Five for Silver: A John, the Lord Chamberlain Mystery (5 page)

Chapter Six

Empress Theodora stepped out of her silk tunica and pushed it away across the tiled floor of the Great Palace baths with a deft flick of her bare foot.

Naked, she was a short, middle-aged woman with thick ankles and slightly fleshy arms, hardly the glamorous subject for sculptors as she was when clothed in imperial regalia. She did, however, still possess the shapely calves and thighs of the dancer, one of the professions she had followed in her youth.

This afternoon her audience consisted of her ladies-in-waiting and two aristocratic matrons, standing nearly up to their chests in the steaming circular pool, plus the startled bathers’ two servants.

Theodora’s ladies-in-waiting carefully folded the layers of glinting, gem-patterned robes she’d just shed and gathered up several pieces of jewelry. The empress glanced down over herself, performing the ritual examination that had become common for the city’s inhabitants. “Do you see any of the signs?”

The attendant she’d addressed, trained never to stare at her mistress, timidly directed her gaze toward the empress. Finally she shook her head and quickly turned away, bending to retrieve the discarded tunica.

Would anyone dare tell her if they did note some indication of the plague, Theodora wondered.

She padded over to the steps leading down into the water. The baths she had chosen occupied a semicircular room, reminding her of the apse of a church. Steam from the pool coiled upwards through a shaft of light descending from the circular aperture in the large room’s domed ceiling. Benches and tables sat against the walls. A monumental Diana, hunting gear strewn around her chiseled feet, stood nearby, looking ready to place a bare marble foot into the pool.

“My private bath is well appointed, ladies, but it gets lonely, bathing with only echoes for companions,” Theodora observed to the room at large.

One of the bathers, chubby and pink, began to execute a low bow, became suddenly aware that her pendulous breasts were, perhaps, not an appropriate display of respect, and clamped her arms down over them. Her companion, a pallid, angular woman with sunken cheeks and chest, stepped backwards in the water, wincing as her spine came up against the sharp snout of a fancifully carved, water-spewing fish.

“There is no need for formalities, Priscilla,” Theodora addressed the plump bather. “Just think, now you’ll be able to tell everyone you’ve bathed with the empress. That stable boy you’ve been trysting with in the palace gardens will be most impressed, not to mention your husband the senator.”

Priscilla was suddenly much less pink despite the hot water.

“As for you, Galla,” Theodora observed to the other woman, “I expect you don’t have anyone to tell your secrets. But you don’t have to run away. I won’t bite.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not a devotee of Sappho, are you? Might it be I will not be safe with you in there?”

“Oh, no, excellency. Never. That is to say…”

Theodora giggled. “This is so much more pleasant than my solitary ablutions. I know, let’s play.” She splashed a handful of water into Galla’s face.

The woman sputtered and coughed.

Theodora splashed her again. “Come now, fight back. It’s no fun otherwise. You too, Priscilla. Hurry up!” She sent a spray in the direction of the plump woman. “What? Afraid to splash the empress? Just pretend I’m someone else. Pretend I’m your stable boy.” Her tone sharpened. “I might as well be bathing with the Patriarch. Play!”

Priscilla bent slightly, cradling her bosom with one hand, dipped her fingers into the water, and shook them in Theodora’s direction.

The empress gasped. Her hands flew up to her eyes. “What did you do?” she wailed. “I can’t see!”

Her ladies-in-waiting rushed to the edge of the pool.

Priscilla gaped in horror.

“Don’t stand there! Help me!” Theodora cried.

Priscilla stumbled forward clumsily. The empress executed a well practiced dance step, swung her foot, and cut her fellow bather’s legs out from under her. Priscilla disappeared below the water, sending a wave up over the rim of the pool, soaking the ladies-in-waiting.

Theodora laughed with delight.

As Priscilla surfaced, choking and spitting, Theodora gleefully prepared to dunk her playmate’s head beneath the water.

Before she could do so, a shadow passed over the pool.

Something was blocking the light from the aperture in the dome.

Theodora looked up.

A dark shape almost filled the opening.

A great, black bird.

It dropped, dark wings spreading, and hit the center of the pool in an explosion of water.

What bobbed to the surface almost immediately wasn’t a bird, however, but a man whose leathery face was half hidden by a sodden hood. In one claw-like hand he clutched a sack from which emanated a hideous, demonic cackling.

The matrons and attendants shrieked in unison.

“Silence!” Theodora commanded. “All of you! If I’m not mistaken, we have a holy visitor.”

The hooded man shook the dripping sack, which cackled even more frantically. “What do you mean, highness? Can’t you see, I’m Death! Just thought I’d drop in unexpectedly, like I always do!”

“You’re the holy fool we’ve all been hearing about,” Theodora told him with a scimitar of a smile.

“Am I? Well, you’re the empress, I suppose, so if you say so, I must be.” He lurched toward Galla, his cloak floating on the surface of the water. Galla covered her chest with her hands and cringed away, but was pinned against the carved fish head.

“Don’t you want to hear my riddle?” asked the intruder. “Why is the empress like Rome?”

Galla’s only reply was to tremble with horror and embarrassment.

“Because…because…she’s the symbol of all that’s great?” offered Priscilla in a quavering tone.

The man now sidled in Priscilla’s direction. “You should be trying to flatter me, not her, don’t you think? After all, I might be carrying a knife. As far as I can see, the empress isn’t armed.”

“Tell us why the empress is like Rome,” Theodora demanded.

“Why, because Justinian will do anything to have her, even though she’s already been well plundered by strangers!”

He scrambled nimbly up the bath stairs, scattering the ladies-in-waiting, and squatted toad-like, dripping water, on the tiles.

Theodora followed and hunkered down next to him, careless of her nudity. “Tell me, fool, how did you get in here? There are guards everywhere outside.”

“It was a miracle, highness.”

“It will be an even greater miracle if you can get out…still attached to your head, that is.”

“Of course, for I have seen too much.” The man leered. “Well, if the Lord wills it, so be it. But, first, allow me to entertain you.”

He opened the soggy sack, tipped out an extremely agitated chicken, and then scooped two handfuls of wet grain from the depths of the sack.

The bathers couldn’t stifle their gasps. From one of the cowering attendants came a nervous, uncontrolled titter.

The fool turned his hooded, shadowed visage toward Theodora. “Ah. You’re smiling, I see, highness. You know how this works, then?”

“Do you think I don’t know half the population of Constantinople claims to have watched chickens peck corn from my groin in the days when I was working in the theater?”

“I’ve heard that on one occasion a certain high-ranking foreign official paid good silver to play the chicken,” the man informed her.

“Now that’s a slander that hasn’t reached my ears before now!” Theodora leaned toward the fool until her face nearly touched his. His eyes glinted within his hood. His shabby cloak appeared encrusted with grease, but the only smell about him was that of desiccated papyrus. “Sitting here with you like this reminds me of my past. People are amazed that a bearkeeper’s daughter can command senators to prostrate themselves at her feet. But, you know, senators have been prostrating themselves at my feet since I was…well…a child…”

The fool had taken hold of the chicken and was stroking its feathers idly. “The Lord will forgive your sins, if only you will ask.”

“Sins? It is I who was sinned against, fool.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I remember the first occasion my sister brought a man to me. Some high official or other he was, he claimed. A fat, nasty man. When my sister explained what he wanted to do, I didn’t know whether to laugh at how silly it sounded or cry with disgust at what he required. I couldn’t imagine why he would desire such a thing, but I’d learned to add up coins before I could read, so I knew immediately why I would allow him to…well…”

One of the attendants burst into noisy sobs, but was quelled by one look from Theodora.

“When my sister left, the old fellow began to paw me,” Theodora went on. “I pretended to cry. ‘Oh, sir,’ I whimpered most convincingly. ‘I want to obey you, but I’m so frightened. Perhaps if you pretended to be a little purring kitten I would not be so terribly afraid.’ Yes, I’ve always been an excellent actress…”

The fool grinned. “Indeed. And you have made a practice of humiliating rich and powerful men ever since those far off days. Isn’t that so, highness? Why, that’s a homily worthy of Chrysostom.”

A wet strand of hair had snaked over Theodora’s shoulder, trickling water down between her breasts. “How do you intend to entertain me? Be quick, fool, before I call the guards.”

Keeping the restless chicken grasped firmly in one hand, the man set the wet grain into two small piles. “I shall answer your questions. Or rather, my oracle here will. When I place this sagacious fowl between the piles of food, highness, ask it something, and then see toward which pile it heads to eat. The grain at my right hand means Yes, that to my left indicates No.”

***

Felix put his shoulder to the door of the imperial carriage standing in a small clearing, turned its latch, and heard it click into place.

From inside the conveyance came a thunderous growl, then the noise of claws rattling and scrabbling. The carriage rocked slightly. A few in the bedraggled group of excubitors surrounding it cursed bears in general, and this one in particular. Although it was now safely contained, there was more than a little blood to give evidence of their struggle to get it into the carriage.

“Lucky for us our big friend here didn’t escape from the grounds,” Felix rumbled, sounding decidedly ursine himself. “Someone, and I suspect it would have been me, would have had to pay for the mistake then.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” protested a young guard armed with a broken lance. “I didn’t make that cursed weak net…”

“You’re right. Still—”

“Captain, what are we, animal keepers?” protested another. “I didn’t join the excubitors to haul the empress’ pets around. It’s not supposed to be part of our duties, pulling imperial carriages occupied by bears!”

“Now you know very well that the empress has such a kind heart she ordered three of you harnessed to the carriage so that none of the imperial horses would be terrified by the smell of its occupant. Need I remind you that your job is to do whatever she orders, and do it fast and without complaint?” Felix retorted.

The excubitors immediately began to detail orders they’d prefer to take from the empress.

“Those are wishes not likely to be granted,” Felix grunted with a grin.

“Perhaps, but sometimes Fortuna surprises us.” The speaker was staring open-mouthed down the path leading into the clearing.

Hardly had he spoken when two naked women raced past them.

“Murder…at the baths,” shrieked one.

***

The hallway in the women’s wing of the imperial baths swarmed with aristocratic ladies in various states of panic and undress, the more panicked among them the least clothed.

“Mithra!” said the young man with the broken lance. “And I thought having to stand guard at banquets and smell all that food was hard duty.”

A decently dressed woman, an attendant no doubt, trotted by, glancing back over her shoulder.

Felix stopped her. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

“It’s Satan, sir. Satan’s flying from one pool to another, shouting all manner of blasphemies and obscenities. Flying about like a horrible black bird. Everybody in the baths ran away, naked or not. The shame of it, sir, to be seen naked in public…but it was a question of garments or souls and not both, so it was.” She looked down at the blue silk tunic in her hands. “Now I must find my mistress and get her decently clothed, sir.”

As she ran out of the building, a familiar figure raced down the hallway toward them.

No, Felix realized, the figure wasn’t familiar. It was its clothing, which was instantly recognizable. Its elaborate embroidered panels depicting the temptation in the Garden of Eden identified it as a garment he had seen the empress wearing.

It was not actually being worn, but rather was wrapped around the running figure. Whoever it was suddenly flung the robe off, straight into Felix’ face, and bolted outside.

Felix knocked the garment aside. He saw the back of the black-cloaked figure that had worn it and set out in hasty pursuit.

His boots slid on wet tiles and he fell heavily, taking two excubitors with him. For a short space, the hallway was a confusion of sprawled, armored guards, bare flesh, swords, and silks.

Felix found himself pinned beneath the not inconsiderable weight of a plump, pink-faced, matronly woman.

He gently lifted her off and scrambled to his feet, trying not to look at her. “Priscilla, my apologies. Please give my regards to your husband the senator.”

He contained his choice string of lurid curses until he was outside the baths.

“This way!” an excubitor shouted, gesturing toward the clearing down the path as his colleagues poured outside, heads swiveling back and forth, gaping after fleeing women.

“Look at me, men,” bellowed Felix. “Pretend I’m a pretty sight! Keep your eyes on your captain! Now, follow! He can’t outrun us!”

He was right. The leading excubitors burst into the clearing only a few paces behind their quarry.

Unfortunately, those few paces also marked the distance between the edge of the open space and the imperial carriage.

Without saying a word, the strange intruder grasped the carriage door and flung it open.