Five for Silver: A John, the Lord Chamberlain Mystery (7 page)

“Gaius says there is no cure for the plague. If that’s so, we can only try to scare it away.”

“You would do better to put your faith in the Lord than in creatures of clay, Hypatia.”

The young woman gave the pot a final stir and then stepped over to the window. Each pane held a wavering image of the flame from the lamp on the table. She leaned closer to the glass. “How can you put your faith in a god who visits such punishment as this pestilence upon his creatures?”

Peter quickly made the sign of his religion. “This world may be full of horror, but it is only this world. Who can say what lies beyond? We might well convince ourselves there is nothing outside this kitchen, but lean close enough to that dark glass, look through the reflections from our small lamp, and you’ll see countless lights blazing forth beyond.”

“For an old army cook you preach very well, Peter,” Hypatia replied softly. “In fact, better than some prelates.”

“We must remain humble! After all, there may well be prelates who are better cooks than I am.” Peter began to smile, but then his face darkened. “Gregory and I had been discussing this world and the next for some time.”

“And those words were composed for his ears?”

“Yes.” Peter bowed his head.

Hypatia rubbed away condensation on the window panes. In the quiet kitchen, her finger made a faint squeaking sound against the glass. Boiling water murmured busily in the pot. Now the smell of bacon joined the odor of dill. “I might believe in your god if he sent a messenger to me, Peter, as he did to you. Yet why would you receive a message about your friend when so many are dying?”

Peter observed the ways of heaven were beyond understanding.

“They’re certainly beyond mine. Those clay scorpions you scorn are more much straightforward. Besides, do you think I haven’t noticed your lucky coin?”

Peter gave her a questioning look.

“The coin you keep in your room. I’ve seen it now and then when I’m cleaning.”

Peter related how he had found the coin in Isauria. “And consider this, Hypatia. Paul himself might have held that very coin!”

“It could have magickal powers then,” the young woman suggested slyly.

“You make it sound like one of those…” Peter hesitated, choosing his words with care. “…foreign talismans.”

“This sort of foreign talisman, Peter?”

Hypatia took off a small pendant suspended on a thin, leather thong and handed it to him for inspection. “It’s an udjat. They’re very highly thought of in Egypt.”

The green faience piece was a stylized representation of a large eye, with a trailing, curved tail descending from its left side.

“That’s an Eye of Horus,” Hypatia went on. “It protects its wearers against evil and ill health. Everyone in this city should be wearing one, if you ask me.”

“What an odd thing,” Peter observed. “And without intending blasphemy, it reminds me of the all-seeing eyes of the Lord.”

“Why don’t you put your coin on a chain and wear it, Peter? Then you’d be protected wherever you go.”

“But why are you convinced it is lucky?”

Hypatia beamed. “Why, because it bears the likeness of Fortuna, of course.”

Chapter Eight

Triton had not moved a great distance from his father’s dwelling, but he had fallen a long way from its comfortable surroundings.

The address to which Sylvanus had directed John lay not far from the silversmiths’ quarter, across the street from a squat edifice completely occupied, according to the plaque beside its entrance, by furriers. Chunks of the plaster facing of the apartment building where Triton lived had fallen off, revealing rough brickwork beneath. Many of its grubby windows displayed shattered panes or shutters hanging drunkenly from broken hinges.

Just inside a low archway leading to the building’s inner courtyard, two chipped columns, which looked as though they’d been recently scavenged from a refuse pit, called attention to a splintered door.

John knocked and waited. Looking back across the street, he could see a formless brown heap against the wall of the building opposite. Presumably furriers’ discarded wares. The malodorous smell wafting from that direction suggested rather a dead donkey.

A lock snicked and the door cracked open to reveal a tiny woman with the creased yellow skin of a quince and an expression almost as sour. Despite the warm weather, she was swathed in layers of black wool.

“What is it?” She firmly clutched the edge of her door, obviously prepared to slam it shut if necessary.

“Are you the owner of this building?”

“Yes. My name’s Glykeria. How can I assist you?” She inclined her head to one side to look up at John. Her eyes had a glassy, vacant look.

John realized she was actually turning an ear toward him.

The woman was blind.

He told her he sought a man named Triton.

“Do I know where he is? Indeed I do,” Glykeria replied. “Burning in the eternal fires, that’s where. That young villain will be roasting long after the empire is dust and that’s just for the rent he never paid. So whatever he owes you, I’m afraid you’ll just have to be content with considering that he’ll burn for that as well.”

The sightless eyes gleamed as if reflecting the flames she contemplated.

John sighed. He’d never undertaken an investigation where death seemed to be not only the crime, but also the murderer’s accomplice. Nonetheless he forged ahead, explaining he wasn’t a bill collector but rather a palace official.

The woman glowered at him. “Of course not. You’re a good friend and just want a word. He had so many good friends wanting a word. Never met anyone so popular, I must say. I could tell by my nose just who he’d robbed. The perfumer visited more than once. for a start. At the end he couldn’t even pay the cheesemaker’s bill. All good friends, so they said, although none of them claimed to be from the palace before now.”

John assured her he was, in fact, from the palace. She gave no indication that she had heard him, or believed him if she had.

“When did Triton die?” he asked.

“Only yesterday. Or possibly it was the day before. Not long ago.” She flapped a claw-like hand vaguely.

“Do you know anything about his family or friends? Perhaps some of these visitors you mentioned—”

“His father won’t be settling Triton’s debts, so you’re out of luck there. I can assure you, the rogue had long since cut himself off from whatever family he had, or they cut themselves off from him. Little wonder, really. If he hadn’t died, I would’ve evicted him at the end of the week.”

“Triton was a troublesome tenant?”

“Named for a pagan god and had the morals of one.”

Something in the woman’s tone told John he would have to tread around the subject of Triton carefully. He asked to see Triton’s room.

Glykeria’s head inclined further to the side. “I see I misunderstood your intentions.”

Suddenly she grabbed a fold of John’s robe.

A toothless smile added another crease to the woman’s face. “I can feel from this fine cloth you can afford my rooms. For an instant I thought I’d have to direct you to a tenement. If you would wait…”

She banged the door shut and emerged not long afterwards grasping a bundle of keys.

“This way,” she said as she scuttled out. Despite her lack of sight, Glykeria crossed the paved courtyard without hesitation and vanished into an entranceway. John followed her to the top of a gloomy flight of stairs.

“I’m not proposing to become a tenant,” he said, wondering how she had formed the misconception. “I only wish to see where Triton lived. I’m curious, though. How did you initially suppose I couldn’t afford one of your rooms?”

“Excuse me, sir, but it was because you carry the smell of the most vulgar of wines.”

Glykeria led him to the second floor. If any lamps were provided in the windowless stairwell, they weren’t lit. The hallway was nearly as dark. Glykeria’s key grated in a lock, a battered plank door swung open, and they stepped into a room whose furnishings consisted entirely of dust.

“Spacious, as I’m sure you’ll agree. If you’d care to look out the window and direct your gaze between the building over the way and the warehouse next to it and then over the top of the distant granary, there’s a fine view of the sea, or so I’m told.”

John walked over to the window. Whoever had described the view to Glykeria possessed either eyes or a tongue that couldn’t be trusted.

“A most pleasant view,” she went on. “But then to me any view would be pleasant.” She emitted a brief cackle.

Ignoring his recent statement that he did not wish to take a room, she continued. “I must caution you, sir, there’s already been some interest in this fine place. Several well-spoken young men came by just yesterday. Come to think of it, that proves Triton must have been dead then. Unless it was this morning when I showed them the room. They looked around for the longest time. They wanted to meditate on the decision by themselves, so I left them. I suspect they were praying for advice. In the end, they did not take it. Perhaps it was heaven’s plan the room should still be here for you, sir. They gave me a nummus for my trouble. Very pious young men, they were.”

Not to mention strong, since the courteous thieves had apparently stolen everything in the room. Not that there had been much furniture to begin with, judging from the dust-free markings on the floorboards.

Glykeria secured Triton’s former lodgings behind them. Having taken several uncannily sure steps down the hallway, motioning John to follow, she rapped a staccato summons on a door at the far end.

After some time a muffled screech came from within. “I told you, my husband’s sick, you old crow. We’ll pay the rent as soon as he’s up and around and can get back to work.”

“I’ll have what’s due, or you’ll answer to the City Prefect!”

“Why not bring the Patriarch along with the Prefect while you’re at it?” came the shouted reply. “Or how about Justinian? I am sure the emperor is as anxious about your rent as you are! Go away and stop bothering a sick man!”

“I’ve got someone here prepared to take you away now,” Glykeria claimed. “If you don’t believe me, look out and see.”

The door opened briefly and shut again with a loud click. Not long afterwards the door opened a second time and several coins clattered onto the floor near Glykeria’s shoes. She bent nimbly, her fingers explored the boards, found the money, and scooped it up in an instant. “Thank you for your assistance, sir. I’ll be happy to give you a discount on that room.”

“Perhaps you might have waited until your tenant resumed working?” John suggested as they clattered back downstairs.

Glykeria snorted in derision. “The fellow won’t see sunrise tomorrow.”

“What makes you think so?”

They were halfway across the courtyard. Glykeria stopped and turning toward John tapped her nose. “I can smell it, sir. Take the clerk on the second floor. He’s afraid it’s the plague, but he’ll be back to his accounts next week. He just ate something that had spoilt, that’s all. However, the potter next door to him will be clay before he touches his wheel again.”

“How do you know this, Glykeria?” He almost expected to hear that she kept an oracle in her kitchen.

“I smell it on them.”

“Ah, I understand.” It was becoming obvious that Glykeria’s blindness was less an impediment to her than her mental faculties. Which perhaps explained how she had transformed John so quickly from one of Tritons’ creditors to prospective tenant.

She must have sensed the doubt in his tone. ”Let me prove it, sir.” She wrinkled her nose and sniffed. “What a strange thing. You have been to a farm recently. A gentleman like you in the midst of the capital, I agree it seems unlikely and yet it is unmistakable. Let me advise you, bulls can be dangerous beasts.”

John remarked that she had an amazing gift.

“Gift? You call this a gift? Can you imagine what it is like to live by one’s nose since the plague arrived? Be glad you don’t possess my sensitivities, sir. Now, about the matter of Triton’s old room…”

John explained yet again that he did not intend to rent anything. He pressed a coin into her hand, stifling her vague murmurs of disappointment. “For your help, Glykeria. Is there anything else you can tell me about Triton before I go?”

“I didn’t know him as well as some, I admit. However, I make my daily rounds, to collect rents, to clean, to make certain all is in order. I noticed things from time to time. He imbibed heavily, for a start. He was often sick from too much wine.”

Her face crinkled with displeasure at the recollection. “His father visited once. They argued. Such blasphemous language. I’ve rarely heard the like! It’s no wonder Triton died horribly. Many of my tenants have left this life since the plague arrived and it’s always a dreadful death, but his was the most terrible of all. I could hear him at the end, bellowing with pain, even down here in the courtyard. Heaven is just, sir, if not always kind.”

She tilted her head toward the courtyard which they had just left, as if the paving stones still vibrated with echoes of Triton’s last agonies.

John asked what Triton and Nereus had argued about.

“A woman, of course. What else? She insisted on calling herself Sappho. She thought I didn’t notice, but I always knew when she sneaked in and out of the building. She smelled of cheap wine, expensive perfume, and garlic. A very stupid and low girl.”

Glykeria leaned forward confidentially. “One day she brought in a piece of fox-fur one of the furriers over the way had discarded. I had a tenant who sewed, and I allowed her to conduct business in her room for a small weekly consideration. Apparently Sappho imagined she would look quite the aristocrat, with this nasty scrap of fur sewn along the bottom of her tunic. Still, the job provided my tenant a extra nummus or two, so she could pay her rent on time for a change, until the plague claimed her.”

She pursed her lips. “My tenant described the woman to me in great detail. Sappho always wore saffron-colored garments, of a most indecent style I may add, and boasted endlessly about how she would one day wear golden silk. Well, to cut a long story short, she eventually moved in, but when she left him she took the nasty thing with her. I mean the fox-trimmed tunic, not Triton.”

John asked, without harboring much hope, if Glykeria could remember the date of the woman’s departure. Unfortunately, she could not. Nor could she say where this particular girl had come from. She’d really been no different from the others who stayed with Triton occasionally, except she’d stayed longer than the rest.

“But then what do you expect? She was an actress, sir, and very flighty in her ways. Decent folk use other words for them that follow that particular profession.” She compressed her lips. “Have you talked to the bear trainers by the Hippodrome? But no, it’s a bull you recently visited, not a bear. She claimed to work with them. Bears, I mean.”

“And Triton, what profession did he follow?”

“He was like her. Had all sorts of notions, but rarely worked. Fancied himself first an actor, then a bear trainer. The girl knew some of the trainers, as I said, and got him a job with them. It didn’t last long and no wonder, if he mistreated the bears as badly as he did her.”

She hugged herself suddenly. “If you don’t mind, sir, there’s bit of a chill in the air. I need to warm up inside and then I’m off to the Great Church. I spend as much time there as I can.”

John remarked that one’s faith could be a great comfort in such trying times.

Glykeria gave another cackle. “It’s the incense that draws me there these days, sir. Yes, the blessed incense. It’s the only thing that banishes the stink of death from my nostrils.”