Ten for Dying (John the Lord Chamberlain Mysteries) (2 page)

Chapter Two

Felix clumped disconsolately past the excubitor barracks and across the cobbled square fronting the brick-walled house where his friend John, Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Justinian, lived. His head throbbed from too much wine and not enough sleep and he could still smell Anastasia’s perfume in his beard.

Two months ago Justinian would have summoned his Lord Chamberlain to order him to look into the theft of an important relic. John would have been receiving orders in the emperor’s chilly reception hall and Felix would still be in Anastasia’s warm arms. But since Theodora’s passing, things had changed in Constantinople. John’s investigation of her death had resulted in his dismissal.

It was one of Justinian’s transitory whims, no doubt. No successor to the post had been appointed. In the meantime, Felix hoped John would help him even if he was temporarily in disfavor.

He was surprised to see a laden ox cart outside the house.

“Peter! Is your master at home?”

The old servant looked up from the crate he was tying to the back of the cart. “The master will be out shortly, but I fear he has no time for visitors.”

“Why the gloomy look, Peter? Isn’t your new marriage agreeing with you?”

Felix’s jocular tone failed to brighten the wrinkled visage. “Life’s joys are always accompanied by sorrow, sir. Our lot is to run with patience the race that is set before us, as the holy book says.”

Felix thought a man of Peter’s years should be happy to run the race with a new bride half his age. He reflected that it must be a platonic relationship as a tawny-skinned and raven-haired Egyptian woman emerged from the house. In Felix’s opinion she more resembled the parchment-skinned man’s daughter or granddaughter than his wife.

Then he saw with a shock that Hypatia cradled a swaddled figure. Before he could say a word, she lifted a corner of the blanket.

A shriveled head with enormous whiskers stared up glassy-eyed.

“Cheops, our poor little mummified cat,” Hypatia explained. “A souvenir of Peter’s travels with the master.”

“Ah…well…congratulations to you and Peter. On your marriage, I mean. But what’s all this about?” Felix gestured toward the cart.

“You must know that the master has been exiled, sir. The whole city knows.”

“This is home no longer, Captain Felix.” Peter added.

“Yes, I know the emperor was displeased, but Justinian always comes to his senses before—”

“Not this time, my friend.” As John stepped out of the house into the sunlight Felix couldn’t help noticing his face looked more gaunt than usual and there was, hard to believe, a hint of a stoop in the tall frame. Cornelia emerged and stood beside her husband. Her eyes were red-rimmed.

“You aren’t really going away?” Felix blurted.

“Our ship leaves for Greece this morning,” John replied. “I hoped to have a chance to talk with you before we departed.”

Felix realized the quartet—master, mistress, and servants alike—all wore rough traveling cloaks. “I would have come to see you, John, but I never imagined…and I’ve been…well…very busy…important business.”

Cornelia walked over to the cart. Her nostrils flared. “Busy, indeed! That’s an expensive scent you’re wearing! Everyone at the palace knows about your important business, even those of us in disfavor.”

Felix felt his face flush.

Cornelia glared at him. “Anatolius has been exceptionally busy in his legal endeavors lately, what with all the uncertainties everyone faces with Theodora gone, but he managed to tear himself away from the charms of the magistrates to pay his respects. Even Isis visited and cried the whole time.”

“Isis left the refuge?” He was surprised the brothel owner, now head of a sanctuary for reformed prostitutes, would have dared to visit a disgraced Lord Chamberlain.

“Why not? She’s known John for years. She had several girls in tow. To protect her reputation I suppose. Very proper they look now in their plain garments. Quite a contrast to the old days.”

“As usual Isis wanted to reminisce about when we knew each other in Egypt although in reality our paths never crossed there. Not that I recall.” John pulled the heavy nail-studded wooden door shut and locked it. “However, speaking of Egypt, there’s still an ample stock of Egyptian wine left in the house.” He handed the key to Felix. “Help yourself to anything else left behind before the emperor does.”

The key was a massive weight in Felix’s hand. “Why didn’t you warn me you were about to go?”

The former Lord Chamberlain answered only with a faint smile.

“I realize you don’t like farewells, John, but—”

“And you didn’t come to say farewell. What is it then?”

Felix’s head seemed to be filled with cobwebs. Perhaps he wasn’t as sober as he had imagined after the night’s excesses. “A relic’s been stolen,” he said, realizing that he shouldn’t be burdening John under the circumstances, but too befuddled to change course. He pulled the emperor’s message from his cloak. “It’s all explained here. Very strange. I was hoping you’d accompany me to the Church of the Holy Apostles.”

Cornelia’s eyes gleamed, resembling the edge of a newly honed sword. “Felix, you know very well Justinian made it plain nothing happening in Constantinople is of interest to John any longer. Not to mention our ship sails in an hour or two.”

John put his hand on her arm. “We’ll take a couple of the excubitors’ horses. You and the others go on to the docks. I’ll be there before the cart’s unloaded.”

“Master, if I may ask, could we leave now?” Peter put in. “That big man lounging against the barracks has been taking quite an interest in us ever since we came outside.”

“No wonder. It’s not often you see a former high-ranking official being sent away in disgrace,” Cornelia snapped. “He’s no doubt one of Justinian’s spies, making certain the emperor’s orders are obeyed.”

“John’s fortunate,” Felix pointed out. “Usually those who fall from favor disappear permanently.”

The glare Cornelia gave him made Felix wish he could vanish. She climbed up onto the seat of the cart beside her two servants. “Are you certain you aren’t going to get John involved in anything dangerous?”

Felix shook his head. “Hardly, unless you consider frogs dangerous.”

“Frogs?”

Felix opened the scroll and glanced at it. “So it says. The new mausoleum at the back of the church was overrun with frogs.”

Hypatia suddenly leaned around Peter, who had taken up the reins. “Are you certain, sir?”

“At least thirty of them.”

Peter glanced at Hypatia. “You look distressed, my dear. What is it?”

Hypatia bit her lip.

“There is something you wish to say?” John asked.

“If I may, master,” Hypatia replied hesitantly, “in Egypt frogs are sacred to the goddess associated with resurrection. That so many appeared overnight in a place of the dead seems a great wonder. Where could they all have come from?”

Felix ran a hand through his beard. “Strange you should mention Egypt. A carved scarab was left behind.”

John looked thoughtful. “Frogs and a scarab are an unusually suggestive pairing. Was someone trying to raise the dead?”

Felix didn’t answer immediately. He hoped John was joking. But his friend didn’t smile. “It could be,” Felix finally said, reluctantly. The implications of John’s observation made him shudder. “The scarab was found lying on top of Theodora’s sarcophagus.”

Chapter Three

Theodora’s shade was not waiting for Felix and John at the entrance to the Church of the Holy Apostles.

Not that Felix had truly expected her, although, he had to admit, his imagination had bedeviled him during their ride along the Mese.

Leaving their horses with one of the excubitors arrayed around the church, he and John made their way upstream against a flood of worshippers pouring out into the sunshine after morning prayer. In the nave, where they found the priest Basilius, beams of sunlight dropped through wisps of pungent incense, sparkling here off a silver lamp, there from jewels set in a gilded reliquary.

Christian ostentation had never impressed Felix like John, a secret follower of the soldier’s austere god Mithra. But recently, battered by the changes at the palace, he had felt a guilty appreciation, an attraction, not to the gold and gems and fine marbles in the churches, but to their solidity. Theodora was dead, John would soon be in exile, his own life had careened past with shocking speed, but these monuments to the Christian god were ever-present, in every street. Wherever you stood in Constantinople you could see a glittering dome, a cross. Endlessly built and replaced, the churches, and perhaps what they represented, would forever be here.

Basilius did not appear to be taking any comfort from his surroundings. Short and slight, of indeterminate age, he looked distraught as he spoke to a shabbily dressed man and woman beside the marble-columned templon guarding the sanctuary beyond. Lingering worshippers, Felix guessed.

He strode up to Basilius, accompanied by John. Both men towered above the priest, whose robes were disheveled.

“Ah, Captain. Thank you for coming. I’ve already spoken to one of the City Prefect’s men. I was told the emperor would be sending someone as well.” Basilius offered John a nervous glance, started to address him, then, instead, handed Felix a green stone, carved into the shape of a beetle. “Here is the scarab found on Theodora’s tomb. The frogs have been removed from the mausoleum.” He absently wiped his hand on his vestments.

Felix peered at the scarab, turned it over, looking for what, he couldn’t say. The ancient talisman, crude and dull, seemed profoundly out of place amid the magnificent trappings of Christianity. “Do you have any idea who might be responsible for this?”

Basilius shook his head.

Felix gave John an inquiring glance, but John said nothing.

“We’ll need to examine the mausoleum,” Felix said. “But what about the relic that was stolen?”

Basilius appeared ready to burst into tears. “One of the empire’s most sacred and powerful relics, the fragment of the burial cloth of our Lord’s mother!”

The words took the air out of Felix like a blow to the stomach. Surely not the Virgin’s shroud? He knew of it, of course. Who in the city did not? Constantinople was said to be under its protection. A fine thing if it couldn’t even protect itself from thieves.

“You saw the theft?”

“No. I have witnesses.” Basilius indicated the poorly dressed couple whom Felix had taken for worshippers. “This is Mada, who serves the Lord in the capacity of church cleaner, and Peteiros, her husband, who takes care of lighting the lamps and polishing the holy vessels.”

The couple gave feeble smiles, bowed, and moved forward a few paces. They were of late middle age, sturdy but pallid-skinned, suggesting farmers who hadn’t seen the sun in years.

“Please tell the captain and his companion what you told me,” Basilius instructed them.

Felix noted the priest’s description of John as merely the captain’s companion. Two weeks ago he had been the feared and respected Lord Chamberlain. Now the whole city knew of his fall from imperial grace. It was obvious John’s presence made Basilius uneasy. People kept their distance from Justinian’s enemies if they knew what was good for them.

Mada clasped her red and knobby hands together and began in a faltering voice. “We came here early this morning to attend to our duties, sir. My husband was refilling the lamps. They were burning low and the church was full of shadows. And it seemed wrong, somehow. We got to work…”

The woman spoke with a faint, rough accent Felix could not place.

She shivered and looked around fearfully. “But after a while the church felt different. There was a strange smell, a bad smell, overpowering the incense, and suddenly the walls began to move.”

“Move?” Felix asked.

The woman wrung her clasped hands. “Yes. The Lord is my witness. It was as if the stone had turned to water. Like a waterfall. Yet my mouth felt as dry as the desert. And then my husband fell down.”

“That is true, sir,” Peteiros confirmed. “I know how a fly must feel when a man brings his hand down on it. One moment I was standing here and the next—”

“Oh, Peteiros, you do go on,” scolded his wife.

“But it is true, sirs. All turned black and I went straight to the floor.” He pointed to a large bruise on his forehead. “Does this mark lie?”

Felix looked to John, who did not appear inclined to assist in the questioning. “So what happened then?”

“I was helping him get up as best I could,” Mada said. “I was feeling very unwell myself, and then I heard the sound of running feet. I looked around. There were two of them, keeping to the shadows, they were. It was hard to see, what with the walls bubbling and trembling, but it seemed—”

“Demons, sirs.” Interrupted Peteiros. “Hideous demons!”

Felix thought the priest looked faint. “Demons? My orders mentioned frogs and a scarab. Nothing was said about demons.”

“I only caught a glimpse of them,” Mada admitted, “between the shadows and my head spinning and helping my husband, but they had to be demons. There was that smell I mentioned, surely it was the smell of demons?”

“That’s right,” her husband confirmed. “The unholy stink of them is still in my nostrils.”

Felix sniffed the air but discerned only incense, predominately frankincense. He had noticed that the breath of the cleaning woman and her husband was particularly foul. He suspected they had both been drinking the night before. “Are you sure this dreadful odor is in your nose and not just in your head?”

“I wish it were only in my head, sir.”

“And then? What did these demons do?”

Mada waved a claw-like hand in the direction of several elaborate reliquaries sitting on a table in front of the templon. “They ran over there. To where the holy objects are kept. When they raced away one of them carried something that glowed white in the shadows.”

“Like a halo,” added Peteiros.

Felix had seen the shroud when it was displayed during holy days. In truth it was merely a piece of the shroud, a stained scrap of cloth.

Basilius walked over to the reliquary. Felix managed to compose himself and followed.

The priest’s hand shook as he pointed out how the lock on the dome of a miniature, gem-encrusted Great Church had been forced.

To Felix’s consternation John remained adamantly silent. “What do you think, John?” he hinted.

“A very small lock to secure such a great treasure,” John replied.

Basilius shook his head. “The shroud is usually housed at the Church of the Virgin and well-guarded indeed. But it was brought here temporarily for the empress’ funeral. Who could have guessed anyone would engage in such desecration? I sent one of my younger assistants out to find a patrol but by the time he brought someone back it was far too late.”

“It’s obvious someone decided to take advantage of the shroud being kept here without adequate security,” Felix observed. He lifted the golden dome and peered down into the reliquary’s interior. A thread lay coiled there. Did even a minute bit of a sacred object hold divine power? If the Christian god was all powerful, why not? But if that god was present everywhere, as the Christians claimed, what was the point of relics anyway?

He shut the dome with a click. Felix well knew the only point that mattered to him right now was that the emperor valued this peculiar old scrap of cloth more than the head of his excubitor captain. If Felix didn’t find the relic he would soon be joining John in exile, or a worse fate, given Justinian’s apparent derangement since Theodora’s death. But how was he supposed to accomplish that? To believers, the shroud was holier than the Great Church. The Great Church, however, could not be folded up like a child’s tunic for hiding.

There was no use pondering the problem now. He forced his attention to the matter of Theodora’s tomb. “You’d better show me where the frogs were,” he told Basilius.

The mausoleum’s elderly doorkeeper was half dozing on a stool by an outside entrance. A stout stick leaning across the inside of the door frame provided an attempt at a barrier. As Basilius, Felix, and John approached, he blinked and grabbed the stick, and attempted to stand.

“Remain seated,” Basilius told him.

Felix was dumbfounded. “This ancient is who you have guarding the mausoleum?”

“Timothy is perfectly dependable, sir.”

The sight of the stick caused Felix to raise his eyebrows. “You mean he’s too crippled to want to stroll about during the night?”

Timothy turned a watery gaze on Felix. “There’s not a soul in the city wants to go creeping around a tomb in the middle of the night, sir. Especially Theodora’s tomb. It makes my hairs prickle just sitting in the doorway. More than once I’ve felt the hand of the empress this close to the back of my neck.” He showed Felix his thumb and forefinger, the space between them the thickness of a coin. He looked toward the priest. “It’s then I mutter a prayer, and she goes back where she came from.”

“You shouldn’t speak of our blessed empress that way,” chided Basilius.

“Last night someone wanted to creep around and did,” Felix reminded the doorkeeper.

“Not men. Demons.”

“So you saw these demons, too?”

“That’s right. Two of them. They came running out of the church.”

“I have already questioned Timothy,” Basilius put in. “He confirmed everything Mada and Peteiros said about them.”

“And in which direction did they run?” Felix supposed Timothy had not been able to pursue them further than the seat of his stool.

The old man must have guessed his thoughts because he planted his stick on the ground and pulled himself upright. “There was no way to pursue them, sir. I leapt to my feet, just as I did now. But as I was about to give chase they vanished!”

Felix stared around the courtyard behind the church. There were several fountains and shrines, along with a few small trees. “Vanished? Behind what?”

“Into the air, sir. Into the darkness. It was as if Satan opened his mouth and gulped them down.”

***

“I wonder if Satan had as bad a bellyache as I do,” Felix complained.

He and John were riding slowly to the docks as their horses picked their way around pedestrians, carriages, and litters crowding the streets between the colonnades.

“What’s made your stomach hurt?”

“You, John. I hoped you’d assist me.”

“When there’s nothing to say, it is better to say nothing. Besides, you’d better get used to undertaking investigations like this. It may be that Justinian is going to turn to you now that I’m leaving.”

The suggestion horrified Felix. “I hope not!”

“He can count on you, can’t he?”

“You need to ask?”

“I’m not certain. Do I?”

Felix wondered whether John knew something of his recent activities. Not that it mattered now. He could see the waters of the Golden Horn glistening beyond the seawall on the other side of the open square where the descending street ended. John’s ship would be there, Cornelia, Peter, and Hypatia awaiting him.

“But at least tell me what you make of it all, John. What about the frogs?”

“Just frogs, judging by the bloodstains left by those that were trodden on. Not to mention the leftover legs. I saw nothing that supported these claims of malignant fiends running about.”

“You mean Timothy imagined or dreamed of seeing them and it improved in the telling?”

“Perhaps.”

“Perhaps? You have no opinion? You didn’t ask any questions, John. I can’t understand why you weren’t paying attention.”

“Mada and her husband were from somewhere around the Euxine Sea. They had lost much of their accents, so I suspect they probably came to Constantinople when they were young.”

“All right, so you were paying attention after all, my friend. But didn’t you learn anything of use to me now?”

“I don’t know yet.” John dismounted, handed the reins to Felix, and with a quiet “Mithra guard you” walked quickly toward one of the archways giving access to the docks.

Felix let him go. As he watched John’s receding back, now as straight as if he had thrown off a burden, he wondered why John hadn’t mentioned the stolen relic.

It was the relic that worried Felix the most.