Seven for a Secret

by Mary Reed

  Anatolius paused at the mouth of the street and looked back into the square he had just left.

  John remained standing at the base of the stylite’s column.

  Anatolius wondered if he should go back. He decided John would prefer to wait alone. Anatolius’ client, on the other hand, would not appreciate waiting at all.

  His way took him along a thoroughfare scarcely wide enough for two carts to pass each other. There were no colonnades and little shade. The second stories of the buildings projected outwards, almost meeting overhead in the narrower sections. Passing an archway, he walked through a sudden blast of heat emanating from the ovens of a baker or a glass maker’s furnace.

  He turned off onto another, narrower, way. Two men in grimy tunics brushed by him, staggering and trailing a miasma of smoke and wine. They were night laborers who’d stopped at a tavern on their way back to whatever place they called home.

  Anatolius wasn’t familiar with the area. He couldn’t recall whether he had been on this particular street and John had not led him this way on their walk to the square. Nevertheless he headed unerringly and without hesitation in what he knew to be the direction of the Great Palace. Having always lived in Constantinople, he was never lost. Perhaps it was something to do with the invisible map formed by the slope of the land, the direction of the breezes, the smell of the sea.

  He had also learned to be ever alert.

  Which is why the burly man about to step into a tavern did not escape his attention.

  Anatolius noticed how the man turned his bearded face away quickly.

  But not quickly enough.

  “Felix!”

  The bear-like head swung around slowly. “Anatolius! Must you announce my identity to the entire world?”

  “If I’d wanted to do that I would have addressed you as Captain Felix.” Anatolius managed an uneasy laugh.

  Encountering Felix in front of a tavern was never lucky. It usually proved an evil omen, like a glimpse of a lone crow perched on a garden fountain. “It’s more than likely the proprietor is already aware of your position at court, Felix,” he continued, “not to mention boasting his patrons include the captain of Justinian’s excubitors.”

  “If he didn’t know before, he certainly knows now!”

  At that early hour they had their choice of the few tables within the tavern. Felix sat with his back against a mosaic on the rear wall, a few strides from the door. The mosaic displayed a feast—assorted olives and cheeses, exotic fruits—an enticing pictorial menu of all that the establishment did not serve. The table could hardly accommodate both their wine cups at the same time, not that Felix bothered to put his down.

  “You’re in a bad humor today, Felix. Personal troubles? A lady?”

  Felix frowned. “There’s more to life than chasing women, difficult though you may find that to believe.”

  “My current mistress is the law. Haven’t you heard?”

  “Yes, of course. My apologies.”

  “So what is it that’s troubling you, my friend?”

  “Nothing. Nothing in particular, even though the plague carried off half my men and recruiting replacements is difficult to say the least. Men who like the feel of a weapon in their hands don’t relish the prospect of standing idly next to imperial doorways waiting for a riot to break out.”

  “Now that the city’s coming back to life, they might not have to wait for long. We’ll be having enough riots again to suit their taste for action.” Anatolius took a sip and grimaced. “Why, we can even expect decent wine to come on the market again soon.”

  Felix’s mouth formed a slight smile, barely visible under his bushy mustache. “Whenever I drink swill like this it reminds me of when I was a young soldier. I made many a day’s march on worse, I can tell you. But that was a long time ago. Justin was emperor. Now there was an emperor. A born soldier.” He looked down into his cup. “The taste’s enough to strangle the breath out of you,” he concluded with grudging admiration.

  “Like John’s evil Egyptian stock. Maybe he likes it because it reminds him of when he was a young mercenary?”

  “I haven’t spoken to John for a while. Have you seen him lately? I heard he sent Thomas and Europa off to your uncle’s estate.”

  Anatolius let his gaze wander over the flat fruit in the wall mosaic before speaking. He knew that John wouldn’t thank him for alerting Felix to what Anatolius had already begin to think of as an embarrassing incident.

  “It’s true. Thomas is thriving as uncle’s estate manager. He’s actually very shrewd in his own way.”

  “But too naive in some ways. Constantinople’s different than Bretania. It sounds like the best arrangement for everyone. The city’s dangerous enough without having a family to worry about. Though the plague did thin the ranks of assassins along with my excubitors. It’s been a long nightmare, but now we’re waking up.”

  A shaft of light from the sunlit street had crept up the wall to illuminate an ornate bowl filled with bright orange and green striped melons of a sort Anatolius had never glimpsed, even on Justinian’s banquet table.

  “A nightmare,” agreed Anatolius. “I’ll never forget seeing grass growing in the streets, dwellings deserted, a smell all the perfume at the palace couldn’t have conquered from the dead piled as high as if they’d stormed the Great Gate armed only with their teeth and nails.”

  “Give me a clean death, that’s what I say,” Felix muttered. “A soldier’s death, not rotting from some vile disease. When I saw the plague ravaging the city I prayed to Mithra that I should not be carried away while lying in a soft bed, having accomplished nothing. Your words are eloquent! It sounds as if you’re composing verse again.”

  “No, what I am composing is mostly wills. The plague reminded a great many people of the need for one.”

  “What an age we live in! Tragedy only inspires lawyers to scribble more documents. We have no Homers.”

  “Only those who fancy themselves Homers.”

  Felix grinned. “You’re thinking of Crinagoras, aren’t you? I hear at his latest reading a member of his unfortunate audience flung a cabbage at him. Hit a senator instead. Some passing beggar grabbed the cabbage before it had stopped rolling. Ran out of the place as if demons were after him. I suppose it became his evening meal. I don’t blame him. I’d rather have a cabbage than a poem any day.”

  “Then you’d better avoid the baths this week. Crinagoras is planning another public appearance.”

  Felix stated it was a source of amazement to him that Crinagoras had not been set upon by disgruntled lovers of literature and carried off to be drowned in the tepidarium. Then he finished his wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Do you know, wine always tastes better in a tavern than a well appointed atrium or an imperial reception hall? It was in taverns I learned to drink. Wasn’t born to the palace. That’s why I seek out places like this.”

  “I thought it might be to avoid anyone at the palace seeing you drinking, my friend, considering your history. Are you sure there isn’t some woman troubling you?”

  Felix grunted. “No. I am over that sort of thing. Like you. Don’t worry about Bacchus and me either. We’ve made a truce. The line’s been drawn. But you haven’t told me what you’re doing in this part of the city?”

  Anatolius had set his empty cup down preparatory to leaving. He would have to hurry now to meet his client on time. He realized he was a bit lightheaded, the result of the raw wine, a lack of breakfast, too little sleep, and too much exercise so early in the morning. He thought of the two unsteady men he’d seen after leaving John.

  Obscure squares in the Copper Market were hardly places for unguarded Lord Chamberlains. It did not matter if he had fallen victim to someone’s idea of a jest, for the city was rife with real dangers.

  A bunch of purple grapes stared at Anatolius over his companion’s broad shoulder. He blinked and the face in the grapes went away. He could imagine a
few more cups of wine and they might start speaking to him.

  What if John insisted on pursuing the ridiculous matter further? Besides, Felix was bound to find out when the prankster began bragging—if indeed that’s all it was.

  Anatolius leaned forward and whispered, although they were alone in the tavern except for the proprietor. “Felix, I rely upon you to treat this as confidential, but who do you think John met the other day?”

  “What do you mean? Some envoy perhaps? A Persian? A Goth?”

  “No! I’m not talking about his job. It was Zoe from the mosaic in his study!”

  “That’s impossible!”

  Anatolius nodded. “That’s what I told him. And when we went to meet her again as arranged, she didn’t appear.”

  Felix scratched his bearded chin. “John should consult a physician for a concoction to correct his humors. They must be unbalanced if he’s starting to imagine things. What do you make of it? If John’s in danger I should—”

  “It’s nothing but a prank. I’m certain of it.” Anatolius immediately wished he’d said nothing. Mithra! He had as a bad a weakness for talking as Felix did for wine.

  He recalled how he’d seen John last, waiting alone. He could imagine his reaction if a contingent of armed excubitors dispatched by Felix came rushing into the square.

  “Forget I said anything, Felix. I can assure you, John’s in no danger at all.”

  Chapter Four

  John stepped away from the stylite’s column to make room for a group of pilgrims.

  The middle-aged men with peeling, sunburnt faces, their homely garments stiff with the dirt of a journey from the countryside, stared up toward the motionless holy man and put their fingertips to his granite pillar.

  The sunlight felt hot. The finger-like shadow of the column fell across the square as if marking the hour. More passersby were in evidence. One or two beggars had stationed themselves near the pillar in order to take advantage of pious charity. The smell of fresh bread mingled with the acrid smoke that had begun to burn the back of John’s throat, evidence of a bakery hidden amidst the forges and furnaces whose increasing clamor announced the beginning of a new day of labor.

  The enticing odor reminded John that he had not eaten that morning. It was simply a fact to be noted. He was not a man who was driven by appetites.

  Again he surveyed the square.

  Perhaps Anatolius was right and Zoe was not going to appear.

  The long watch was not difficult for John. During his years as a mercenary he had passed countless nights in Bretania, on guard in the chilly darkness at what had once been the edge of the empire. The nights had seemed countless at the time, but they were not, for now they were gone.

  John’s muscles remembered how to remain still but ready to respond immediately if attacked. He retained the trick of letting his mind doze while his eyes and ears remained alert.

  He saw a woman, dressed in brocaded robes, step out of the canopied chair which her four Nubian slaves had set down in front of a goldsmith’s workshop. A small army of retainers and guards accompanied her.

  Not far off he heard an elderly man, who might have passed for Peter, haggling with a tired merchant over a bundle of limp greens.

  “They weren’t wilted when you started arguing about the price!” the merchant declared.

  A hollow-eyed, dirty boy lingered nearby. Was he waiting for his opportunity to snatch one of the apples the disgruntled customer had already dismissed as worm-eaten?

  No.

  In fact, he was staring at John.

  Steadily. Brazenly.

  When he noticed John looking back, he turned and bolted.

  John went after him.

  Metal flashed in the sunlight as the guards posted at the door of the goldsmith’s establishment drew their weapons. John was already past them, running out of the square and down a straight street without colonnades.

  After an initial burst of speed, the boy slowed. As a young man John had been a runner. He knew how to pace himself and he made a point of regularly visiting the gymnasium at the Baths of Zeuxippos. Nevertheless, the boy was younger. As soon as John began to make up ground, his prey managed to pull away. John thought he could wear the boy down if they ran long enough and he kept his quarry in sight.

  Laborers on their way to work and shoppers carrying baskets stepped aside in alarm. Later they would regale their friends and families with the incongruous spectacle of a tall man in fine robes in pursuit of a grubby street urchin, and not a few of the theories advanced to explain the spectacle would be of a lewd, not to say obscene, nature.

  The boy veered sideways into an alley.

  John followed.

  It was possible he was being led into an ambush. He did not think so. There was no doubt the pursuit had attracted attention, which assassins would wish to avoid.

  The alley turned at sharp angles, threading its narrow path first one way and then another, its course defined by the surrounding buildings.

  John leapt over a pile of rotting cabbages, his boots sinking into a semi-liquescent puddle surrounding the remains of some farmer’s unsold wares, not yet found by the hungry. He slipped, righted himself. His shoulder slammed into a brick wall an arm’s length to his right.

  For a heartbeat he had taken his gaze from the boy, who had vanished.

  Impossibly, because John was at the entrance of a cul-de-sac.

  A perfect spot to be waylaid, if attackers closed off its one entrance.

  Except there was no place for potential assassins to hide—or for the boy to have gone. The buildings closing in the airless space were devoid of doors or windows. The wall John had briefly touched was hot. He guessed there was a furnace of some sort on the other side. Later in the day, the narrow passage would be stifling.

  Ahead, three long steps led up to what must have once been a portico. Pale circles on the platform at the top of the flight revealed where columns had stood. The wide door to the building it originally graced had been partly boarded over and secured with a heavy rusted chain. It had obviously not been opened for some time.

  However, a corner of the board had been cut out and the metal strapping bent aside, creating a gap large enough for a boy, or a man as lean as John, to crawl through.

  He ran up the steps and knelt by the opening. It appeared to have been gnawed by giant rats but was, no doubt, the work of beggars seeking shelter. Constantinople was too small for its populace. No space was allowed to go unused. Any place where rent was free attracted the homeless who scratched out a living, and often died, in dark corners and on the city streets.

  A cool draught emanated from the building. John thought he could hear the fading sound of footsteps.

  Then the boy was not lying in wait for him.

  Others might be.

  It would be folly for him to go in there.

  He stilled his breathing and listened.

  There was no sound.

  He was certain no one was on the other side of the door. He had no sense of any other presence.

  He took a handful of nummi from his coin pouch and flung them through the gap. The copper coins rang noisily against stone.

  From within, there was no reaction. No intake of breath, no muffled sound of a weapon shifted, automatically, defensively. No scuffling for the coins.

  John pulled his short blade from his belt, took a breath, and squeezed through the hole. A protruding nail ripped his robe from shoulder to waist, tearing a scrap of flesh with it.

  He scrambled to his feet.

  It was not entirely dark. Shafts of light, filtering through fissures in the derelict building above, criss-crossed a cavernous space interspersed with soaring columns. He was at the top of a flight of steps, matching in width those outside, but descending more steeply into darkness.

  John’s foot touched something heavy and unyielding.

  As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he realized it was on
e of several pieces of broken statuary—legs, a wing, and a horn such as the fabulous beasts described by Aristotle and Pliny might have displayed.

  He started down the steps.

  There was a movement in the darkness below.

  Something pale. A mist. A phantom. It floated up toward him as he descended until it had resolved itself into a human form.

  It was John’s reflection in water.

  He stopped abruptly at the edge of the gleaming surface. The water stretched back past the rows of columns, smooth as a black basalt floor in the Great Palace.

  His heart had begun to race harder than when he had been pursuing the boy.

  He was not surprised to find himself in a cistern. It was a common enough use for the basements of abandoned buildings.

  However, he would have preferred to confront an armed man, or even more than one wielding weapons. He could never look upon deep water without remembering a freezing stream in Bretania and a familiar face staring up at him from beneath its surface, eyes fixed and unseeing.

  John fought the urge to flee back up the stairway.

  A sword in the back, a knife slashing one’s throat—those were deaths he could face, but to drown was a horror past imagination.

  Was that why he had been led here? To be overpowered and held under the water?

  He would not go down to death without a struggle.

  He looked around, gripping his blade tighter.

  Little more than an arm’s length away a figure rose from the water.

  This time John recognized it as statuary immediately. It was a stern Greek goddess, sculpted from green porphyry.

  A few steps and John could see another statue, this one of reddish stone, lying face down, barely submerged, at the feet of the goddess.

  John shuddered.

  He felt an urge to turn the statue over, to remove its face from the terrible water.

  It was a remarkably life-like work. Even in the dim light, the subtlety of the musculature in the naked form was apparent. And the sculptor had chiseled every strand of hair.

  Long, red hair which spread out and floated on the water’s surface.

  John bent and put his hand on the supine figure’s shoulder.