Seven for a Secret

by Mary Reed

  At least he had managed to convince Cornelia that his morning’s destination, on a broad, busy thoroughfare just west of the Augustaion, posed minimal danger to unguarded Lord Chamberlains.

  Not that it was far from where he had been the day before. He could see the timbered roof of the Church of the Mother of God, rising over the surrounding buildings, a few streets, and innumerable dank alleys, away.

  The interior of the shop smelled of savory and cumin. A stout old man, bent and balding, with massive forearms, put down his funnel and gave a twist to the casing he’d been stuffing.

  “You’re the man from the palace,” he said. “I’ve been expecting you! I’m surprised you’re alone.” He dropped his half completed sausage into the pile of empty intestines heaped on the counter, some dangling onto the floor.

  “You say you were expecting me?”

  “Don’t worry. The sausages are ready. Do you intend to carry them back by yourself?”

  “You seem to have mistaken me for someone else. Are you Opilio, the owner of this shop?”

  “That’s me. And you work for the emperor, don’t you?”

  “True enough.”

  Opilio came out from behind the counter, brushing his hands on his greasy tunic. He was short, his lack of height entirely due to bowed legs which appeared to be half the length one might have expected judging by his torso. “The sausages are in my storeroom. I shall get them right away. They are of finest Lucanian variety, the sort they make in southern Italy. The same kind Augustus enjoyed. Yes, I hear Justinian’s entertaining a Persian high-up and wants to remind the foreigner of Rome’s great traditions.”

  He chuckled. “It’ll remind him how Justinian’s taking back Italy from the barbarians too. Once he’s done with Italy, he’ll get after Persia. I hope I live to see it. Nothing says Glory of Rome like a succulent Lucanian sausage.”

  “I’m afraid I haven’t come for sausages, Opilio. While it is true I work for the emperor, I’m not a servant.”

  The other gaped at John and then asked him what in fact he did.

  “I am Justinian’s Lord Chamberlain.”

  Opilio guffawed. “And I’m the famous eunuch general Narses! I like a fellow who has a sense of humor. Would you lift your boot?” He bent over in awkward fashion. “You’re standing on a casing.”

  The sausage maker must have noticed the fine workmanship of John’s boots or possibly the subtle gold thread worked along the hem of John’s cloak, because when he straightened up, one end of the errant intestine in hand, his formerly ruddy face had turned as white as if someone had cut his throat and hung him up to drain his blood.

  “I apologize, excellency. An honest mistake. I would never wish to insult our great emperor. I am the staunchest of supporters.”

  “No matter, Opilio. I can see the humor in being mistaken for a servant when I venture into the streets.”

  The color began to return to Opilio’s face. “Well, then, how can I assist? I have it! You are here to purchase sausages for yourself. Why, the empress herself praised my wares! Or so I hear. I have not spoken to her personally, although perhaps it is an everyday occurrence for you, excellency? Perhaps that is where you heard of me?”

  John smiled. Anatolius had once got into trouble for including both the empress and sausages in the same verse. That information he kept to himself. “I am often summoned to her presence, Opilio, but not daily. She has not mentioned your sausages to me.”

  Opilio looked disappointed.

  “I wish to talk to you about a young woman named Agnes,” John continued.

  Opilio frowned. “Agnes?”

  “I understand she was your brother’s daughter?”

  Opilio slapped the length of intestine he was holding down on the counter. “It’s true, Lord Chamberlain, but I haven’t seen her for a long time. She was always an ungrateful child. She refused to help with my work. Wouldn’t deign to do even the simplest of the jobs. Clean the entrails? Oh no, far too nasty. She was used to a life of wealth and privilege. Girls like her don’t dirty their fingers on the nasty insides of pigs, although they’re happy enough to have those insides on their dinner plates. Agnes was always willful, but she grew worse after her mother died.”

  “Comita is dead?”

  “Yes. She went to the Lord almost three years ago.”

  The sorrow in his tone was unmistakable. “I can tell you were fond of her,” John observed. “My condolences.”

  The sausage maker looked away. “I don’t want you to think I am concealing anything from you, excellency. We were to be married. She used to say the family of a sausage maker would never starve. But she left me for my brother. He was a clerk at the palace at the time. Ruthless, greedy, and underhanded. It was obvious he would do well for himself and so he did. And after all, living on the palace grounds is not the same as occupying a few rooms near the Copper Market with the smell of smoke and worse always in the air. As she said, making sausages is such a low occupation.”

  From the way Opilio said the final words it was apparent that they were as fresh in his memory as if they had been spoken an hour before, even if he had repeated them in his thoughts ten thousand times.

  “Yet you took mother and child in, so I am told.”

  Opilio shrugged. “They were my brother’s family. And to be fair, Glykos had sent much custom my way. We used to joke that those at the palace felt safe eating my sausages since the tax collector’s brother wouldn’t be inclined to poison them. Particularly since their demise would have resulted in a decrease in tax revenues. As it turned out, I now own a perfectly respectable home, although hardly a mansion. I might have had a mansion too, if my brother hadn’t fallen out of favor. I was about to be given a contract to provision the army. Yes, Lord Chamberlain, there can be gold in entrails, if a man is not too dainty to seek it.”

  John observed that the loss of the contract must have been distressing.

  “What is a mansion worth? What was my brother’s house worth to him in the end? I’d prefer to live with pigs and eat from their trough in a world where Comita still lived.” Opilio dabbed at a watery eye. Then his lips tightened. “It’s as well she died. She never had to see what Agnes became. An actress, which is to say a whore. I did my best, but when her mother died, I couldn’t control her. Who was I but the poor, rejected, younger brother of her father?”

  He sighed. “Why should she heed my advice or respect my commands? Before long she was going about in the lowest places with the lowest personages. She was seen at theaters—or what she called theaters—and in the company of so called actors and actresses. Then she suddenly seemed to have money. I confronted her. She denied earning it in the common way, but had no other explanation. A man in trade must be careful of his reputation, excellency. Wagging tongues have ruined many a business. Seeing she could support herself, by whatever vile artifice, I turned her out.”

  John said he understood. “And you have not seen her for some time?”

  “No, excellency. It’s been months now. Nor do I ever care to see her again. She has my brother’s blood in her.”

  What would Opilio think if John told her his errant niece was dead? Would he be pleased? More likely he would immediately regret all he had just said. John decided not to tell him yet. The fewer who knew Agnes had been murdered the fewer would be alerted to his investigation.

  He questioned Opilio further but the sausage maker had nothing of consequence to add. He said that Agnes had rarely mentioned the names of her disreputable acquaintances.

  “Did she mention a man named Menander? I am told he was a patron of the theaters.”

  Opilio shook his head. “I’ve already told you, excellency, she said little to me about her acquaintances. I made it plain to her I did not want to know. As for the theaters where she claimed to perform, they were usually nothing more than some public or private area taken over temporarily, as far as I could gather. You will understand I had no desire to s
eek them out.”

  “I may return in a few days,” John said. “Meantime, try to think if there’s anything else you can tell me. Before I go, there’s one more thing.”

  “But I’ve told you everything. My old head is as empty as these poor casings awaiting my funnel.”

  “I don’t want to question you further, Opilio. I’ve decided I’d like to purchase some sausages after all.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Although Opilio at first insisted that he had not wanted to know about the unwholesome places Agnes frequented, John’s interest in his wares, especially at the exorbitant price quoted, assisted the sausage maker’s memory.

  Thus he learned Agnes had let slip a location where reprobates of her sort often congregated to put on what they were pleased to call performances.

  Following Opilio’s directions, John soon found himself on the long narrow street leading to the square where Agnes had approached him.

  A strident cry caused him to look up. A raven rose from the top of the wooden cross on a nearby roof. Then another raven appeared and another. John counted them. Seven.

  Their wings beat furiously. For an instant they hung over him, their shadows hovering beside his boots. Then the birds gained height and soared off.

  John looked away, back to earth, to an archway from which issued a breath of warm air both acrid and appetizing. Stepping under it, he discovered among the businesses, opening off the packed dirt courtyard beyond, were a public bakery, a dye house, and a coppersmith’s workshop.

  The city felt limitless to those confined to its maze of streets and alleyways, amidst the crowds and clamor and stench, where every new turn opened upon a new world—a forum, a church, tenements, warehouses, a line of shops, a monument to a dead emperor. There was no limit to what might be found in the capital. The ravens in the sky would have seen that despite all that it contained, Constantinople was a small place. No location was far from any other. From the southern harbors on the Marmara to the northern shore along the bay of the Golden Horn was an easy walk, even for earthbound creatures, made difficult only by the necessity of ascending and descending the steep ridge that formed the backbone of the peninsula upon which the city sat.

  John’s investigations had thus far not taken him beyond the Copper Market to the north and west of where the Mese ended at the Augustaion. He wished he could ascend like the ravens and peer down into the brick and marble tangle of the city.

  He remembered the old rhyme, common in Bretania, which foretold the future by counting black birds. Seven was for a secret. If he could join those ravens would the secret he sought be easily seen? Or, as the rhyme went, was it a secret never to be told?

  As John entered the courtyard, he heard raised voices. People bustled about under the columned roof of a semicircular exedra, reached from the far end of the enclosure by three long, low steps.

  The structure resembled a smaller version of the front of Isis’ establishment. Its curved wall contained a number of doors. Most, however, were boarded up. Two obese gilded Cupids, wings encrusted with soot, looked as if they’d have a hard time climbing out of their wall niches, let alone soaring with the ravens, in the case of the Cupids not to scavenge for scraps but to search for the lovelorn.

  John hailed a youngster hauling a basket of loaves out of the bakery toward what was clearly the make-shift stage Opilio had mentioned disparagingly. At the mention of Agnes, the boy’s eyes narrowed, but he raced off, and as John mounted the stairs, a woman emerged from one of the functioning doorways and came toward him.

  “My name’s Petronia.” The speaker was dressed in an threadbare yellow tunic. Her finely chiseled features, set off by black hair fashionably coiled at either side, were as perfect and white as those of an ancient Greek sculpture from which time has worn the last vestige of pigment. She was no longer young, but John was old enough to appreciate stubborn, aging beauty more than the careless, unchallenged, and common prettiness of youth.

  In this case, the beauty was somewhat diminished by the monstrous phallus the woman wore.

  She cocked her head to one side reprovingly. “What right do you have to stare like that, coming in here with your sausage in your hand?”

  John looked down at the offending articles hanging loosely in his grasp for want of a basket.

  “Save that lot for the wife,” Petronia cackled, swaying her hips in order to waggle the stuffed, leather protuberance jutting from beneath her garment. “Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” she continued with a simper. “Did I offend you? We are all Christians here.”

  “It wasn’t that.” John’s tone was sharp.

  The playful expression left her face. “I overheard you asking about Agnes.”

  “Do you know her? Daughter of the tax collector, Glykos?”

  “We share a room, off and on,” the woman replied. “I haven’t seen her for a few days. What do you want with her? A private performance? Are you looking for Agnes in particular or might I be of assistance?”

  “I wish to question her,” John replied.

  Petronia was suddenly wary. “And who are you to come questioning me?”

  “I am Lord Chamberlain to Justinian.”

  Petronia opened her eyes wide in feigned surprise. “Of course you are! That explains why you carry sausages about in your hand. Well, it’s makes no difference to me who you are. All our best patrons are pretending to be something they aren’t, or at least aren’t any more. It’s hard to say on what side of the stage the best actors reside.”

  “Many of your patrons used to be at court?”

  “That’s right! This quarter suits those who want to stay in the city, or have no place left to go. It’s not the most desirable area, what with all the smoke and furnaces and smells and such, so the rents are reasonable. Yet it’s near enough to the palace and the Baths of Zeuxippos where they might run into old friends for a chat. Or at least old friends still willing to recognize them.”

  A number of people John took to be Petronia’s fellow thespians strolled about, talked, and gesticulated. They didn’t seem curious about the tall, thin stranger in their midst. Just another patron. There were as many women and dwarves as men.

  “You offer those who once enjoyed the privileges of the palace something of the culture they miss,” John said. “I imagine you are well patronized?”

  “Indeed. We’re one of the few troupes to stage the classics. We’re doing a new version of Lysistrata.”

  “That explains your unusual adornment.”

  “What did you think? Old Aristophanes didn’t take full advantage of the comic situation. We’ve eliminated all the boring dialog and debate. We offer something friskier. You’re lucky to find us here. We don’t rehearse every day. As it happens we like to stage our performances during the afternoons when they’re holding one of those religious processions. There are always pilgrims waiting for the procession to begin, so we do well enough.”

  “Doubtless some would say you’re taking coins that the pilgrims would otherwise offer to the church.”

  “Oh, I expect we do the church a good deed,” came the airy reply. “There are bound to be pilgrims who feel guilty about having come here and seen…what they saw, and so give more to the church than they intended in the first place.”

  John glanced around. “Do you employ this place regularly?”

  “We call it our theater. It’s been deserted for years.”

  “I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of a failed brothel before,” he replied, inclining his head toward the Cupids.

  “It didn’t fail. Theodora had the girls rounded up to help populate that convent of hers across the Marmara. Not that these girls wanted to be saved, but a job’s a job and it wasn’t that hard to be a reformed sinner. Rumor is that the empress paid the madam to talk them all into moving, with the madam taking on the new duties of abbess.”

  “Who owns it now?”

  “No one knows who this ruin belongs to.
I believe whoever it is doesn’t care to come forward. It’s not much good for anything. The cubicles would all have to be torn down and the whole inside repaired, so it stands here ignored and perfect for our uses. That is to say, this part serves for a stage and we store our props in the back.”

  “And there are plenty of rooms left over for getting in and out of costume?”

  “Indeed. Our patrons sometimes…assist with that.”

  Petronia’s demeanor suggested she hadn’t heard about Agnes’ death.

  John told her.

  The powder on Petronia’s face could not have turned any whiter. Her eyes, however, plainly registered shock and she put a hand to her mouth, muffling a gasp of horror.

  For a moment she tottered, as if about to collapse. She walked unsteadily to a wall niche and sat at the foot of a Cupid. She wiped away the tears before they could ruin her makeup, blinked, and attempted to compose herself.

  Her sitting position thrust the leather phallus up in front of her face. She pushed it aside, and then fumbled with the strap holding it around her waist. The phallus fell off and she kicked it away.

  “There, and I’m glad to be done with the nasty thing. They do get in the way. And that’s a small one compared to some we’ve used on stage. How vexing they must be.”

  She covered her face, burying her failed smile. When she finally looked up her pale makeup was half gone, showing fine wrinkles at the corners of reddened eyes.

  “What is it you want to know? I haven’t seen Agnes for days, as I told you. And now, now I will never see her again. I’ll miss her.” She paused. “But before you ask, I know little about her private life. Women like us are always busy. Even when sharing a room we don’t see much of one another and we don’t share our woes. They’re all the same anyhow. When that bastard Opilio kicked her out I offered her shelter. If you got those sausages from him, I’d have a servant taste them for you before you eat them.”