by Mary Reed
John declined. He fixed the actress in his gaze. She had leaned forward so that her tunic fell open, revealing an expanse of tawny skin below the white powder covering her neck. “It would be best for you to tell me everything that happened. I can see you may have wanted to protect Troilus but I can assure you, if he is responsible for the murder neither you, nor anyone else, will be able to save him from justice.”
Petronia emptied her cup, refilled it, and gave John a bleak smile. Her eyes glistened. “Troilus murder Agnes? I can’t imagine such a thing, Lord Chamberlain. They were…well…he would never have harmed her.” Her lower lip trembled as she raised the cup to her mouth again.
“You said Troilus arrived here before dawn?”
“I can’t say exactly when but it was still dark when Agnes left. The sky was beginning to lighten. I don’t know what they talked about. She has her own place.” Petronia nodded toward the painted backdrop partitioning the room. “I’ve trained myself not to hear what I’m not meant to hear.”
“Praiseworthy, indeed, but you must have heard something of their conversation since they exchanged angry words.”
Petronia stared at John in horror. “Who said so?”
“It was obvious, since you seemed so reluctant to tell me.”
Petronia shook her head. “How foolish I am. An old actress trying to deceive the Lord Chamberlain. But you are correct, for they did indeed argue. I didn’t hear precisely what was said but I could tell from their tone.”
“And then Agnes left?”
“Yes, although it was not on account of the argument. Agnes and I were already up when Troilus came pounding on the door. Agnes had to meet someone, you see. That wasn’t so unusual. She often had early appointments but she would never say what they were or who was involved.”
“And Troilus?”
Petronia dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve. She looked at John pensively. Her jaw clenched. She was silent for what seemed like a long time and then her chest moved as she took a breath. “Troilus stayed here afterward. He needed someone to talk to. He thought Agnes had an assignation.”
John nodded his understanding.
“She did,” Petronia continued, “but not the sort he had in mind. She often spent time with disgruntled exiles from court. They were always meeting at odd hours, most likely to avoid being noticed. A wise thing considering the kind of loose talk they engaged in. It was all play.”
The actress sighed. “She always dressed as if she had been summoned to an audience with the emperor. Well, as near as she could given our circumstances. That’s why she was accepted in those circles. She acted her part so well, you see.”
John wondered whether that was the only service Agnes rendered. He kept the thought to himself. “When did Troilus leave?”
“He stayed for a long time, Lord Chamberlain. When you’re young you can agonize over affairs of the heart for hours. Sometimes it’s good to be able to discuss these matters with someone who is older and, sadly, wiser.”
“I trust you are wise enough to be telling me the truth. If you are not, I will soon find out.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
John paused outside Petronia’s lodgings to decide in what direction the truth might be discovered.
From the street the sea was invisible, obscured by the structures rising all around. The low sun left the street in shadow except for a single, sharp lance of fire which found its way through some gap in the buildings.
If Petronia wasn’t lying, which was far from certain, then Troilus could not have murdered Zoe. Whatever had been in the sack, Agnes had been seen alive hours after Helias had noted Troilus’ late night labors.
In addition, Troilus had been baring his soul to Petronia when Agnes died, perhaps even as John was gazing down at her dyed and lifeless body in the cistern.
No matter the exact duration of his visit, Troilus could never have killed Agnes, attempted to obscure her identity with dye, and conveyed her body to the cistern unless he had in fact followed straight after her, which, according to Petronia, he had not.
No doubt Petronia had thought she was protecting Troilus by initially failing to reveal his argument with Agnes. He would have been one of the last to see the victim alive. An obvious suspect. As it turned out, Petronia had inadvertently concealed the innocence of the man of whom she was so obviously fond.
Her fondness for Troilus meant that Petronia could not be ruled out as an enemy of Agnes.
The lance of light crossing the thoroughfare faded as the sun sank lower.
John turned for home.
He walked up the short incline toward where the narrow street intersected a colonnaded thoroughfare.
It must have been the same direction Agnes would have gone on her way to meet him in the square. While John waited, she had been waylaid and killed.
By whom? And where?
If John were to attempt to retrace her route he might notice something useful. He would still be moving in the general direction of the palace. She would have kept to the main streets. There would have been no need to take shortcuts to a prearranged meeting, especially for a woman in predawn darkness.
Merchants were closing their shops. The torches they were setting into wall brackets would have rendered the colonnades relatively bright and safe even in the dead of night. Nevertheless, the shops were interrupted by gloomy alcoves, open doorways leading to apartments, archways opening into courtyards, and the black mouths of alleyways, all places where a murderer might lie in wait.
He spoke to a merchant, who jumped up, startled in the midst of locking the grating protecting his shop to the iron ring set in the pavement. No, there had not been any disturbances recently. He’d seen nothing out of the ordinary. He never arrived to open his establishment until dawn anyway.
Most shopkeepers would have been at home at the time Agnes passed by on her way to her appointment.
A familiar odor caught John’s attention.
The smell of grilled fish, the sort sold on skewers by the docks. This street was a fair distance from the docks. He dismissed it as nothing more than hunger coupled with imagination.
The smell grew stronger.
Why would anyone be selling grilled fish in this part of the city at this time of the evening?
Then he saw the ragged creature huddled on the step of a doorway, surrounded by charred skewers from which hung mostly scraps of blackened meat, obviously unsold or ruined wares discarded by a vendor at the end of the day.
The beggar noticed John looking at him, grabbed an empty skewer, and waved it like a sword. “Get away, you bastard, or I’ll have yer eyes out. It’s all mine, this is. I didn’t battle them mangy curs to stuff the chops of a worthless lout like you!” Bits of fish clung to the man’s beard.
“I have a couple of coins for you, if you have certain information,” John replied in an even tone.
The man squinted up at John suspiciously. One eye was blackened, the other watered profusely and he blinked it repeatedly. While considering the unexpected offer, he gulped down a bit of fish and nearly choked.
“My apologies, excellency,” he gasped when he had stopped coughing. “I thought you was after my hard earned dinner.”
“All I want is information.” John angled his hand so the two copper nummi in his palm caught light from a nearby torch. “Have you noticed anything unusual around here lately?”
“No, excellency. This is a quiet street once the shops are closed for the night. There’s no reason for anyone to be creepin’ about up to no good and there’s not enough taverns to attract them Blues and Greens.”
“It’s deserted here at night?”
“There’s usually just carts, excellency, passing by on their way from the docks. In an hour or so no one will be around. Well, there might be something going on in the alleys, but it’s the same all over, isn’t it?” he leered.
The squeal and crash of another grate being lowered further u
p the street seemed to bear out the beggar’s words.
The rags piled behind the beggar suggested the doorway was his residence. John asked whether he had been in the same spot a little more than a week earlier.
“Oh yes, excellency. I like this place. The last fool who tried to take it from me found out just how much I like it. Which is not to say I didn’t do him a good turn because a one-eyed man gets more handouts and that’s a fact.” He gave a hoarse chuckle, his gaze fixed on the coins glinting in John’s palm.
“You’re observant. You must be to spot a bounty like that fish quickly enough to beat everyone else to it. Now, try to remember eight days ago, around dawn. Did you see anyone who might have seemed out of place at that time of the morning?”
“I’m not sure. Time does run together. I hardly know what day it is unless I’m due for an audience with the emperor.” The fish eater emitted a coughing laugh. “What sort of person was you thinking about?”
“A young lady.”
“Ah, yes. Now I remember. Yes, a young lady went by here just when you said.” A greasy hand reached out.
John closed his fingers over the coins. “What did she look like?”
The beggar licked his lips. “Young she was, sir. A lady.”
“As I’ve just said.”
The beggar’s good eye blinked rapidly. “No, excellency, I mean dressed like a lady, or rather dressed to look like one. A tart if you ask me. Some men like to pretend they’re paying a lady for…well, that’s surely worth them two coins in yer hand.”
“What do you mean by saying she looked like a lady?”
“I mean she weren’t a lady. But the first time I seen her, I thought, what’s a high born woman doin’ out here this time of the morning and with no attendants at that? Then, when she got closer, I seen her clothes was all bright colored like, but not much better than mine.”
“You’ve seen her more than once?”
“Yes, excellency, every so often. She must live ‘round here to be out on the streets on her own like that. Not respectable, is it?”
“The last time you saw this woman was about a week ago?”
The beggar nodded.
“Was anyone following her?”
“No, excellency. No.” His voice trailed off. “Why do you want to know?”
John said nothing.
“Yer from the palace, aren’t you?” The beggar shrank back into the doorway. “It’s some trouble, isn’t it? I din’ have nothin’ to do with it, excellency. Swear to our Lord.”
“Nothing to do with what?” John demanded.
“With nothin’, excellency, nothin’ at all.”
John bent, grabbed the front of the man’s garment, and yanked him to his feet. “Nothing to do with what?” he repeated.
The rotten fabric tore and the beggar tumbled backward. John squatted down and addressed the blubbering figure, now groveling in the remains of his feast.
Tears streamed from the beggar’s unclouded eye. “Mercy, excellency. Have mercy. I seen her. I don’t know nothing more. I knew there must be trouble of some kind, what with one like you askin’ about her. It were about a week ago. She came along here just before dawn. You can have me tortured, excellency, but I won’t say different. Trust a tart to get a man minding his own business into trouble. If I see her again I’ll—”
John stood. “Here.” He added another coin to the two he still held and tossed them into the heaped rags behind the huddled, trembling man before him.
John strode away down the street.
The hollow feeling in his stomach had nothing to do with hunger.
He wished he could give up for the evening and return home to Cornelia.
He knew he had to keep following Agnes’ footsteps.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
John continued through the alternating shadows and torchlight beneath the colonnade.
Only days earlier Agnes must have passed the same way. She might have been pondering whatever it was she intended to tell him. Did she realize she was in danger? Is that why she had arranged to meet in an obscure square while the city was still coming awake?
Here and there sculpture graced an alcove or a pedestal. Likenesses of long dead rulers and poets, the statues served as reminders of the empire’s ancient heritage.
Where had Agnes’ journey been interrupted? Had she gone past that marble Sophocles? Had she noticed him frowning at her? Was his bearded face the last thing she had seen before her attacker leapt from the black mouth of that nearby alleyway? Or had her assailant been hiding, masked behind the chiseled robes of the ancient playwright?
The red ruin of the woman’s battered face floated to the surface of John’s thoughts. He hoped it had been over too quickly for her to be aware of what was happening, that her killer had not dragged her away into darkness to complete his task in a leisurely fashion.
John brushed a spark from a sputtering torch off his shoulder.
There was no one to question. The only people on the street were of polished stone.
The thoroughfare crossed the street where Figulus kept his mosaic workshop and passed in front of the Church of the Mother of God, before running along the back wall of the law courts. To reach the square where John had been waiting for her, Agnes could have turned and gone past the courts or proceeded on for a short distance and gone up the street which went by the courtyard housing the make-shift theater, the dyer’s emporium, and the entrances to the underground establishments of Helias and Troilus.
John guessed Agnes would have gone by the theater since it was most likely a route she took often to see her friends.
He continued toward the intersection, past Opilio’s shop. A faint smell of spice drifted out through its lowered metal bars.
The giant, sausage-shaped sign looked even more obscene in the twilight.
The narrow way leading to the square, with its overhanging structures, was darker than the colonnade. The hot breath of forges and furnaces issued from archways.
In such an area why had the killer chosen to conceal his victim’s identifying tattoo with dye? Perhaps he had not had access to a furnace. There was also the problem of the smell of burning flesh. Dye was easy to come by. Jabesh’s establishment was not far from the alley leading to the cistern where John had found the body.
But then why not just carve the tattoo from the dead flesh?
Had Agnes come within shouting distance of the square? Surely whoever wanted to prevent the meeting would not have taken such a chance.
If, indeed, her ambush had been planned in advance.
Nothing moved in the square, aside from a dog which slunk away at John’s approach. Scattered shop front torches hardly penetrated the gloom. The stylite’s column rose from darkness into a gray rectangle of sky where a bright star winked between ragged clouds.
There was no light atop the column. No doubt the holy man would consider artificial illumination a luxury, a vanity of the world he had left behind. Would he, like Helias the sundial maker, be aware of the passage of time as the relentless sun drove his shadow around the top of the column or that of the column itself around the square?
John had completed the walk Agnes had failed to finish. He had learned little, observed nothing.
He looked up at the looming pillar. Might the stylite have seen something useful from his high perch?
From that height the holy man would be able to look down the street which John had just traversed, perhaps even into the courtyard where the theater was located.
A movement caught John’s eye, and he whirled around. He expected to see the feral dog had returned. Instead a figure coalesced from the darkness.
It was the acolyte he had glimpsed in the square during previous visits or perhaps another like him.
“Do you seek Lazarus?” the man asked. The deep, raspy voice identified the figure as a man. His face was hidden in the shadow of a hood. “I have taken in the offering baske
ts, but I will gladly accept whatever you care to give to the glory of our Lord.”
“I haven’t come here for that purpose,” John replied. “I do however wish to speak with this Lazarus.”
“That will not be possible. Lazarus has dedicated his tongue to glorifying the Lord. He does not engage in worldly discussions and speaks not of earthly things. All of his words are of Heaven. Pilgrims from far and wide make their way to this city to hear Lazarus describe the beauty and joys to be found in the Kingdom of God.”
“He will speak to me. I am a servant of Justinian, and the emperor is God’s representative on earth, is he not?”
“The emperor is nothing to Lazarus, less than the scrawny mongrel that lifts its leg against the pillar. Lazarus is above them both,” was the reply. “He prays to the Lord and the Lord protects him.”
The acolyte made the sign of his religion before proceeding. “It may be that the emperor would threaten Lazarus with torture. That is his way. Yet do you suppose there is any torment worse than those Lazarus imposes on himself? His own awareness of sin sears his soul more painfully than a thousand red hot pincers. If you return in the morning you may listen to his message, but Lazarus talks with no one except the Lord.”
John craned his neck to observe the top of the pillar. The stylite would have retired to his tiny shelter by this hour. Every manner of religious zealot flocked to the Christian empire’s capital. There was no reason to disbelieve the acolyte’s description of the holy man’s attitude to worldly authorities. John had encountered far more eccentric holy men.
He considered whether a coin or two might help his cause but decided it would not. In his experience the poorer the Christian the less susceptible to bribery—a trait a Mithran like John could respect.
He therefore asked the acolyte the same questions he had put to the beggar, and was not surprised to find that the former could shed no light on matters.
John had to admit to himself that he was tired. He could approach the stylite at some later time, if it still seemed worthwhile. He started back the way he had come. Night settled into the narrow passage between the buildings like a black fog. He lengthened his stride.