by Mary Reed
Agnella’s expression was one of disapproval. “That’s what she thought. I say you take your chance. What better opportunity are the likes of us going to get? But she fled here, hoping to be forgotten. She didn’t like it any better than I do. Finally she left.”
“She was allowed to leave?”
“Only because this official wouldn’t let her alone. He kept appearing here and pressing the abbess to release her. I suppose the abbess was tired of being annoyed.”
“Or she feared the palace might get involved. ”
“The abbess isn’t likely to give any of us girls any reasons. All I know is she let her leave.”
“When was this?”
“Oh. I have no idea. It was just a rumor. Recently, I believe.”
“I don’t suppose you have any inkling of where she intended to go?”
“Why yes, sir, I do. It caused much tongue wagging. She knew an actress in the city and was going to stay with her. And the abbess let her go, despite all the talk about our souls.”
Agnella directed a mournful stare at Anatolius. “Such a pity when I am so terribly bored and you have such a nice face. But then, I suppose, in your condition, you are never bored in that way.”
Chapter Forty
The boy had fled into the Copper Market and vanished into thin air.
It was as if he was a demon, according to the guards who had pursued him. Or so said Theodoulos, who had not himself witnessed the pursuit or disappearance.
John had not been able to locate and question the guards concerned. Perhaps they had been executed, just as the dwarf had said. John did not trust Theodoulos.
The Copper Market was not an enormous quarter, but its streets and alleyways seemed without end. John had lost track of how many thoroughfares he had hiked up and down, wide streets and narrow, straight and twisted, a few boasting colonnades, most without.
He had spoken to shopkeepers, servants on their way to market, beggars, laborers going to and from their jobs, and prostitutes, not to mention several members of the Blue faction swaggering around in search of a reason to start a fight.
No one recalled seeing a boy pursued through the streets by guards from the palace. Was it surprising? It had been at least ten years ago. In that time riots, fires, and the recent plague would have buried such a trivial incident deep beneath more dramatic and horrific memories.
Still, it was not every day a boy vanished into thin air.
“What did you say? Palace guards?” The wizened man in the candle shop turned his head toward John, as if straining to hear the question. “Yes, I remember that, sir. I looked out and saw soldiers. There was a big man with a beard. Someone was lying in the street. Couldn’t make him out too well. He wore dark robes. He was probably some dandy from the court who came looking for trouble and got more than he bargained for.”
John thanked the shopkeeper and returned to the street. What the man had recalled was the aftermath of the attack on John.
Somewhere in the labyrinth of shops, tenements, and foundries there was someone who would have reason to recall a minor event from years ago. Perhaps the boy had knocked over a servant on his way home from the market and scattered a perfectly good basketful of vegetables onto the street and the guards chasing the lad had trampled most of them before he could retrieve them from the cobbles.
Unless the servant could somehow replace the goods, he would remember such an incident.
Especially if he was employed at the palace, where discipline could be harsh.
That was grasping at phantoms, John realized. The chances of him finding such a witness were almost non existent.
He had come to the entrance to the courtyard where the theatrical troupe was located. He had already passed the spot once. Troilus was too young to have maintained his establishment at the time of the chase. What was now used as a theater would have been a brothel. Should he interview the dye maker Jabesh? Perhaps not. Those John was seeking in the crowded, cramped city—plotters against the emperor and Agnes’ murderer, or murderers, one and the same or not—could not be far away.
Unless they had fled Constantinople.
Word might have already reached them, since he had spent all morning and half the afternoon trudging around the area repeating the same questions. By tomorrow morning rumors would begin to spread and people would be convinced a boy had been seen fleeing soldiers from the palace. So and so had heard it from a most reliable source.
The tale of the fleeing boy might well replace the inevitable gossip about a tall stranger who had been seen again and again in the Copper Market.
John walked on until he found himself at the square where he had met Agnes, the center of the entire affair.
Rising up over the rooftops at one end of the square was the granite column of the stylite.
Who had lived up there for how long? The stylite would have been able to see not only the square, but the surrounding streets and alleys as well.
He had this same thought days ago. Then he had wanted to question the holy man—Lazarus, his acolyte had called him—to establish whether he had noticed anything on the morning Agnes had been killed.
The acolyte had said Lazarus would not speak of worldly things and at the time John had not considered it worthwhile to press the matter.
Now he would not be deterred.
Let Lazarus speak for himself—or not.
John craned his neck to look upward.
He could make out the stylite’s motionless, bowed head through the window of his ramshackle shelter. How did he pass the time? Did he meditate on the evils of the world? Pray silently?
A life so constrained, such rigid self control, was not unknown. John had seen a stylite glistening in the morning sun on a bitter day, the man’s emaciated body covered with a sheen of ice from the driving rain of the previous night.
A lifetime of bodily suffering was a transitory inconvenience compared to the eternal glory such men anticipated.
The door in the back of the column swung open when John pushed. Lazarus and his acolyte put more faith in their god than in locks. He ducked under the low lintel and started up a stairway resembling a stone ladder. Light filtered in from above. There were two landings, both almost blocked by wicker baskets. John did not pause to examine their contents. When he reached the second landing he could see the open trapdoor leading out to the platform atop the column.
Cautiously, he poked his head into the open air and looked around.
There was something wrong.
What?
John sniffed.
That was it.
There was no smell.
He had been on top of the stylite column more than once in the past. He knew that to glorify their god such solitaries dwelt for years amidst the decaying refuse from their scant meals, dead vermin, and their own filth. When the breezes were in a particular direction, standing downwind from such a pillar was enough to take away the appetite.
Yet here there was no odor at all. The air smelled fresher than it did in the square below.
John pulled himself up onto the platform. It was wider than most. There was room for a man to lie down, but not much more.
Constantinople stretched out around him. He could see the dome of the Great Church, the Hippodrome, and the palace grounds. Sunlight struck sparks off the water on three sides.
A man perched up here would have been able to see a great deal.
On the other hand, the acolyte had insisted Lazarus would never talk about what went on below him.
John turned carefully to face the shelter. It was hardly more than a few weathered planks. The door which made up the front was shut.
“Lazarus,” John called out. “I am sorry to intrude on you. The matter is urgent.”
He was not surprised that there was no reply.
“I am seeking to bring a murderer to justice,” John went on. “I am hoping you will be able to help me.”
&nb
sp; John grasped the edge of the ill-fitting door and gave it a tug.
It opened a crack and he peered into the enclosed space.
Lazarus lay rigidly, at an awkward angle, head against the back wall and feet against the door.
John opened the door wider.
The holy man slid out onto the platform feet first.
His head hit the platform with a clank and came off.
His arms remained bent at the elbows, fingertips pressed together just under his chin in an attitude of prayer. His face, sitting beside his shoulder, appeared frozen in an expression of eternal beatitude.
Sunlight glinted off the smooth, bronze features.
Lazarus the stylite was an automaton.
Chapter Forty-One
A sound caused John to look up from the automaton lying at his feet.
He was not alone atop the stylite column.
A man emerged from the trapdoor leading to the stairs.
John recognized the acolyte who had advised him that Lazarus would not speak of anything but heaven.
“You are the man who claimed to be from the emperor,” the acolyte said in the same raspy tone John recalled from their brief conversation in the square.
“You deceived me,” John stated, indicating the metal figure. “Explain.”
“I told you Lazarus would tell you nothing. That was the truth. Yet you still sought to violate a holy man’s solitude.”
“You indicated Lazarus was not concerned with what the emperor might order done to him,” John replied. “I can see you were perfectly truthful about that as well. But can you say the same of yourself?”
The acolyte blanched. “I am not Lazarus. Flesh is weak.”
John glanced down at the metal figure. The joints which would enable arms, legs, and mouth to move were cunningly wrought.
He had recently seen a similar mechanism among Troilus’ antiquities and curiosities.
Like Troilus’ automaton, this one wore armor. It was odd attire for a holy man, but it would not be noticeable from the square.
“Lazarus here was not one given to human weaknesses,” John remarked. “What is your name?”
“I gave up my name when I came to serve Lazarus.”
The garment the acolyte wore was too large for him. The skin of his hands appeared weathered when they emerged from his overly long sleeves.
“Your name?” John ordered.
“In my former life it was Stephen,” the other admitted.
A swirling breeze carried the smell of fresh bread from a bakery hidden in the welter of buildings laid out below them. The shadow of the column sliced across the square. John could see the tops of pedestrians’ heads as they hurried by without looking up.
Few paid attention to stylites apart from their followers and the occasional pilgrim. Those men perched atop pillars were always there, part of the city landscape, like the statuary lining the streets.
John half expected the other to rush at him suddenly. There was little space between them on the small platform. The iron railing was low and insecure and the ground was a long way down.
It would be an easy matter to arrange an accident.
“Where was this automaton obtained?” John asked.
“I can’t say,” came the reply. “I found it up here.”
John gave him a stony stare.
“No, it’s the truth,” the acolyte protested. “It’s been many years since then. I’m not sure how many. My days are all the same. One morning when I came up here, Lazarus was gone. This metal creature had taken his place. Perhaps it was a miracle?”
“You don’t really think so.” It was not a question.
Stephen bent his head. “No.”
“Now explain to me how you came to be spending your time shifting an automaton around on top of a pillar. I observed Lazarus outside his shelter, or so I thought. I assume that was your intent?”
“Yes. I moved him in and out of the shelter and stood him in different places. People don’t look very hard at stylites.”
“But someone might eventually notice if the pillar remained unoccupied?”
“Yes,” the other acknowledged. “And also the pilgrims would have been disappointed.”
“Not to mention you would have been without employment,” John pointed out.
“I can’t deny it. Yet it seemed to me the Lord must have left the automaton here for a reason. In that way, it was a miracle. If God had simply wanted to call Lazarus to his reward, I would have found the top of the column empty. As his acolyte I felt it was my duty to continue his good works.”
The fact that a holy man might appear to remain motionless for much of the day would not be at all unusual, John realized. The mortification of the body that many of them practiced included standing in one position for hours. He suspected they endured their harsh existence by remaining in a self-induced stupor much of the time. “How did you come to hold your position, Stephen?”
“Through the grace of God. When I was a boy I found myself living in the streets. I don’t know why. I don’t even remember my parents. One day I stole a leg of lamb. As I raced off, delighted by my cleverness, a huge black dog came loping after me.”
The acolyte looked down into the square. “It was Satan in the shape of a dog. I should have given the beast what it wanted, but the lamb tempted me. I was hungry, I’d been eating what I could find in the gutters, dead fish that had washed ashore, that sort of thing. So I ran, foolish child that I was. You can’t run from Satan. That monstrous dog savaged me. I should have died, but that was not the Lord’s plan. The man who served Lazarus at the time found me bleeding in an alley. He’d grown feeble with age and needed a helper. After I healed I assisted him.”
“And you eventually took his place?”
Stephen nodded. “He died a year or so after he rescued me. I had learned my duties by then. They’re simple enough. I arrange the offering baskets in front of the column in the morning and keep beggars away from them. Lazarus shared edibles with me and I bought more with the coins left by pious pilgrims.”
“And now you do not need to share the offerings,” John observed.
“There are far fewer than there used to be. Scarcely enough for me to keep body and soul together. Fewer pilgrims visit these days and they are usually older. Whatever fame Lazarus had in his native land, a fame which at one time drew people to this city, has faded away. Those who witnessed his works and were inspired by his teachings, before he journeyed here and mounted this column so as to give his earthly husk over to God, are gone. Even their children are gray and bent, as are most of those who heard him preach from where we stand.”
John suggested that Lazarus had simply decided to leave.
“No,” said the acolyte. “His legs were all but paralyzed from living in such a confined space, and besides, they were so deformed from disease and hardship he would have had to be carried down the stairs. He couldn’t have walked away unaided.”
John looked down once more at the soldier with the gleaming metal face, hands frozen in eternal prayer.
Stephen stepped over to the railing, put a hand on it, and gazed out across the city. “Lazarus was not like other men. Perhaps…” His voice was unsteady. It had been a shock discovering John up here, finding his secret had been uncovered after so many years. What would he do now if John chose to make his deception known?
John had climbed to the top of column in search of a missing boy and learned instead of a stylite who had vanished just as mysteriously. “How long ago did Lazarus disappear?”
“As I said, all my days are the same. The seasons blend into one another. It might have been ten years ago.”
“Did you have any forewarning? Did anything unusual happen before the automaton appeared up here?”
“Only that Lazarus stayed in his shelter for a long time. That’s why I finally decided to investigate. I thought he might be dying. Or dead.”
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�You didn’t communicate with him regularly?”
The other shook his head. “Lazarus said little. The man I replaced described the sermons Lazarus had once given. He knew them word for word, hearing them every day. He could recite them like a pagan can recite Homer. Lazarus painted the most glorious vision of heaven, but as the years went by he fell silent. Sometimes he talked to the Lord, but his words made no sense to me.”
John thought anyone’s humors would become unbalanced after perching atop a column for years. He could understand why the acolyte had not wanted to simply take the holy man’s place. “How long did he remain in this shelter before you decided to investigate?”
“A week or two. Lazarus sometimes retreated into his shelter to meditate for long periods. In the evenings, as usual, I sent baskets of food up by means of the rope and pulley you see attached to the railing and in the mornings the baskets were returned empty. So far as I knew he was avoiding the sun while he pondered. They say there are those who worship the sun rather than the Lord. He used to denounce them most vehemently. But then several days passed and the basket I had sent up remained up here, untouched.”
The sun whose worship the stylite had abhorred, and John had embraced, had begun its daily descent. Two moving shadows—low flying gulls—swept across the platform.
“And what did you do when you found the automaton in your master’s place?”
“I thought it must be a miracle. Yet the world seemed the same. The city still stretched around me. I could hear gratings being pulled up in front of shops, dogs barking, see the ships on the water moving, just as always. If I had witnessed a miracle wouldn’t the world feel different?”
The acolyte sighed before going on. “Then I feared some villains had abducted Lazarus. For all I knew they might have been trying to extort money from the Patriarch or even the emperor.”
John thought that if that was the case they would have soon and in a very painful manner learnt their error. He said he would have been surprised to learn that this had been the case.
“But he was a holy man and the Patriarch and Justinian would be concerned about his welfare,” Stephen said. “The kidnappers would have left the automaton there so as not to draw attention to the fact that Lazarus was missing, and yet, if they sought to benefit from his kidnapping, they had to announce he was gone. I soon realized such actions were contradictory and dismissed the notion. Then it occurred to me he might simply have been murdered. The Blues and Greens are often involved in mayhem. One of them might have killed Lazarus for the sheer enjoyment of it. Or perhaps they were blasphemers who wished to see if he would return to life as did his namesake.”