by Mary Reed
Lifting the tablet revealed a crinkled piece of parchment on which was inscribed what purported to be a poem, written in Greek:
See yon rock the unlearned call Leander’s Tower?
They say fair Hero threw herself down
at the sight of Leander’s lifeless form.
But who can say,
if customs then were as cruel as customs are today,
did Hero leap because she was bereft
or was she pushed by the emperor’s tariff?
If the dreadful composition was Gregory’s work, whatever other secrets the man’s life might have held, he was not another Homer.
John made his way back downstairs, the prospect of the return boat journey slowing his step. As he crossed the atrium, the youthful clerk yelled at him from the store room.
“You’re still here? What are you up to, scoundrel? I’ll have you arrested!”
John strode in to confront the youngster. He had regained his authoritative bearing and after a swift glance, the girl tugged warningly at her friend’s arm. The young man shook her hand off. “Who do you think you are! No closer! Unless you mean to kiss the emperor’s feet, that is.”
John produced the official document he habitually carried. “Perhaps Caesar has had too many libations?” he suggested. “Especially since you never imbibe wine. Don’t you recognize your own Lord Chamberlain?”
The clerk fumbled through the document John handed him. No doubt he’d seen enough official papers during his employment to recognize the genuine article. “You stole this!” he sputtered.
“Ah,” John said, his mouth drawing into a thin line, “and do you suppose your future would be much brighter if I am not in fact the Lord Chamberlain, but rather a man who has just murdered the Lord Chamberlain and relieved him of this document and his clothing?”
As the truth began to penetrate the clerk’s alcoholic armor, his face became very pale.
The girl leapt up, threw herself to the floor, and grabbed the hem of John’s robe. “Please, please, excellency,” she wept. “We meant no harm. Don’t send us to the dungeons. Not the red hot tongs and all them sharp knives…I’ll do whatever you want…he’ll do whatever you want…”
John pulled away. “That won’t be necessary. Just curb your tongues in future, or you may find them removed.”
***
Peter did not admit John to the house, having apparently put aside his duties for the day after all, as John had advised.
The sun was setting, but the atrium lamps were unlit. The quiet water in the impluvium reflected the dull, rose-tinted sky visible through the rectangular opening above.
John went upstairs. No fragrance of recent cooking emanated from the kitchen, only the dusty odor of last year’s dried herbs. Hypatia was nowhere to be seen, although a scorpion-like clay creature, one of her numerous charms against the plague, squatted on the kitchen table.
Peter must have forgotten to instruct her to assume his culinary duties for the evening.
John took a jug of wine and his cracked cup into his study.
His servants were available only when ordered to be there. John preferred solitude. He did not like people hovering unbidden at his elbow and had never cultivated the aristocratic knack for regarding servants as little more than animated furniture. How could he, he who had once been a slave? Such unorthodox convictions caused him to traverse the streets and alleys of Constantinople alone and unguarded, a practice others considered unthinkably dangerous for a courtier of his high rank.
A Lord Chamberlain was powerful enough to do the unthinkable if he chose.
Besides which, he was no stranger to using a blade when necessary.
He sat at his desk and sipped raw Egyptian wine. Beyond the diamond-shaped panes of the window overlooking the palace grounds and the sea beyond, the sky was fast growing dark. Might one of the myriad distant lights beneath the emerging stars mark the customs house he had just visited?
He imagined Peter working in the study, cleaning the window perhaps, never knowing he was laboring within sight of the building where, at the same instant, the man he knew only as an impoverished former soldier was likely to be warning a wealthy shipowner that a cargo of silks could not be unloaded until the tariff was paid, even if the merchant considered the amount demanded to be larcenous.
Peter, John thought, would doubtless be singing, and tunelessly at that, one of the lugubrious hymns he favored, dismissing dust as Gregory dismissed the disgruntled merchant, who would stride angrily off, his retinue of bodyguards trailing behind.
He’d still have to pay the appropriate tariff.
Did Peter truly not realize the position his old friend had held, the power he wielded?
Should John reveal what he had learnt? Would Peter’s new knowledge allow him to shed further light on Gregory’s murder? Sometimes we know things that we recognize only when our perspective changes.
John turned his attention to the wall mosaic. In the shadowed room he could not distinguish details, but he knew by heart each of the pagan gods who populated the sky as well as the faces of the bucolic mortals working in the fields below. Most familiar was the one he had named Zoe, a young girl whose glass eyes seemed to hold an expression conveying she had glimpsed all the sorrows to which flesh is prey.
There was an unnerving naturalism about her, as if the image had been taken from life. John thought it possible she was the artist’s daughter. The mosaic had been in place when he purchased the house, having been installed by the previous owner. It was strange to think that if his surmise was correct, the model for Zoe could well still be alive. John might see her one day while inspecting some artisans’ enclave, or she might appear in one of the hallways of an imperial residence, perhaps even be glimpsed moving down an alleyway off the Mese.
He was as likely to run into her as he was to see his own daughter again.
Would he recognize either of them?
He thought he heard someone moving about in the hall. Rising from his plain wooden chair, he looked out. A single lamp flickered at the far end, where narrow stairs led up to the mostly unoccupied servants’ quarters. Nothing moved.
It hadn’t been exactly a footstep. It was a softer sound, similar to heavy garments brushing against a wall. Birds often got into the house from the garden or through the compluvium, yet he couldn’t help recalling Peter’s imagined heavenly visitor.
Zoe stared solemnly at him as he sat down again.
“Peter doesn’t like me talking to you, Zoe.” John could not have said whether he spoke aloud or not.
There was a hint of sympathy in the girl’s almond-shaped eyes.
“Strange to think, isn’t it, that my servant possesses what I do not? That is to say, a past.”
He brought the wine cup to his lips. It was a cup akin to the one he’d owned when he lived with Cornelia, the mother of his daughter. The vessel was a duplicate he had ordered made, down to the crack in the rim. It was all of the past he could bear to keep close to him. Of the man he had been before his capture and emasculation in Persia, there remained nothing.
As for the family and friends of the man he had been then, they had vanished as surely as if the emperor had ordered every one of them dragged off to the dungeons in the dead of night. Or as if his Lord Chamberlain had ordered it, for John could certainly wield such power if he ever chose to exercise it.
Still, he admitted, if only to Zoe, he missed hearing Cornelia’s light breathing as she slept in the bed beside him, when the night was as silent as this one.
He lit the lamp on the desk and stared out of the window for a while. In the darkness there was no sign of the horror that stalked the city’s streets. For that matter, it could be lurking within this very house. The plague could go wherever it chose.
John forced his mind back to his investigation. He had become a servant to his own servant, as Gaius had said. Yet Peter was part of John’s household, and if it were po
ssible, John intended to find out who had killed Gregory. Elderly men like Peter did not have much time left to outlive their sorrows and disappointments.
“He’s already lost an old friend, but he at least has good memories of him. If I tell him the work Gregory did, will I murder those memories too? What do you think, Zoe?” John poured himself more wine.
Chapter Four
The bakery was deserted. Empty shelves in its front and cold brick ovens at the back confirmed what John had known as soon as he turned down the street and failed to smell freshly baked bread.
He crossed Eustathios the baker off the list on Gregory’s wax tablet.
There were now no names left. The list had led John to a succession of closed shops and silent houses where knocks had gone unanswered, their residents having departed to the country—or forever—or were perhaps too ill or frightened to answer.
He wondered if the names had in fact been Gregory’s itinerary.
That the bakery had been left open and unlocked indicated not only that Eustathios was dead, but that he had fallen prey to the most virulent variety of the plague, the type that took its victims within hours.
A muted thump caused John to turn quickly. Was there someone here after all?
He saw a cat, little more than an animated skeleton, stalking away from an empty grain bin. The cobwebs hanging off the animal’s whiskers testified to the extent of its hunting efforts. No baker meant no grain to feed the rats and no rats to feed the cats.
The creature glared balefully at John, who had nothing to give it.
Only a few coins.
No use at all to a hungry cat.
John realized he was hungry too. It had been a long time since the chunk of bread that had formed his breakfast.
The sun, now high overhead, drove all shadow from the streets here, a lengthy walk from the Great Palace grounds. John had made his way along the northern ridge from which, between buildings crowded conspiratorially together, he could occasionally glimpse the scintillant waters of the Golden Horn. He had planned his route to avoid climbing and reclimbing the seven-hilled city’s precipitous streets.
Now, however, he decided to walk down toward the docks.
When he reached a square facing the sea wall he was disappointed again. The seller of grilled fish, whose smoking brazier usually sat beside the marble statue of Emperor Anastasius, had gone. No sign of him remained except soot on the emperor’s chin and a few discarded fish bones, picked clean by seagulls.
There were still a fair number of pedestrians. A traveler unaccustomed to the capital’s jostling masses might not have noticed how relatively few they were or how most maintained careful courses, keeping a safe distance from strangers—rather like ships navigating the harbor, except that the ships in the harbor were not moving. There wasn’t a sail to be seen, only a forest of bare masts.
John recalled what Peter had said about his visits with Gregory. Sometimes they met at the Great Church or the Church of the Holy Apostles. Both were certainly places of some interest to Christians, but the latter was a long walk from John’s house. Was it was nearer to where Gregory lived? The thought occurred that there must be some record of where Gregory lived, either at the customs house or in the administrative warrens of the palace.
John turned away from the sea wall and started back up the steep thoroughfare. He often walked, since he found he thought better when his feet were moving. Thus he knew the alleys and byways of the city well. He crossed the top of the ridge, navigated a series of side streets not quite narrow enough to be called alleyways, passed under the Aqueduct of Valens, and eventually reached the Church of the Holy Apostles.
A motley assortment of associated ecclesiastical buildings all but hid the church. Not far beyond, the city’s inner wall stood guard. Impregnable to men, the walls had provided no defense against the plague.
John looked up and down nearby streets until he found an establishment that appeared to be open. A pyramid chiseled above its entrance bore the admonition The Wise Man is Prepared. A plaque beside the door identified the establishment as belonging to one Paraskeve, Builder of Tombs of Distinction.
John found the owner in the courtyard behind the shop, surrounded by the equivalent of a warehouse’s stock of marble, granite, and more exotic stones. Some were blank, awaiting the chisel, while others were in the midst of being carved into bas reliefs, cornices, or vine-entwined columns, or inscribed with appropriate verse.
Paraskeve hurried over to greet John, beaming. He had one of those round, snub-nosed faces that never age yet never look quite adult. Over his work tunic he wore an embroidered rectangular apron.
“How can I serve you, excellency?”
“I’m trying to find a man I believe may live in the area. Do you know a customs official named Gregory?”
“Yes, indeed I do.” Paraskeve looked crushed.
“I shall naturally reimburse you for the information.”
Paraskeve waved a stubby-fingered hand. “No. No, please, there is no need. I must apologize if my disappointment showed. The plague has all but carried my business off and I hoped you might wish to order…that is to say, for future use of course, not wishing any tragedy on your household, or in other words…” He floundered to a halt.
“I understand,” John replied. “Although I would have imagined a tomb builder would be overwhelmed by work in the midst of so much death.”
“The dead don’t purchase tombs, excellency. My customers are dying before they can make appropriate preparations. Constructing a proper tomb can take years. It’s not just hacking a few stones about, as some in the profession are wont to do.”
“You’ve had business dealings with Gregory?”
“Not exactly, but I can tell you where to find him. You can’t miss his house. Continue up the Mese from here and it’s the house just before the obelisk the candlemaker erected in front of his emporium.”
“You don’t know Gregory personally?”
“No. He is, however, said to be a good Christian.” Paraskeve’s tone was abrupt.
John asked why people had formed this opinion.
“For one thing, he petitioned Justinian to renovate the Church of the Holy Apostles.” Paraskeve didn’t seem inclined to add a second thing.
“Emperor Constantine built that church to be his tomb, didn’t he?”
Paraskeve’s cherubic face brightened suddenly. “That’s right. There’s a fine example of forethought, excellency. It’s one reason I set up my workshop as close as I could to the church.”
John inspected a carved piece of black-veined marble leaning against a pile of sandstone blocks. As he bent to examine the partially completed inscription, heat from the sun-warmed stone touched his face. He read the half finished verse aloud. “‘Do not believe you have twice five thousand years; death is close at hand, thus while—”
“—you breathe, while there is time, live in a fitting fashion,’ Marcus Aurelius,” Paraskeve finished the verse.
“You are quite a philosopher, I see.”
“Not at all, excellency, but when you’re in the business of constructing tombs you just can’t avoid Marcus Aurelius. I think I must’ve engraved every word of his miserable Meditations at some time or other.”
“You don’t agree with his thoughts?”
“I’m an optimist! Tomorrow I might die, but as long as I know that it means I’m still alive, doesn’t it? How could an emperor be so gloomy? Especially considering just about everyone’s going to die without ever being emperor. I encourage my customers to choose contemporary verses, if verse they must have. Something specially composed. Not that I can afford to engage a decent epigrammist the way things are right now.”
“So you think we should contemplate our deaths to the extent of commissioning our tombs?”
“Please, excellency! Clients who commission tombs, well, their deaths are the last things on their minds. No, not at all. I’ll give you an ex
ample. Years ago a basket-maker came to me. At the time he was practically a youth. He had his tomb constructed in a secluded corner of a cemetery just outside the city wall. Was he contemplating his mortality? Hardly! He wanted to impress a young woman whose hand he sought. It worked too! A man of sufficient substance to finance such a project at such a young age and so responsible and practical as shown by the very act…well, excellency, women like men who have their tombs already built. Now he tells me he and his wife take a basket of food out there on sunny days and enjoy the country air.”
John remarked that tomb construction sounded like a very interesting profession, but before he could turn the conversation back to Gregory, Paraskeve, seemingly happy to have someone to talk to for a time, had embarked on another story.
“So the bootmaker’s tomb is no more than a hand’s-breadth from the Via Egnatia, practically in sight of the city. Naturally it gets as dusty as the boots he sells,” Paraskeve concluded. “Ah, but consider this! It’s also readily seen by every footsore pilgrim. What a fine advertisement for his goods. Idle boasts read much better as epitaphs!”
John agreed there was some truth in the statement.
“Then there was a certain senator,” the other rushed on. “You’d know his name immediately were it to pass my lips. His tomb overlooks the Marmara from a promontory on his estate. He was so pleased with the edifice I built he hired me to add apartments to it where he could sit and meditate.”
“I can’t say I would want to spend more time than necessary in my own tomb,” John observed.
“His wife apparently felt the same. She was horrified and refused to set foot near the place.” Paraskeve laughed. “Ah, but then again, his mistress is not so squeamish and I understand is much given to meditation!”
“Did Gregory have a family?”
“A wife, but he refused to show her my design for their final resting place. It was a representation of the hold of a cargo ship. The tomb itself was in the shape of a crate, adorned with angels and set amidst monumental amphorae and crosses. They would be part of the heavenly ship’s cargo, bound for some higher land, you see. Very appropriate for a high-ranking customs official. I still have the…but wait! Why are you asking me about Gregory? He’s not been taken off too?”