by Mary Reed
“They hold several pieces of the leg bone of John the Baptist,” Palamos explained. “From their size and number it would seem he was twice the height of an ordinary person. Very convenient for river baptisms, wouldn’t you say? I’m certain he would forgive me for saying that.” He gently brushed cobwebs from the reliquaries.
John described the witnesses he had already identified: Crinagoras, Gregory, and Cador. “With yourself and the holy fool and a cart driver that makes six. Do you know who the seventh was?”
“Aristotle of Athens,” Palamos replied immediately. “He tried to pawn off some questionable relics on me whenever I happened to meet him at Nereus’ house. He presents himself as a dealer in antiquities and oracles.”
Palamos coughed. Was he choking on the cobwebs he’d stirred up or the thought of the dealer of antiquities?
“Did Nereus transact very much business with this Aristotle?”
Palamos nodded. “I regret to say it of a good friend who is now gone, but Nereus exhibited a certain gullibility at times.”
“Where is Aristotle’s establishment?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you. I never ventured there myself. His regular discovery of ancient oracles struck me as highly suspicious. In fact, on one occasion I questioned him most closely about it. And do you know what he said, Lord Chamberlain? He claimed he was born on the fifth day of the fifth month and as Virgil observed, when gamblers wager, Fortuna favors uneven numbers! Thus, he said, he trusted to Fortuna that the antiquities and oracles he bought and sold were as represented and since he has not been prosecuted so far, obviously that proved his wares were genuine.”
“It’s extraordinary how many are placing their trust in Fortuna these days. Her name seems to be on everyone’s lips.”
“True enough. We should rather be praying to the Lord, but there are those, I am sorry to say, who are reluctant to trust one whom they believe responsible for the pestilence. In fact, many say we have brought the plague on ourselves.”
“Do you know the lawyer Prudentius?”
Palamos had picked up a small, exceedingly ugly reliquary which resembled, no doubt quite by accident, a jeweled toad. He looked up from it in surprise. “I do know Prudentius. Very well, in fact. Another pious man full of charity. He was another orphan like the boy you just saw and again like him brought up in the church. Now he not only donates regularly to our charities, he also takes outcasts and dear children into his own home. As you see, Prudentius’ kindly nature and actions prove that charity begets charity. If you’re thinking about the will, though, Nereus formed his own opinions about that.”
John asked what he meant.
“Recently Nereus mentioned to me he’d consulted the law on the matter. I think he meant he had been leafing through that set of the Institutes he obtained a while ago. He consulted them as often as he did those oracles in his garden. Well, as far as the latter goes, superstition isn’t a sin, but what sense he could have made of something as confusing as the Institutes, I can’t say. One needs suitable training to disentangle the entrails of the law.”
He tugged at the tiny door of the reliquary. “You haven’t told me why all this interests you, Lord Chamberlain, not that I have any right to ask. It isn’t about his generous gift to us, is it?”
John assured him that no one was thinking about confiscating the church’s legacy and then briefly explained Gregory’s fate.
Palamos looked distressed. “Gregory was another of our benefactors. And he’s been murdered, you say? I didn’t know him too well, although I’ve occasionally seen him here. He’d come in now and then and just stand silently for a time, contemplating our relics of John Chrysostom. I did not think it unusual to see him at Nereus’ house. People who worship at the same church tend to get to know one another, conduct business together, and so forth. Have you spoken to his widow?”
“There was no one at his house when I called.”
“I believe her sister lives nearby. She may be staying with her.”
Palamos finally managed to pry open the reliquary and extracted from it a finger with a cracked and blackened nail. As he held it up, it appeared to be pointing at John.
Palamos smiled. “The finger of St. Luke!”
***
Angelina, Gregory’s widow, was spinning wool in a sunny room at the back of her sister’s house, a short walk from her own home. A small, plump woman perched on a stool, she reminded John of a dove. A dove whose feathers were, however, a blue and dark as the waters of the Sea of Marmara under the glare of the midday sun. In one hand she held a clump of wool. A weighted spindle dangled from the other.
She greeted John with a timid smile, indicated he should take a seat, and continued working. “My sister’s husband has been taking care of such matters that need to be taken care of, I am thankful to say. The news was a terrible shock. A man from the palace administrative offices came to tell me. It all seems a terrible dream.”
John offered condolences.
“Thank you. As you see, I am keeping myself busy. Not crying in lamentation or any such extravagance. A nasty pagan practice, excellency. They might well tear their hair at the mouth of Hades, but why should we when our loved ones are standing at the gate of heaven?”
The widow’s cheeks were rosy without the aid of makeup, her skin unlined, her hair, pulled away from her face, dark brown. It struck John that Gregory must have taken a much younger bride, until he noticed the joints of the hands that tugged at the wool and twirled the spindle were swollen and knobby with age.
“Not that the journey there is easy unless one is a saint,” Angelina continued. “My poor husband must be braving the toll-houses at this very instant, arguing over his baggage with demon tariff collectors.” A brief smile illuminated her face. “He always said he’d be well prepared to deal with them, having been a customs official himself.”
John remarked that such a position would certainly be of great assistance in the circumstances.
“He was a good man, excellency. A good husband. I never wanted for anything. If he is facing some satanic judge right now, he surely has a score of angels defending him.”
Not to mention angelic messengers seeking justice on his behalf, John thought. “I would say Gregory is not carrying the sort of baggage that would interest demons.”
Did a wistful look cross the round face before him? “None of us are without sin, I fear,” Angelina said.
The room had whitewashed walls lined with chests and baskets of wool. A shaft of light from the open window fell across the dark floor tiles, touching the stool where Gregory’s widow worked. John told her, without elaboration, he was investigating her husband’s death.
She accepted the statement without question. It would not be unusual for the palace or the City Prefect to take an interest in the murder of a high-ranking customs official.
“I understand your husband was once a military man. How did he come to be a customs official?”
“John Chrysostom got him the post,” was the surprising answer.
“But he died almost a century and a half ago!”
“My husband had a great and abiding interest in him, excellency. When he served in Isauria he would visit every church he saw to ask if it owned any copies of the man’s writings. Whatever he found, he committed to memory as best he could. Thus eventually he carried in his head a library no ordinary soldier could possibly have afforded.”
John realized that the young Gregory had probably shared this knowledge with his friend Peter. “How did he become interested in John Chrysostom?”
“It was because John was exiled to that part of the world near the end of his life. He was part of the history of the mountains, if you wish. The beauty and power of his writing impressed Gregory.” Although the old hands continued to work the wool and spindle, a quaver crept into her voice. “Gregory chose a phrase from them for his tomb inscription long ago.”
“Since he was a Chris
tian as well as formerly a military man, might I venture to guess it questions the supposed victory of the grave?”
The spindle stopped for an instant. Then she plucked hastily at the thread, smoothing out an errant thickening. “Why, yes, excellency. You are also a man of the church?”
“I am often at the Great Church.” John did not explain that, as Lord Chamberlain, it was part of his duties to arrange and oversee the emperor’s ceremonial entrances into the church, and that further, it was extremely wise for him to attend its services, despite holding other religious convictions.
Angelina forced a smile. “But I was telling you how Gregory obtained his post, wasn’t I?”
She lifted the spindle and pushed down the multiplying coils of thread. “It was in Isauria that he took a spear in the arm.”
There was the slightest hesitation in her words. The ancient wound she had mentioned might well have reminded her of the more recent and fatal wounding.
“He couldn’t remain in the army,” she continued. “He always said it was a sign sent by heaven. In any event, he came back and took a clerical job at the customs house. As it happened, one of the higher officials there was also a student of John Chrysostom’s writings. He learned that Gregory shared his interest and when they began discussing matters of religion he soon recognized my husband’s intelligence and talents.”
Her hands continued like separate creatures, going about their own business. “He was blessed to be given a path leading so sure-footedly from a soldier’s life in the wilderness to great wealth here in the capital,” she went on. “I know Gregory wouldn’t like to hear me complain it ended as it did. That would be ungrateful and unreasonable, he would argue.”
“Did your husband discuss his work much with you, Angelina?”
John was not surprised when she told him he had not. Was there any connection between Gregory’s post and his death? Was his death related to Nereus’ oral will? Tariff collectors were so much disliked that it was not surprising that the church, seeking to remind the faithful of future accountability, had populated the soul’s road to heaven with demonic customs officials.
John asked whether anyone with whom Gregory had recently transacted business might hold some resentment against him.
“No, excellency. He felt he was simply taking wealth on behalf of our Christian emperor from those who had more than enough. He personally donated a great deal of his own wealth for charitable purposes, particularly to the Church of the Holy Apostles.”
“Did he receive any unusual visitors during the past few weeks?”
The spindle was full. Angelina placed it in the basket set beside her stool and brought her gnarled hands together in her lap, folding them together as if in prayer. “As I indicated, I did not know much about my husband’s business. Indeed, you exhibit considerable knowledge of him.”
“Peter related a few things about your late husband to me,” John explained.
“Peter?”
“Gregory’s old army friend.”
“I’ve never heard Gregory mention him.”
“Peter is the man Gregory met every week or so to talk about theology and—”
John was unable to finish because Angelina sprang off her stool, a dove taking awkward flight.
“Bless you, excellency!” She burst into tears. “You were sent from heaven. Now I see it all! Sent from heaven!”
She looked up at the whitewashed ceiling. “Gregory, forgive me!” she cried, and then addressed John. “All these years when Gregory was going off to his meetings with this Peter you’ve just mentioned, and never saying why or who he was visiting, oh, Lord forgive me, I supposed he had been seeing another woman.”
Chapter Nineteen
Loud voices from the atrium distracted Hypatia. The scorpion’s tail snapped off in her hand.
She set the lump of clay she’d been modeling on the kitchen table and quickly wiped her hands on a rag. The door slammed below and someone stamped angrily upstairs.
Europa burst into the kitchen, eyes bright with anger.
“I wish we’d never come here, Hypatia! I’m telling Thomas I want to leave!”
She found a cup, filled it from the wine jug, and drank thirstily.
“You didn’t enjoy your visit to the Great Church?”
“I’d hardly reached the Mese when a man accosted me.” She took another gulp of wine. “It was my father. I’ve just been escorted back home as if I were a child. Now he’s gone out again. The streets are dangerous, I was told. Ha!”
Europa’s tone of voice, her slim physique and deeply tanned skin, the mouth set in a thin line of anger reminded Hypatia of how much his daughter in some ways resembled the Lord Chamberlain. She murmured sympathetically.
Europa continued to fume. “I didn’t notice any danger in the streets. The last time I visited this city they were swarming with people. Now it might as well be some old ruin in the middle of the desert. The most threatening thing I saw this morning was some half-naked old man singing lewd songs.”
“That sounds like the holy fool everyone’s talking about, mistress.”
“I’ve heard better lyrics on the docks.”
“I saw him dancing with a dead woman,” Hypatia recalled with a shudder.
“Let him try dancing on a live bull! Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if father asked me to give up my profession because it’s dangerous. I hope mother arrives soon. She’ll set him straight.” She glared darkly into her cup and then pulled a stool over to the table. When she sat down her movements were as fluidly graceful as a dancer’s. She poured out more wine. “Have a libation, Hypatia. You look overheated.”
“That would hardly be proper, mistress,” Hypatia faltered.
“This is not what many would call a proper household, is it? So it will be all right. How is Peter?”
Hypatia shook her head. “Fading, judging from his voice. I talk to him through the door when I take him food and water. He doesn’t eat much, but the water’s always gone next time I look.”
“He didn’t like Thomas when we were here last, I recall, but it’s a shame to see him so ill.”
Feeling awkward, Hypatia sampled the wine. “You’ve been involved with Thomas a long time then?” she ventured.
“No. We’d gone separate ways after he escorted mother and me back to Crete. It’s just during these last few months, after he ran into us by accident, that I’ve got to know him well.”
“Thomas is a fine fellow, mistress.”
“He is, though some might call him a barbarian because he was born in Bretania, practically on the edge of the world. A country permanently shrouded in fog and mist, he tells me. A most romantic place. He’s traveled a lot and seen more of the world than I have, and that’s saying something.”
“I’ll wager he has many stories to tell!”
“Oh, he can be a regular Herodotus, if you can persuade him to talk about his past. He’s a very discreet fellow.”
“A quality to admire.” Hypatia shoved her empty cup aside. It had occurred to her that if the Lord Chamberlain were to return, he would not appreciate finding his servant sharing wine with his daughter. She picked up the half-made scorpion and began nervously forming the clay.
“He’s a sweet man, Hypatia. Oh my, yes…” Europa smiled to herself, but did not elaborate.
“I met someone sweet recently,” Hypatia heard herself confessing.
Europa leaned forward. “Someone special?”
“Well, he might be.” Hypatia’s voice caught. Surely she shouldn’t be confiding in Europa? Yet somehow she could not help herself.
She worked at the clay furiously. “His name is Pamphilos. He’s a patient at the hospice where I’ve been helping Gaius. He was badly burned with lye. Somehow he’d been thrown into one of the towers being used for disposal of the dead.”
“How horrible! Will he live?”
“Yes, but his face…”
&n
bsp; “He’ll need your comfort then,” Europa said kindly.
“Once he was handsome, mistress. Even now you can tell that was the case. He is so kind and charming. He thought I was an aristocrat from a rich Egyptian family. I told him I was merely a servant. ‘Surely you jest?’ he said. ‘You don’t have the bearing of a servant.’”
“Evidently he is a golden-tongued young man!”
“I admitted my master was not just anyone, but rather the Lord Chamberlain. Pamphilos insisted it was a scandal that I should be anybody’s servant and that half the men at the palace would throw themselves at my feet if given the chance.”
Hypatia had formed the clay into a rudimentary face. It reminded her too much of her patient. She squeezed it into a lumpy mass. “He is so romantic, mistress! He even kissed my hand once and said all five fingers should have silver rings on them.”
Europa, overlooking the fact that Pamphilos had counted thumbs as fingers, asked why he would pick silver rings and not gold.
“He said gold rings were so commonplace that the true romantic would always choose silver. Especially as silver is sacred to the moon, the friend of lovers,” Hypatia explained with a blush.
“Indeed. Well, he sounds quite a fine young man. You should take no notice of looks, Hypatia,” Europa said. “In the dark, you won’t notice a few scars. Thomas has more than one.”
They were giggling together when Thomas appeared in the kitchen doorway. “What’s so funny? We could hear you laughing all the way downstairs!”
Hypatia blushed.
“How did a great big man like you creep up here so quietly?” Europa demanded in mock anger.
Thomas looked bemused. “You’ve been imbibing! Both of you!”
Europa pouted and shook her head. “No, no, dearest. Only me. Hypatia has been a good girl.”
Crinagoras peered over Thomas’ broad shoulder. “Thomas has been escorting me while I visited my favorite bookseller, and I must say Scipio was very impressed. He’d never seen me accompanied by a bodyguard. It makes one feel a new man, walking the streets with a guard at one’s side.”