by Mary Reed
“Bear!” the poet cried.
“For a main course? At a court banquet? Surely not. Then again, with an appropriate sauce-–”
“No. No! There’s a bear!” Crinagoras staggered backward, practically into Anatolius’ arms.
Anatolius heard the rustle of undergrowth and the crack of breaking branches. A dark shape loped through the cedars. An enormous black bear. It came to a halt, blocking their path.
Crinagoras spun around, prepared to run. Anatolius grabbed his shoulder. “Be still.”
The beast unleashed a rumbling growl.
Crinagoras made a tiny, keening noise, like a dying rabbit.
There were shouts from the surrounding woods. Crashing, the clash of metal on metal. The bear’s head swung toward the racket, its flanks heaved, and it lumbered off with deceptive speed, vanishing into the trees on the other side of the path.
Almost immediately an excubitor appeared from the direction in which the bear had come. He was banging two metal pots together. Other guards appeared, all similarly armed with cooking utensils. They plunged after the bear, yelling and clanking.
Trailing the pack came Felix. The bearded captain’s booming obscenities could not conceal the truth that his weapons were a copper night soil pot and a soup ladle.
“I suppose bears flee bad language,” observed Anatolius.
Felix launched into an even viler oath, then stopped. “Mithra! My quiver seems to be empty! Not to mention I’m getting hoarse. But you seem to have grasped the situation, Anatolius. We have been ordered to chase Theodora’s pet away, without ruffling its fur. It doesn’t like loud noises. I hope.”
“Is this the bear from the menagerie? I thought you were supposed to let it loose in the countryside?”
“According to Theodora this Imperial estate is the countryside.”
“Well,” muttered Crinagoras, “there are plenty of trees for the bear to lurk behind if it wants to ambush anyone.”
“Bears don’t usually bother with people, not even plump poets,” Felix informed him. “It’s the smell of food for the banquet that’s attracted it.”
“But having a bear roaming the grounds. Isn’t that dangerous?” Anatolius wondered.
“The emperor and empress never go out for a stroll without an armed guard,” Felix reminded him.
“But what about guests, or anyone who might wander in by mistake?”
Felix glared into the trees. The sound of the chase had nearly faded away. “Yes, as for such folks, that’s Theodora’s idea of humor. ‘How was your walk? Oh? I thought I’d mentioned my bear!’” The excubitor gave his night soil pot a couple of half-hearted bangs with the ladle and trudged away after his men.
“Oh my,” groaned Crinagoras. “All that glorious food awaiting us and now I have the most dreadful stomachache.”
They continued more slowly, finally emerging from the wood into a meadow that sloped down from the back of the imperial residence. An enormous purple canopy had been erected in the center of the open space. Diners were already seated at a long table under its shade.
Anatolius could tell that this was what passed, at court, for an intimate gathering. There was a subtle difference in the indecipherable buzz of conversation. The guests were all members of Justinian and Theodora’s inner circle, Latin speakers, like the emperor and empress, and unlike most of the population. The emperor, he understood, would not be in attendance, which made the gathering one of Theodora’s affairs.
An attendant met the newcomers and showed them to their seats.
“What is this?” Crinagoras stared down at his three-legged stool. “Are we expected to milk goats? Where are the couches? I’m not so certain I care much for the country, Anatolius.” He lowered himself gingerly.
“On the other hand, you should be extremely honored to be sitting so near the head of the table.” Anatolius pointed out a gilded and plushly cushioned chair set a few arm-lengths away.
As he did, an imperial carriage rattled around the side of the residence and pulled up next to the canopy. As everyone stood, Theodora emerged from her conveyance.
In keeping with the bucolic surroundings, she wore a short brown tunic, one that might well have belonged to a farmer’s wife provided the farmer had happened to plow up the chest full of jewels that adorned the rough cloth, and bartered his crops for the golden bees ornamenting her hair.
The obligatory announcements and encomia accompanied her ascent to the makeshift throne. Anatolius paid little attention, having written them.
Servants bearing silver salvers appeared and began a circuit of the table.
Horrified gasps erupted among the guests.
At first Anatolius did not understand, then, as one of the servants drew nearer, he realized with a trickle of shock that those now serving the first course had almost reached their last.
The servants were covered in black boils and their tight-fitting tunics did little to disguise the huge swellings in their armpits.
Theodora emitted a caw of laughter. “My friends, fear not! Is not your righteousness an armor? Eat and be thankful! The entertainments will begin shortly!”
Shrinking away from the slaves circling them, her high-born guests, as frightened by the empress as by the plague, tried to subdue their cries of dismay.
Anatolius looked at the chunk of bread that had been set before him on an earthenware plate and then at the small jug of water beside it. Crinagoras, as pale as a lily, poured water into his cup with a shaking hand.
Theodora, with a scimitar of a smile, nodded to an attendant, who strode swiftly away.
A few heartbeats later, a cart rolled into view and even the presence of the empress could not mute the chorus of full-throated cries that rose into the azure sky.
The cart was piled with half-naked dead and driven by a wizened, sinewy man dressed only in a dusty loincloth.
“It’s that holy fool I saw at Nereus’ house!” Crinagoras looked prepared to run away as the macabre conveyance rumbled to a halt at the head of the table. “He looks ready to join his passengers at any instant!”
As if to prove Crinagoras wrong, the driver gave a terrible grimace, leapt from his perch, and scrambled onto the table. He danced along it wildly, kicking off plates and overturning cups with filthy, bare feet.
“Eat the bread of affliction and drink the tears of sorrow,” he shouted, making an obscene gesture at Crinagoras as he went by. “They’re more than you deserve! Eat well and hearty, my friends, for tonight you may be traveling in a cart like mine! For all your finery and fancy airs now, your only attendants then will be the flies, and who will sacrifice on your behalf to Zeus Apomyios?”
Theodora laughed loudly. One or two of her guests tried valiantly to follow suit, but their forced merriment was put to rest when one of the dead suddenly sprang from the cart.
Anatolius nudged Crinagoras in the ribs. “See, they’re all alive. It’s just one of Theodora’s nasty ideas of entertainment.”
“Alive?” Crinagoras appeared about to swoon with relief.
It was true. The dead had already risen and were now reenacting the arrival of the plague in the city and its deadly progress through the streets. The plague itself, Anatolius noted, was played by the driver, who, with coarse comments and foul language, strutted about slapping his fellow performers’ faces and exhorting his listeners, including the empress, to repent their sins while they still had time. Those struck by the fool staggered, wailed, and fell down in convulsions.
“My friends, eat, drink, as the holy fool bids you,” Theodora urged, sinking her teeth daintily into a miniature loaf which, Anatolius noticed, was gilded.
Crinagoras choked down a crumb or two and then asked Anatolius in an undertone if he thought any of the servants really were suffering from the plague.
“Of course not. I told you, it’s just something she considers amusing.”
The performers, having mimed agonizing deaths, were
loaded on the cart by a pair of guards. The holy fool climbed back on the table, waved skeletal arms, and urged the assembled company to sing a blasphemous ditty with him.
“Interesting that Theodora knows all the words, isn’t it?” Anatolius noted. “The fool reminds me of someone, but I just can’t call him to mind.”
Trailing curses, the holy fool finally remounted his cart and drove off as a few of his passengers waved feeble farewells.
Theodora smiled benignly at her guests. “I trust you have taken his exhortations to heart. Now, I have invited a few luminaries to inspire us further during this dark time. Lucilius…” She nodded toward a stout, red-faced fellow seated directly across the table from Anatolius.
The man rose to his feet, revealing that he wore a ludicrously oversized toga. He bowed. “Lucilius is most humbled to be permitted to enter into the presence of our most glorious empress. Were the emperor here I would implore him to commission your fair likeness in gold and silver, marble and mosaic, ivory and paint, for every corner of our city so each of us could always bask in your light. However, I most certainly would not engage the portrait painter Dordanus, who has never yet produced a good likeness, and that includes his own children.”
Several of the guests tittered. Crinagoras pursed his lips with displeasure.
“Let us hope that none here need resort to the ministrations of physicians,” Lucilius continued. “Why, just last week a physician killed his patient while operating. It was a mercy, he told the widow, because otherwise your husband would have been lamed for life.”
Theodora guffawed.
“Did you hear,” Lucilius went on, “that the very same physician called on a statue of Jupiter yesterday? And even though it was marble and Jupiter, its funeral’s tomorrow.”
“I’ve heard that jest before,” muttered Crinagoras, his voice barely audible for the laughter all around.
Lucilius waved his wide sleeves, giving the impression of a fat seagull unable to get off the ground. “Which is it better to trust, a physician or a soothsayer? A traveler went to a soothsayer to ask whether it was safe to sail to Bretania. The soothsayer consulted his oracle and said, ‘If you have a new ship, and an expert captain, and set sail in the summer rather than the winter, and the winds are favorable, you will have a safe voyage, unless of course you’re captured by pirates.’”
“Nicarchus,” Crinagoras said in outraged tones. “Those are all epigrams written by Nicarchus. The villain’s stolen them and is passing them off as his own!”
“I shall give you some advice myself, my friends,” Lucilius was saying. “Steer clear of toads, vipers, and Isaurians. Also at all costs avoid those afflicted with the pestilence, mad dogs, and Isaurians. Keep far from scorpions and burning tenements, and did I mention Isaurians?”
Crinagoras fretted as the literary thief rambled on. “Why did the empress invite me here, if this sort of nonsense is what her guests are likely to enjoy?”
“They enjoy whatever Theodora says they will enjoy, Crinagoras. No doubt your poems will serve as a welcome contrast.”
“Yes, there’s that.”
Lucilius sat as a last gust of hilarity swept the table. Theodora turned her gaze toward Crinagoras.
He climbed shakily to his feet and muttered the brief words of praise for the empress with which Anatolius had coached him on the ride there.
The empress offered only a glimmer of a smile. “Proceed, dear Crinagoras.”
He looked around the table, licked his lips nervously, and began his recitation. “Alas, woe, poor, bereft Crinagoras.”
Before he had reached the end of his fourth verse a few guests shielded their mouths to muffle snickers.
Crinagoras stopped.
The purple canopy made snapping sounds in a freshening breeze. A bird called from the underbrush fringing the open space.
Crinagoras cleared his throat and began again, his voice shaking. “Alas, woe, poor, bereft Crinagoras, he who lingers behind fair Eudoxia, she of the—”
More stifled laughter distracted him.
He glanced down at Anatolius, his expression that of a rabbit in a snare, and then soldiered valiantly on.
“—fair Eudoxia, she of the moon-white bosom—”
A strident laugh drowned out the poet’s faltering voice.
It was Theodora. Having thus been granted permission, the guests joined in.
Crinagoras sat down.
“No, no. You must continue, Crinagoras,” Theodora ordered. “Your poetry is well known at court and we wish to savor it from the lips of its creator.”
Crinagoras swayed to his feet.
Fortuna proved more merciful than Theodora. Before he could continue, two guards appeared, dragging the holy fool between them.
Theodora turned to face the arrivals, demanding to know what had happened.
The guards were husky young men, with broad shoulders and wide, bland faces. The fool hung between them, limp as an empty old wine skin, his long hair flopping down and obscuring his features.
One of the guards displayed something that flashed in the sunlight.
“A knife? He intended to assassinate someone?”
“He was trying to steal it from the kitchen, highness,” the guard replied. “We caught him with a sack full of imperial silver.”
Theodora addressed their captive. “You truly are a fool. I favor you with an invitation to inspire my guests and you attempt to steal imperial silver. Do you realize the punishment you face?”
The fool twisted convulsively, slithering from his startled guard’s grasp. Quick as a striking snake, he snatched a gold bee from Theodora’s hair.
The two guards stood dumbfounded.
Theodora rose slowly from her chair. Though shorter than the guards, she seemed to tower over them. “What if this man had been an assassin?”
Her tone was low, but many of those present blanched at the venom it carried.
At her gesture, other armed men who had been stationed around the perimeter of the dining area rushed to take charge of the errant guards.
“Pray that you contract the plague immediately,” Theodora told the two unfortunates. “Your demise then would be considerably more pleasant than what I am contemplating as a reward for your failure to carry out your duties.”
“Please return the knife to the empress,” put in the fool. “With this fine ornament, and the other items I’ve chosen, I would otherwise be over-compensated for the entertainment I provided.”
Theodora smiled. “You have a mime’s wit, fool. Are your wits nimble enough to explain why you should not join these two in the dungeons? You have, after all, admitted to stealing imperial property.”
“Could there be a more heinous crime than stealing from the emperor and empress, our most generous benefactors? Yet how many present would learn that lesson if no one dared to show them by example?”
Anatolius realized from Theodora’s laughter that the fool’s body would remain intact for another day.
Then again it might all have been planned. “Let’s hope this is part of the entertainment too, for the sake of those guards,” Anatolius whispered. “What do you think, Crinagoras?”
There was no reply.
Glancing sideways, Anatolius was horrified to see his friend had vanished.
If he had chosen to flee the banquet without Theodora’s permission, it would be the worse for him.
Then he noticed the pale hand by the stool next to him and the remainder of the poet sprawled in the grass under the table.
Crinagoras had managed to make his escape by losing consciousness.
***
Gaius straightened up and turned away from the motionless body sprawled on the hospice cot. He shook his head at Anatolius, waiting nearby. “Nothing more than a bad bump on the back of his skull. Nothing to worry about.”
The supine figure stirred and whimpered. “Is it safe to move now?”
“You’
ll feel some swelling there, Crinagoras,” Gaius told him. “That’s to be expected. However, if the swelling happens to spread to your armpits or groin, do let me know.”
Crinagoras sat up, prodded the back of his head, and let out a yelp of pain. His face darkened. “It was awful, Gaius. Everyone was laughing at me.”
Anatolius could sense anguish in his friend’s tone. “It was Theodora’s idea of a jest,” he said kindly. “Whenever the empress laughs, her guests have to pretend to laugh as well.”
“They sounded very convincing to me.”
“You must have noticed that the empress certainly appeared to be enjoying your recitation,” Anatolius said. “I’m sorry I had to rush you away from the banquet, but you seemed exceedingly groggy and she kindly allowed us to leave before the entertainments concluded.”
“I don’t get very many patients arriving in imperial carriages,” Gaius observed with a grin.
“You see? The empress lent you her own carriage. Few at court can say that!”
“No doubt Theodora wanted to ensure you’d remain with us and so would be available to entertain her further in the future,” Gaius observed.
Crinagoras struggled to his feet. “Perhaps,” he grudgingly conceded. He looked down and scuffed his boot on the floor. “I do wish she’d had the bear dung cleaned out first.”
“Was anyone else reciting?” Gaius asked.
“Lucilius,” Anatolius said. “One of the court poets.”
“Not to mention a literary thief,” Crinagoras put in hotly. “Although I will admit jests about physicians have always been favorites of mine.”
“Do you know why a poet is deadlier than a viper?” Gaius replied.
“Oh, I haven’t heard that one! Why is that so?”
“In order to kill, a viper needs to open its mouth and sink its fangs into the victim, whereas a poet needs only to open his mouth.”
Anatolius laughed and took Crinagoras by the elbow.
“Nothing like a bit of humor to ease the pain of your patients, is there, Gaius? We’d better be on our way.” He stopped in the doorway. “Since we’re here, however, I understand Hypatia has been helping you?”