Nine for the Devil

by Mary Reed

  On this occasion, however, John had arrived as a brief ceremony was concluding with a final prayer.

  “…fallen far away defending the frontier and even now ascending to thy realm of light though buried without the appropriate rites for one who loved and served thee. Grant that he be found worthy of living in thy radiance,” the Father intoned.

  Three men ranged behind the Father responded as one with John and the Father.

  “Lord of Light, we beseech thee!”

  The five Mithrans bowed to the altar before the trio of men took their seats on a bench and waited in silence as the Father greeted John.

  “As you heard, we have lost another adept, John. A brave man, one advancing rapidly in the ranks.” The Father was about John’s age, a familiar face at court though considerably outranked by John. “We are losing others too. Lately many are neglecting their religious duties.”

  “Have you seen Felix recently? Of course, he’s been rushed off his feet since Theodora died.”

  “I’m afraid he’s one who has fallen away. I haven’t seen him for months. I intended to ask you where he’s been.”

  John exchanged a few more words with the Father and then sat on a bench in the quietness of the sacred place.

  He had hoped to compose his mind, to think about the problems he faced. But the absence of Felix from his usual place of worship had given him yet another matter to worry about.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  “The captain hasn’t been in this morning,” a clerk told John. “He may be inspecting the barracks.”

  “I expected him to have left word for me.”

  The clerk, a thin, pallid creature and clearly not a military man, pawed through scrolls on Felix’s desk. “I’m sorry, Lord Chamberlain. There’s nothing but routine paperwork here.”

  Early morning sun slanted across the paved courtyard visible through the window. The plaster walls were bare except for one of the official crosses installed all over the administrative complex. It was not a salubrious office, but then Felix never spent much time behind a desk.

  John went into the corridor. Clerks and minor officials were wandering into their offices, blinking sleepily.

  He had spent a long time meditating in the mithraeum and then had come straight here, to see what information had been gleaned during the night by the watch Felix had put on Anatolius’ house. The fact that Felix had not been waiting for him, had left no word, seemed to indicate no one of interest had been seen entering or leaving the house, but John would have preferred to have been told that was the case. Apparently Felix had not thought it necessary.

  He left the palace and found Pulcheria in her usual spot. She had moved from the shadows to sit in a patch of sunlight and her multicolored rags resembled a wild, formless mosaic, the perfect adornment for a church of some sect whose views would make even the most blasphemous of heretics flush with disapproval. Tripod the three-legged cat peeked from behind her, a lurking demon glaring malevolently at John as he hunkered down to talk to Pulcheria.

  “What of the assignments I gave you? Have you learned anything yet?”

  “About the one matter, nothing yet,” Pulcheria replied. “But as to the more pressing question, concerning your friend—”

  “So you were able to observe Anatolius’ house last night as I asked? Did you see anything?”

  Pulcheria divided the last of the fish on which she was breakfasting, ate one bit, and gave the other to the cat. She looked slyly at John with the good side of her face. “Oh yes, Lord Chamberlain. I followed your instructions. Your largesse will buy me many a fine meal, but I think you will find it was money well spent.”

  “Did you see that young servant I described to you? Did she arrive early and spend the night as I expected?”

  Pulcheria wiped greasy fingers daintily on her colored rags. “No. Your friend was not up to his usual antics, not last night at least. I hired an acquaintance of mine to help me. The poor fellow is lacking a leg but his eyesight is excellent. I set him to watch the front entrance and he says he didn’t see anybody unusual going in.”

  “Is this acquaintance reliable?”

  “Certainly, Lord Chamberlain. He is a former military man. Unfortunately, he squanders his pension on wine.”

  It was not necessarily a description that would have led John to consider a man reliable. However, he made no comment. Pulcheria had always been very reliable. He would trust her judgment.

  “I thought if anyone wanted to come to the house unobserved they wouldn’t go to the front door,” Pulcheria continued. “So I found a cozy space with a clear view of the back of the house.”

  “Did you notice any excubitors watching?”

  “No. They must have concealed themselves well.”

  “As they should have,” John said. It surprised him that excubitors, even without their uniforms, could have hidden themselves from a street beggar. And what could she have noticed that they had not?

  “I settled down quite comfortably before sunset,” Pulcheria went on. “I’m not particular where I wait when I am keeping watch.” The undamaged side of her mouth lifted in a laugh. “A couple of men came and went before dusk. One delivered a crate. Another brought a big sack full of cheese. I could smell it when he walked by. I had to grab Tripod by the scruff of his neck to keep him from leaping out. He is very fond of cheese.”

  “But eventually you saw a suspicious visitor?” John prompted, aware Pulcheria was enjoying drawing her story out.

  “Oh, very suspicious, Lord Chamberlain! But many hours passed first. Several drunken faction members wandered by quarreling about their racing teams, pushing and shoving one another. After they’d gone I found a nummus one had dropped. Well, then, it was nearer to dawn than sunset when a visitor arrived. The house guards looked practically asleep at the back gate, but they raised their lances until they saw who he was, then they ushered him in, most obsequiously.”

  “A man,” John said, trying to hurry her along.

  “A big man, yes. Powerful once, but gone to fat. Looked middle aged. His head was tonsured and he wore a burlap garment. Surely he was a monk or cleric to judge by his looks most would say? But I knew better, Lord Chamberlain. I recognized the scoundrel. It was that vile tax collector, John the Cappadocian.”

  For an instant John looked at Pulcheria without speaking. “Are you certain?”

  “The gate is well lit by wall torches. They revealed his obscene face clearly. He is more bloated than he was before being exiled. He is quite deserving now of the nickname given that rapacious protegé he appointed to rob the provinces—Flabby-jaw. Yes, the visitor was definitely the Cappadocian.”

  John was silent, absorbing the information.

  “You are perhaps doubtful I would recognize him?” Pulcheria asked.“But don’t forget, in the profession I practiced before my accident forced me to beg on the streets, I knew many high officials very well, and knew other girls who knew other high officials. Girls who had loose tongues. What I could have discovered for you in those days would have much more value than what I can observe now!”

  She sighed. “I made a better living then. But the Cappadocian…to think of him revolts me even now. He would hire a dozen girls at once and have them lie down naked in his private room. Then he would eat delicacies off their bodies, gorging himself until he vomited into a golden basin. He wasn’t satisfied until he sated every one of his horrid appetites, preferably all at the same time. He would watch an enemy being tortured while the poor girls performed certain services for him as best they could manage while trying to ignore the victim’s pitiful screams. Why, I heard he had girls come to his bed clothed only in golden jewelry and a thick coating of fish sauce!”

  “Very little surprises me after years of hearing court gossip.”

  Pulcheria cackled and glanced at her cat
. “You’d like fish sauce, wouldn’t you, Tripod?”

  John pushed himself to his feet.

  “It seems to me some people aren’t human, Lord Chamberlain.”

  John gave Pulcheria quizzical look.

  “Seeing that evil creature gave me a fright. It made me think. People all appear to be the same flesh and blood, and maybe they are. But the same jar can contain wine or poison. Do you think there’s something different inside a creature like the Cappadocian than in you or I? Perhaps such things should not be called people just because they look like people on the outside?”

  “Some call such people demons,” John said. “Or monsters, like the person who harmed you.”

  Pulcheria ran a delicate white hand down the scarred ruin that made up one side of her face. “The man who threw the burning lamp at me wasn’t a monster, Lord Chamberlain, just a drunken fool.”

  John pressed another coin on her and she did not protest.

  He left the square, walking slowly.

  He was almost sorry he had hired Pulcheria. It wasn’t right to spy on a friend, was it?

  But John had merely wanted to explain Anatolius’ odd behavior. He had expected to learn Anatolius had resumed his old ways with women, that he had taken the young lady-in-waiting for a mistress, the sort of backsliding not uncommon with middle-aged men who were noticing the gray in their hair. He had never expected to implicate him in…in what?

  There could not be any innocent explanation for the Cappadocian’s secret presence in Constantinople when he was supposed to be in exile in Egypt.

  Reluctantly, he turned in the direction of Anatolius’ house.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  That’s done, Kuria thought, and so now for the next step.

  She set off down the Mese, having left the palace for the last time. She felt more confident than she had in days.

  When she had returned to her room earlier after a stroll in the gardens, she found it sealed up, the door boarded shut.

  There was irony in her being barred from her own room. Like most of the attendants, she rarely closed her door, let alone locked it. In this part of the palace there was no need. When they were not on call the young women spent as much time in each other’s rooms as their own.

  The eunuch who oversaw the quarters for the ladies-in-waiting would not arrange for Kuria to be let back in, even to collect a few precious belongings. He claimed to have had the orders from the Master of Offices.

  She asked if she might return for some things later when the room was cleared out.

  The eunuch laughed. Everything inside was to be burnt.

  Kuria felt a momentary pang of regret she had not chosen to go to the gardens later. If she had been present when the Master of Offices’ men arrived, she might at least have salvaged one particular item.

  Perhaps it had been wise to go to the gardens early. For all she knew, they might have thrown her out of the palace bodily. She supposed, eventually, someone would do so. A bureaucrat in a warren in the administration building had probably forgotten to sign all the required documents.

  So she had been deprived of a place to stay before being officially evicted.

  There was no point in waiting.

  After the shock of Theodora’s death had worn off, she had made plans. She had done what needed to be done in the palace, and now she had taken the first step on the way to her new life outside the palace.

  Although she had lost almost everything, it was some consolation that she happened to be wearing her favorite dark green stola. It was no coincidence she practically coruscated in the morning sun, thanks to her jewelry. She’d prudently worn every piece she owned every day since the empress died.

  Besides, she needed to look attractive for what she had to do.

  She needed to make it plain that she was a lady now.

  Kuria was not a beauty, but when she put her mind to it she was able to project an air of assurance that indicated a much higher station than she held.

  A pair of laborers, judging by their dusty breeches and stained tunics, moved aside deferentially as she strode along.

  Good, Kuria thought.

  She was almost there.

  She was prepared.

  But it was also necessary for her to find a little of the young whore she’d been, to apply a dab of that garish makeup. Enough to say that she was a lady, but willing to be a bit more exciting than most ladies.

  She passed the Hippodrome and crossed the street that ran along the side of the racecourse. She didn’t glance at the one-legged beggar sitting on a pile of rags near the intersection.

  She never knew he was there until he was dragging her through the doorway of a vacant shop.

  Chapter Forty

  Instead of looking John in the eye, Anatolius stared down at the skull depicted on his desk top. “How could I turn him away, John? My father knew the Cappadocian well. You remember how much father wanted me to take up the legal profession. How could I refuse legal aid to one of his closest associates?”

  John had broached the subject as soon as he set foot in the study.

  “I am amazed Senator Aurelius would have allied himself with a man like John the Cappadocian,” John replied, keeping his voice level. He couldn’t help thinking of the Cappadocian’s escapades as described by Pulcheria. Nor could he see Anatolius’ staid, respectable, and happily married father engaging in such behavior or even wanting to be associated with a man suspected of such outrages.

  Anatolius finally looked up. “That’s unfair, John. I know what people say about the Cappadocian. My father had a different view. He used to tell me people hated the man because of his reforms, because they didn’t like change.”

  John wondered if he were, in fact, being unfair. He was angry that his friend had concealed the presence of the Cappadocian in the capital from him. “I admit I never dealt with the man. His reputation is unsavory.”

  “I have no opinion on his reputation for licentiousness, if that’s what you mean. Mostly rumors, no doubt. My father worked with him in a purely official capacity. He respected what he did as Praetorian Prefect. Before he took over, the prefecture had become an empire unto itself, paralyzed in tradition like so many bureaucracies,” Anatolius replied. “There are those who devote themselves to writing histories of bureaucracies—the prefecture, the Master of Offices. They have a ready audience in their fellow civil servants. A clerk might spend his time poring over the the accounts of estates, adding up taxable goats and sheep, but at the end of the day he wants to read he is a valiant soldier, battling for the empire in an institution stretching back to the age of Augustus.”

  He paused. “The Cappadocian had the temerity to imagine that the prefecture was supposed to function for the benefit of the emperor rather than for the benefit of its bureaucrats. Naturally, he was resented and hated. The civil servants didn’t care about doing things more efficiently. They loathed having to use Greek rather than Latin, for example.”

  “You sound as if you are preparing to be a Cicero for your client, Anatolius. It is commonly said the Cappadocian was guilty of endless financial depredations. How do you defend him against that charge?”

  “He merely enforced the tax laws others refused to enforce. If the rates are onerous, well, it is the doing of the emperor.”

  “You should have told me he was in the city.”

  “Why? It is my job to represent clients who come to me for legal advice. Do you tell me about every private discussion you have with the emperor?”

  “His being in the city might well have a bearing on my investigations. He was one of Theodora’s bitterest enemies. Everyone knows that. He’s an obvious suspect in her murder.”

  “But you said you do not believe the empress was murdered.”

  “At the time I thought the Cappadocian wa
s safely confined in Egypt.”

  Anatolius’ expression was unreadable. Apparently the flighty and emotional young poet of the past had learned some lawyerly skills.

  John asked bluntly what, exactly, Anatolius was doing on behalf of the Cappadocian.

  “In general, he wants me to investigate whether he can reclaim certain properties confiscated when he was exiled. He thinks it might be possible because Justinian did allow him to maintain considerable wealth in Egypt despite being disgraced. It is his opinion it was only on account of Theodora’s animosity that he was deprived of office. I can’t go into specifics.”

  “In other words, he heard of Theodora’s illness, decided she would soon leave the world, and decided he should get a head start on returning to his former prominence?”

  “He hasn’t said as much, but I gather that’s correct. You know what a favorite he is with Justinian. As soon as the emperor conquers his grief he’ll be issuing orders for the Cappadocian’s return.”

  “How long has he been back in the capital?”

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  “When did you first see him?”

  Anatolius met John’s gaze. “You know I should not discuss a client.”

  “He was here before Theodora’s death? That would make him an obvious suspect, as I have already pointed out.”

  “I am representing him in land dealings, straining my eyes over dusty documents. I have had no reason to question him about other matters.”

  “Both he and you are aware there are other matters involved, not least the fact he is in the city illegally, otherwise he wouldn’t be creeping in your back gate in the middle of the night. Whatever the Cappadocian might be up to, you will naturally be implicated. Justinian won’t care whether you were serving as the man’s lawyer or not.”

  “You can’t think I am working against the emperor?”

  “I would prefer not to think so, Anatolius. Where is the Cappadocian staying when he is not here seeking your aid?”