An Empire for Ravens

by Eric Mayer

  It had been previously worn by a man who had died on the wall. Now John held the senior rank of those present, the highest of all, Father, being absent from the garrison.

  John chose to keep the memorial service for Felix short. It was painful enough to lead opening prayers asking Mithra to be merciful to Felix, but a worse ordeal was now upon him.

  Delivering a eulogy to his departed friend.

  John’s throat felt constricted, and unshed tears shone in the dark eyes looking out from the golden face. “My brothers, we are here to honor General Felix, a man from Germania who served the empire long and well. He attained the rank of Lion and displayed a lion’s courage and strength. He fought on the battlefield and rose in the ranks, as all soldiers hope to do. He served as captain of excubitors, one of the highest offices in the empire. Yet what he most wanted was to return to the battlefield and so he sought and was granted a generalship.”

  His mask seemed to be suffocating him. He tried to control his voice. He blinked his burning eyes but the scene before him dissolved into a watery blur.

  I am seeing what Felix saw at the last ceremony he attended, probably on the last night of his life, John thought.

  On the low ceiling stars painted on a blue background were dimmed and obscured by a low-hanging fog of lamp smoke. Smoke and shadows roiled around the masked figures on the benches. Was Cassius there? Or even Viteric?

  “As his friend and colleague, I will mourn him,” John concluded, struggling to find the breath to continue. “As his fellow adept, I celebrate his new life in the presence of Mithra, a home we all strive to reach. May his memory be preserved.”

  Finally, he allowed himself to weep, silently, grateful that the tears running down his cheeks were hidden by the golden face he wore.

  He led a final prayer and waited for the congregants to leave in ones and twos before removing his mask.

  Relieved to be free of it, he breathed deeply of the smoky air and looked at the golden face in his hand. He had often felt, while wearing the mask of his rank, that he was becoming something other than himself. That he was actually, for a time, a Runner of the Sun. He had become the mask through which he looked. People became the masks they wore, didn’t they?

  When the last footsteps had vanished down the passage, John quenched the lamps. Before putting out the final one, he took a look around the chamber.

  He saw a gleam on the floor beside and almost behind the altar.

  Bending down to pick up the object, he frowned. He was sure he had searched the mithraeum thoroughly upon finding Felix’s body nearby. But here lay a silver earring.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Clementia wandered around the house to which she had fled, peering into many rooms decorated only by spider webs. It didn’t surprise her that a house temporarily lodging military men was not kept up as well as the one she had left. Away from the occupied rooms it might have been one of the many houses in the city whose inhabitants had been taken away, its deserted rooms left to gather dust and silence.

  And spiders, she reminded herself with a shiver as she brushed away a sticky veil that had attached itself to her face. A scrap of web stuck to her hand. Its dangling architect pulled itself up toward her. She flung the spider away.

  Clementia wondered whether she should return home. She’d panicked at the thought of being unguarded there, especially with the Goths at the walls. However, she had expected Felix to protect her. Now that he was dead, could this friend of his, the Lord Chamberlain, be counted on? Was he much like Felix? Still ambitious, despite holding high office? The tall, lean Greek intrigued her. Outwardly he was unlike Felix, controlled and self contained, whereas Felix had been a boisterous, brawling man. But even Felix hid his ambition from those who needed to be kept in the dark.

  Had she been too honest with the Lord Chamberlain—with John?

  Why had she blurted out her real identity? Because she feared that a man of such stature might not be willing to shelter a mere servant girl, she admitted to herself. At their interview he had struck her as a severe man. If she had been thinking calmly she would have kept her identity concealed. It was too late now, but she resolved to tell him nothing else for the time being.

  She emerged into the garden and its deserted animal pens, sadly overgrown with weeds. How different from her own beautiful roses! As she tried to walk a half-obscured path, nettles stung her carelessly swinging hand. She retreated to the peristyle and sucked thoughtfully at itching red wheals swelling on her skin, remembering the previous night, crying for Felix in a strange bed.

  Strange because John had taken Felix’s room. She was given a room near the kitchen.

  She had collapsed at the news of Felix’s demise. She was shocked, yet not surprised. It had always been a looming possibility. She had sobbed for a long time, expecting she would eventually cry herself to sleep. In reality, her tears had dried long before sleep came and she lay in silence, planning what to do next.

  Clementia was considering how to deal with her new protector John when a rotund man on spindly legs emerged from behind a shaggy, unpruned shrub and stopped abruptly.

  “Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought no one was…well…that this was the way out…”

  Clementia was poised to run. The man looked more comical than threatening but she remembered the intruder in her own garden. The intruder she had only glimpsed. One needed to be wary of stealthy, uninvited visitors, no matter what they looked like. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  The man nervously touched the charioteer’s helmet he wore. “I am Aurelius. And you must be Clementia.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Everyone knows about the senator’s servant who’s taking care of his house while he’s a guest of Totila.”

  Could it be so? Rome’s population had been reduced to the size of a village and the inhabitants, intent on survival, had good reason to find out everything they could about all their neighbors, for who knew when such information would turn out to be useful? “How did you find me here?”

  “I asked at the senator’s house and the cook directed me here.”

  Clementia couldn’t recall if she’d told the cook where she was going. “And Eutuchyus told you I was in the garden? You did speak to Eutuchyus?”

  “Oh, yes, certainly.”

  Aurelius took two steps toward her.

  Clementia tensed. For all she knew this might be the same man who had invaded her house. Before she could decide whether to run or cry for help, another figure came flying out the doorway behind her and flung itself at the unwelcome visitor.

  Aurelius went down as his assailant, a thin youngster, beat him with a wooden stave. The charioteer’s helmet fell off into a patch of weeds and the boy belabored him on his shiny, bald head.

  “Please stop,” wailed Aurelius. “I didn’t come here to harm anyone!”

  The boy relented, stepped back warily brandishing his weapon, allowing Aurelius to crawl around, retrieve his helmet, and sit up holding his head.

  “I’m Julius,” the boy informed him. “The master asked me to protect the household while he was away.”

  “And a fine job you’ve done,” John said, stepping out onto the peristyle. “I came as soon as I heard the commotion but I might have been too late. I am familiar with our visitor, Julius. You may leave. You’ve carried out your duties well.”

  The boy went away grinning.

  John was not grinning. “What are you doing here, Aurelius?”

  “Exactly what I’ve already explained to you, Lord Chamberlain, looking for justice for my daughter.”

  “What connection does that have with Clementia?”

  Clementia stared at Aurelius, trying to hide her chagrin. What kind of trouble was he going to cause? She wished she had ordered the boy to beat him to death.

  Aurelius hemmed and hawed and f
inally said, “She knows Hunulf, sir, the soldier who brought our poor Veneria to ruin. He worked for this woman as a guard.”

  “Your wife told me you feared Veneria had been killed by a man with whom she was involved but claimed you didn’t know his name.”

  Aurelius looked startled. “Did, I sir? Did I say that? I’ve been so distraught since Veneria was killed I hardly know what I’m saying. You can understand, I am sure. Besides, I’ve been investigating further and found out who he was and that he worked for this lady. And anyway I wanted to avenge my daughter’s death personally so, well, I kept what I knew to myself.”

  “So you had a number of reasons for lying to me. Clementia, did a man named Hunulf work for you?”

  “He did, Lord Chamberlain.”

  “What do know about him and Aurelius’ daughter?”

  “Nothing. I do not delve into the private affairs of my employees.”

  “But you might have heard talk among the servants?”

  “No. I don’t eavesdrop on them.”

  His gaze seemed to drill into her, searching out her secrets. It was a strange feeling. In Clementia’s experience, men usually stopped short at the protective shell of her beauty. She noticed that his eyes were rimmed with red. If she didn’t know better she might have guessed he had shed tears. “Lord Chamberlain, there are some things I need to retrieve from my house. Would you accompany me?

  From a sun-warmed expanse of pavement they climbed an imposing staircase up to the temple of Venus and Roma and passing between a row of white columns, circumferences the height of a man, entered the interior where rows of porphyry columns flanked a nave. Enthroned in a semi-domed apse, the goddess Venus loomed over them, staring resolutely east. In an identical apse, on the other side of a dividing wall, and so invisible from this end of the structure, sat the goddess Roma.

  “Do you know,” said Clementia, “Roma is amor spelled backwards?”

  John had to admit it had never occurred to him.

  The ceremony for Felix still fresh in his memory, he had no desire to think about love and considered this visit to the temple an unwarranted detour.

  They seemed to be alone, except for silver statues standing along the walls beyond the nave. However John noticed piles of ashes and burnt sticks, the remnants of fires. There was a faint odor of smoke in the air and a stronger odor reminiscent of a public lavatory. He realized that what he had taken for a pile of rags lying at the feet of Venus was actually a beggar, sleeping or dead.

  Clementia gave no sign of noticing any of this. She was seeing the temple she had always known, a place of beauty, not a residence for derelicts. “I grew up across the street from this here,” she was saying. “Every day I couldn’t help but think of Rome and love. The two most important things in the world. I suppose it is why they haven’t closed this temple like the others because the statues don’t represent pagan goddesses anymore but rather the empire and love. Does that make sense?”

  John thought her comments the philosophical musings of a romantic young girl. “I can’t say. I’d have to question the emperors and civic authorities who left the temple open to venture an opinion.” He was listening carefully. Did he hear whispering or was it just the breeze amid the columns?

  “Do you have great temples like this in Constantinople?”

  “Not pagan temples. The Great Church is much grander.”

  Here one was overwhelmed by the size and mass of the architecture, the marble, bronze, gold, and silver. Yet no weight of physical evidence could truly convince one of the presence of the Roman gods because no matter how towering their representations, they were still stone and metal. The immense interior of the Great Church, on the other hand, was filled with an unearthly light. The Christians experienced that light as the essence of their invisible god, whereas John was reminded of his sun god Mithra.

  “I dream of visiting Constantinople,” Clementia said. “I had hoped…well, Father said we might move there, but then the Goths arrived and they had other plans for us.”

  “When the war is won your family will be reunited and free to do as they wish.”

  “If they are still alive.”

  “Totila won’t kill aristocratic hostages.”

  “You’re certain?” John felt her hand on his arm and reflexively flinched. He liked people to keep their distance. “Felix told me you were a close adviser to Emperor Justinian. He said you saw him face-to-face, every day.”

  “As captain of the palace guard, Felix was also close to the emperor.”

  “Is it true Justinian’s a demon? Did you ever encounter him at night, when it’s said he has no face?”

  “Those are nothing but nonsensical tales.” John edged away but her hand remained fastened to the sleeve of his tunic.

  “They say Theodora was very beautiful.”

  “Not so beautiful, really.”

  “Prettier than me?” Clementia gave him an unabashedly flirtatious smile.

  Looking down at the plump, painted girl, John couldn’t help but think of Cornelia, back at home in Greece, her slender, boyish figure browned by working in the sun. Not so much different from the young woman he had loved when he was not much more than a boy.

  He could appreciate Clementia’s charms, remembering how he felt when young and whole—a blinded man’s nostalgia for the blue of a summer sky—but he was no longer susceptible in the way most men would be. That disability had helped him survive the marble jungle of Justinian’s court where so many of its traps were disguised in silks and perfume. Yet he did not fault the women who traded on their sex nor the men, like Felix, who succumbed. How could a man who for so many years had lacked the common human weakness judge others? He had adhered without fail to the rigid military morality demanded by Mithra, but what credit was it to him who could not do otherwise? He regretted that he could never know what sort of man he would have been if he had had the choices free to others.

  All he said to Clementia was, “I wouldn’t say Theodora was prettier than you. At court they jested Justinian had raised the taxes in Egypt to pay for her cosmetics, clothes, and perfumes. But they jested in whispers.”

  “But she ruled the emperor and whatever men she chose! She didn’t do that with cosmetics and silks only, did she?”

  John was aware of the girl’s perfume. Although he was no connoisseur of fragrances he could tell it was exotic and expensive. A puzzling choice to go with the rough clothes she had donned to flee to Felix. He did not like her clinging to him. It would do no good to tell her he considered himself married, nor would it discourage her to explain he was not interested in an attachment. She would simply decide she needed to try harder to convince him to do whatever it was she wished him to do.

  If he told her he was maimed, incapable, then she’d retreat, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He realized it was false pride. Everyone at the capital had referred to him behind his back as John the Eunuch, and certainly Diogenes and others in Rome knew his history. Clementia gazed up at him with an unsettling mixture of awe and fearlessness, a gladiator about to slay a lion. “Your mansion must have been wonderful.”

  “People said it was Spartan.”

  “But you had many servants.”

  “Two. And I set them free.”

  She pursed her reddened lips in thought. “So really you’re just an old soldier, like Felix.”

  Her unexpected perspicacity struck him like a dagger.

  She added. “You need a woman’s touch.”

  John suggested they proceed to her house, swung around, and walked quickly back the way they’d come, giving her no choice but to follow.

  Disconcerted by her obvious advances, already upset over Felix’s ceremony, he had forgotten that this place was not unoccupied. He had let his guard down. It was Clementia’s faint cry of fear that alerted him to the ragged figures emerging from behind the s
ilver statues.

  The men were armed with sharp sticks, broken boards, jagged pieces of masonry. One brandished a chisel. They surrounded John and Clementia and crept forward cautiously, eyes gleaming, like a pack of feral dogs. The man with the chisel was a step ahead of the others.

  John put his hand on the sword he carried perpetually in this benighted city. A good weapon was the only advantage he had, aside from the fact that being slender and well dressed, he probably didn’t look like a man who would fight.

  Glancing at Clementia he saw she had a pathetic little jeweled dagger in her hand. It might have sufficed to peel a small apple. He put his free hand on her arm. “Don’t try to fight. There are too many of them. Just run. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Or so I hope, he added to himself.

  The pack closed in. No words were spoken. John could hear harsh breathing. He could smell unwashed bodies.

  He made a show of backing up and looking around in terror.

  Then with a battlefield roar he flew straight at the chisel-wielding leader.

  A single blow half-severed the startled man’s neck. Blood spurted in an arc as the dying body staggered and fell. John kicked the corpse aside and slashed at the pack, knocking aside boards, crunching into bone. He forced an opening in the ranks.

  “Run!” he shouted to Clementia.

  She ran, slipped in blood and went sprawling.

  A beggar lurched toward her, lifted up the stone he was carrying. She threw her little dagger at him. The hilt hit him on the nose. He stopped, blinked in surprise, and John split his skull open from behind.