Ten for Dying (John the Lord Chamberlain Book 10)

by Mary Reed

  “You did spend some time at the border, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, and during the middle of night, staring out over that desolate landscape, I remembered watching for wolves to emerge from the woods. The difference was, there really were Persians among the crags and ravines.”

  “You must have left home at an early age.”

  “As soon as I was old enough I walked into the local fort and joined the army. My mother cried. She had hoped I would be a farmer like my family had always been but my father had put other ideas into my head.”

  “Your father must have been happy. You certainly have led an exciting life.”

  “A farmer might think so. My mistake was excelling as a soldier. I was eventually sent to Constantinople and brought to the attention of Emperor Justin. I became one of his bodyguards.”

  “But soon you will be fighting in Italy.”

  “Provided the corpse in the bath doesn’t end up blocking my way.”

  “Everything will turn out all right. Tell me more about Germania.”

  “But I’ve already told you about all that.”

  Felix felt the weight of his predicament pressing in on him and grew silent.

  After a while Anastasia said, “I can’t bear it, sitting here, waiting and waiting. I have things to attend to at the palace. I’ll be missed. I’ll come back before dark.”

  Felix had taken hold of her arm, gently but firmly. “Stay. Please.”

  She stared at him. “Do you think I’d betray you to the City Prefect?”

  He looked away, ashamed. How could he doubt this woman who shared his bed? And yet a woman about whom he knew nothing? “Perhaps I should go for a stroll to calm my nerves.”

  She gave him a grim look. “No. I would prefer you didn’t. It feels like rain. The breeze has a chill in it. I wouldn’t want you to get wet. It’s best that we both stay here.”

  So, they understood each other. Both feared the other, and with reason, given both might be found equally guilty. Those who unthinkingly trusted others, those who were never afraid, did not survive long at the palace.

  Anastasia must have guessed what Felix was thinking. She grasped his hand and led him back to the bedroom.

  The day passed slowly. There was time for speculation. The corpse remained a mystery. In death the courier had been empty-handed. If he had carried a package to the house someone had taken it. Had the man been robbed and killed in the courtyard upon his arrival or had he been left there? There was no way to tell. Anastasia did not recognize the dead man as anyone she had seen at court. The discolored and contorted face bore little semblance of humanity and she could barely bring herself to glance at it.

  At some point Felix decided how to deal with his unwelcome visitor. He would not resort to lawyers or the authorities. Laws were unreliable allies. He would handle the matter himself.

  After an eternity, when a single invisible bird sang from the darkness pooled in the garden, Felix instructed Nikomachos to order the servants to remain in their quarters for the night.

  “I will summon you later to refresh the bath.”

  Nikomachos’ face exhibited its usual vaguely supercilious expression.

  How much had he observed apart from the obvious fact that two of the urban watch had searched the house? Had he seen the body? Had he overheard anything of their conversation?

  “And you will remain at the house until I give you further orders,” Felix added.

  Nikomachos offered one of his bows, little more than a peevish twitch, and departed.

  “He knows,” Anastasia said.

  “Why do you think so?”

  “He’s always hovering nearby, listening, peeping. And the other servants must know. They must have realized something illegal was going on, with this courier constantly arriving in the middle of the night.”

  “Not at all. I dropped hints to Nikomachos that I was buying silk at less than imperial prices. These days, who doesn’t?”

  He took the last fig, stuck it into his mouth, and wiped his fingers on his tunic. “But now I have work to do.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Less than an hour later Felix was cursing the narrowness of the alley behind his house.

  He hadn’t driven a donkey cart since he’d left the family farm in Germania to join the legions. He might have felt a pang of nostalgia under different circumstances, ones that didn’t involve secretly disposing of a strangled corpse. The cart’s wooden sides scraped brick walls as he urged the donkey through semi-liquid drifts of discarded vegetables and other slippery detritus better not investigated in the dark, or for that matter in such light as straggled down into the narrow way even in daytime. The stubborn beast refused to follow a straight line. Apparently donkeys were much stupider than they used to be.

  Felix would have slung the body across the back of one of his horses but he feared drawing attention. Lying in the bottom of the cart, wrapped in a blanket, the corpse would pass for a sack of grain if anyone took any notice. Or so he hoped.

  He kept expecting a contingent of urban watch to materialize in the alley mouth to block his way. When he had managed to maneuver the cart out of the alley and the wheels rattled over the street cobbles he began to feel easier. The further he could get from the house the better.

  His relief lasted only a short time until he discovered the cart was too wide to be driven through the slit between the buildings opposite the mouth of the alley. He would have to travel in more public places than he had planned in order to reach the seawall, where his burden could be tossed into the water to become a plaything for Poseidon’s children, as Anastasia had delicately put it.

  He had left her behind. If she wanted to betray him this was her chance. He’d know whether she was loyal or not when he got back.

  His house was located on a side street off the Mese, conveniently near to the Great Palace and not far from the water. Tugging clumsily at the reins, he convinced the donkey to turn down the thoroughfare. The beast continued to plod slowly but erratically, veering from side to side. Torches outside shops shut for the night intermittently illuminated the street. A gust of wind blew grit into Felix’s face. Moon-silvered clouds raced through the sky.

  The cart rolled into an oblong of light spilling from a doorway.

  “Felix! Stop!”

  What the voice stopped was Felix’s heart. Discovered? Already?

  He raised his whip, ready to urge his reluctant animal forward, then he saw a familiar figure reeling out of the tavern, one Felix too often frequented. Or had until he met Anastasia.

  “Felix, my friend, come and share a cup with me! How long has it been since we’ve saluted Bacchus together? You’ve been away as long as Odysseus.”

  “I regret I’m off on urgent official business, Bato.”

  To Felix’s chagrin the donkey decided to halt dead in its tracks, allowing Bato to stroll over to the side of the cart and lie against it.

  “Official business, is it? That’s why you’re taking the imperial carriage?” Bato looked bleary-eyed into the cart.

  “It’s a matter that calls for discretion.”

  “Ah.” Bato exhaled pungently, leering up at Felix. “You are off to see a lady, aren’t you? Come my friend, are we not men? There is no need for prevarication. You have fallen under Circe’s spell.”

  “Mithra!” Felix muttered under his breath. “I admit it,” he said loudly, “I’m on way to visit a woman, who is waiting impatiently.”

  Bato made no effort to push himself away from the cart. Instead he banged the side. “And with such a conveyance? Do you expect to be so exhausted you’ll have to be carted home?”

  “Hardly. I just decided to…to show her how things were back in Germania when I was growing up.”

  Bato ignored his excuse. “I have it. You’re going to pretend to be bringing the cart b
ack after repairing it, so her husband will be misled if he hears of your visit.”

  Felix sighed, winked, tapped his nose, and flapped the reins. He didn’t like the way Bato was staring into the cart. The donkey started to trot with a jerk, almost jarring Felix from his seat.

  Relieved of his support, Bato crumpled to the cobbles and sat there in the tavern light, waving after Felix. “Go sail the wine dark seas into the arms of your sorceress, Felix! When she grows bored, you know where to find your loyal old friend Bato.”

  Glancing back over his shoulder Felix saw his inebriated friend shooing away a dog which had come to investigate the interesting offal in the gutter. Fortunately the street was otherwise deserted.

  He had to get off this wide street. There were bound to be people about, not to mention occasional patrols.

  With difficulty, Felix convinced the beast—or it convinced itself—to enter what was little more than a noisome crevice between tenements. Dark shapes swarmed around the cart and the wheels went over bumps that let out piercing shrieks.

  The panicked donkey moved faster. Felix shouted orders, futilely. It didn’t respond to any of the curses he tried.

  The cart careened through various gradations of almost total darkness, banging walls, splashing through blessedly invisible filth, turning corners when the way ahead seemed blocked. Not that the route mattered. Felix was not familiar with the back ways here. As long as he continued downhill, as seemed to be the case, he would reach the water, which was all that was necessary. Constantinople was a long, narrow peninsula. He couldn’t help but find the water eventually.

  When the cart reached more level ground and emerged from its dark narrow passage into what seemed by comparison a blaze of light, he discovered he had been optimistic, not to mention badly disoriented. Instead of the sea wall he had expected, he faced a thoroughfare broader than the one he had fled and more brightly lit.

  It could only be the Mese.

  Felix looked back into the cart. His dark, shapeless burden still lay there. Had he expected it to get up and walk away?

  Considering everything that had happened lately he wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Now what? He hadn’t calculated on having so much difficulty navigating or driving. Craning his neck, he was able to spot the glow from the dome of the Great Church rising toward the moon, now visible, surrounded by a misty halo, in a gap in the gathering clouds.

  Perhaps he had better brave the Mese. If he simply continued straight on, he could dump the body in one of the cemeteries outside the city’s inner walls. The worst risk of his being discovered had been near to his house, hadn’t it?

  He ordered the donkey forward.

  Few pedestrians were abroad and mostly in the noisy vicinity of taverns. Horses trotted by, thankfully none carrying military men.

  Despite the muggy air, Felix kept getting chills. He couldn’t help recalling Anastasia telling him she’d been afraid the dead courier would reach up from the bath and put its cold hand against her back.

  He resisted the urge to twist around to peer into the cart.

  The eerie feeling that there was something there, reaching out, behind him, grew stronger. He could almost sense a hovering presence a finger’s breadth from his neck.

  “Don’t be a fool,” he growled. He didn’t like the uneasy note in his voice. The courier was as dead as a grilled fish. No, Felix wouldn’t turn. Wouldn’t give in to irrational fear. He stared straight down the street.

  He could hear the voices of those he’d interviewed at the church, describing the supernatural thieves they’d glimpsed fleeing, recalled the strange spectacle in the mausoleum, the dead frogs, the scarab on Theodora’s sarcophagus.

  Who could say for certain what might be out here in the night?

  Where was he?

  Wasn’t that the fork, where the Mese split into a northern and eastern branch? The northern way led past the Church of the Holy Apostles.

  “South, then!” Felix told himself, yanking at the donkey’s reins. The beast resisted, slowed. Exasperated Felix swung his whip. Too hard.

  “Gently, gently, my boy. The whip is only to direct the animal,” he heard his father telling him.

  The donkey leapt forward in its traces, jerking the cart. Felix grabbed his seat to avoid falling into the street.

  The terrified beast would have tired itself out quickly but it didn’t get the chance. A gaping rut spared it the effort.

  Felix saw the jagged hole looming an instant before the cart hit with a bone-shaking jolt. There was a sickening crack from below and the cart tipped over sideways as one wheel flew off onto the nearby colonnade.

  His precious cargo slid out, hit the ground, and lay there in the bright illumination of a nearby torch, looking exactly like a dead body wrapped in a blanket.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dedi, desecrater of Theodora’s tomb, lurked in night shadows, watching the mansion across the street with growing impatience.

  During his pursuit he would have been happy to stand still, as he had now been doing hour after hour. With his short legs it had taken all his strength to keep the fleet-footed, demonic creatures in sight.

  His first thought when he saw them burst from the Church of the Holy Apostles was that the spells intended to bring Theodora back to life had gone awry and called forth two monsters from the depths instead. But if so, what were they carrying away from the church?

  On impulse, he decided to pursue them. At the back of the church grounds they cut behind a looming cliff of inky buildings and raced downhill to where the Valens Aqueduct emerged from the hillside to span the valley there. They kept to the base of the aqueduct, gliding in and out of the thick shadows cast by archways in the moonlight. For an instant Dedi would see two ghostly, silvered shapes, then they would vanish into utter blackness, only to reappear as if by magick. So he ran after two flickering phantoms, until they veered off into labyrinthine alleyways.

  Dedi’s snaggle-toothed mouth worked like a bellows as he sucked in the thick unwholesome atmosphere of the city night. There was a devilish air about him. He had always been able to make Theodora laugh. Perhaps his call had not gone unheeded. The empress may have heard it while chatting with the two loping creatures in front of him. “Go and see what Dedi wants,” she might have ordered.

  Luckily their route continued to descend, which made running easier, or Dedi would have lost them. They avoided the main streets and open spaces. Dedi had no idea where he was. He began to fear that in their strange zigzagging flight they had traced an arcane symbol which had dropped them all into a maze leading to the anteroom of the underworld. Then they crossed the Mese in a band of moonlight and Dedi would have breathed a sigh of relief if his burning lungs had allowed it.

  They plunged down toward the Harbor of Julian. Were they bearing whatever they had stolen to a waiting ship? Why would evil spirits do that when they could simply take to the skies, or sink down into the earth? But instead of continuing to the docks they ran along the periphery of the harbor in the direction of the Hippodrome and the Great Palace. The moon threw a shaft of icy light across the basalt sea. Dedi raced on until his legs began to cramp, but the moon remained always at his one shoulder and the reflection at the other so he seemed to be churning along in place, as in a nightmare.

  As they came into sight of the curved end of the Hippodrome one of the creatures suddenly vanished. They had run into a pool of shadow but only a single one emerged, the other having apparently dissolved into the darkness from where it had come. Or, perhaps, cut abruptly into an alley.

  Dedi forced his legs to move faster, determined not to lose the remaining demon, the one that was carrying whatever had been pilfered from the church.

  He was not surprised when, at last, the creature ended its flight by slipping through a side door into a mansion Dedi recognized as belonging to General Belisar
ius and his wife Antonina. The magician had entertained there so often he knew many of the staff by name. He knew that the fortress-like granite exterior, adorned only by a wide marble staircase, concealed an interior as luxurious as that of the Great Palace.

  He remembered too how uneasy Antonina made him. Her stare seemed to penetrate his heart, making him shiver with fear. It was not merely that she was ruthless, she was also widely rumored to practice magick, and not the harmless kind Dedi performed. Antonina’s magick was malignant and self-serving. Thus had Belisarius been assisted in his rise to generalship, or so it was claimed by chattering courtiers.

  Could Antonina be involved in the theft from the church?

  He would rather wrestle with a denizen of hell than be caught looking at her askance. Suddenly he felt a presence at his back. Something infinitely cold with menace. He staggered around, heart leaping, but there was nothing to see except the icy moon hanging high up in the sky, beyond the grasp of the countless crosses reaching up from the rooftops of the Christian capital.

  Nevertheless, he fled, peering this way and that, fearful of being observed.

  Dawn and a nap had cleared away the black cobwebs of Dedi’s fears. Having been frustrated in his attempts to revive his employer, he began to consider other schemes. It hadn’t taken long to discover that the object clutched by the demon had been the shroud of the Virgin. News spread fast. Half the city had probably learned about the theft while Dedi pursued the perpetrators. Both Justinian and the church would be grateful if he were able to restore the relic to its rightful place. Could he steal it back?

  He wasn’t certain what he might learn, but he would soon be out on the streets and idle anyway.

  So now a shriveled face peered out from behind a statue of Virgil. Although looted from Rome, the statue was not, in truth, a very good example of classical art, barely good enough to fill one of the many niches needing residents in the nether walls of the Hippodrome. Dedi had no interest in either sculpture or poetry, but only in the concealment offered by Virgil’s voluminous marble toga.