One for Sorrow (8 page)

Chapter Seventeen

John’s heart was pounding as he strode hastily down the wide steps outside the Octagon. How could he have been so careless? The emperor could have had him executed on the spot. Then again, he reminded himself, the emperor could have him executed on the spot for no reason at all. The thought gave him little comfort.

Agitated as he was, he had walked halfway home before he realized he was being followed.

Yet another lapse.

At first it was merely the sensation of another presence intruding into his consciousness. Then, alerted, he began to distinguish quiet movements mirroring his own.

Ahead, the path lay dark and deserted. Although the palace grounds were heavily patrolled, he saw no guards, and only a fool would discount the possibility of some cutthroat having managed to slip into its maze of buildings, pathways, and gardens.

He forced himself to continue at an even pace. Listening hard, he thought he could discern only one set of steps behind him. Against one man he would have a chance. Once he had been a trained fighter. However, his follower might be a military man also, one much younger than he and with more recent training.

Why would anyone want to follow him from his meeting with the emperor?

Had Justinian decided to have him killed after all, but on the grounds instead of in his private quarters? John doubted that he would leave such a task to a single guard. The emperor was nothing if not cautious.

He considered his options. If he cried out for help guards would appear almost immediately. They were never far away on the palace grounds. On the other hand, John’s pursuer was nearer to him than any guard. Would the man flee when John called for help or try to carry out his mission before help arrived?

If his mission was in fact to kill John.

A low archway punctuated the stucco wall John’s path paralleled. He ducked through it into a garden. He considered lying in wait to one side of the archway, but decided any trained man would be alert to such an obvious ploy. He heard the gurgling splash of a fountain. Faint moonlight, falling toward the rooftops of the tenements visible beyond the wall encircling the palace grounds silvered dwellings, water, and the fountain alike. Beyond the garden he had entered, he could distinguish a line of trees, a black mass of branches.

He moved toward them. The footsteps turned after him into the garden as he had expected. The trees appeared to be figs. John waited until he had almost reached them, then broke into a run. He stopped suddenly, turning back toward his pursuer. He could now see a bulky outline, moving forward rapidly. John took a step to the right, then, pretending to be confused, to his left.

With a burst of speed he knew his legs would regret later, he raced around to the other side of the line of trees, then doubled back. But they were too widely spaced to conceal him. He would be visible to the man chasing him, and, what was more, by detouring around the trees he had lost valuable time, time he might have used to escape.

John’s pursuer, seeing his chance, took the direct route, straight through the row of trees.

There was a resounding splash and the clatter of a metal blade on marble.

“God’s blood!”

John recognized the voice of Thomas.

The burly redhead had emerged from the sunken pool when John reached it. Thomas was still spluttering, cursing, and shaking water out of his ginger mustache.

“Thomas, I see you have discovered one of the emperor’s little jests. It was especially designed to catch trespassers. Though usually they creep in here to steal, not to pursue Lord Chamberlains.”

“I wasn’t pursuing you. I was out walking and saw you. I didn’t want to be shouting about in the middle of the night, and you walk faster than a Pict in full retreat.”

Several guards, attracted by the noise, arrived at a run. John dismissed them without explanation. No doubt they would soon be weaving lurid tales in their barracks about his strange assignations with foreigners in garden pools in the middle of the night.

“Why were you walking about the palace grounds at this time?” John asked, wondering exactly how Thomas had managed to get inside the walls at such an hour. “I thought you were staying at the inn.”

“Who can sleep in this city, with all those barking dogs and people shouting and such?”

“You have refined sensibilities for a soldier. And why was your sword drawn? In greeting?”

Thomas looked at the sword in his hand, as if just realizing it was there. He snorted and resheathed it. “It came out when I fell into the water. But you are right, it wasn’t the noise of this damnable city that kept me awake. In truth, John, it was that girl. Berta. The one I, uh, saw at the house you took me to. My mind’s been troubled since then.”

“The soldier’s simple life has been changed then?”

Thomas said nothing, but looked abashed. He ran his fingers through his dripping hair, squeezing out rivulets of water.

“Come back to my house and get dry,” John offered. “You can return to your inn in the morning. You’re likely to get arrested, wandering about at this hour of the night.”

Chapter Eighteen

The flame of the lamp in the niche beside the house door had become dim before Peter heard John’s familiar rap.

“Thanks to the Lord,” he murmured, hurrying to admit his master. It had been too long a night for him.

It worried Peter that John was a pagan. He feared that one day Justinian would find out and have John hauled away to the dungeons, or perhaps the emperor already knew and was merely biding his time.

Peter fretted not only about his master’s bodily welfare but about his immortal soul. Though, the old man sometimes told himself, his master’s god was so like his own true Lord in so many ways that John was perhaps guilty only of getting the name wrong. Still and all, he had been terrified when John was suddenly summoned to the emperor’s presence.

Once John and that disgusting boy had gone out into the darkness, as he sometimes did when he was alone in the house, Peter had stolen up to the master’s lavatory. Through the slit of a window there, it was possible to see the lighthouse. It was the only vantage point in the house from which it could be glimpsed.

Leaning against a wall, Peter had looked at its light, a golden carpet across the surface of the sea. At times, it reminded him of his Lord, who was mankind’s beacon. At other times it brought to his mind more earthly visions of those distant places that lay beyond the sea, places that he had never seen, and so barbaric by all he heard he devoutly wished he never would.

He had been thus occupied when the prefect’s messenger arrived and pounded at the front door. It had given him a terrible fright. He had known at once, from the manner of the summons, that it was not John.

Now, at the familiar knock, he opened the door to see not only John but also a sodden and disheveled figure.

The shiftless character who had visited John the day before.

“I prayed for your safe return the whole time you were gone,” Peter informed his master while directing a glare toward Thomas, whose wet clothing was making puddles on the tiles.

It was only after he’d been dismissed and was climbing the narrow stairs to his tiny room on the third floor that Peter remembered he’d forgotten to tell his master about the visit from the prefect’s messenger.

***

John showed Thomas into his study where Peter had started a fire in the brazier. Thomas had squeezed into one of John’s tunics, and now the two men sat drinking wine under the riot of the fantastic mosaic.

“Ah, this warms where it’s needed most,” remarked Thomas.

John refilled their cups. “Granted, the streets of Constantinople must be confusing to one who is not a native, but I can’t see how you could have wandered onto the palace grounds since the gates are shut at night.”

Thomas gave John an embarrassed smile. “I admit I was out walking long before dark. I anticipated I would not be able to sleep if I stayed at the inn and I recalled the pleasant gardens I had passed through on my way to our first meeting. Once in the gardens, I became lost.”

John sipped his wine. It struck him as an unlikely story. But anyone foolish enough to invent such a feeble excuse might be foolish enough to actually have acted as Thomas claimed to have done. Was he dealing with a man who was exceptionally naive or exceptionally cunning?

But why should this barbarian knight be such a mystery to him? John was familiar with judging the characters of powerful men at court every day.

He realized he was not thinking clearly. He had already had too much wine. His potentially fatal mistake in meeting Justinian while armed, his encounter with Thomas, and, yes, he had to admit, his reunion with Cornelia, had unnerved him to the point where he had quickly and unthinkingly consumed—how many cups of wine?

He did not usually drink so much.

Thomas shook his head. “Women are troubling.”

“You are thinking of Berta?”

“Yes. A little beauty, but she insisted on talking. Talk, talk, talk! She went on and on about her friends and her clothes and her jewelry and this talisman she had, and finally persuaded me to try it on my leg. I have an old wound there. It stiffens up on me at times and she noticed that when I tried to….well…anyway, it didn’t do it much good. Where do they get these ideas?”

“You don’t think there’s anything in the idea of healing talismans?”

“What? Oh!” Thomas frowned. “You’re thinking of the Grail’s heal-all aspect. But that would be for the good of all. To save the kingdom. It would never be used to cure one man. That’s blasphemous!”

“I see.”

“And even if the Grail can heal physical ills, can it heal the troubles caused by women? It is not a soldierly thing to be so troubled.” Thomas slurred. “Yet it is a manly thing, and to be a soldier one must be a man.”

John tapped the big ceramic jug on his desk. “Perhaps this contains the answer to the riddle of women. Men have searched many other jugs for the answer, and yet not found it.”

“The greatest men are troubled in this manner,” mused Thomas. “There is, for example, your great general Belisarius. They say his wife Antonina rules him by magick.”

“The magic she uses she keeps beneath her clothing.”

“Even so. But you…dare I say it, John, as a friend? You have the advantage on ordinary men.”

“Why do you say that?”

Thomas suddenly looked abashed. “I…I…well, people refer to you as John the Eunuch and….”

“You have been asking about me?”

“No. But people talk and—

“So you imagine I cannot be swayed by feminine magick?”

“Nor…uh…persuaded to swerve from the path of righteousness,” Thomas replied. “Who was it said there are those who make themselves eunuchs to better serve heaven?”

John filled his cup again. “One doesn’t serve by refraining from that which he cannot attempt. My condition is not of choice, I can assure you.”

“It wouldn’t be. But how was…no, I apologize. I have had far too much of this excellent wine.”

John realized that Thomas wasn’t alone in having had far too much to drink. He couldn’t remember when he had last been so intoxicated. Not since he had begun his ascent at court. Possibly not since he had been a young man. The little girl in the mosaic looked out at him, reproach in the glass facets of her eyes. He knew he should not say more. Nonetheless he spoke.

“You want to know how I came by my nickname, do you Thomas? Since we are such great friends, as you seem to think, the two of us having met three times, I shall tell you.”

“It isn’t necessary. Forgive my impertinence.”

“No, I will tell you, Thomas. My lover and I were with a troupe of bull-leapers. We traveled endlessly. They entertained, I was one of their guards. The roads are dangerous. We were very much in love. Odd to think of it now, is it not? I wanted the best for her. It was her birthday. I was young. I was impatient. I made inquiries, and heard of a man who sold silk. Illegally, of course. But I wanted my Cornelia to have silk. I bragged to my friends in the troupe that if all those high-born ladies could have it, then so would my Cornelia.

“I had been drinking that night too, and the idea suddenly seized me that I must obtain silk before the sun rose again. So I went. The roads in the area were little more than ruts. Amid the defiles and brush, in the darkness, I took a wrong turning.

“The man I sought was encamped at a crossroads at the base of a prominent hill, or so I had been told. All the hills looked prominent and none of the roads I took crossed others. Still, I convinced myself I was moving in the right direction. I went on and on. I have learned since that it is better to turn back sooner rather than later.

“I crossed into Persian territory. We’ve been at war with the Persians a long time. I was caught. I wish I could say I killed at least one of them. In my time, I have killed men. But I was taken by surprise, knocked to the ground, a boy manhandled by his older brothers.”

Thomas grunted uneasily. He looked ill. “There’s no need to….”

“I insist, my friend. You wanted to know. I will spare you the details of my captivity. I was not enslaved alone. After some time we became a burden. We were to be killed. It was Fortuna that brought traders, because to them we were of some value, provided we were properly prepared. Eunuchs are considered by many to be more dependable in certain roles than other men, unburdened as they are by family loyalties or normal appetites.

“You are aware how such a condition is accomplished. When you are young you feel invulnerable. You think you are not like the others. Others may die, but not you. You cannot imagine being shorn of what makes you a man so easily? Are you familiar with the weapon employed by the Persian soldier?”

“I must leave!” Thomas staggered to his feet, knocking his stool over, stumbling into John’s desk, sending the jug onto its side.

John heard Peter’s door bang open and the servant’s steps coming downstairs. He closed his eyes, trying to clear his head. The room was circling. Why had he been telling this stranger the story he never related to anyone?

“But how can one live through such an ordeal?” Thomas whispered thickly.

“We live or we die. It is not our choice.” John turned away from the big knight and toward Zoe. “And now,” he told the mosaic girl, “I can give Cornelia as much silk as she could ever desire.”