Seven for a Secret (10 page)

Chapter Nineteen

Anatolius wiped away tears with the sleeve of his tunic, blinked, and squinted around Francio’s steamy kitchen. Almost immediately the garlic-saturated air started his eyes watering again.

“Mithra!” he muttered.

Francio was nowhere to be seen. A small army of servants rushed about carrying bowls and brandishing knives, somehow avoiding fatal collisions. The clank of pots violently stirred or pushed around the long brazier running along one side of the room reverberated from the sooty walls and low ceiling.

He would have left immediately, except that he had come here on serious business.

To investigate a murder.

Since parting with John outside Menander’s tenement, Anatolius had not been able to put the murder out of his thoughts.

This morning he had arrived at the steps of the law library with the gulls but couldn’t concentrate on research. Instead he kept wondering how a common prostitute could have known the name by which John addressed the mosaic girl on the wall of his private study.

Francio might be of assistance. He was familiar with every rumor, true or false, at the palace. He would know who, if anyone, might be aware of John’s solitary conversations.

He had shoved the Digest and its dusty old jurists aside and left for Francio’s house. However, the nearer he got, the more wary he became of revealing too much to his gregarious friend. Curiosity had carried him from the atrium to the back of the house and into the kitchen.

As he tried to decide whether to leave, a basket was suddenly thrust under his nose. It was filled with what looked like wilted weeds.

“Here’s them herbs you wanted, sir.” The basket holder’s garments were too ragged for a servant. “I even located some of that rue, and nasty stuff it is.”

If there was any odor of herbs, Anatolius couldn’t distinguish it beneath the reek of garlic. “You’re probably looking for the master of the house,” he said, just as the man they both sought strode out of the chaos toward them.

Francio’s elaborate clothing looked out of place in a kitchen, even if it was thematically appropriate. Rondels embroidered with parsnips, lettuce, and radishes sprouted from his earthy brown dalmatic. He exchanged a few words with his herb supplier, shooed the man off toward the far end of the room, and turned his attention to Anatolius.

“Merchants have been in and out all day. They’re wonderfully obliging. As well they should be. There’s not a better customer in the city, except perhaps the imperial couple. Justinian and Theodora’s banquets rival mine in size if not imagination. But why have you dared to venture onto my culinary battlefield, my friend?”

“Battlefield? I’d have described it as a riot. I’m surprised your place isn’t burnt to the ground every time you decide to entertain.”

Francio laughed. “It looks like a riot because you are not schooled in the strategy of the kitchen. This is merely a skirmish in a carefully planned campaign. My soldiers need the experience. When the day arrives for that rustic banquet I mentioned, they will not cower in the face of a cheese and garlic paste.”

Anatolius remarked he was surprised to find Francio in the kitchen.

“A leader rides out at the head of his army surely?”

“Justinian doesn’t!”

“He must stay here to lead on the theological front,” Francio chuckled. He made his way through the hubbub and bent over a bubbling copper pot until his flattened nose came perilously close to the turbulent liquid within. When he straightened up, his lumpy face was bright red from the heat of rising steam.

“Excellent!” he remarked. “Just the right amount of coriander. Another hard fought victory is at hand!”

“Your cooks have boiled, grilled, or roasted every creature that lives. I’d have thought it would be easy for them to prepare a simple peasant dish.”

“They aren’t used to simple dishes. And when there are so few ingredients, mistakes cannot be disguised, not even with a sauce.”

“You’ve enough garlic in here to disguise a shipload of spoiled fish.” Anatolius ran a hand over his eyes but the stinging miasma seemed to have settled onto his fingers. His eyes burned still more fiercely.

“I apologize for your distress, but all this is not the finished art. No one enjoys the smoke from the glassmaker’s furnace or the sweat from the poet’s brow, do they? Do lovers of verse stroll into your study unannounced and complain about your efforts? I’m certain you haven’t barged in on me without good reason. There must be some urgent business?”

Anatolius decided he might be able to learn something without giving too much away. “I need to call on your expertise again. It’s about a private matter. Not exactly scandalous, but potentially embarrassing.”

Francio tapped the side of his nose. “Sounds fascinating! Am I about to learn something?”

“No. I was just wondering how such stories spread?”

“By mouth. How else?”

“But, let’s say, a person at the palace had an unusual habit…”

“Let’s say there was anyone at the palace who didn’t. Now that would be interesting. What sort of person is this? A servant? A senator? Man or woman?”

“Hypothetically, an official.”

“You lawyers are a circumspect bunch. This habit, does it involve, shall we say, an unnatural practice?”

Anatolius frowned. “I don’t think I’d go that far.”

“I can tell by your expression that whatever you are talking about is extremely unnatural. You will need to control your expressions better in front of the magistrates, my friend. I don’t grasp what you think I can tell you. Rumors and gossip have a thousand roads but only a single destination, which is to say the entire city.”

“I can’t believe everything becomes general knowledge,” Anatolius observed. “I’m not speaking about an indiscretion at the Hippodrome or in a brothel.”

“Where then? Come now! You want to know who might have whispered scandal into someone’s ear? How can I tell you if I don’t know what it is? Don’t worry about revealing the details. As you know, I am the soul of discretion.”

“You wouldn’t dare to say that on oath!”

Francio looked hurt. “I only parcel out what I know as seems absolutely necessary. How do you suppose I maintain my popularity?”

“By your golden tongue?”

Francio grinned. “Flattery is a good tool. It usually works, no matter how clumsily one employs it. Now, you say this mysterious behavior which is not scandalous, but which I deduce is quite unnatural, occurred not in public but in a private place. Such as…?”

“A place similar to, for instance, a study.”

“Oh yes. You’re referring to the Lord Chamberlain’s habit of talking to the mosaic on his wall, are you not?”

Anatolius might as well have been hit in the stomach. He couldn’t seem to draw breath to reply.

“Yes, this is fairly well known,” Francio went on. “It isn’t a very popular story. The Lord Chamberlain is considered so eccentric, all in all, his speaking to bits of colored glass hardly raises an eyebrow. And before you ask how the story could have got out…well, he has a few friends who have visited the house, not to mention servants, and has even had some unwanted visitors over the years, I’d wager.”

“I’m positive I didn’t mention it to anyone.”

“Not even to some lady? I daresay we will all reveal anything under the appropriate circumstances.”

“That’s what Justinian’s torturers claim too. You’re right. Yet I truly don’t believe I’ve ever breathed a word about it. As for his servants, Peter wouldn’t disclose his master’s secrets, even to the imperial torturers.”

“Ah yes, Peter. John doesn’t have many servants, does he? The paucity of servants strikes people as far more peculiar than him talking to mosaics when he’d had too much wine. You might not know any of this. Since you are one of the Lord Chamberlain’s closest friends and he is a powerful man, many are doubtless reticent about sharing such opinions with you.”

“Indeed. This is the first time you have shared this information with me, Francio.”

“You never asked, my friend. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how John’s little secret got out. It’s spread too far from its source.”

Francio peered again into one of the pots on the brazier, grasped the protruding handle of the ladle, and gave a lusty stir. A few drops of liquid splashed out and evaporated on the coals in a hiss of steam.

Anatolius decided he should get back to the library. “I was interested in who might know about Zoe,” he said. “But it sounds as if there’s nothing to be learned.”

Francio dropped the ladle back against the side of the pot. “Zoe. That’s what John calls the mosaic girl, isn’t it? Now that I only learned a few weeks ago.”

“Then the name isn’t common knowledge?”

“I just told you I didn’t know about it until recently.”

“I see your point, Francio. Who was it who told you?”

“Crinagoras. I can’t remember precisely when it was. I spend so much time here on the battlefield and the scene is always just like this. You’ll recall I invited him to compose some verse for my banquet? His original idea was to recite odes to the various rooms of the wealthy and powerful to form a poignant contrast to the humble fare on the table, as he put it. Well, he came here and started declaiming samples of what he intended to write. The poem about the decorations in a certain senator’s residence was scurrilous enough to give me second thoughts. When he started describing John’s mournful conversations with Zoe I made him put the whole lot in the brazier. I thought he’d plucked the name Zoe out of his imagination. I should have known better. He hasn’t got much imagination.”

Anatolius couldn’t hide his disappointment. “Mithra! Then I’ve wasted my time. I thought you might be able to narrow it down for me, but if Crinagoras wrote a poem about Zoe, you can be sure her name was all over the city before the ink was dry.”

Chapter Twenty

A corpse covered in wet dye would be difficult to handle without leaving some trace, even if it were secreted in a sack.

John hadn’t noticed any sign of staining in the corridor leading to Troilus’ shop.

He considered possibilities as he stood in the sunlight outside the entrance to the subterranean realm where Helios and Troilus conducted business. On the other side of the courtyard, the man John deduced was a dyer sat on a stool by the doorway to his business in the shade of a rainbow covered awning.

No one would have arrived with a body and asked that it be dyed.

However, dye might be obtained at such a place.

The dyer appeared to be enjoying the rehearsal, which had reached a point where actors were busy knocking each other over with their leather phalluses.

John couldn’t see the humor in it.

The stricken Petronia was nowhere in sight. John walked over to the man, who immediately sprang to his feet.

“Good day, sir! Welcome to the shop of Jabesh! I can supply every color under the sun and some the sun has never seen.”

Jabesh was an angular little man with glittering black eyes and a beard that was little more than a dark stain. He flapped the baggy sleeves of his tunic, upon which were sewn colored squares of every imaginable hue, apparently samples of his work, making him a walking advertisement for his craft.

There were several shades of red, but how a dye applied to white linen might compare with the same used on livid flesh, John could not say.

“I see you are authorized to work for the palace, Jabesh,” he remarked.

The dyer looked down at his hands, stained a telltale purple. “Like my father and his father before him. Though I am but a humble laborer I wear the imperial purple today. I was preparing silk on commission this morning. Are you here on court business?”

He stretched out his arm to display a multicolored sleeve. “You see here only some of the colors I offer,” he went on. “My family is descended from the very dyers who created Joseph’s many-colored coat.”

“Have you sold dye to anyone recently?”

Jabesh lowered his gaudily decorated arm. “I am a craftsman, not a merchant. If it’s dyes that are wanted, I suggest consulting an apothecary.”

“I understand it isn’t your usual line of business, but perhaps you have sold dye in special cases?”

Jabesh’s hands clenched into purple fists. “Has Troilus sent you? If you’re one of his friends, you can tell him I won’t sell purple to anyone at any price. It’s illegal. It could cost me my livelihood and my life.”

“Troilus has tried to purchase purple dye?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Did he say why?”

“No, but it was easy to guess. He wanted it on account of that woman of his. He came around wheedling me after I refused to sell it to her.”

“You mean Agnes?”

“I don’t know. I’m not interested in the names of actresses.”

“Yet you’re not averse to enjoying their performances,” John observed with a slight smile.

From the direction of the stage drifted the dull, repetitive thump of simulated gladiatorial combat with obscene leather weapons.

“I like a little culture now and then,” Jabesh admitted. “Many of the actors are men, as is proper. As for the so called actresses, you can dye a beggar purple but it won’t make him emperor.”

John kept to himself the thought that dyeing a whore purple might very well make her empress. “When did this woman approach you?”

“She’s cajoled me more than once. A few weeks ago she started to try to persuade me and I believe she would have given me what men pay her for, if I had been so stupid as to take the risks I mentioned. Finally, it would be a week ago, Troilus tried to talk me into agreeing. No one except a craftsman authorized by the emperor would have such dye. You can’t buy purple from an apothecary any more than you can pay to have your robes dyed purple.”

John asked if any reason had been given for the couple’s interest in an illegal dye.

“No, sir. My guess is she wanted to play act.”

“With the troupe? It would be just as illegal and more dangerous in public to appear in such garments even onstage.”

“Not all performances are public. She often brings costumes in, you see. The troupe uses the same old rags over and over and they have me dye them occasionally so the audience thinks it’s seeing something new. There’s more color than fabric to those costumes now. The actors might as well parade in here naked and jump into my vats before they perform.”

John wondered if, in fact, the body he’d seen had been submerged in one of Jabesh’s vats before being left in the cistern.

“Your workshop is secure?”

“Certainly.”

“You do a lot of work for the troupe?”

“Nothing beyond coloring and recoloring their rags. Every color but that reserved for the emperor. When a play requires it, I come as close to the imperial hue as the laws allow. Not very close, but close enough so that when an actor says, ‘Ah, what a lovely purple tunic you are wearing, Theodora,’ the audience grasps the idea.”

“The troupe has performed plays about Theodora?”

Jabesh glanced around and lowered his voice. “Only at private functions, sir. Not that I’ve seen any, or care to. They are vile, or so I’ve heard. Not that I know any details. I believe they call one production A Secret Account. I suspect it’s Troilus’ painted woman who pretends to be Theodora. She behaves as if she is the empress even when she isn’t on stage.”

“Why is that?” John could not imagine the dark eyed, sorrowful little girl he knew pretending to be an empress. He had to remind himself that Agnes was not Zoe.

Not really.

“She puts on the airs. There are more than a few ladies in the neighborhood who used to be members of the court and come by their airs naturally, as you might say, but none of them can match her. In any event, she has no right to pretensions. You can tell. The common sort of woman always overdoes the act. It’s not just the mincing about pretending to be better than she is. There’s the way she soaks herself in perfume.” Jabesh waved a purple hand as if to disperse a foul odor. “Do you know, it just occurred to me. Maybe she wants the dye for herself. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are men who would pay well to spend the night with a woman in purple.”

“You may be right, Jabesh. What about this scurrilous play? Do you have any idea where the troupe performs it?”

“No, sir, but I don’t want to make it out to be more than it is. It’s nothing but a bit of fun. Or rather, some peoples’ idea of a bit of fun.”

“The actors are your customers after all.”

“Yes. That’s right. Like all of us, they need to serve their customers. Look at this.” He grabbed his sleeve, bunched it and displayed a square of garish orange next to an overpowering green. “Have you ever seen a more hideous combination? Yet an excellent patron of mine will insist on sending these barbaric colors to wear on his finest robes, not to mention his wife’s garments and wall hangings.”

“I can believe there is an audience for performances that do not show the empress in the best light.”

“Especially around here, sir. People who have been cast out of the palace—and there are many of them—do not think kindly of Justinian and Theodora. Some like to plot revenge.”

“Is that so?”

“It’s the same as the play. Nothing, really. Something to pass the hours. You can see how they would enjoy a play that mocks their enemies. Then they go out drinking and continue acting themselves. As soon as the tavern closes they’ll storm the palace walls. But needless to say the uprising is always put off to a more auspicious time.”

“How do you know this?”

“Customers grumble in front of me. What do I matter?”

“And you say that Troilus’ friend was involved in this…play acting?”

Jabesh looked distressed. “Yes. As I said, they don’t mean it seriously. Perhaps I should have said nothing.”

“No. I appreciate your honesty. Someone I spoke with earlier was not so forthcoming. He will soon regret it.”