Two for Joy (17 page)

“There is no one except for the emperor to whom I may not speak in any manner I wish,” John replied coldly. “And I am ordering you to remain inside this house for your own safety.”

The harsh words stuck in his throat, or perhaps it was the last crumbs of bread. He reminded himself it had been many years since Philo had been his tutor and further that he had no right to speak of Peter in the manner that he had used.

“Very well, John. After all, I am in no position to argue with my benefactor.” Philo replaced the shatranj ship on the board with enough force to send several smaller pieces to the floor.

The mention of Aurelius’ banquet reminded John of another matter and his anger at Philo was now directed at himself. How could he have forgotten something so important? He, the Lord Chamberlain who owed his position and his continued life largely to his unerring attention to every detail, no matter how minor it seemed in the richly woven carpet of court life.

“To change the subject, Philo,” he began, “Anatolius said he left a document here on the day of the banquet.”

“He would have left it with your servant. Why are you asking me about it?”

“Peter was not here then, being at work directing the slaves in Aurelius’ kitchen.”

Philo looked at the ceiling. “I know nothing of any such document. You have intimated that I am foolish. Would you now call me a liar as well?”

John had spoken plainly on many occasions to satraps and senators and the highest officials of the empire. But those powerful men had not taught him to decipher the magic of the written word nor walked with him along the shaded paths of the Academy, opening his mind to the wonders of history and philosophy. He could not bring himself to do it.

“No, Philo,” he finally admitted with a sigh. “I cannot call you a liar. But I must now go out, so please remain here and see that Peter does not try to over-exert himself. I have inquiries to make.”

Chapter Thirteen

John found the first person he sought standing
under the portico of the senate house on the
north side of the Forum Constantine.

Senator Balbinus looked as if he’d not slept since he’d appeared at Aurelius’ house hotly demanding to speak to his recently murdered colleague concerning certain mysterious matters whose details he had refused to divulge.

On this occasion, however, Balbinus’ anger was directed elsewhere.

“The senators were ordered to convene here in the very midst of the mob,” he complained, “and furthermore, we’ve been forbidden to leave the city.” His tired gaze moved past John out into the forum.

The crowd of raucous humanity eddying past the base of the Column of Constantine was the usual mixture of roughly clad laborers interspersed with an occasional better robed aristocrat. Customers jostled each other in front of the shops lining the upper and lower levels of the colonnades surrounding the forum. Nothing in the scene seemed out of the ordinary. Still, on his way over, John had sensed impending violence. Was the collective breath of the city sourer with wine, were its citizens talking louder than normal?

“No doubt the emperor fears the sight of the entire senate scattering to their estates would cause a panic,” John commented.

“It has nothing to do with Justinian. It’s Theodora who’s holding us hostage,” Balbinus replied. “There’s no doubt that this order is her doing. The emperor is a reasonable man, except when he chooses to wrestle with the angels. Not that we don’t all support his theological efforts, of course,” he added hastily. “Yet even the Patriarch has fled the city, or so I hear.”

The two men were conversing beside one of the portico’s four towering columns, taking advantage of the scant warmth offered by weak early afternoon sunlight. John inquired politely about security measures at Balbinus’ country estates and vineyards and the senator grumbled and muttered his replies in irritated tones.

“Do you think ne’er do wells in the country aren’t aware that we are being detained here?” he demanded. “Do you suppose they won’t be swift to take advantage of the situation if violence breaks out in the city? We are all men of property. Businessmen. It is intolerable that we should not be permitted to look after our assets at such a time as this.”

John found himself wondering if it had been an illegal business arrangement that had led one senator to murder another. Yet powerful men did not usually find it necessary to personally resort to murder to dispose of their rivals. They had more subtle means at their disposal. Nevertheless, Balbinus’ visit to Aurelius had been just ill-timed and inexplicable enough to pique John’s curiosity.

Then too, he could not help noticing that as Balbinus spoke he kept the side of his face presented toward his visitor. Certainly, John thought, it was a regal profile that would have looked more fitting on a follis than Justinian’s commoner cast of features. Was it the practiced vanity of a thoroughly professional politician or was the man trying to distract attention from the partially healed wound running along one cheekbone?

“Was it affairs of business that brought you to Aurelius’ door?” he asked.

Balbinus’ hesitation was slight enough that few but John would have noted it. “Of a sort,” he finally admitted.

“Is it then a new arrangement that men of property normally discuss such matters at the first light of dawn?”

“My visit concerned something I prefer not to discuss, Lord Chamberlain.”

“Perhaps you would rather discuss it with the Prefect?”

Balbinus looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

Now it was John who paused. The senator’s surprise seemed genuine. Could the man truly be such an innocent? Didn’t he realize the implications to be drawn from the odd hour of his visit to Aurelius’ home?

“I mean no offense, senator, but your colleague Aurelius was murdered. The Prefect will naturally be interested in, let us not say an enemy, let us say a colleague with whom he had fallen out, who arrived uninvited at the victim’s doorstep shortly thereafter.”

Balbinus affected a half-hearted laugh. “If I’d had the old rascal murdered why would I come calling? To ascertain whether the poison had had the desired effect? The whole affair is the talk of the senate.”

Several senators emerged from the busy throng and nodded familiarly to Balbinus as they passed by on their way into the senate house. John did not recognize any of them, not surprisingly since most of the landholders who comprised the senatorial class visited the city only very occasionally. Aurelius was one of the few who lived there. Or had lived there, he corrected himself.

Balbinus scowled. “Now that my colleagues have seen us talking, they’ll be asking me what fresh gossip I have from the palace.”

“Senator, I must ask you again about your business with Aurelius. Let me also assure you that I am a much more discreet man than the Prefect.”

“But you can’t suspect me, surely? I am a senator!”

“I am not implying that, but surely you will understand that under the circumstances you are almost certainly already under suspicion so far as the Prefect is concerned?”

“So you consider that’s a possibility? Well, then, it seems I must speak after all. It strikes me that if I’m thrown into the dungeons you can take over my job here, Lord Chamberlain. You certainly have the persuasive tongue for it!”

Balbinus stared out into the forum for a few moments, deep in thought. One hand went absently to the reddened wound on his face, then drew away quickly.

“My business with Aurelius was personal and of a very delicate nature,” he finally said. “My wife Lucretia has been missing these past few days. I thought I might find her at his house.”

Balbinus’ reluctant words not only explained his interest in speaking to Aurelius but also strongly indicated the feminine hand that had inflicted the half healed scratch that marred the senatorial face, John thought. “You had reason to believe that you would find her at Senator Aurelius’ house?”

“I did. She was, however, not there and is still missing.”

“I see. You have, of course, alerted the Prefect to her disappearance?”

“No. I intend to take care of the matter myself. Do you think I have no resources at my disposal?”

“If she wandered off…”

“Lucretia did not wander off. She is a capable woman although young. And very beautiful. Any man half my age would be proud to claim her as his wife!”

One of the men who had recently arrived emerged from the senate house. “Balbinus, we need your assistance. Several of us are composing a petition to the emperor, pointing out that if our estates are sacked while we are detained here against our will, the imperial treasury will suffer mightily since compensation will be due and most certainly sought.”

John silently admired their courage in even contemplating presenting such a petition to Justinian.

“I have to attend to this, Lord Chamberlain,” Balbinus said. “So if you will permit me? There is nothing more I can tell you, at any rate. I do not need to say, I trust, that I rely upon your discretion regarding what I have just told you.”

John nodded, adding “And if anything else occurs to you, I am not difficult to find.”

John remained standing under the portico after Balbinus had gone inside. Again he noticed that the eddying crowds seemed louder than usual, and few beggars could be seen prodding charitable purses by displaying their malformed bodies or ghastly sores. That was strange, he thought, since more often than not society’s outcasts were at the forefront when unrest fermented in dark alleys and darker lives boiled over from a scalding cauldron of noise and hate, its flood sweeping all before it. He must mention this sudden curious lack of mendicants to Felix.

John made his way quickly across the forum. At the Column of Constantine he glanced up briefly at its mounted statue of the first Christian emperor. A smile flickered over John’s sunburnt face as he recalled one of Anatolius’ more unfortunate remarks, to the effect that the emperor’s statue should have been placed on a lower pedestal because there wasn’t a single inhabitant of Constantinople who, having seen its glory once, would bother to make the effort to crane their neck to observe it a second time.

He sighed as he resumed his swift lope, realizing he could not avoid further investigation of Balbinus’ suspicious appearance at Aurelius’ house. But there were other interviews to be conducted first.

***

Following John unobserved had been child’s play. Tall and lean and wrapped on this chilly afternoon in a heavy black cloak, he made a striking figure, his dress and bearing clearing him an easy path through swarming humanity. There had been no danger of losing sight of him in the common throng while still being able to maintain a safe distance. It would be simpler than expected to close the space between them when the time came, thought the pursuer, a smug smile crossing his face.

The narrow street they were now traversing was lined with brick buildings, not tenements but obviously divided into apartments. Their first floors were taken up by the customary merchants’ establishments. The smell of fruit too long unsold mingled with the odor of boiled fish and cabbage emitted from open windows. Several workshops rang with the sound of hammering, but the street’s occupants were apparently even less inclined to labor than usual, since several establishments were shuttered. Here and there, men clustered in stray patches of pale sunlight, conversing in strident tones but falling ominously silent as the two strangers, pursued and pursuer, approached.

John’s swift stride took him past the mouths of several alleys, narrower than the street into which they yawned and largely deserted at this time of day except for the occasional foraging rat, skittering about their gloomy length.

Philo had already decided that he would draw closer to his prey and risk the possibility of revealing his pursuit if John should turn aside into an alley since he had no wish to become lost anywhere in that warren of narrow, dark ways a second time. He had therefore been chagrined when John led him at last to the Forum Constantine. That enormous open space made it impossible for him to sidle close enough to the senate house’s portico to overhear John’s conversation with the important-looking man he was addressing. He was thus forced to lurk under one of the ornamental archways leading into the forum, peering out now and then while wondering where John might go next.

Yes, he thought, John would not be at all pleased if he discovered that Philo had ventured out of the house. But who was he to order Philo about as if he were an ignorant student? There again, hadn’t Philo already garnered more about the dead stylites than the Prefect’s men had managed to uncover? And, no doubt, an innocent-looking old gentleman could easily extract more information from one suspected of murder than could an intimidating Lord Chamberlain. He had only to find out who John suspected and then talk to them. And how else to do that but by following John, however distasteful such deceit might be?

Yet, he thought, John would thank him in the end, when he was presented with those vital scraps of fact necessary to solving the murders. Not to mention the matter of deciphering that most peculiar letter from the leader of the Michaelites. The guilt he might have felt at concealing his possession of the hastily scribbled copy Anatolius had left, in order to study it for carefully hidden meanings, had been assuaged by John’s totally unwarranted tone with him. What right did he have to speak to him in that manner? He might indeed be Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Justinian but Philo remembered a time when John was an unlettered student from the country, rough and awkward in his manner although certainly intelligent, if overly hasty in making decisions.

Peeking around the edge of the archway, Philo was suddenly assailed by the sweet scent of roses. It was unexpected here, amidst the odor of the crowd and the bitter smell of animal dung. Not to mention the acridly lingering memory of the beggars who had relieved themselves in the relative privacy of the archway under bas reliefs commemorating forgotten military victories.

Philo was reminded of Senator Aurelius’ banquet, at which the gentle fragrance of roses had hung sweetly in the air. He looked around.