Two for Joy (38 page)

“I agreed to be present as a witness,” Balbinus told him, “and only then because my wife urgently requested it. I do not know what it is I am to witness.”

John spoke again. Despite the rage in his eyes, he spoke in his normal level tone, rendering his words the more shocking.

“Then let me speak plainly,” he said. “It was you, Michael, who ordered the murder of those unfortunate stylites as well as the death of the girl Adula. Those first deaths you predicted in a letter to Justinian. The death of the girl, in the house of a wealthy citizen, you prophesied in a sermon you gave here on the very evening the deed was committed.”

“Is this true, Lucretia?” growled Balbinus.

She flushed with anger. “Why do you question me? I was not here on that particular evening!”

Michael shook his head wearily. “Does a prophet command the events he foretells? Of course not! Likewise, I but sounded the warning. It was the hand of God that smote those deluded stylites and a woman corrupted by the foulest of sins.” He traced the ritualistic sign that Peter often made but, John noticed, used all four fingers of his right hand to do so.

“I do not believe it was the hand of any deity,” John replied, noting by Darius’ expression and the rigid setting of his shoulders that he did not care for Michael’s characterization of Adula. “It was the very human hands of your accomplices, who soaked certain clothing in a mixture ignited by water. A heavy rain, for instance.”

“Is not a human hand animated by the Lord’s will His hand?” Michael asked, apparently heedless of the implied confession in the words.

“He must be very careless in the details then,” John said. “Your letter predicted four deaths, but only three stylites died. Joseph was spared, but that was only because the inflammable tunic placed in his offering basket was stolen by a beggar. And so it was he who burnt to death in an alley a stone’s throw away when drenched by the same storm that immolated the others. Was that beggar’s thieving hand also carrying out heavenly will?”

Michael abandoned the religious debate. “I repeat I am not a murderer, Lord Chamberlain. I am a healer. You yourself saw that I cured Senator Aurelius.”

“A coincidence, nothing more. You ordered him murdered also. Nor we should overlook another victim, a harmless old philosopher.”

A shadow seemed to pass across Michael’s pale features. “A philosopher?”

“A former tutor of mine, not one of those exiled philosophers whom you met in the east. They were traveling around, studying incendiary weapons, weren’t they, looking for a tool to take revenge on the emperor who had so badly wronged them.” John pressed the attack. “And is it not true that when they heard you preaching and more importantly saw the followers you were attracting they recognized in you another weapon just as powerful as fire, one that could be harnessed to it to wreak even more havoc?”

Balbinus, glancing from one to the other, looked astonished.

“I see by your expression you do not deny that part of it at least,” John went on. “That’s why Aurelius died, isn’t it? He taught at the Academy years ago and they were afraid he recognized them when we visited the shrine. Afraid their plan might be revealed before it could come to fruition.”

“We senators strongly counseled Justinian against letting those men return,” Balbinus broke in hotly. “He called them toothless old thinkers, as harmless as doves.”

“You are implying that I have been used, Lord Chamberlain?” Michael said sharply.

Balbinus gave a bitter laugh. “Isn’t it obvious? Of course you were. The philosophers were creating an opportunity for invasion. Who knows, perhaps they were even being paid to do so. What a sweet revenge that would have been!”

“The moment Justinian’s grip was loosened sufficiently Khosrow’s army would have been at the gates,” agreed John.

“I have never raised my hand against any man.” Michael’s spoke in little more than a whisper. “You accuse me of murder, yet I have never approached the walls of your accursed capital.”

“But at least one of your philosophers has been to the city every market day, visiting a house such as you say you intend to shutter,” John pointed out. “And I am willing to wager that while in Constantinople he also gathered information from Khosrow’s spies as well as dispensing further instructions to them, just as others had done throughout the years. Nor should we overlook the fact that such visits would afford the perfect opportunity to place fatal robes in offering baskets.”

“How could any of this possibly not have occurred to you?” Balbinus asked in an amazed tone.

“I am a simple person,” Michael replied, sounding suddenly tired.

Lucretia finally broke the ensuing silence. “John, these accomplices, these spies, whom do you suspect?”

He had no chance to answer.

With a sweeping blow of his huge arm, Darius leapt away from John’s side, knocking Balbinus out of his way. The senator shouted outraged protests, his dignity compromised more than his person injured.

The pair of unarmed excubitors on guard outside stepped uncertainly into the doorway. They had not expected a threat to come from this side.

“There’s no point attempting to flee,” John’s voice was tinged with sadness.

Darius paused for a moment to speak quickly in his native tongue. “I had to do it, John. It was for my family. Tell Isis I’m sorry.” Then he whirled around and bolted out of the room, knocking the unarmed guards aside.

John followed him into the nave as Balbinus lumbered behind, shouting “Stop him!”

But the sea of startled pilgrims had parted to allow passage for Darius, whose wild-eyed charge as he escaped through them resembled the bull to which he had so often been compared.

From behind him, John heard a woman’s screams.

***

Crouched in a dark corner of the cellar, heart hammering an anguished tattoo, Darius rummaged through the chest of clothing. From the nave above he could hear the excubitor captain shouting orders to his men to seek the Persian outside, his voice rising above the screams and cries of pain from roughly handled patients and pilgrims being shoved aside.

Would Michael’s followers manage to delay the pursuit long enough to allow him to make his escape? They owed him that much, at least, Darius thought wildly.

At last his hand found the unnaturally stiff fabric it sought. He yanked the garment out and threw it over his broad shoulders.

He had already left the waking world. Now as he burst out of the cellar, he moved through a dream landscape where white-robed acolytes fell away from him like wisps of mist.

The grassy field outside the shrine was the dry, sandy earth of his native Persia. The sounds that trailed him were not the shouts of imperial pursuit but the wailing lamentations of his poor family, the family he had failed, whom Khosrow would surely now order put to death, if he had not already done so.

Wavy hair streaming behind him, robe flapping, Darius ran madly along the embankment where the field sloped down to the dark waters of the Bosporos. As he fled he wept.

A momentary vision of Adula passed through his thoughts. What choice had he had? If only it had been one of the other girls who had worn the fateful robe he’d been given along with orders he had tried to refuse but, reminded of his family, could not…And all the years of spying, the deaths for which he was responsible, the lies he had choked on even as he told them, his terrible betrayal of Isis’ trust, in the end it had all been for nothing!

Breath laboring, he glanced back over his shoulder. The excubitors were gaining on him.

He stopped. He was a soldier as much as they. A soldier did not run away. His hands moved to discard the robe he wore. Then he remembered the justice Justinian meted out to spies unfortunate enough to be captured alive.

Turning his bearded face to the sky, Darius shrieked the terrible curse of a man about to die, calling down the gods’ vengeance upon Khosrow, demanding it for the innocent blood he had been forced to shed and his dear, lost family.

Then, screaming his wife’s name, he leapt into the embrace of the waiting Bosporos, into an unbearable explosion of heat that burned away the world.

Chapter Thirty

“This supposed admission of guilt was in a
language no one there but you understood,
Lord Chamberlain. While it was followed by self-immolation, it isn’t sufficient proof of the Persian’s murderous activities. Nor,” Theodora stated coldly, “will it serve to free Anatolius.”

The empress had perched herself with audacious impertinence on the throne in the chilly reception hall while Justinian restlessly paced its floor. The huge, echoing space around them reminded John even more strongly of a sarcophagus, perhaps because it looked increasingly likely he might soon be entombed in his own.

“After all,” the empress continued, “need I point out that Anatolius arrived at your house covered with Philo’s blood?”

“In a way he did, highness, since although it was mostly his own, some of it came from Darius’ tunic, bloodied when he committed the deed just before rescuing Anatolius.” John directed what he hoped was a reassuring look toward Anatolius, who stood in shackles a few paces away.

“We do not have time to waste on this trivial matter,” Justinian put in mildly. “You are fortunate indeed, Lord Chamberlain, that I did not have you summarily executed when Senator Balbinus appeared on your behalf, seeking an audience. And you, senator,” he added, with a slight nod toward Balbinus, “are lucky that that head of yours is still atop your shoulders rather than displaying its regal profile from a spike, given the dangerous company you have been keeping of late.”

Balbinus made no reply. His face had begun to take on the pale tint of the ivory panels mounted on the hall’s green marble walls.

The emperor paced over to the throne. With a fond smile, he put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “I know, however, that the empress is as determined as I that justice be done,” he announced to the small group, “and so we will grant you a little more of our time. Lord Chamberlain, you say that this doorkeeper Darius had been a spy for years?”

“Almost certainly ever since he first arrived in Constantinople,” John confirmed. “For after all, where would anyone find talk looser than such an establishment, one whose patrons included courtiers and palace officials?”

“Indeed! And now, since you’ve described to us this plot on the part of the philosophers and their fiendish fire weapon,” said Justinian, “do you believe it was Darius alone who was responsible for all the deaths we have spoken of?”

“Not to mention those who died on the docks,” Theodora put in, glaring at John.

John admitted that obviously the entire truth could never be known.

“But Caesar,” he continued, ignoring the empress and addressing Justinian directly, “although it may not have been Darius who placed the murderous clothing into the stylites’ baskets, it could only have been he who provided the deadly robe in which Adula died at Senator Aurelius’ house. And it was Darius who poisoned the wine jug in the senator’s study. He had the run of the house, assisting Isis and her girls preparing to present their entertainment. And as for Philo….” John again glanced at Anatolius but the young man was staring at the floor, shoulders slumped.

“As for Philo,” John went on, “I am certain that his fateful appointment was to meet one of his former colleagues. Since he was both extremely bitter about his exile and very vocal about it, I have no doubt that colleague would have felt safe in revealing the plan to him.”

Theodora interrupted to draw her husband’s attention to the fact that John appeared to be criticizing his closure of the Academy. John’s spirit’s sank to his boots. Justice was going to prove elusive, after all. The faces of the two men beside him reflected the same grim thought.

“Not at all, not at all,” Justinian said, stepping away from the throne. “The Lord Chamberlain merely reports his deductions. Not that I shall necessarily accept their truth, John, but carry on with your explanation.”

John collected his thoughts rapidly. “Thank you, Caesar. As I was saying, no doubt their plan was revealed to him. A spy in the Lord Chamberlain’s house would be extremely useful, would it not? And, after all, Philo had suffered too.”

“Suffered?” snapped Theodora. “They should all have been thanking their pagan gods for the mercy shown by their emperor in allowing them to come home.”

Justinian smiled benignly at her words.

“Indeed that is so, highness,” nodded Balbinus with perhaps a shade too much enthusiasm.

Justinian ordered John go on.

“But Philo, I think, would not have thrown his lot in with them,” John said. “He was nothing if not contrary. Besides, despite some of the things he said, it is obvious to me that he had really turned his bitterness on himself. I cannot see him harming others. And a man so preoccupied with beauty and order would have found no appeal in the philosophers’ plans for death, destruction and chaos.”

Theodora laughed. “Do you practice magick, Lord Chamberlain, that you can read the thoughts of another, and a dead man too?”

“No, highness, but as my teacher he offered his thoughts to me and many of them I have made my own. I am sure he balked at the chance to work with his former colleagues. They could not afford the risk of allowing him to reveal what he had been told. So when, thanks to me, Darius arrived on the scene to bring him home, he was ordered to dispose of Philo immediately.”

Justinian, seemingly lost in thought, was gazing at the hall’s great bronze doors. His florid features had sagged into the unreadable expression that too many opponents had mistaken for vacuity.

John knew that his life and the life of more than one other in the room were being weighed. Finally the emperor spoke, “Although this is not exactly proof as would be acceptable in a court of law, Lord Chamberlain, your chain of deductions does seem possible. I have always trusted your insights and intelligent discussions of difficult problems. Besides, I cannot imagine my soft young secretary as a cold-blooded murderer of old men. I am certain that the empress agrees.”

Theodora’s venomous stare skewered John, contradicting Justinian’s words even as they were spoken. Although a slight smile quirked the emperor’s lips briefly, he appeared not to notice her look. “So I have decided that the matter is now closed. Guards, unchain my secretary!”