Mary Reed - Seven for a Secret

“Yes, certainly. Very wise. But wouldn’t it be even wiser to forget the whole thing?”

“That would be dangerous. The woman approached me for a reason. I am convinced she was killed because she was seen talking to me.”

“Or it may have been a prank gone wrong, a mistake, a coincidence.”

“Even so, I cannot be certain until I investigate.”

“True enough, but that’s not why you want to investigate, is it? John, the woman who was murdered, even if she served as the model, wasn’t Zoe. She wasn’t the girl you conjure up in your solitary conversations.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?”

“I believe you know it, but I’m afraid you don’t feel it is so. We can’t reason ourselves out of what we feel. Take it from a former poet.”

John observed he had looked into the murders of friends before.

“But Zoe is family,” Anatolius pointed out. “She’s the daughter of your own imagination.”

John shook his head. “You can’t persuade me, my friend.”

“I thought not. And now how do you intend to begin?”

“By making inquiries around the artisans’ quarter. I will say I admire the man’s work and want to engage him for another assignment.”

Anatolius looked skeptical.

“It’s quite true,” John assured him with a thin smile. “Cornelia would like my bath repaired and its mosaic renovated. Its style and workmanship, not to mention its subject, are such that it was obviously the work of the same man.”

“It’s a pity mosaic makers don’t sign their work. They must not have the egos of poets. Think how much easier your task would be!”

John agreed. “There’s also the tattoo I’ve described to you. That will certainly narrow down the chase. Even though nobody claimed her body, someone is certain to know about a missing woman with such a distinctive marking.”

Anatolius looked thoughtful. “The culprit must have feared she could be identified by the tattoo or he wouldn’t have tried to conceal it with the dye. A scarab with a cross over it, you said. A peculiar combination.”

“The cross was crudely done and somewhat blurred. From what remained, it might once have been an ankh. An Egyptian marking, like the scarab.”

“Do the two together signify anything?”

John shrugged. “I spent a few years in Egypt. I was not preoccupied with studying the culture.”

“One thing we do know, whatever the tattoo means, they are usually on women of the class employed by Isis, not to mention actresses and the like. I’d be happy to make appropriate inquiries among those ladies.” Anatolius looked at his littered desk and sighed. “It’ll make a change from winding up estates and trying to trace elusive heirs.”

A burst of laughter greeted Anatolius as a girl clothed in rose-scented perfume and a wisp of silk admitted him into Isis’ house. A gilded Eros beside the door announced the business of the establishment.

A niche by the entrance was piled higher than usual with the daggers and swords everyone in the city carried but which were not allowed inside. Most of their hilts were elaborately worked, some bejeweled. Anatolius added his own blade to the armory.

The sound of merriment emanated from a room opening off the hallway.

The girl noticed Anatolius’ glance in its direction. “It’s that Egyptian magician called Dedi, sir. Madam arranged for him to entertain a group of patrons.” She half turned to look over her shoulder, obviously eager to get back to the performance. The silk mist she wore rose revealingly with the movement.

Anatolius was about to instruct her to take a message to Isis when the madam herself emerged into the hall. Isis was middle-aged and comfortably plump. She wore considerably more silk than her employee.

“Anatolius! What an unexpected pleasure! And how well you timed your visit! Do come and see the magick this diminutive ornament to the empire is performing. I’ll wager the Patriarch would anathematize all of us, if he only knew what the fellow was doing!”

She placed a finger to her lips. “And he may well find out,” she whispered in mock horror. “I recognized at least one deacon from the Great Church. No doubt he will claim he was here to gather information on the blasphemous goings-on taking place nightly in my house, although that’s not what I hear from his favorite girl.”

Isis grasped Anatolius’ arm and pulled him toward the open doorway of a room decorated by a life-size statue of Bacchus in classical Greek style, attended by several marble satyrs engaged on various lewd pursuits. A crowd lounging on cushions strewn amidst the statues guffawed at the antics of an olive-skinned little man at the far end of the room.

Or, rather, Anatolius realized, at the talking skull on the table beside Dedi.

The skull was chattering about the Patriarch’s private life and secret pleasures while Dedi’s carp-like mouth did not move, except to pucker itself into an expression of outrage.

“Blasphemy!” Dedi suddenly shouted at the skull. “You wouldn’t dare utter such scurrilous untruths if you were alive!”

He leaned forward toward the crowd and whispered loudly, “It’s possessed by a demon!”

A murmur of confusion filled the room and the girl in silk, who had lingered beside Anatolius and Isis, emitted a squeak of dismay.

“Please, do not be alarmed,” Dedi went on. He placed a ring of glowing charcoals from a nearby brazier around the skull and then produced a leather bag from which he poured what looked like irregular pebbles. “This is incense, blessed long ago by none other than Simeon the Stylite. A special gift to me from Empress Theodora, before whom I recently had the pleasure of performing.”

“He’s telling the truth,” Anatolius said. “I happened to witness that performance.”

The skull uttered dire imprecations as Dedi added the incense to the charcoal. Thick, pungent smoke roiled upwards. The skull emitted a keening groan as the dark cloud enveloped it. When Dedi fanned the smoke aside, the skull had vanished.

The crowd voiced its appreciation. Many sprang to their feet, craning to see better.

The loquacious skull was nowhere to be seen.

Anatolius noticed the prostitute beside him making the Christian holy sign and muttering thanks for the destruction of the evil thing.

“Isis, the entertainment is splendid, but I’ve come to make some inquiries,” he said.

Isis waved a chubby, beringed hand. “Yes, yes. But first you must see this!”

Dedi had set upon the table a number of goblets, two jugs, and a large urn with a spout. He explained the urn contained wine and the jugs held water, inviting a man sitting nearby to approach and confirm this was the case.

After confirmation was received, Dedi drew wine from the urn, drank it, flourished the first water jug, and then poured its contents into the urn.

“This is an exceedingly peculiar vessel,” he told his attentive watchers in a confidential tone. “I can’t say whether it is magickal or accursed or just has humors of its own.”

When he refilled his goblet from the spout, clear water streamed out, followed by a mixture of wine and water. Then, after more water was added, wine again.

Members of the audience crowded around to inspect the wonder.

“Isn’t it amazing?” said Isis. “I’ll wager Justinian would love to have an urn like that, if he weren’t so abstemious.”

Anatolius expressed doubt. “I’d expect the emperor to prefer to know that nothing will come out of an urn that didn’t go into it.”

“Spoken like a lawyer!”

Anatolius frowned. “Why does everyone insist on mentioning my new profession? It isn’t as if I’ve changed. May we talk now in private?”