Mary Reed - Five for Silver

Hypatia frowned. “I realize you call my charms superstitious nonsense, Peter, but surely you understand I’m using them to protect the house and all who dwell here?”

“Them? There are more?”

“Yes, there are.” She began to launch into a sharp retort, but sensed an unusual anger in the elderly servant’s suddenly flushed face and instead lowered her voice. “I placed one at every entrance and each corner of the house, but I couldn’t get up on the roof to-”

Peter interrupted with the comment that a woman seen clambering about on the Lord Chamberlain’s roof would certainly have been fine grist for every palace gossip who happened to be passing by at the time.

“I know these scorpions come from a good heart,” he went on kindly. “However, you need to conceal them. Remember that the master serves a Christian emperor and, in addition, may well have visitors who would not look kindly on such decorations. Besides, it’s my understanding that the scorpion has some significance for Mithrans. The master most certainly does not want his beliefs placed on view, even by accident.”

He sighed heavily. “I am confiding in this fashion because it may well fall to you to remember all these things one day.”

“Gaius says there is no cure for the plague. If that’s so, we can only try to scare it away.”

“You would do better to put your faith in the Lord than in creatures of clay, Hypatia.”

The young woman gave the pot a final stir and then stepped over to the window. Each pane held a wavering image of the flame from the lamp on the table. She leaned closer to the glass. “How can you put your faith in a god who visits such punishment as this pestilence upon his creatures?”

Peter quickly made the sign of his religion. “This world may be full of horror, but it is only this world. Who can say what lies beyond? We might well convince ourselves there is nothing outside this kitchen, but lean close enough to that dark glass, look through the reflections from our small lamp, and you’ll see countless lights blazing forth beyond.”

“For an old army cook you preach very well, Peter,” Hypatia replied softly. “In fact, better than some prelates.”

“We must remain humble! After all, there may well be prelates who are better cooks than I am.” Peter began to smile, but then his face darkened. “Gregory and I had been discussing this world and the next for some time.”

“And those words were composed for his ears?”

“Yes.” Peter bowed his head.

Hypatia rubbed away condensation on the window panes. In the quiet kitchen, her finger made a faint squeaking sound against the glass. Boiling water murmured busily in the pot. Now the smell of bacon joined the odor of dill. “I might believe in your god if he sent a messenger to me, Peter, as he did to you. Yet why would you receive a message about your friend when so many are dying?”

Peter observed the ways of heaven were beyond understanding.

“They’re certainly beyond mine. Those clay scorpions you scorn are more much straightforward. Besides, do you think I haven’t noticed your lucky coin?”

Peter gave her a questioning look.

“The coin you keep in your room. I’ve seen it now and then when I’m cleaning.”

Peter related how he had found the coin in Isauria. “And consider this, Hypatia. Paul himself might have held that very coin!”

“It could have magickal powers then,” the young woman suggested slyly.

“You make it sound like one of those…” Peter hesitated, choosing his words with care. “…foreign talismans.”

“This sort of foreign talisman, Peter?”

Hypatia took off a small pendant suspended on a thin, leather thong and handed it to him for inspection. “It’s an udjat. They’re very highly thought of in Egypt.”

The green faience piece was a stylized representation of a large eye, with a trailing, curved tail descending from its left side.

“That’s an Eye of Horus,” Hypatia went on. “It protects its wearers against evil and ill health. Everyone in this city should be wearing one, if you ask me.”

“What an odd thing,” Peter observed. “And without intending blasphemy, it reminds me of the all-seeing eyes of the Lord.”

“Why don’t you put your coin on a chain and wear it, Peter? Then you’d be protected wherever you go.”

“But why are you convinced it is lucky?”

Hypatia beamed. “Why, because it bears the likeness of Fortuna, of course.”

Triton had not moved a great distance from his father’s dwelling, but he had fallen a long way from its comfortable surroundings.

The address to which Sylvanus had directed John lay not far from the silversmiths’ quarter, across the street from a squat edifice completely occupied, according to the plaque beside its entrance, by furriers. Chunks of the plaster facing of the apartment building where Triton lived had fallen off, revealing rough brickwork beneath. Many of its grubby windows displayed shattered panes or shutters hanging drunkenly from broken hinges.

Just inside a low archway leading to the building’s inner courtyard, two chipped columns, which looked as though they’d been recently scavenged from a refuse pit, called attention to a splintered door.

John knocked and waited. Looking back across the street, he could see a formless brown heap against the wall of the building opposite. Presumably furriers’ discarded wares. The malodorous smell wafting from that direction suggested rather a dead donkey.

A lock snicked and the door cracked open to reveal a tiny woman with the creased yellow skin of a quince and an expression almost as sour. Despite the warm weather, she was swathed in layers of black wool.

“What is it?” She firmly clutched the edge of her door, obviously prepared to slam it shut if necessary.

“Are you the owner of this building?”

“Yes. My name’s Glykeria. How can I assist you?” She inclined her head to one side to look up at John. Her eyes had a glassy, vacant look.

John realized she was actually turning an ear toward him.

The woman was blind.

He told her he sought a man named Triton.

“Do I know where he is? Indeed I do,” Glykeria replied. “Burning in the eternal fires, that’s where. That young villain will be roasting long after the empire is dust and that’s just for the rent he never paid. So whatever he owes you, I’m afraid you’ll just have to be content with considering that he’ll burn for that as well.”

The sightless eyes gleamed as if reflecting the flames she contemplated.

John sighed. He’d never undertaken an investigation where death seemed to be not only the crime, but also the murderer’s accomplice. Nonetheless he forged ahead, explaining he wasn’t a bill collector but rather a palace official.

The woman glowered at him. “Of course not. You’re a good friend and just want a word. He had so many good friends wanting a word. Never met anyone so popular, I must say. I could tell by my nose just who he’d robbed. The perfumer visited more than once. for a start. At the end he couldn’t even pay the cheesemaker’s bill. All good friends, so they said, although none of them claimed to be from the palace before now.”

John assured her he was, in fact, from the palace. She gave no indication that she had heard him, or believed him if she had.

“When did Triton die?” he asked.

“Only yesterday. Or possibly it was the day before. Not long ago.” She flapped a claw-like hand vaguely.

“Do you know anything about his family or friends? Perhaps some of these visitors you mentioned-”

“His father won’t be settling Triton’s debts, so you’re out of luck there. I can assure you, the rogue had long since cut himself off from whatever family he had, or they cut themselves off from him. Little wonder, really. If he hadn’t died, I would’ve evicted him at the end of the week.”