Mary Reed - Five for Silver

John asked, without harboring much hope, if Glykeria could remember the date of the woman’s departure. Unfortunately, she could not. Nor could she say where this particular girl had come from. She’d really been no different from the others who stayed with Triton occasionally, except she’d stayed longer than the rest.

“But then what do you expect? She was an actress, sir, and very flighty in her ways. Decent folk use other words for them that follow that particular profession.” She compressed her lips. “Have you talked to the bear trainers by the Hippodrome? But no, it’s a bull you recently visited, not a bear. She claimed to work with them. Bears, I mean.”

“And Triton, what profession did he follow?”

“He was like her. Had all sorts of notions, but rarely worked. Fancied himself first an actor, then a bear trainer. The girl knew some of the trainers, as I said, and got him a job with them. It didn’t last long and no wonder, if he mistreated the bears as badly as he did her.”

She hugged herself suddenly. “If you don’t mind, sir, there’s bit of a chill in the air. I need to warm up inside and then I’m off to the Great Church. I spend as much time there as I can.”

John remarked that one’s faith could be a great comfort in such trying times.

Glykeria gave another cackle. “It’s the incense that draws me there these days, sir. Yes, the blessed incense. It’s the only thing that banishes the stink of death from my nostrils.”

Anatolius loped through the high-ceilinged halls of the Baths of Zeuxippos, exchanging hurried greetings with one or two of the scanty number of bathers availing themselves of the facilities. It was remarkable, his poetic nature noted, how even as the shadow of Thanatos lay across the city, some residents still clung to their everyday routines.

What was even more remarkable, his practical side immediately asserted, was that there was still enough manpower and fuel to provide enough hot water for the baths to continue to operate.

The corridors were eerily deserted as he made his way toward the private baths. His footsteps, slapping against an uncharacteristically dry marble floor, sounded far too loud.

He remembered a dream he’d had more than once. In the dream he arrived at the baths only to find himself alone. The water was cold, the corridors all empty. As he wandered the lifeless labyrinth panic began to swell in his chest. Suddenly he knew, without question, he was the last person left alive and that when he emerged from the impossibly deserted baths, Constantinople would be just as empty, and all the towns beyond its walls, and all the lands beyond the seas-all would be empty. He could feel the emptiness inside him as well as all around him.

Had that recurring dream been an omen?

He had begun to form the uneasy feeling that perhaps he was dreaming again when he arrived at a semicircular area graced by a platform facing a number of empty benches.

At least this lecture room was occupied, if only by a single person, the glum-faced Crinagoras.

Seeing Anatolius, his expression brightened and he leapt up with an eager grin. “How kind of you to attend my recitation! I feared my genius had frightened off my fellow devotees of Calliope. Until you arrived, as someone once said, my audience was made up of three benches and four walls. Well, if you want to be entirely accurate, not even four walls, just a single curved one.”

Not certain whether his friend was jesting or not, Anatolius mumbled apologies for arriving late. “I visited the Lord Chamberlain on the way here, and we talked about Gregory’s murder. Remember, I was telling you about that after you mentioned you’d witnessed-”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. What matters is that you’ve managed to finally get here!”

“Yes. That’s the important thing, naturally.”

Crinagoras ignored the ironic comment and chattered on.

Anatolius occasionally wondered why he tolerated Crinagoras. They’d been tutored together as boys. Their shared horror of the hypotenuse was the foundation of their friendship. The two aspiring poets had always preferred Homer to Pythagoras.

Crinagoras had grown up to be slightly taller than Anatolius, bigger of frame, and with a tendency to plumpness. Although the same age as his fellow, his ruddy face, framed in sandy curls, retained the pudgy, unformed look of a child, a face that might be characterized as a not quite completed marble likeness still awaiting time’s final, telling cuts.

“We may as well begin, I suppose.” Crinagorus fussed with the voluminous folds of the old-fashioned toga he’d donned for the event. A disappointed scowl displaced his welcoming grin as he ruffled through several parchments. “It’s just as well I didn’t bring my lyre.”

“Perhaps notice of your recitation has not yet reached your patrons?” The prospect of maintaining a semblance of enthusiasm as an audience of one in the face of his friend’s lugubrious verses made Anatolius squirm as much as the sight of a equilateral triangle on a wax tablet had upset him in his youth. “Might I therefore suggest you delay it until they have received the news? Doubtless they’d all be sorry to miss such an opportunity! Instead, perhaps we could…” He cast about for inspiration. “…go off into the country for a little fresh air?”

“What? But we’d have to go to the stables. I’d need to change my clothing. What about our midday meal?”

“Oh, you don’t need to change,” Anatolius replied hastily. “It will be an adventure. John was telling me just now that he hadn’t learned anything when he visited Nereus’ residence except that the household has moved out to his estate. It’s up by the northern end of the Golden Horn. Perhaps we could find out something useful for him.”

“I’m not certain if I want to go, Anatolius. Riding always upsets my humors.”

“We could stop at the cemetery on the way and inspect your latest inscriptions.”

“Well, there’s that, certainly! It may be that some of my dear patrons no longer draw the breath that sang my praises. What a cold mistress is the grave, yet none can resist her blandishments. Alas, that men would desert my verses for death.”

“Aptly put, my friend. You must write it down for posterity as soon as possible.”

“Anyway, it would be best to reveal my newest inspiration to several of my patrons simultaneously, wouldn’t you say? Then no charge of favoritism could be leveled at me if one should hear before the rest.”

“A circumstance that would certainly create difficulties in the way of obtaining new commissions, if someone thought another had heard your most recent creations first.”

“Exactly so. I hope you don’t mind, Anatolius, but I shall not let you read my new poems either, even though you are a close friend!”

“Of course.” Anatolius attempted to look disappointed. “Even friends cannot always ask for special dispensations.”

“I can tell you, however, that one of them is a most personal poem about my beloved Eudoxia and the agonies of longing I have suffered ever since her death. I am quite painfully honest about my anguish. Courageously honest, if you will. It is my duty to keep her dear memory alive.”

“You don’t have to explain. Your patrons expect nothing less of you. Alas, I know how difficult it can be, pleasing one’s patrons.”

Crinagoras looked thoughtful. “I said I would not reveal my latest poems to you, but I will tell you I have composed several more of my epigrams on architecture. You see, my thought is they might eventually be chiseled on the architecture in question for a reasonable price. You might describe them as little bricks of poems. Businessmen are not always interested in the finer feelings. Ordinary subjects are what they prefer. For instance-” he glanced through the parchments in his chubby hand- “you’ve already heard my Ode to a Granary. Another one proclaims the Mese. I call it Forked Like The Serpent’s Tongue. There’s pathos in stone, you know, if you can just find it.”