Mary Reed: Five for Silver

“Isauria. We were both in our twenties. This was after Emperor Anastasius put down the rebellion. Our task was to clear the Isaurians out of the mountains where they’d retreated. It took years.”

“I have heard it is a rugged country and breeds rugged men.”

“Indeed it is and does, master. The mountains are made of what looks like bleached, crumbling stone. They don’t look natural at all. Traversing them was like picking a way though a ruined fortress left by some vanished race of giants.”

Peter fell silent. His eyes sparkled. He had returned to another country, more distant than the ends of the earth. His own youth.

“The fighting was brutal,” he continued. “The Isaurians battled for every pass, every boulder. I was only a cook, but I learned soon enough a blade has other uses than slicing onions. Yet, hard as it was, not a day passed when I wasn’t inspired by the knowledge I was treading the same dusty roads as the saintly Paul traveled on his missionary journeys.”

Peter paused. “You can understand, then, that I thought a great deal about Paul,” he went on. “I found it a comfort. If we stopped to rest beneath a stand of pines beside a clear cool spring, who is to say that Paul might not have found the place just as inviting and paused there to refresh himself too?”

John observed that it was certainly possible.

“Many must have passed that way through the years. Gregory and I once found a couple of old coins fallen into a crevice in a flat rock where we’d sat down to enjoy our ration of wine. The coins were dropped there by some traveler, no doubt. I saved one because its inscription showed it was from Derbe, one of the cities Paul visited. I always put the coin out the evening before I was to meet Gregory, to remind me of our appointment when I woke up the next morning.”

Peter looked at his boots and blinked back tears. “I think I will just leave it out permanently now.”

John sat as stiffly as a bronze statue, trying not to rock the tiny boat. The muscles of his long legs, necessarily drawn up almost to his chin, tingled in protest at his cramped position.

Over the broad shoulder of the laboring oarsman, he could see the customs house rising from the water, close to the mouth of the Bosporos.

The official building was a tall structure, comprised of several unmatched, wooden stories stacked atop a stolid brick base. The edifice totally obscured the rocky outcropping to which it was anchored. It appeared to be rising straight out of the murky water or else attempting to stay afloat. Neither thought reassured John. He kept his gaze fixed on his destination, finding it preferable to looking down into the gentle swells of dark oblivion so near at hand.

“Don’t worry, excellency,” the oarsman said, catching his stare toward their destination. “We’ll have you safe on dry land nigh as quick as a cleric out the back door of a whore house.” The man-Gurgos, he had announced himself-let loose a rumbling laugh.

“We might not be the sort of fancy transport you’re accustomed to, but we strive to do our best,” he went on with a grin. “It’s far better than swimming, like Leander. Did you ever hear the story of Hero, Emperor Constantine’s daughter? He had her locked up in a tower on the island where the customs house is now, to keep her pure, you see. Only that lusty lad had other ideas and swam over to visit her every night, until a tempest finished him off. A very sad tale, excellency.”

John shifted his legs slightly, observing it was indeed a tragic story, but omitting to mention that Gurgos had got the details wrong.

“Sorry about the inconvenience, excellency,” his irrepressible companion went on, looking not at all repentant. “The regular ferry men are all busy hauling the dead. Do you know how many corpses fit into even a small vessel like this? These days everyone with a boat is minting nomismata.”

He rowed silently for a time. John stared at the tower and frowned in thought.

“Yes,” Gurgos went on, “I sometimes ask myself what will be my final destination? The spacious pits across the Marmara, or perhaps one of the city wall’s towers? They’re filling up faster than the emperor’s dungeons these days, so I hear. Then again, there are always a few berths left on those ships Justinian ordered requisitioned. The evenings are cool out on the water, I admit, but we’ll be quite warm when the vessels are set afire and we’re all cremated.”

The boat dipped to one side.

Gurgos raised a dripping oar. “Sometimes folk just drop others off in the water.” He used the oar to push a half-submerged form away from their prow. The corpse bobbed past, staring up at John without curiosity.

“Isn’t this craft rather too small for you to be playing Charon?”

“I’m not complaining. Happy to take whatever comes my way. Fortuna smiled when I spotted this little boat lying against the sea wall. I thought to myself, well, the owner is nowhere in sight and is probably dead anyway, so I took it and set myself up in business.”

The large man seemed determined to tell John his entire history.

“Always been a laborer, excellency,” he continued jauntily. “It’s hard work that pays nothing and gets harder to do as you get older. I admit, until now the closest I’ve been to navigating treacherous waters was making my way through the public latrine at night, but if you see your chance, you have to take it, don’t you? I’m learning fast. It’s been nearly a week since I last capsized, and the patches I put on the boat seem to be holding well!”

Gurgos emitted another laugh worthy of Neptune at his jolliest.

They rocked sickeningly on toward the customs house with all the grace of the three-legged cat John had seen in a particular city square more than once. He was painfully aware of each awkward oar-stroke. Their destination seemed to continually sidle away, but then Gurgos would grunt volcanically and adjust their course.

By the time they drew alongside the custom house dock, John was sweating and the coins he pressed into the giant hand were as wet as if they’d been plucked from the bowels of a drowned ship. “Wait for me, Gurgos. I won’t be long.”

The customs house appeared deserted except for a few gulls perched on window sills and along the ridge of its tiled roof. Several small vessels were clustered around the island. Their sails were furled, whereas they should have been shuttling officials to and from cargo ships waiting to unload grain or amphorae of wine or oil, or to depart with crates filled with the work of the city’s finest artisans-delicately engraved silver goblets bringing a reminder of civilization to tables deep in the forests of Germania, or jewelry to decorate the neck of a wife or concubine in far off Egypt.

The heavy doors of the building opened into a perfunctory marble atrium. It was deserted.

John heard laughter.

Gurgos?

No. The sound was a giggle rather than a bellow.

John stepped between the columns framing an archway in one wall and entered a room as packed with crates and amphorae as the hold of a ship. Confiscated goods, no doubt.

He soon discovered that a portion of a wine shipment had been seized a second time, judging by the glassy-eyed looks of the young man and woman slouched at an ivory-inlaid desk in the center of the room, an open amphora at their feet.

The male sported a blotchy face and managed to project the look of a clerk, despite long hair hanging down over his back in the fashionable Hunnic style. He took another drink from a delicate, pale green exemplar of the glassmaker’s craft that probably would have cost him many weeks of his salary had he decided to purchase it.

“We’re not able to inspect your ship,” he mumbled at John. “Everyone is at home. All sick.”