Mary Reed: Five for Silver

“No doubt. Meantime, where will he be today?”

***

From where John stood at the sea wall none of the burial pits Peter so feared were visible. A heavy pall of smoke half-obscuring masts and sullen water alike was the only evidence of municipal efforts to cope with the grim situation.

The raucous sound of squabbling gulls rose up on cool air redolent of the sea, overlaid with the sound of voices. Not the shouts of individual dockworkers, but rather the murmur of a group of people speaking all at once.

John trod to the bottom of a slippery flight of steps leading to a rocky strip of shoreline littered with rotting seaweed and other debris. There he halted to observe the situation.

A short distance away several people talked and gestured excitedly. A sudden shout directed John’s attention toward the water. Scipio’s information had been correct. He could see a spindly figure some way out.

It appeared as if it were dancing on the surface of the sea.

“Came out of nowhere, so it did,” someone loudly remarked.

“It’s magick, I tell you!”

“Smoke and sea spray. That’s all.”

“No, it’s him! That holy bastard!” The speaker was a long-armed, lanky fellow, with shoulders as wide as a spar and an untidy bowl of blond hair.

“Performing miracles now, is he?” The blond man had a companion of comparable size, but darker and bearded.

“I’ll give him miracles,” cried the blond. “He’s the bastard who insulted my wife when the cart came for her!”

The figure identified as the holy fool spread his thin arms as if they were wings and swayed perilously from side to side, his feet moving in place as if to keep a precarious balance on the water.

The fool began to laugh wildly.

His merriment enraged the two men even further. They ran to the shoreline, shouting virulent abuse, which was amply returned in kind.

More epithets followed. Then the pair splashed into the water. It had risen up to their waists before they reached the fool, who was still lurching from side to side.

“Have you been baptized, my sinful friends?” he cried, kicking spray into their faces.

The lanky blond grabbed the fool’s arms.

“Now let’s see you do another miracle, you old goat!”

He shoved the fool’s head under the water.

Eerily lit by strengthening sunlight, the two big men forcing the slight figure beneath the frothing surface might have been chiseled in marble. For an instant John remained frozen in place by the prospect of entering the dark depths in which a murder was taking place.

He ordered himself to move.

He did not have time to obey the order, or to disobey it.

A stiff arm emerged from the roiling water and slapped the blond assailant’s leg.

The man let out a yelp of disgust and then he and his companion were retreating to the shore, dragging the fool in their wake.

John glimpsed a bloated face leering from just below the surface and a swollen torso, rotating slowly as it drifted away.

The disturbance created by the fool and his assailants had set in motion the floating corpses upon which the fool had been balancing.

Back on land, the enraged pair began to beat the fool. Between coughs and sputters he taunted them, spitting blood in the bearded man’s face.

The onlookers drew back, apparently disinclined to come to his aid.

The blond man pulled out a long blade.

Now John did move, and quickly. “In the name of Justinian, I order this ended!”

Three startled faces turned his way.

“And who might you be?” sneered the man with the blade.

“I know who it is!” came the helpful reply from the fool. “It’s the Lord Chamberlain!”

“He’s no more Lord Chamberlain than you are holy, you stupid, blaspheming bastard!”

The fool rolled on to his side and propped his chin in his dirty palm. “A fool I am, but not stupid. Look at his clothing.”

“It’s worth more than I make in a month,” growled the bearded man.

“No one’ll notice another naked corpse,” his companion suggested, lifting his blade.

John turned his head toward the stairs. “Guards!”

The blond grabbed his friend’s wrist. “Bodyguards! Now who’s the fool? You think he’d be out walking about alone?”

The murderous pair took flight up the shore, not pausing to look back in their panic. The rest of the crowd followed.

John turned his attention to the man he had rescued.

The fool’s face was sunburnt and creased with deep, innumerable furrows. His eyes were black and glittering, deep wells sunk in a parched desert.

With a shock, John realized he knew the man he had just saved.

Years before the fool had claimed to be a soothsayer.

***

“Ahaseurus?”

Thomas downed a gulp of wine and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Ahaseurus is the holy fool? I can’t say I’m surprised though, since going by what I’ve heard about his antics, he isn’t much of a holy fool. There was one in Antioch you could track through the streets by his spoor. That would have been very useful in your quest to find him, wouldn’t it?” He gave a hearty laugh. “But leaving that aside, the question is what’s Ahaseurus doing in Constantinople?”

“That’s what I hoped you’d be able to tell me,” John replied, pouring more wine into his cracked cup.

He had returned to a house occupied only by Peter. After a word or two with the elderly servant, John allowed himself to lie down and awoke late in the day to the fragrant smell of boiling chicken.

Evidently Hypatia had found a suitable fowl in the marketplace.

After the evening meal, when dusk cast a kindly veil over the city, Hypatia lit the lamps. As she and Europa chattered in the kitchen, John had invited Thomas into his study.

Thomas regarded the wall mosaic and pondered John’s question. “I have no notion why Ahaseurus would be in Constantinople posing as a holy fool. Why do you think I would?”

“Am I wrong to suspect you were associated with the rogue in some manner the last time he was here?”

Thomas ignored the question. “If he really was a soothsayer as he claimed, you’d think he’d have avoided Constantinople, because he’d know if he came here he’d be riding around in a cart hauling the dead or getting himself assaulted by murderous ne’er-do-wells.”

“He was fortunate today. Tomorrow he may not be so lucky.”

Thomas shook his head in admiration. “Dancing on the sea! What a sight it must have been and yet so simple to accomplish when you know how it’s done. Provided one had the agility. I’m sure Europa could have done it. Not that I would allow her to try. Still, why wasn’t the trick of it apparent at once?”

“During our conversation he claimed he is able to make people see only what he wants them to see, not to mention that he can also stop them seeing things he does not wish them to see.”

“An excellent skill to have, I’d say. Apart from gallivanting about the city getting up to no good and being rescued by Lord Chamberlains, what else is he doing? Is he still working as a soothsayer?”

“He mentioned he continues to practice the art, except instead of reading a chicken’s entrails, the chicken itself does the fortune telling. He claims he was recently consulted by the empress at the palace baths, no less.”

“He showed a chicken to Theodora in the baths and lived to tell the tale?” Thomas guffawed. “Mithra, but you have to admire the old rogue’s tale spinning! Did he happen to mention what the chicken supposedly revealed?”

“Apparently the empress asked it if she would die of the plague and the answer given was that she would not. However, Ahaseurus added that as an oracle the bird was not too reliable because people often don’t ask it the right question and it can only answer yes or no.”