Mary Reed - Five for Silver

There was no reason to go on, he realized. What chance did he have of finding Cornelia?

He was needed at his house.

He had better return as soon as he could.

As he coaxed his horse around, a flash of red caught his eye.

A short, bushy pomegranate, lancet leaves interspersed with scarlet blooms, was growing just behind the deserted column.

John’s chest tightened.

He did not know plants. Not even the ones in his own garden. He only recognized it as a pomegranate because he and Cornelia had spent an afternoon in the shade of one such, lying in the grass sampling its fruit, talking about a life that would never be.

John climbed down from his mount.

In the shadow of the column where a Christian holy man had once stood, John opened his wineskin and poured an offering around the tree sacred to the goddess Cornelia had worshipped. He offered a prayer for Cornelia, thanked Mithra for the opportunity to do so, and rode back toward Constantinople.

***

With his gaze turned homeward, John’s thoughts again centered on Peter and his murdered friend. Considering the puzzle helped push aside the dark cloud of John’s bereavement for a little while.

What had Peter’s angel said? “Gregory. Murder. Justice.”

He would never find Cornelia now, but perhaps he could still find the justice Peter desired.

Reviewing the events of the past few days and his attempts to form a coherent pattern from disparate scraps of information, John recalled his brief conversation with the bear trainers near the Hippodrome, and his subsequent musings about mythological beings.

Neptune’s horses.

The thought persisted and grew stronger.

There was something important, a pointer to the solution, involving Neptune’s horses.

Very well then, examine the conundrum logically, he thought.

Neptune was the god of the sea.

Nereus was named after a sea god.

Triton the same.

The sea.

A connection with the sea.

A link with horses.

Neptune’s horses, beautiful animals with flowing, golden manes and gleaming bronze hooves, pulling the god’s chariot over the surface of the sea.

Yet the thoughts passing rapidly through his mind made no sense, didn’t immediately suggest anything that would lead to a leap of deduction, launch him into the darkness with the certainty that his boots would find a firm surface on which to land.

If he could but apply the whip to his flagging imagination, he would have the solution in his grasp. He knew that to be the case as certainly as he knew his own name.

But the only thing that he could think of right now was that there was, in fact, one witness to Nereus’ will with whom John had not spoken.

The servant Cador.

It was true that Anatolius had conducted an interview with Cador, and in doing so had discovered that Prudentius was Nereus’ lawyer.

Was it possible Cador had other useful information?

John decided he would add a few more hours to his journey and visit Nereus’ country estate on his way back to the city.

***

By the time John arrived at the departed shipper’s estate, the lowering sun cast a pale yellow light across the landscape, lending it the appearance of an ancient mosaic sorely in need of cleaning.

From Anatolius’ description John recognized the muscular man shifting crates in front of the villa.

“Cador?” John proceeded to introduce himself and explain the purpose of his visit. He had to speak loudly to make himself heard over the noise of hammering coming from inside the building. “If we could perhaps talk in private, somewhere quieter?”

“We can step into the kitchen garden if you wish, sir,” Cador replied with a keen look at his visitor.

He led John around behind the house. “We’re crating up the master’s belongings. The estate and its contents are to be sold and the money donated to the church.”

The kitchen garden was yellowed from lack of watering. Cador strode to its far end, where a bull grazed in a pen.

As they approached, the animal greeted them with a loud bellow.

Cador looked admiringly at the animal. “He is a handsome specimen, isn’t he?”

“He certainly is, Cador.”

During his ride to Nereus’ estate, John had gone over the questions he intended to ask Cador, attempting without success to identify some stone he’d not already turned over during his interrogations of the other witnesses. No new line of inquiry had occurred to him.

He therefore concluded he would have to ask his usual questions about the will and its witnesses and hope Fortuna might finally favor him. He sighed and gazed at Apis. “Have any arrangements been made for the bull?”

Cador did not reply, continuing to stare at Apis with a smile on his lips.

John repeated his question.

Still the man did not respond.

John took a step backward and spoke the other’s name authoritatively, demanding an immediate answer.

There was no response.

John placed his hand on Cador’s shoulder. The man turned and looked expectantly into John’s face.

“You are cannot hear, can you?” John said.

***

Darkness fell as John questioned Cador further.

No new revelations were forthcoming. Sylvanus brought wine out to them and departed after greeting John and directing a few fond words at his bovine charge.

“I’m sorry I have nothing useful to tell you, sir. Most people don’t realize I cannot hear because I can follow their words by their lip movements. If they happen to notice me apparently rudely staring at them, a few get aggravated until they grasp why I must do it. On the other hand, some people will get angry no matter what you do.”

“Anatolius mentioned you were from Bretania. I imagine you had difficulty learning to interpret Greek since it is not your native tongue?”

“It took more than a little time. The master was never impatient. There were those who laughed at him because of his great interest in oracles, and though he will never admit it, Sylvanus more than once got into fisticuffs with the other servants, although he never told the master why he had been fighting. Some would have dismissed him immediately, but not Nereus. He treated us all very well. He had a kind heart, sir, and did not deserve to have such an ungrateful son.”

“Indeed. You mentioned all of Nereus’ possessions are to be sold. Is Prudentius handling that?”

Cador looked puzzled. John wondered if he were having trouble reading his lips in the dim torchlight flickering into the garden from the kitchen windows.

“Is Prudentius, his lawyer, handling the sale of your master’s possessions?” John tried to form the words clearly.

“Oh, no, sir. Prudentius is not the master’s lawyer. He employed a young fellow with offices not far from the Great Palace.”

“I understood that you had delivered a missive to Prudentius.”

“That’s true, sir. I don’t know what it was about. After Nereus and his steward died, it was my duty to do what I could to put the master’s affairs in order, so I did what I’d seen Calligenes doing, sorted through the papers on his desk, put aside bills waiting to be paid, that type of thing. There was a letter addressed to Prudentius, so I delivered it when I took a number of other missives here and there.”

John stared into Apis’ pen.

The bull lay in the shadows, a darker shape identifiable by the odor of dung and hay.

John wasn’t looking at Apis.

It was Prudentius he saw, sitting at his ornate office table, explaining to John the law of wills.

A person who could not hear was among those legally barred from serving as a witness to a will.

Nereus’ oral will was therefore invalid.

John let himself into his house in the middle of the night.