Mary Reed - Four for a Boy

“Stop! Stop!” The narrator rushed over to the fallen empress and waved his arms frantically.

“Oh good sir, I cannot stop,” the empress wailed in a hideous falsetto. “I am but a poor actress and must earn my crust, or preferably a few coins, any way I can.”

From the crowd came a cry of “It’s a disgrace!”

Ignoring the comment, a lanky fellow carrying a bag of grain over his shoulder approached the prone figure. The straw in his hair revealed that he was acting the part of a farmer.

The narrator again addressed the audience. “What’s this chickpea up to? Can it be? Was Theodora’s performance really just as common gossip has it?”

Several in the crowd honked like geese.

The narrator screwed his face up in mock offense. “Some may find it humorous that a future empress was forced to support herself by stripping and allowing geese to gobble grain from her naked body.” He paused and raised his eyebrows. “Although I’ll wager the Patriarch isn’t one of them!”

The farmer opened his bag and sprinkled a few grains onto the prone empress. The crowd hooted. He daintily sprinkled a few more. The crowd grew noisier. Finally, he raised the bag, and dumped its entire contents on his fellow thespian.

The exaggerated choking noises made by the half-buried Theodora were drowned out by raucous honking of a much more professional and convincing nature than the audience’s hootings. Three goose impersonators burst out from behind the troupe of actors. Each manipulated the long, flaccid neck of a plucked and rather desiccated fowl.

“Ah, but philosophy is a merciless teacher,” cried the narrator. “I would rather pluck my eyes out like Oedipus than witness this sorry example, this spectacle of degradation. Is there not a Roman citizen among you who would spare our future empress this indignity? A coin or two. I beg of you. Feed the starving actress before she is further befowled.”

A few bits of copper flew out from the onlookers. The narrator called for more contributions, but the scanty rain soon abated. He paused and then whirled around, directing attention to one of the darker shop doorways.

A misty shape materialized in the dimness and then a stocky, dwarfish figure rushed out. It was totally white and wore a crown. The figure ran toward the recumbent empress, leaving a faint trail of the flour that covered it.

“May heaven preserve us,” thundered the narrator. “It is the shade of the Empress Euphemia!”

The diminutive phantom leapt acrobatically into the air and came crashing down on Theodora in an explosion of grain and flour. The two men dressed as women began a hissing, mewling battle, much to the crowd’s delight.

Felix laughed until he had to wipe his eyes. Despite John’s urgings he refused to budge until the epic had been finished, with the doughty Euphemia ousting the terrified Theodora, and then delivering a bombastic homily on morality.

“A good morning’s work,” John muttered as the crowd finally began to disperse. He and Felix approached the narrator as he counted a handful of coins, and made the usual inquiries.

The actor tugged at his beard, pulling it down around his neck, and scratched his chin. “A Blue, you say, but an enormous fellow? A regular Hercules?”

Felix confirmed that they were searching for such a man.

“Did he have an oddly crushed sort of nose?”

“Yes, that’s him!”

The actor shook his head. “Sorry, sirs, I haven’t seen him.”

Felix’s eyes blazed, but as he opened his mouth to retort, the actor held up a hand and smiled. “Forgive my jest. I have seen him, but not lately and not around here. He was in our audience once. We were working up near the northern harbor at the time. Or was it the southern? I can’t recall. I just remember seeing this huge man looming in the crowd. Such a man could have an excellent career in the theater, you know. He’d be perfect for a giant or Zeus. Any hero for that matter, even the emperor.”

The broad-shouldered and highly perfumed man who answered Felix’s rap at Madame Isis’ door took the excubitor’s sword and the short blade that John carried before allowing them inside.

The day had been long and fruitless. Felix had finally suggested they come here. “There’s more information to be found at Isis’ place than there is marble on Proconnesus,” he’d said.

The atrium’s floor, with its intricate scenes of entwined carnality, left no doubt as to what sort of establishment they had just entered. It was equally obvious by his accent, curly beard, and long, wavy hair that its doorkeeper was Persian. For John, the Persian and the erotic mosaic created a painful juxtaposition.

“We’re here for some wine and conversation, Darius.” As Felix spoke a girl dressed in white, hair crowned with a chaplet of interwoven flowers, rose gracefully from a gilded couch that sat beside a statue of Venus in the embrace of Mars. She padded toward them on bare feet.

Felix frowned. “I don’t have the coins for more right now, I fear. They’re right when they say if you don’t have a nummus for a sausage it’s better not to be hungry!”

“Well, Darius, it seems we have been favored by a visit of two gentlemen from court.” The girl smiled sweetly at John and Felix, and then raked them with a shrewd, appraising glance.

“In this instance I fear we have arrived to see Madam Isis, not you, Hunila.”

The girl pouted. “Oh, Felix, it’s been ages since I entertained you. When are they going to raise your wages?”

The girl looked down to the floor and following her gaze John saw she was expertly caressing one of the mosaic’s naked figures there with her bare toe. She looked up expectantly at John. “And who’s this handsome friend of yours?”

“John. He’s a slave. Assisting me.” “I will ask madam if she can see you.” Darius moved away quietly. John saw he was wearing soft yellow slippers.

“As far as that goes,” Hunila said, “we make no distinctions here, although I can think of a few of my clients who would be horrified to learn I’ve also occasionally entertained their servants. There again, who’s going to tell them?”

Felix observed that they would certainly not reveal anything. “I’m certain we can trust your professional discretion as well. Even though I’m sure there are plenty of interesting stories you could tell.”

Hunila’s face suffused with such anger that the flush on her cheeks showed through her fashionable white makeup. “Interesting? Ugly, more like it! If it hadn’t been for Darius we would have had a very bad incident the other night. Three boys from one of those idiotic factions showed up in the small hours. Not that madam minds since she just charges them extra for keeping us up late.”

Felix guffawed at such business acumen.

The girl glared at him. “Unfortunately they objected to paying a little extra for the inconvenience. You know how they are, dressed so richly but generally with about as much wealth as starving dogs. And the manners of starving dogs. Anyway, they decided to take what they wanted for nothing. Just as they’d probably stolen their fine clothing. Darius tossed them out. I thought madam would be annoyed to lose clients, but she just patted him on his shoulder and thanked him for his efforts.” Felix turned to John. “Darius has been with Isis ever since she set up this house. Beautiful place, isn’t it?”

“It’s certainly very well appointed.” John didn’t add that the dizzyingly detailed floors, plush wall hangings, decorative columns, and the gilt glittering from every nook and cranny did not match his Spartan tastes. He studied the statue of Venus and Mars, who, in contrast to the white-faced girl, had been painted in warmly realistic flesh tones.