Mary Reed - Four for a Boy

“Anna! I thought it was you. Yes, you deduce correctly. I decided to take a stroll to blow the cobwebs away. This is certainly the right weather for that! And what do you think of this? I was just standing outside the Great Church talking to a couple of senators, good friends of mine, and I saw the most amazing thing. There was a commotion around the corner and the several of the Gourd’s men went racing past, with swords drawn no less. I wonder what that was all about?”

Lady Anna said she was not surprised. “We’re living in an armed encampment these days. We should count ourselves fortunate if we are merely robbed and not murdered for daring to venture out.” Her lips curved briefly into an ironic smile.

“As you say. An armed encampment,” Trenico agreed. “Even the Greens are afraid to be out on the streets.”

“So the Blues have spared us from the depredations of the Greens, at least,” Anna observed.

“The cold hasn’t frozen your wit! Let’s hope the emperor regains his senses and orders some chariot races before long. Then these miserable factions can get back to insulting each other from opposite ends of the Hippodrome and leave the rest of us in peace.”

John had occasionally glimpsed Trenico at Lady Anna’s home. The man seemed intent on ingratiating himself with her father, Senator Opimius. That was one path to advancement for a soft fop of a courtier who probably knew nothing about armed encampments.

“You can see I’m well protected.” Lady Anna gestured at John.

“Well protected? By whom?” For the first time Trenico acknowledged John’s presence. “Oh yes, him. But surely this is only the slave your father borrowed from the Keeper of the Plate’s office to tutor you? A eunuch, is it not? How can a eunuch tutor protect you from a street gang? Frighten them away by reciting epic verses?”

John struggled to maintain a blank expression. He succeeded, barely. Luckily Trenico did not glance down at John’s hand, tightened around the hilt of his dagger until his knuckles were pale. It would be sweet to sink the blade into that jeering fool. He forced himself to look away from Trenico and glance around the Augustaion again. His dark eyes were furious.

It would also be folly indeed to spill aristocratic blood, John’s practical side reminded him. He did not consider himself as truly a slave, and would never accept his slavery. Unfortunately, the world saw things differently.

“You don’t seem worried about running into any danger in the streets, Trenico,” Anna was saying. “Aren’t you tempting thieves going about in such finery?”

Trenico’s broad shoulders went back. To John he resembled a dove puffing its feathered breast. “Even those murdering Blues won’t force me to creep around the city sporting a brass belt buckle. I’d rather die defending my best silver buckle, or the gold one for that matter.”

“I would think your life would be worth more than a silver buckle.”

Trenico shrugged off her comment. “Don’t fret, Anna, I can defend myself. But I fear I must be on my way now. I have an audience at the Hormisdas Palace with Theodora. This is absolutely confidential, you understand.”

John glared at Trenico’s receding back. A smoky haze was settling, suffusing the city with a gray twilight. In the eerie light the massed buildings, a jumble of tenements crowding up to churches, mansions protected by stout doors, looming warehouses, elegant colonnaded baths, all of them sporting roofs bristling with crosses, appeared to John as nothing more than a fanciful fresco on the wall of an eccentric’s villa.

It had been only a handful of years since he had been brought here to labor in metaphorical chains. There were still days when Constantinople and his life within the Great Palace seemed unreal. Perhaps that notion had helped him to endure the unendurable.

“I wonder what all that fuss Trenico mentioned was about?” Anna mused as they continued on toward the Great Church. “The City Prefect always has armed men running around. It’s mostly done to impress citizens, or at least that’s what father says.”

“That could well be so.”

They ascended the steps to the church. When they reached the shelter of its wide, columned portico John almost-unforgivably-relaxed his vigilance. He heard the muffled pounding of approaching footsteps and for a heartbeat imagined they signaled the reappearance of the rambunctious street urchins.

Then two Blues careened out of the building and down the stairs. With a swift sweep of his arm, John pushed Lady Anna into a corner of the portico and placed himself between her and the church door.

Just in time before a third Blue burst out.

This one raised his weapon to strike, saw the blade waiting in John’s hand, and instead bolted off toward the Mese.

John registered a fleeting impression. An enormous man with the shoulders of a brick carrier and a squashed and crooked nose. Then two of the Prefect’s men rushed out. They halted at the top of the steps, labored breath hanging on the air, as they stared out over the open space before them.

Behind them, in the church, the screaming began.

“The bastards have split up,” growled one of the men.

“Where’s Septimius?” asked his companion.

“He’s trying to stop the doorkeeper’s bleeding. One of them slashed the old man on their way out. A clever diversion. They’re not all stupid, the Blues.”

“What about Hypatius?”

John noticed Lady Anna pale at the mention of the name.

“He’s beyond tending,” came the reply. “Look, I’ll follow the short fellow. See if you can catch the one who ran toward the hospice. Once he’s gone through there into the alleys we’ve lost him. Let the giant go. Someone his size won’t be able to hide for long.”

John looked across the square. The quarry had already disappeared from sight even as the men finally lumbered off in pursuit. They would be fortunate to catch the fleeing miscreants. He suspected they didn’t particularly want to corner them.

He turned toward Anna. “Forgive my impertinence in touching you.” He broke off, seeing her expression. Her face looked whiter than the freshest snow shrouding the city.

“Hypatius,” she whispered. “Surely not the same Hypatius…”

She spun around and entered the church. John followed.

Just inside the vestibule a man bent over a prone figure, no doubt the wounded doorkeeper. Worshippers milled about in panic. The screaming had stopped, but several women sobbed and a short man with gray hair shook his fist at no one in particular.

“I saw it with my own eyes!” he shouted. “Murder even while the Lord looks on!”

John pushed his way through the crowd, clearing a path for Lady Anna as they advanced toward the life-sized marble sculpture standing on a shoulder-high pedestal in the center of the vestibule. It was an image of the meek god the Christians worshipped, a condemned man as helpless as any slave, hanging from a cross. Wisps of coiling lamp smoke imparted a hint of animation to the dying man’s chiseled features, but the groan of anguish was Anna’s.

She had knelt beside a crumpled shape lying like a carelessly discarded robe at the foot of the pedestal on which the instrument of execution was displayed. Lamplight glinted on a dark, glassy pool spreading from the motionless form.

“It is Hypatius. My father’s friend. They will never discuss philosophy or share wine again.”

***

Felix flinched as Emperor Justin’s spidery hand unexpectedly dropped onto his shoulder. At first the young German excubitor feared that some loathsome creature had fallen on him from the low roof of the bridge between the church and the Great Palace. When he jerked his helmeted head around and saw instead Justin’s veined and palsied hand, his heart jumped. Most of the empire’s inhabitants would meet their god without even setting eyes on their emperor. His fleshly touch was profoundly unsettling.