Mary Reed - Four for a Boy

Mystified, John described the various courses he had seen.

“I am always looking for something new in the culinary line to offer my clients. I don’t think those baked gourds you described would do. However, I’ve had an inspired idea. What do you think of this? I shall redecorate my house in the style of Sobek, the crocodile god!”

“Sounds very exotic to me.” Felix’s speech was slurred. “Though when visiting a girl, how much notice does anyone take of the surroundings? What did you say? Crocodile god? That might keep the Blues away and everyone else as well!”

“Oh, Felix, it would all be in jest!”

“A toast to whatshisname then, the god of Egypt.” Felix spoke too loudly. He helped himself to yet more wine.

John set his own cup down. It was always wise to keep a clear head. He wondered if he’d have to carry the burly excubitor back to his barracks.

***

On their way out, Felix fumbled his sword as Darius returned it. The sun’s early promise had proved to be as reliable as that of a man of law. The wind was sweeping in from sea, swirling around corners and throwing dust into pedestrians’ eyes. John hoped its chilly fingers would revive his companion.

As the two men stood outside Isis’ house several others hurried up, paused as they drew abreast, and then quickened their pace to go by, faces averted. John suggested it would be better if they moved away from Isis’ door since their presence there was obviously affecting possible clients.

Felix, however, planted his boots stolidly, leaned against the wall and contemplated the sky, evidently seeking inspiration.

“I’m not certain where we should inquire next,” he finally announced, scratching his chin.

He appeared to John to be in no condition to make further inquiries. “As I suggested earlier, we should try to establish who might have an interest in engaging someone to do away with Hypatius.”

“And what authority have we been granted to question the sort of people who can hire others to do such murderous tasks?”

“None, strangely enough given the circumstances,” John admitted. “However, I think it would be the best-”

“And who are you to be giving orders?”

“I am trying to cooperate as ordered.”

“Well, I’m willing to listen to sensible suggestions.” Felix spoke thickly.

“We certainly can’t find the culprits by sitting around and drinking.”

Felix took a lurching step forward. “Watch your tongue, slave, or I’ll give you a thrashing you won’t soon forget!”

Slave! The insult was a spark to the anger that permeated John’s being like oil in a lamp wick. A raven’s wing of darkness beat across his eyes and a roaring akin to breaking waves filled his ears.

Felix seemed unaware of his companion’s anger. “You dare to insult one of the emperor’s bodyguard?” he went on. “You. A slave! And a eunuch at that!”

John’s fists clenched. The muscles in his arms tightened.

With an effort he stopped himself from lashing out.

A terrible heat rushed up around him as he looked at the excubitor, swaying, splay legged and glassy eyed. An easy target.

John reminded himself he was not free to defend honor he did not possess. Were he to strike Felix, he would be destroyed like a defective tool.

Not that that possibility concerned him, for it would mean a merciful end to the undesired, phantom existence into which he had been cast.

But how then could he find those shadowy enemies who seemed to be menacing Senator Opimius and his daughter, Lady Anna?

“What, you’re not going to fight? At least pretend to be a man.” Felix took a unsteady step toward John and fell forward.

John caught him. “Come on, Felix,” he said. “Perhaps we can get you into the barracks without your captain noticing.”

“Do you know, Proclus, I sometimes wish I were still Captain of the Excubitors. It’s a more straight-forward job than this emperor business. I should have refused the crown, especially since the Master of Offices was eager enough to wear it.”

Justin shifted uncomfortably on the marble bench in an instinctive but vain attempt to relieve the ever-present pain of his wound. He did not look at his quaestor. Instead, he stared out into the night, across the sunken garden he had insisted they visit.

“It was you for whom the crowds in the Hippodrome roared, Caesar,” Proclus replied smoothly, “and the empire would have been the poorer had you not acceded to the public will.”

“The empire got on perfectly adequately without me for several centuries. It will manage just as well when I’m gone. Each journey I take is more difficult. I wonder if this will be the last time I see this place?”

“You mused about the same thing only two weeks ago, Caesar,” Proclus pointed out. They had descended several terraces in the palace grounds, down precipitous staircases and along twisting paths meandering between groves of dark cypresses.

Their winding way took them to a long colonnade whose pillars were embraced by climbing plants, leafless in this dead season. The sylvan retreat was fitted with benches and faced a marble fountain whose wind-blown jet dared sprinkle droplets on the ruler of the empire as the small procession passed by.

Justin produced a key, opened a low door in the far corner of the colonnade, and thus they had come at last to this concealed garden.

Hemmed in by the blank back of the colonnade and two tall brick retaining walls, the narrow, enclosed space held its secrets fast among the cascading vines and trailing bushes spilling down in thick profusion from plantings on the terrace towering above its fourth side. The trees faintly silhouetted on the level above them might have been floating in the starry sky.

Justin’s attendants, breathing as heavily as the emperor, had lowered him to the bench and, on his curt order, departed to the other side of the colonnade door.

“This garden was Euphemia’s notion,” Justin said. “A private place kept only for us, away from prying eyes and ears. We often came here at night. It’s a good place to talk, and sometimes even…yes…” A reminiscent smile lightened his broad, ruddy face.

Proclus observed that the imperial living quarters offered more warmth, not to mention comfort, on this cold night and pointedly suggested that Justin might be more comfortable there rather than sitting in a cold, dark garden.

“Would I? Even the most trusted guards have ears, Proclus. Yes, on reflection, I should have allowed someone else to take the throne. My life would have been simpler.”

“The Master of Offices was incompetent. As for your other rival, Amantius…he was a villain, to say the least. A treacherous eunuch. Would you have allowed him to place his own man on the throne?”

“There are those who think I am more treacherous still,” Justin replied. “My nephew, to name but one. He believes I condemned Amantius for no other reason than to serve my own ambition. Naturally, he fears I intend to employ the same strategy with him, which is to say executing him for the murder of Hypatius. My own nephew, a man I have educated and nurtured and made my heir, believes this vile lie! How do I know, you wonder? Let’s just say that, like my guards, the walls of the Hormisdas have ears. Perhaps, after all, I am not a foolish old man to wish to speak to you privately here.”

His voice was so low that Proclus could barely make out his words over the sound of water reverberating around the rectangular space. At the base of the waterfall tumbling from the terrace above an alabaster Diana stood poised on a marble outcrop in the middle of a pool whose edges were lost in thick undergrowth.

The moon had risen. As his eyes grew accustomed to its stark, blue light, Proclus could see other alabaster forms, a deer, a goat, a boar, half concealed amid rampant bushes. The pale animals looked alive and made him uneasy, although less so than when he looked up at the rectangle of sky. Then he felt as if he was standing at the bottom of a freshly dug grave.