Mary Reed - Four for a Boy

The sculptor’s residence nestled within an enclave behind the Domninus, north of where that colonnaded thoroughfare intersected the Mese, in an area populated by bakers, metal workers, and artisans.

An archway leading from the Domninus admitted John to a courtyard around which stood tiny shops selling glassware, jewelry, dyed goods and furniture. The sound of hammering, the thud of mallet on chisel, and the smell of sawdust, all gave evidence of workshops behind the shop fronts. Blankets, draped to air at open windows punctuating the upper story of the enclosure, disclosed the presence of residences.

John noticed several premises displaying marble pieces at their doors, but his eye was drawn to one emporium. Over its entrance loomed a huge, carved lintel. The doorway itself was surrounded by small squares and rectangles of marble, wood, metals, painted plaster, and mosaic chips, each repeating in miniature form the single word chiseled deeply into the lintel: Signs.

Curiously, however, the sign-maker’s sign did not announce his name to prospective clients.

The proprietor, a red-faced man, appeared in the doorway and smiled expectantly as John approached.

“Good morning, sir,” he said jovially. “What can I do to help you? Do you seek a sign for your business premises? A plaque announcing your name and profession?”

John wondered what he would do with a bronze plaque engraved with “John, Slave.” Perhaps, he thought ruefully, he could wear it around his neck.

“Let me guess what you will want emblazoned on your sign.” The man turned his head to one side and squinted hard at John. “I can always tell the professions of my clients. Tall fellow, aren’t you? Little trace of calluses on your hands, I see. By your looks Greek perhaps? And you have the bearing of an aristocrat, sir. Definitely from the palace.”

The maker of signs bobbed his head enthusiastically. “Yet there is something hardened in your features,” he went on. “Military almost. And…hmmmm…there’s that look…” The man straightened his head and chuckled. “Well, sir, I give up. All I can think to classify you as is a philosopher!”

“I regret to say I’m not here to buy a sign,” John replied politely, “but rather seeking a sculptor named Dio.”

The red-faced man looked disappointed. “Dio? Naturally. He has all the luck!” He pointed across the courtyard to one of the larger shops.

“He has all the luck, you say?”

“One big commission after another. Why, customers pour in over there and the way they’re dressed, you’d think his door was the entrance to the emperor’s reception hall. He’s barely more than a youth. Granted, he has some talent.”

John thanked the man. “By the way,” he added, “you are quite correct about me, at least if you count as a philosopher someone who studied for a time at Plato’s Academy.”

The man brightened. “There it is. I do have a knack for reading people, sir. Very helpful in my trade, as you might surmise.”

John strode over to Dio’s shop. He guessed the sign-maker would soon be regaling everyone in earshot with how he’d identified a philosopher from the palace. Doubtless the tale of such a person visiting his emporium would be worth more to him as publicity for his wares than whatever he might have earned from a commission for a sign.

The sculptor’s shop was deserted except for a few bits of carved marble populating a table. They were chiefly smaller versions of the sculpture in the Great Church but there was also a woman’s head, startlingly realistic and thus none too flattering, depicting as it did every wrinkle and several prominent moles. A rejected commission perhaps?

John walked through the shop and into the studio behind.

The space was larger than he’d anticipated, two stories in height, with a packed dirt floor. Worktables covered with tools and partly shaped chunks of marble and granite lined unfinished masonry walls. Light poured down from tall, narrow windows.

Dio was nowhere to be seen.

At the far wall of the studio a dozen rectangular chunks of marble, all taller than a man, stood close together. Their grouping reminded John of the mysterious clusters of weather-eroded standing stones he’d seen in Bretania.

In front of them lay a chisel whose edge glistened moistly red.

A dark trickle curved from it into the marble grove. John followed its trail.

Spatters of blood had sprayed a tall marble slab set against the studio wall. A body sprawled at its foot, face upward.

Dio?

John realized he had no description.

Not that it would have assisted identification. Whoever had killed the man had applied the chisel to the victim’s face. The white patches glistening up through its scarlet ruin were not marble, but bone.

Voices sounded in the shop.

Had the sign-maker followed him?

He peered cautiously out from the cluster of marble monoliths.

Armed men entered the studio. Not excubitors. Sent by the Gourd, then. Had someone already found the body and alerted the authorities?

But if so, why hadn’t the sign-maker known Dio was dead? It was hardly the sort of thing whoever discovered the body would have kept secret.

Something else caused him to hesitate about revealing his presence. Perhaps it was a certain wariness in the way the men moved. A caution they would not have displayed if they were expecting to confront nothing more dangerous than a dead man.

Besides, he reasoned rapidly, why send so many men to look after one corpse?

“…tall and thin…a eunuch…” one of the men said.

It was John they sought. But why? The answer was as obvious as the murdered man at his feet. He was supposed to be caught at the scene.

Venturing another glance, John noted that two of the armed men were now blocking the door leading to the shop.

One of the others pointed toward his hiding place.

For an instant John considered surrendering himself. He was investigating a murder. Would it be so surprising that he might chance upon another victim?

Yet it was obvious that it had all been arranged. He was about to be wrongly accused. Or rather, first he would be murdered while supposedly resisting arrest. Then posthumously accused.

John made his decision.

Turning, he grasped the top of the slab against the studio wall and yanked himself upward.

Shouts rang out as he was spotted. By the time the first of the men reached the departed Dio, John had scrambled through the open window above the slab.

He found himself on the roof of a shed leaning against the back of the studio. Beyond rose a jumbled wilderness of buildings and tiled roofs.

He quickly crossed the shed, clambered onto the roof of the adjacent structure, and ran in the direction of the Domninus.

At the street, the tile roof came to an abrupt end. Here the buildings facing the Domninus were two stories tall, while the colonnade sheltering their shop entrances rose only to the height of a single story. Fortunately, the roof of the colonnade formed a serviceable route along and above the street. John lowered himself hastily onto it.

Looking down into the Domninus he saw several pursuers emerge from beneath the archway to the artisans’ enclave. From behind him came the sound of pounding boots and shouted commands to stop.

He began to run past the windows of the apartments that looked out over the colonnade roof.

Passersby gaped up at him from the street. He glanced back over his shoulder. Three men had reached the roof of the colonnade. More ran down the street, paralleling his flight. A few urchins joined the pursuit, screaming with excitement as they raced ahead of the armed men.

John was dimly aware of pale ovals of faces behind the windows he passed as the curious looked out to see the cause of the commotion.