Mary Reed: Four for a Boy

John frowned.

“Why do you look so puzzled? Wouldn’t you be frightened if a shade suddenly appeared in your kitchen?”

Opimius’ ancient house steward, who had been looking over a pile of vegetables spread out on the other end of the table, came up to John and patted his shoulder. It was a gesture John disliked intensely.

“You feel solid enough,” Dorotheus continued with a wide smile. “Nonetheless, everyone in the household heard you’d been dragged off to the imperial cells. Usually that means you’re as good as dead.”

John nodded. He should have realized how startling his reappearance must be. His death had seemed a foregone conclusion to them, just as it had to him. He did not offer Dorotheus an explanation for his salvation and the old man did not ask.

John moved his hands closer to the fire. They were almost colorless and numb with cold. The hands of a shade. “I was instructed to resume my duties here, Dorotheus, although occasionally I shall be required elsewhere. I thought I’d warm up a little before seeking Lady Anna.”

“You won’t find her at home, John. She and the master are both out.” The steward’s face was the same brown as the leaves that clung to trees all winter in the northern climes where John had fought long ago. “You look barely alive. What did they do to you?”

John said he had not been mistreated. Dorotheus looked unconvinced. He puffed his cheeks out in a manner that, coupled with his brown face and small beak of a nose, gave him a distinct resemblance to a plump pheasant.

“You were extremely fortunate. The trouble with you is you don’t know when you’re well off. Just back from the dead, and there you stand, looking as sour as spoiled milk.”

“Alive or dead, my fate has nothing to do with my own efforts. It was Fortuna spared me and nothing more than that.”

“I should say it was the Lord that spared you,” Dorotheus replied with a quick scowl. “If you want to call Him Fortuna, I doubt He cares. But having Him on your side is better than having all the emperor’s armies at your back.”

John said nothing and gloomily continued to warm his hands.

Dorotheus sighed. Cheerful by nature, he was a man who could have consulted the oracle of Trophonius and still emerged with a smile on his face, but John’s mood was almost bleak enough to chill even his perpetually sunny demeanor.

He requested John to step out of the kitchen so that they could have a few private words.

There was a sudden exclamation as one of the kitchen workers sliced into her thumb. Perhaps she had been more intent on her eavesdropping than her work.

John murmured agreement. Could he properly refuse a request from Dorotheus, who was a slave like himself, but as steward ruled in his master’s absence? John had been at the palace for several years and every change in his work still brought new uncertainties. He had only recently grown accustomed to laboring in the office of the Keeper of the Plate and had just begun to enjoy it when he was thrust into new duties tutoring Lady Anna.

Now his situation was different again, although for the present he preferred not to think of the mysterious new assignment set before him.

Given his years of military employment, the prospect of taking orders from the Prefect Theodotus was not unappealing in itself, although, for all he knew, he might only be handling written work for him. Justinian had said something about an investigation into the death of Hypatius the philanthropist, the murder the whole city had been talking about. Perhaps he expected John to organize reports and evidence as he would marshal the Keeper of the Plate’s valuable dinnerware for a banquet.

Dorotheus led John from the kitchen and along a hallway whose windows looked out into an inner courtyard. Its fountain was coated with rivulets of ice resembling meandering streams of wax from a melting candle. A few brown leaves drifted down from the branches of a skeletal tree. The sky was leaden.

“I am expecting more snow. It’s most unnatural, if you ask me,” the steward observed. “In all my years I can’t remember such winter weather. Thank the Lord we have warm beds to sleep in and good food to eat. Many are not as fortunate.”

“That’s true enough.” Troubled as he was, John couldn’t help thinking of the shivering beggar he and Anna had seen huddled in a doorway not that far from this well-appointed household. He mentioned the incident to Dorotheus and wondered aloud if the unfortunate man had managed to find better shelter for what would certainly turn into a bitterly cold night. Dorotheus observed confidently that the Lord looked after His flock and made the sign of his religion.

John did not like cold weather and never had. He was thin. Any chill in the air found its way into his bones too easily. One of the few things he liked about living in the empire’s capital was that it was not often as frigid as it had been the past few days.

“Yes,” Dorotheus took up his previous observation, “there’s plenty who would envy us. We may not be free men, John, yet we have a better life than many who are proud to so call themselves. Free to freeze or starve, more like it!”

They climbed the staircase at the end of the hallway and entered Dorotheus’ room, a cramped space cluttered with a pallet, a pair of stools and two chests. A bronze brazier warmed the air with a few smoldering embers.

“Sit down, John.” Dorotheus stirred up the fire, pushed a stool toward its warmth, and seated himself on the edge of his pallet.

“I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to talk with you ever since you began tutoring Lady Anna.

She’s very fond of you and so we all are. There’s nothing more important here than her happiness. Apart from the master’s, of course, but as his depends on hers, it amounts to the same thing.”

John did not reply. Glancing out of the room’s tiny window, he saw that snow flurries had begun to lazily bedaub the sky.

Taking his silence for attentiveness, his companion plunged ahead enthusiastically. “You see, I realized immediately that you’re one of those headstrong young men who are dissatisfied with the place assigned him. Don’t deny it! You are more discreet in your speech than most, but I can see it in your eyes.”

Dorotheus hesitated, collecting his thoughts. “Now, I’ve been with the senator’s household since I was purchased as a mere boy. Never in all that time have I wanted for anything. A kinder master than Opimius you could scarcely find. On the whole ours is not a bad life, wouldn’t you say?”

“Do you think so?”

“You have a quick temper, John,” Dorotheus said sorrowfully. “But what man is not a slave in some way or another? We are all slaves to time and age. And we all must serve the Lord, even the emperor. Eunuchs like us are less enchained than many a free man, since we’re not slaves to our passions.”

Was rage then not a passion? John said nothing. He did not want to hurt Dorotheus’ feelings. He would never have chosen the life Dorotheus found so natural. He could only hope he would not have to endure it for as long as the old steward already had.

“Nor do any of us need question what befalls us, for it is all the will of heaven,” Dorotheus said, as if reading what John was thinking. “Now, you know the tale of John Chrysostom and the eunuch Eutropius?”

John nodded. Who had not heard the story of how the paths of the Christian Chrysostom, he of the golden tongue, and of Eutropius had crossed more than a century earlier in this very city?

“Then consider this,” Dorotheus said. “Eutropius originally worked in a minor position in the palace administration. It’s said he came to imperial attention through his wit and piety, but whatever the reason in due course he was elevated to chamberlain and consul.”