Mary Reed: Four for a Boy

“You’re saying I should not despair, that I might shed my chains one day?”

Dorotheus smiled. “John, you’re being deliberately obstinate, I fear. Surely you recall that Eutropius grew greedy and corrupt and was eventually executed? Obviously what we should learn from his sorry tale is we ought not to seek to rise beyond the position in which we are placed. Especially when ours is such a comfortable one.”

John made no reply. He could scarcely reveal that his position had suddenly become much less comfortable than Dorotheus innocently supposed.

“Now, John, your life isn’t really such a nightmare, is it? You have not flung yourself over the seawall in despair.”

John paused before replying. After his capture and castration, he no longer suffered nightmares.

When he could not avoid thinking about it, this seemed to him a natural result of his maiming. By that unthinkable act in the Persian camp, the night exhausted its forces. The formless terror that lurked just out of sight around sleep’s darkest corners had presented itself all too clearly. The heart-stopping fall had ended, not in waking but with crippling impact. As for death, the bottomless dread upon which all other fears play like ripples, John would gladly have plunged into its depths if he had not felt even more strongly that his duty, as a soldier of Mithra, was to endure.

When he replied to Dorotheus, John chose his words carefully. “It’s true I have not thrown myself over the seawall. That is because heaven has ordered that I exist in this world. It’s an order renewed each time I awake. I cannot imagine the purpose of it, but one should not question heaven.”

Dorotheus gazed at him sorrowfully. John remained silent. How could he explain to this cheerful old man, a man who had never known anything but slavery, how it was to be free, to chart one’s course in the world, to make one’s own way?

And having done so how then to convey the stark horror of being captured and offered for sale to anyone with enough coins to buy a man, a woman, or a child and with that purchase the right of absolute power over their bodies and their fates?

It was not possible to even begin to describe it, he thought, nor did he wish to attempt it. His past life was gone. The man he had been had died under a bloodstained blade.

***

“What’s he up to? That’s what I’d like to know! He’s burdened me with an excubitor and a slave. It’s a certain wager they’ve been told to keep an eye on what I’m doing. I won’t have it!”

Theodotus had stamped into Proclus’ office without announcement. Not that he needed any. There were few in Constantinople who would not have recognized the rough-hewn City Prefect. Though he dressed like a peasant in leather breeches and a rough wool shirt, no one could have mistaken the broad-chested figure, shambling along as if weighed down by the enormous and asymmetrical head set between wide shoulders without apparent benefit of a neck.

Some whispered he’d been kicked in the head by a horse as a youngster. Others said the misshapen head was a result of his mother easing her pregnancy with demonic potions. No one, however, said anything at all about the matter when within earshot of the man nicknamed the Gourd.

“You’re speaking of your two new assistants?” Proclus was seated behind a cluttered desk beside Emperor Justin. He had been helping the emperor sign new legislation when Proclus barged in. Justin didn’t bother to look up from the papers he labored over. “I’d heard about them. By direct order of Justinian, wasn’t it? And the emperor, of course.”

Theodotus ran stubby fingers through hair consisting of a few frazzled strands. “How can I possibly fail to keep order in the city with so much help thrust upon me?” His voice was heavy with sarcasm.

“The murder of Hypatius has dangerous political overtones. There are plenty who might use it for their own ends.” Proclus spoke so quietly he might have been sharing a confidence with the Prefect rather than pointing out something so obvious.

“What he means is my nephew’s let his precious Blues run amuck and now they’ve killed someone important. Not just common beggars and shop keepers. Interesting, isn’t it? With the public outrage it’s caused, he might not get his wish to push me aside before my carcass is cold. Ah! Look. I’ve blotched this one too.” Justin yanked the wooden stencil he’d been tracing off the parchment.

Proclus plucked the sheet up and examined it.

“It is perfectly acceptable, Caesar.”

“So you say, but no one ever tells the emperor he’s got a boil on the end of his nose,” Justin growled.

“Why should they? Boil or not, he is the emperor.”

“Few would dare to talk to their ruler like that,” Justin observed. “That’s why I value your advice so much. And Theodotus’ also. He doesn’t care how he speaks in my presence either. What is this document about anyway? My eyes seem particularly blurred today.”

“It’s a list of regulations regarding warehouse fees.”

“Then it’s all right. Business owners have better things to worry about than blotched signatures.”

Theodotus emitted a loud grunt. “But what about all this additional help I suddenly have, Caesar? Do you suppose I’m not already on the trail of the villain who killed Hypatius? Why would I need a fuzzy-cheeked excubitor and a slave to assist me with my investigations?”

“I agree with Justinian. It’s in everyone’s interest that Hypatius’ murder is solved quickly,” Justin replied. “This business of a murder in the church. And Hypatius being a church patron. It’s got everyone’s attention. We have to be sure it’s solved in a manner that we can all be certain is, let us say, impartial.”

“Impartial? What does solved impartially mean? Solved is solved,” Theodotus said impatiently.

Proclus looked thoughtful. “Sometimes, however-”

The emperor slammed his kalamos down on the desk. “We all need eyes everywhere. You have plenty of spies around the city, Theodotus. They don’t seem to have helped you catch the culprits.”

“I see your point,” Theodotus admitted. “I will have a letter of introduction drawn up for these men, to facilitate their investigations, allow them to interview people. I just hope they don’t interfere with the real investigation. I am holding a dinner party tonight. I’ll set them to guard my guests. Theodora will be there so doubtless that will please her. She can report to Justinian that his slave is already keeping an eye on me.”

The emperor slumped back in his chair, as if tracing a signature on a few documents had exhausted him. “I had high ambitions for my nephew once, until that little whore got hold of him,” he said. “Euphemia hates her. Theodora wants me out of the way so Justinian can rule, and what Theodora wants, my nephew wants. He never paid attention to these street brawlers until she came along. Just because the Blues aided the woman’s family when the Greens wouldn’t, is that a reason to put the whole empire into turmoil? Is this what it’s come to, that Roman citizens should be ruled by the daughter of a bearkeeper for one of the factions? Well, I’m not dead yet. And I don’t intend to die for some time.”

Proclus removed the wooden stencil. Justin had obviously finished his labors although a stack of documents remained unsigned.

“Don’t let this matter of Hypatius keep you from your work restoring order in the streets, Theodotus,” Justin went on. “Street riots threaten the empire as much as any conspiracy.”

“I’ll skin everyone in the city alive if that’s what it takes to make the streets safe.”

“It’s not the beatings and robberies and assaults that scare people, it’s all the counting and scribbling it down,” Justin observed. “If a clerk with a kalamos hadn’t recorded it, you wouldn’t have someone like Senator Balbinus railing about how there were two murders near the Strategion and fifteen assaults on the Mese overnight. Not to mention a grocer had three bunches of leeks snatched. Citizens wouldn’t be so fearful if we didn’t keep count.” Justin’s teeth clenched as he came to an abrupt halt and reached a trembling hand down to his leg.