Mary Reed - Three for a Letter

John now realized what he could not have noticed while surrounded by the murmur of the sea and the creaking of the oars. No birds were singing to welcome the dawn.

Sunilda leapt out of the boat and started up the path to the headland, calling out to Bertrada.

John stepped quickly out to follow her, relieved to be standing on solid ground once more.

Except that the ground was trembling slightly and the bells on the empress’ litter were jangling even louder.

John started after Sunilda as, on the headland above, a raw-boned young man with straggling hair leapt onto the seat of the cart carrying Hero’s mechanical musicians.

“The prelate is right. It’s these accursed figures!” the man shouted. “They must be destroyed before a disaster happens!”

There seemed to be a great many people gathered on the headland, more than John had noticed while rowing back. He could distinguish one familiar form, taller than the rest.

John recalled the group he had glimpsed moving up the coast road. Had Godomar decided to lead his congregation forth to do battle with the evils he had railed against?

A grinding roar suddenly filled the air, whether from the mob or from the stronger shaking of the ground or both John could not say.

A familiar voice rose above the clamor. It was Felix, barking orders to his men. A phalanx of excubitors immediately picked up Theodora’s litter and moved swiftly away from the precipice.

The ground shook sluggishly again. The excubitors swayed like drunkards. John saw Livia running beside Theodora’s litter, dragging an hysterical Poppaea. Bertrada, weeping, trotted behind them, accompanied by a perfectly composed Sunilda.

Even so, the child was still John’s responsibility, especially now that Felix was otherwise occupied. John looked around, quickly gauging the situation, and then back toward Bertrada and her charge.

But they had vanished in the general confusion. For now he would have to trust the nursemaid’s good sense. He had no other choice.

“These ceremonies are blasphemous. The Lord is displeased!” the young Jeremiah was telling everyone in a voice rivaling that of Godomar.

By the time John arrived on the headland Zeno was struggling feebly with the young man on the cart while Felix and his remaining excubitors expertly herded the screaming crowd away from the headland.

“We must destroy these machines of Satan!” the malcontent shrieked. He shoved Zeno down, seized one of the lyre-players and began dragging it towards the precipice.

A few steps more and then he had tipped the automaton over. A moaning noise drifted up as the strings of the falling lyre vibrated with the swift passage of air through them on the way down to the sea. The automaton’s companions soon followed.

John glanced around rapidly. The panicked crowd forced back by Felix and his men was streaming back toward the village, although several had left the main mass and were running through the olive grove. More than a few had fallen in their haste.

“Have you seen Sunilda?” John shouted at Zeno as he helped him up.

“They ran away towards the villa, John,” Zeno gasped, looking dazed and as pale as a lily. John made his way there as quickly as he could. As he approached, he could see cracks had opened in its façade. Part of the colonnade had collapsed. Amid shouting and lurid curses, villagers were rushing in and out.

Two red-faced men appeared, dragging the serpent-slayer automaton by its feet. Its head was missing but it blindly and repeatedly shot an arrow that had long since flown elsewhere.

John ducked inside the building, to be greeted by more yelling and the noise of breaking pottery. Between his expression and the blade in his hand those he met in the corridors fell back. Once Felix’s men arrived the place would soon be secured, but his immediate task was to find Sunilda and her nursemaid.

He rapidly made his way to the Ostrogoths’ apartments. Here and there he passed by one or another of Hero’s constructions lying on the floor, making futile repetitive movements like dying men on a battlefield. Several of the mechanical figures had smashed heads. There was no doubt they would never work again.

Rounding a corner he found Hero seated on the floor beside the tilted torso of his wine-dispensing satyr. In his lap was a cloven hoof, in his one hand a goblet. A painfully loud grating emanated from the figure as wine gushed at regular intervals from its wineskin. Hero’s goblet moved mechanically back and forth from the geyser of wine to his mouth. His eyes appeared more glazed than the glass eyes in his creation’s metal face.

John’s quick glance through the Ostrogoths’ rooms showed no sign of the nursemaid or her charge.

The workshop!

He climbed quickly out the broken window and limped rapidly around to the back of the villa where the noise was even more intense.

Crossing the courtyard, he met several villagers, led by the man who had instigated the riot and who would doubtless be parted from his head before too many days had passed. They were pulling the mechanical whale on its wheeled platform.

Zeno, also arrived from the headland, was protesting but to no avail. Standing outside the workshop, he wept at the destruction going on around him.

Another swift search revealed no trace of the missing girls.

Cursing luridly, John made his way quickly through the villa and back to the coast road. He wondered briefly if Theodora was enjoying this unexpected turn of events. By the time he had got back to the headland the rioters had managed to pull the mechanical whale to the edge of the cliff.

He stood well back. Several villagers were clustered near the whale and he was alone.

“Harvest Lord, we have brought another offering,” shouted their leader, who had apparently taken it upon himself to preside over an impromptu ceremony.

As if in reply, the ground vibrated slightly. Its movement evidently upset Hero’s finely balanced machinery, for the mechanical beast’s mouth slowly opened and a watery plume shot up from its broad back.

Then, unexpectedly, a deafening roar filled the air. The whale toppled sideways and a huge crack snaked across the ground as the edge of the headland majestically crumbled away, carrying the beast and its tormentors down to the sea in a black cloud of dust that continued to rise slowly, in a towering pillar, into the clear blue morning sky.

John turned and started back toward the villa.

“Master?”

It was Peter. He emerged from the olive grove, holding Sunilda’s hand. “I found her all alone,” he continued in a quavering voice. “I told her she had to come back to the villa with me but then that mob came running towards us with the whale and we hid so they wouldn’t see us. They were in a very ugly mood.”

The girl regarded John impassively.

“Where is Bertrada?” John asked her.

“Don’t be cross with her, Lord Chamberlain,” the girl replied. “I ran away from her so I could see all the excitement. I was just taking a walk when Peter found me.”

John looked at Peter.

“She was indeed taking a walk, master, just as she says. Right towards the edge of the headland.”

The girl scowled at the elderly servant but said nothing.

“I left Godomar’s service before it concluded,” Peter went on. “He seemed intent on stirring up the congregation and I didn’t want to find myself caught in the middle of a mob. Besides which, well, I wanted to see a bit of the straw man festival. But by the time I arrived, it was over. However, thank the Lord I was just in time for something else, for as I said, I found Sunilda wandering about on her own and who knows what further tragedy might have ensued?”

***

“I must commend you, Zeno. Even the Hippodrome has never seen such thrilling events! The goats were correct after all!” Theodora surveyed the ruined dining room strewn with fragments of painted marine life fallen from its walls. A light coating of plaster dust covered everything, while in the bushes outside the base of a toppled statue could be observed from a window that was no longer quite straight.