Mary Reed: One for Sorrow

“Mithra!” he exhaled, forgetting for an instant that he was practically within earshot of the ruler of an officially Christian empire.

A trio of figures followed the bull out of the gate. All were clothed in azure loincloths and beribboned chaplets of flowers. Barefooted, they moved smoothly and swiftly along the track until they stood near the imperial box. John realized, with a shock, that they presented the image of bull-leapers from the ancient days of Crete. He had not seen bull-leapers since….he pushed the memory away, as he always did when it ambushed him.

The bull wheeled around, kicking up clods of earth, and then charged at the trio.

Two of the figures, armed with spears, stepped aside. John saw that the remaining figure, unarmed, was a slim woman. His heart leapt as if he were the one confronting the bull.

The spectators’ clamor subsided into a silence like that between breaking waves. In the eerie hush, the beat of the bull’s hooves carried clearly up into the stands.

The woman stepped forward, raising delicate arms as if preparing to push the onrushing beast aside.

John tried to pick out details of her features, but shimmering heat waves hid her face.

The bull closed in. It lowered its massive head. Horns flashed in the sunlight. The woman left the earth as easily as a sparrow, grabbed the bull’s horns, vaulted over them, and landed lightly on the animal’s back.

The crowd’s thunderous appreciation echoed around the Hippodrome.

The bull whipped its head back and forth, but the woman already sat securely astride its broad back. The maddened beast raced around the track to the far side. As it completed its circuit and galloped back toward where John and his friends were sitting, John could see the gleam of the approaching beast’s wild eyes and the foam flecking its mouth. The rider pulled herself up into a crouch and then executed a back flip, ending in a handstand on the arena’s floor directly in front of the imperial box.

She made a low bow, then straightened, raising her arms to the noisy adulation of the crowd and gazed up toward the imperial box.

John stared, transfixed. He did not notice how the spear carriers reappeared to chivvy the animal out of the arena. When the woman looked up John had looked straight down into her dark eyes. Eyes in which he had lost himself, years before.

“Look at her!” Anatolius blurted out. “I have to meet her!”

How many times had John heard the same refrain from his younger friend? But this time Anatolius sounded far away, a voice in a dream. John didn’t hear what he said next. He didn’t notice the second and third bulls, or the rest of the troupe, enter the arena.

“John? What’s the matter? You look as if you’ve seen a demon.”

“I knew that woman,” John managed to say, his voice little more than a whisper. “Long ago, in another place, we were lovers.”

As he gazed down at the bull-leaper, death had been as far from John’s thoughts as when he was twenty-three and watching Cornelia for the first time.

And now, only hours later, Cornelia’s dark eyes were replaced by the sightless eyes of John’s friend.

He caught only a fleeting glimpse of the face. The shutters of the window which had briefly illuminated the scene had slammed shut and he was alone with the dead man in Stygian darkness.

“Leukos,” John said to himself. “What were you doing here?”

He became aware again of the noise of the mob in the square. The shouts and screams had diminished. He heard the bear roar. It sounded far away.

As he peered toward the dim light at the head of the alley a line of fire shot through the night toward him.

He ducked and felt the heat of a torch fly past his face. The still burning torch clattered to the cobbles, leaving John exposed in a ring of light as heavy footsteps thundered toward him.

The murderer or murderers?

His hand went to the dagger he carried. He leapt up and faced a creature out of a nightmare.

A towering, bullish Persian with a braided beard. As the monster raised its sword the flaring torchlight sparkled off dainty wings sprouting from its wide shoulders.

John recognized Madam Isis’ doorkeeper.

“Darius!”

The Persian lowered his weapon.

“Lord Chamberlain. I wasn’t attacking you. I thought you might be in trouble but now I see….” His gaze went to the body lying on the ground.

“Leukos, the Keeper of the Plate. A friend of mine.”

Darius swore. “Let’s get him inside before the vultures strip him.”

John agreed. If the mob realized there was a dead man here he and Darius would find themselves fighting to defend the body like a couple of soldiers at the gates of Troy.

It was only as they got hold of their awkward load that John noticed Leukos’ killer had left a knife in his victim. Had someone scared the murderer off or had the mild palace administrator put up a fight?

John hope the latter had been the case.

They carted Leukos out of the alley.

“If it weren’t for these damnable wings I’d have simply thrown the poor man over my shoulder,” Darius complained. “Madam has me dressed as Eros.”

Luckily the square had emptied out.

Madam Isis greeted them in her brightly lit doorway. An ample woman, whose actual outlines were disguised by layers of billowing pink silks, her face showed traces of the beauty she had once been. “John, thank the goddess you’re safe! I thought I saw you when the riot broke out. Who do you have there?”

John explained.

Isis clucked with distress and ushered them inside into a fog of perfume and incense almost as choking as the poisonous stench in the streets. Several barely clothed young women peered at them with curiosity. They laid Leukos’ body on a couch in a side hall and Darius left to return to his post, fussing with his right wing which kept flopping forward.

“What were you doing observing the mob, Isis?” John asked.

“I went to the doorway to see the bear. It got away. Broke loose from the crowd. That’s why the square’s deserted. Everyone fled. Except the trainer.”

“Did you see Leukos in the crowd?”

Isis shook her head.

“Was he in here earlier?”

“No, John. I never saw the man, and you know I never forget a patron’s face.”

“Or remember a patron’s name. Yes, I know. I wouldn’t have expected Leukos to come here anyway.”

John felt lightheaded. The fever of battle that had gripped him as the mob turned violent was fading away and he was beginning to feel the pain of his loss.

“Did you notice anyone who seemed suspicious, looking for trouble, looking for a victim?”

“No. And I always keep a close watch. I pride myself on running the most civilized house in the city. During the celebrations the wolves come out and my establishment is a good place to find stray lambs.”

John knew Isis was right. But why had Leukos strayed into the alley next to her house? Unless he had been on his way to his appointment? “Is the Inn of the Centaurs near here?”

“Oh, yes. Just around the corner.” Madam described its location. She further agreed that the alley where Leukos died could have served as a short-cut along his route to the inn.

John would have thought Leukos was too cautious to go down alleys, but he had been excited about going to see the soothsayer.

“I’ll question all my girls and my guards as well,” Isis told him. “Someone might have seen or heard something. It might be one of them saw your friend. That bald head must have stood out in a crowd like the dome of the Church of the Holy Wisdom.”

John stared down at the still figure on the couch. It resembled Leukos yet already death had begun to smooth out the details. Leukos was gone and what was left was as hollow as a bronze statue. Had he reached wherever it was Christians imagined they went after dying?