Mary Reed - One for Sorrow

So this was what it meant to be a father.

When she had gone he turned his attention back to Thomas. “What are you really here for, Thomas?”

“As I said, we were talking.”

“I seem to be running into you with remarkable frequency.”

“Not surprising when I’m visiting a guest in your household, John.”

“But on the street and in the palace gardens in the middle of the night?”

“Constantinople is small.”

“To a traveler such as yourself perhaps.”

“Something’s upset you, my friend?”

“Some beast dug up poor Berta’s grave.”

“But this isn’t wild country.”

“I don’t mean an animal,” snapped John. “I meant some two-legged beast.”

Thomas looked stricken. “That is unmanly.”

John felt a softening toward the big redhead. Thomas had understood John’s horror. They were both soldiers and soldiers were most solicitous of the dead.

“Why, John?”

“Grave robbing is common enough.”

“Not in my country.”

“Is this truly a surprise to you, Thomas? Are you really so horrified?”

The other looked up, his eyes glistening. “I did know Berta. Only briefly, I admit, but in a fashion better-” He stopped abruptly and apologized.

“Yes, you knew her much better than I could.” John sat down. His eyes burned. “Leave now, Thomas. I would advise you not to beguile my daughter with your tall tales.”

He slumped wearily as his unwanted visitor went out.

Almost immediately there came a knocking at the house door and Peter appeared to announce another caller waited downstairs.

The youngster at the door was out of breath, as if he had been running. “The prefect sent me, sir. A body’s been found at the docks.”

John made his way to the harbor where the body had been discovered. The sun was setting as he crossed the great square called the Strategion. Merchants were packing their carts in preparation for departure.

The high sea wall cast its shadow out past the end of the docks, over the nearby ships. With a pang, John noticed one of them was the Anubis .

But he had left Europa safely at home and Cornelia had gone to see members of her troupe.

As he reached the steep covered stairs, he barely registered the four men gathered around a dark heap below.

Would the soothsayer’s corpse speak as the entrails of the old man’s chickens had-or as he claimed they had? Would his body offer a clue to the identity of Leukos’ real murderer?

Or was it some other poor unfortunate who had fallen or leapt to his death? Emerging from the stairwell John found himself facing the Anubis . He heart gave a lurch.

He loped over to where three of the urban watch stood.

And forced his gaze to the body sprawled on the stones.

It was not Ahasuerus.

The figure was smaller. The pallid face, although marred by crabs, was one he had known for years.

It was Xiphias.

John worked to steady his breathing. The dock felt as if it was turning under his feet. One of the men was saying something about gold candlesticks.

“…had them tied to his belt. Meant to drown himself. Expensive weights.”

John grunted an acknowledgment.

“There are no wounds. He must have thrown himself in,” the prefect’s man said.

“Or someone else helped,” one of the others put in.

“Someone else would have used stones and kept the candlesticks.”

Something prodded at John’s memory. “Where’s your colleague?” he asked.

“There are only the three of us.”

“I saw someone else.”

“Oh, a passerby, that’s all. Looking for excitement. Wouldn’t find death so thrilling if he had to see it every day.”

“Where did he go?”

The man pointed down the docks. In the distance John could make out a dark shape. He started to run.

A line of warehouses sat along the seawall. John kept in the deepest shadows in front of the stolid, brick structures. He ran lightly and almost silently, steadily closing distance on the man ahead who strode along unaware of the pursuit.

John had nearly caught up with him when a dog exploded out of a dark doorway, snarling and snapping as it lunged at him. John knocked the beast away, sacrificing part of a sleeve.

The other man looked back over his shoulder and then broke into a run. His legs were less tired than John’s but he was bulkier and slower. There was nowhere to hide with the sea on one side and the warehouses on the other. Ahead, however, loomed a dark break between buildings which, John knew, led to another stairway.

They were well beyond the wide space of the Strategion. If his prey made it up the stairs he would vanish like magick into a confusion of streets, alleys, and tenements.

John forced his legs to keep moving. His chest was on fire and there was a coppery taste in his mouth.

His quarry turned into the gap and John reached him as he started up the stairs. John lunged, caught hold of fabric, and yanked the man backwards.

The heavy body fell, tried to scramble up, but John kept the fellow’s tunic in a vice-like grip. Then John’s dagger was pointed at the man’s throat.

“I’m tired of running into you constantly, my friend. It’s time for you to explain your business here, unless you want to take the secret to the grave with you.”

***

The tavern was what one would expect to find near the docks, a dismal cave crowded with Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, and Goths spewing oaths in a babble of accents and languages. The place smelled as if recently vacated by a family of bears.

John gulped wine.

Thomas’ gaze wavered from John’s face to the filthy floor. “I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t been entirely honest with you, Lord Chamberlain, although I suppose I could argue that my duty to my king is greater than my duty to the truth.”

“So you have been following me?”

“No, not you. The old soothsayer. I thought it would be him on the dock. Well, I should have made better inquiries. I met the messenger as I left your house, you see, and he told me that a body had been found.”

“You weren’t simply interested in Ahasuerus, you were actually following him?”

“Yes, I chased him to Constantinople after nearly catching him in Antioch.”

“Explain.”

Thomas smiled weakly. “As I told you, I’m an emissary from the court of Arthur, High King of Bretania.”

“That was the truth?”

“Yes. And my quest for the Grail, that too is the truth. The king, and the kingdom itself, they are both in need of the Grail’s healing power.”

“Continue,” John said, tiredly.

“I set off last year. Superstition pointed me to the east. I started searching in Jerusalem. From there certain stories directed me to Antioch. It was in the Kerateion, the Jewish quarter near the southern gate, that I heard of the soothsayer known as Ahasuerus. You are aware of the story of the crucified god, Jesus?”

John pointed out that he did, after all, serve in a Christian court.

“Of course, as do I. Well, as you know, Jesus was forced to drag the instrument of his death through the streets to his execution.”

“That is so. A barbaric thing. Romans do not crucify criminals any longer. Not even pagans such as ourselves.”

Thomas shook his head sorrowfully. “A terrible spectacle that must have been. Yet there were those who, seeing it, laughed and mocked him. One in particular urged him to hurry, following the condemned man through those dusty streets, shouting at him to make more haste toward his death. At last Jesus could tolerate this brutality no longer, for even though he was the son of God, he was also a man.”

“Much blood has been spilled over that question,” John remarked.