Mary Reed: One for Sorrow

Now she bent to pick up the heavy pot, averting her face. She was exhausted. But then, what a night it had been. The second time she had opened the shutters after her first fright, it had been even worse. What had she seen but a corpse apparently looking straight up at her. And to think she’d had the pot in her hand. It seemed indecent. She had almost dishonored the dead.

She forced herself to peer down into the alley. This third time, at last, it seemed deserted. She emptied the pot, leaning over the sill. Its contents splashed on the cobbles below.

She sank wearily down next to her husband and hoped for dreams of the country.

***

Though the night was far advanced, the liquid sounds of syrinx and flute filled the perfumed air of a private dining room deep inside the palace. A scantily clad girl danced down the middle of a long table that was covered in purple and gold. Not that she knew how to dance. She simply kept her narrow hips moving suggestively while stepping nimbly over and around plates of pomegranates, figs, and boiled duck. The young men on the couches flanking the table laughed as she went by, trying to look up her short green tunic. They seemed pleased.

She was only a girl, young enough so she could remember when men had not noticed her. This new power she had been given was fascinating. She could sense the men’s probing thoughts. Their attention exhilarated and repulsed her at the same time.

One of the diners had grabbed her around the waist and thrust her onto the table. She could smell sour wine on his breath. As he embraced her, his stubble brushed the side of the breast that her tunic, tied only at one shoulder, had left exposed in what Madam Isis had explained was the ancient manner.

“What’s your name, little one?” the man had demanded.

“They call me Nymph,” she had replied, mindful of Madam’s admonition to give only that name and not to reveal her real name, which was Berta. She was puzzled when the man burst into laughter.

“Dance for me,” he’d commanded, and so Berta danced.

Perhaps she would please this man or another so that he would bring her to live at the palace. It could happen. Look at the empress herself. She had once been an actress.

She had been hand-fed a few morsels from the table, a slice of an unfamiliar fruit more succulent than anything she had tasted before. All was luxury here. Even her indecently brief tunic was of silk, smooth against her skin. Her underclothing, too, the same.

As she danced amid the plates, bare feet still retaining their instinctive childish agility, she felt the smooth material caressing her thighs.

The flutes played faster, cymbals underscoring their sinuous rhythm. The girl danced in time, skipping between chalices, ducking under a huge golden bowl of fruit suspended by chains from the ceiling. A flush rose on her cheeks. Surely this was heaven. But then, wasn’t the emperor a god?

She caught a glimpse of an unwelcome figure. A garishly dressed page who leered at her from a corner. Odious little boy. He’d pawed her on her way to the table.

Distracted, she failed to clear the roast boar.

Berta toppled off the edge of the table into an obviously male lap. Recovering her senses, she rolled over to look up into the face of whoever had broken her fall. Perhaps he would take her to his house tonight.

She assumed her most dazzling, ingratiating smile. And gasped. Later she insisted to her friends that the face looming above her was the oldest thing she had ever seen. Older than the headless eroded statue in the ruins near the city wall, more ancient and weathered than the mummy exhibited in the forums by the traveler from Egypt. The face was brown and wrinkled as the head of John the Baptist-if that relic truly existed. But when the man’s leathery lips parted they revealed surprisingly white teeth.

“I am a soothsayer,” said the ancient. “I need no chicken entrails to tell me what a lovely creature you are. Do you want to earn a trinket?”

A visitor was the last thing John wanted the next morning. Unfortunately, just as the watery sunlight of a new day banished the pagan gods from John’s wall mosaic, Peter announced a caller.

The stranger was a powerfully built man with red hair and a wild beard. He sat down stiffly on the stool John indicated and introduced himself as Thomas, a knight of the High King of Bretania.

He spoke the Greek used in the capital passably well but with a heavy accent. John noticed, however, that for knight he employed the Latin eques , a class which dated back to the early days of Rome.

“You say you are a knight?”

“The High King has trained a cavalry after the Roman fashion and given us that title. I understand it is a long time since Roman knights rode in battle.”

“I have heard of King Arthur. What is your business here?”

“I thought you would be expecting me.”

John offered only a questioning look.

“The Keeper of the Plate sent me,” Thomas explained. “Two days ago I visited him and he said I should see you, that he would arrange for a meeting this morning.”

“I was never told. The Keeper of the Plate is dead. Murdered.”

Thomas stiffened and his eyes widened.

Peter padded back into the room to pour ruby Egyptian wine into the silver goblets that displaced John’s clay cup when the Lord Chamberlain entertained visitors. John noticed the servant scowling curiously at the so-called knight. The visitor looked the complete barbarian with scuffed leather boots and leggings and a wool tunic stained by travel and weather.

“You are surprised to learn that Leukos was killed last night?”

The question seemed to fluster Thomas. “Why wouldn’t I be? I only met him briefly. How-?”

John cut him short. “What is it you have come to see me about?”

“If you would prefer I returned-”

“Leukos wished for me to speak to you, so I will. Briefly.”

Thomas took a long drink and stared down at the silver goblet clutched in his large, scarred hand. “I’m seeking a sacred relic.”

“I see. Relics aren’t hard to find in Constantinople. We have hundreds. The staff of Moses, a fragment or two of the True Cross, bones of almost any saint one could name.”

“I’m searching for the Grail.”

“The cup from the last meal before the crucifixion.”

Thomas turned his goblet around nervously. “Some say it is a platter, such as those from which we eat, or a precious gem.”

“An interesting legend, but the Grail is one of the few relics I have never heard rumored to be in the city. If it were it would be in the patriarch’s charge.”

“I couldn’t get an audience with Patriarch Epiphanios. I visited the Keeper of the Plate because I was advised that he is-was-in charge of the emperor’s valuables. I thought he might know about something as valuable as the Grail. He said you would give me an introduction to the patriarch.”

John got up from his chair and went over to the window. A breeze carried the pungent smell of the Sea of Marmara into the study. A detachment of excubitors emerged from the barracks opposite. John was tempted to dismiss his annoying visitor immediately. But was it a coincidence Leukos had died the day after he had been called upon by Thomas? Or the day after Thomas claimed he called upon him? Had that meeting really taken place?

Leukos hadn’t mentioned it to John. Then again, he had seemed oddly distracted for some reason, perhaps something to do with his visits to the soothsayer. Perhaps it had simply slipped his mind.

It was best to humor the man until he could learn more about him.

“Why does your king want the Grail?”

“It’s the holiest of all holy objects,” Thomas said quickly, then added, “and, like mistletoe in the old religion, it will heal all.”