Mary Reed: One for Sorrow

“But how did Kaloethes get the body to the alley without being noticed?”

“It isn’t far from the Inn of the Centaurs to Isis’ house. I was reminded of how small Constantinople is the night I climbed the stylite’s column. During the celebrations the streets were full of reeling drunkards, many of them in costume. Kaloethes donned a mask, tied one on Leukos, and staggered through the streets dragging Leukos along with him. They would have looked like just another pair of revelers. However, I also found a young woman who saw them from a tenement window, although she mistook them for demons.”

“And why wasn’t the body found earlier?”

“Kaloethes must have hidden it in the inn until the streets were crowded and it was less likely anyone would pay attention to him.”

“But the soothsayer’s dagger-what about that?” protested Anatolius.

“Stolen from his room easily enough,” John replied. “I suspect it was Kaloethes who pointed suspicion in Ahasuerus’ direction. After all, the old man was a foreigner and a soothsayer to boot, and there was no one to speak for him. Once Leukos’ alleged murderer had been caught, no further investigation would be made.”

“Kaloethes was extremely busy.”

“Yes. It seemed likely to me the night I helped Felix home the man who appeared at the house was one of the innkeeper’s accomplices, there to coerce him into assisting them with their schemes. He might very well have been the biggest of those rogues we fought in the cistern. Felix refused but in doing so revealed he had had dealings with the intruder in the past, most likely to pay off gambling debts. Felix confirmed the connection by what he shouted at Kaloethes.”

“You told me there was an intruder on the Anubis when you visited Europa. Could that have been Kaloethes?”

“Possibly. Cornelia has told me she and Europa went to the inn and they might have aroused Kaloethes’ interest. He could have followed them back to the Anubis and then returned after dark the next night, or sent an accomplice, to see if there was anything of value to be found. Whoever it was, it was one more reason for them to come to my house.”

Anatolius fell silent but could not contain his natural curiosity for long. “What do you think of this Grail business?” he blurted out. “I hear the patriarch has acquired some holy relic more remarkable than any in Constantinople. It’s being talked about all over the palace. Do you suppose……?”

John laughed softly. “When I visited the patriarch he showed me a stone. He believes it is a artifact of great value, at least judging from the amount he said he paid for it. He purchased it from Ahasuerus.”

Anatolius looked amazed. “You mean that scoundrel did have the Grail and it was not a cup or a platter but rather a stone?”

John looked down into his wine. In the bright sunlight, he could see the wisps of cloud in the sky reflected its surface. “Tell me truthfully, did you ever desire something because someone else wanted it?”

A puzzled look crossed Anatolius’ face.

“Did it ever occur to you,” John continued, “that our friend Thomas talked a great deal? I gather he attempted to get audiences with every person of importance at the palace. Would you go about a quest like that?”

“I’ve never thought about going on a quest. Are you saying that Thomas was trying to persuade people to take an interest in the Grail, the better to raise its price?”

“What better place than Constantinople to sell a priceless relic or, for that matter, a counterfeit? Especially now, with Justinian completing his Great Church and the patriarch so ill…dying and grasping at straws. No doubt the patriarch believes that the stone he purchased is the Grail. In any event, with this great project, he and the emperor spurred the greedy and unscrupulous to take advantage in any way they could.”

“Is it possible Ahasuerus and Thomas were working together?”

John shrugged. “Thomas may really have been a questing knight. Ahasuerus may indeed be the keeper of the Grail. And perhaps he must live until the end of the world.”

Anatolius shook his head wearily. “I don’t know what to believe, John, except that by all accounts Ahasuerus drowned. Nobody seems to have seen him since that night”

“Strange then that hours after his reported demise the soothsayer visited and cast the pebbles for me,” John said. “Perhaps it was in a dream. He told me I would find my treasure underground.”

“An accurate prediction.”

John agreed with a slight smile. “Thomas told me Berta’s pendant had a stone like the one Leukos was carrying, the type of pebble the soothsayer gave his clients. You have one yourself. Leukos’ was somewhat smaller but otherwise identical to the stone the patriarch purchased from the soothsayer and believes to be the Grail. But what if Ahasuerus did indeed possess the Grail and rather than selling the real one to the patriarch, he gave the pendant containing it to Berta for safekeeping, planning to retrieve it to sell it later?”

“The pendant with the green stone? But John, I purchased that with one or two other items of jewelry from Felix! I gave them to Europa and Cornelia. So if you’re right they now possess the Grail!”

“I am afraid not,” John said, thoughtfully swirling the clouds and sky in the bottom of his cup. “Before she left, Cornelia gave the pendant to me and asked that it be returned to Berta.”

He could not help wondering about the pendant he had had buried with Berta. Could such a Grail truly exist?

For an instant, as he mused over his lover and his daughter-lost, found, and now lost again-regret breached the barricade of John’s self-control and he allowed himself to think what he would never have spoken.

Mithra forgive him, but did there live in Constantinople any man who had more need of such a mighty heal-all than John?