Mary Reed: One for Sorrow

“For the ladies, I read currents in a bowl of water or wine, or cast pebbles. One lady gave me gems to cast, to impress her guests. Recently, however, a woman not only insisted on a traditional reading in private, but provided a chicken.”

“Have you been visited here by many from the court?”

“Certainly. They don’t always trust me with their names, let alone their positions, but I can always tell. Their clothes and their manner give them away.”

“Do you recall a large man, pale, completely bald?”

Ahasuerus reflected for a few seconds. “I cast pebbles for such a man yesterday. He had concerns about his health. I was able to reassure him that he would be in good health all his life. Also, if I remember rightly, that he might come into sudden wealth.”

Ahasuerus’ prophecy had been true insofar as Leukos had been in perfect health until someone slid a knife into him. As for wealth, given the brevity of his life following the reading of his fortune, any riches Leukos might have gained had to have appeared very suddenly.

“Was there also another man to see you yesterday? Young, dark haired, handsome?”

Ahasuerus smiled. “I saw many young dandies from the court yesterday. To me they all look young and handsome.”

“Anatolius is his name.”

“I never inquire about names and as I said, few offer them.”

John wondered if Ahasuerus was being evasive or if Anatolius had not appeared.

“I can tell there is something else engaging your mind,” the soothsayer said. “There is something, or someone, you seek.”

John got up from the bench. He wasn’t about to be drawn into the old man’s game. “Who isn’t seeking something or someone? Thank you for your time, Ahasuerus.”

He went out into the clamor of the street. He knew now that Leukos had kept his appointment with the soothsayer. Whether that had any bearing on his death was something he could not say.

Sticking his head out the kitchen window to summon Ahasuerus to his meal, Kaloethes had been chagrined to see the obviously high-born visitor leaving. He had hoped to finally sell a bottle of the wine his wife insisted they stock expressly for such visitors. The wine had cost a fortune because it had supposedly been snatched from under the noses of the Goths who were battling Justinian’s armies up and down the Italian peninsula.

Unfortunately, the only people from the palace who ever took an interest in the Inn of the Centaurs were tax collectors and building inspectors.

At least the visitor had not appeared to be on official business. He had questioned Kaloethes and his wife only briefly about the soothsayer and his customers. They claimed to know nothing. Then Mistress Kaloethes had gone off to the market, leaving her husband to deal with the cooking.

Now, having filled his guest’s plate, Kaloethes lowered his exhausted bulk onto the wooden bench next to the soothsayer to await Mistress Kaloethes’ return. He watched the old man worry a chicken bone as if he were a starved cat.

It occurred to Kaloethes that the inn had in fact had visitors from the palace recently, but unfortunately only to have fortunes told, not to drink expensive wine. “If you wanted, you could tell your clients a thing or two that would make them need a bottle of wine right away and never mind the cost. We could split the proceeds.”

The soothsayer dropped the cleanly stripped bone onto his plate. “I prefer to have satisfied customers. As it is, the authorities frown on such gifts as mine.”

Kaloethes made a rude noise. “So, if you have gifts, what’s my future? A place at the palace, do you suppose?”

“It is what your wife desires, is it not?”

“Takes no fortune teller to see that. But will it happen? Is there ever going to be an end to this incessant labor?”

“Sometimes knowing your past is to know your future.” The soothsayer finished his bread and studied his plate mournfully.

“Look at you! You clean your plate like an obedient child. I remember my mother insisted I do the same. And what did it make me? Not big and healthy, just fat. The butt of jokes. Now, what about this future of mine?”

The soothsayer said he would need his fortune-telling tools in order to cast augurs. “The pebbles are quicker but a chicken is more certain and more detailed.”

“You’ve got part of a chicken there.” Kaloethes nudged the fleshless chicken bone with a pudgy finger. “What can you tell me?”

“It takes back-breaking labor to build a church, but at the end it is filled with song.”

Kaloethes stared at the old man’s leathery face, trying to fathom what was meant. “I can see where a fool with spare coins might pay you well, you old fraud,” he finally admitted with admiration. “Are you sure you can’t bring yourself to see a fine bottle of wine in a man’s future, or many visits to the Inn of the Centaurs?”

“I would betray my gift if I agreed to do that. If you’ll excuse me, I must resume my meditations.”

The innkeeper persisted. “How about this? You could serve your clients some of our fine wines. It would make them more comfortable, not to say credulous. I’ll give you a break on the price.”

The soothsayer bent down to his plate and passed his hand over the chicken bone, then shook his head and said solemnly “I regret that I must inform you that such a plan is not in my future, Master Kaloethes.”

“Go back and nap in the shade then. If you have more high flown admirers should I wake you or advise them to come back when you’re done meditating? Who was that tall fellow anyway? Let me guess, from the severe look of him, an assistant to a bishop.”

“He didn’t say who he was. A wealthy and powerful man-”

“If that’s the best you can do then you can call me the Oracle at Delphi. Anyone can see that.”

“You will find it difficult to cater to such people when you so obviously envy them, Master Kaloethes.”

“What I hate is how they always act so clever and self-assured, those men. If only you were half so clever as I, they seem to say without actually saying it, you would not be toiling away your pitiful existence. Ha! What do they know? I’ll wager your caller from the palace was born to his rank.”

Ahasuerus offered no opinion and returned to the courtyard and the shade of the fig tree.

Kaloethes muttered savagely to himself. “The only shade I’ll see is when the wife’s looming over me with some complaint. Where’s the slim young thing I courted, the girl who told me I was going places?”

He picked up the soothsayer’s plate and tossed the chicken-bone out the window to where the striped cat waited. “You’ll be disappointed when you see how bare that bone is. Well, life is full of disappointments.”

He looked down at the plate. Silver. From their own private table setting. His wife must have taken it out to impress the soothsayer, or more likely his important visitors. The woman’s pretensions were intolerable.

But so was her nagging tongue. He had to find a way to appease her. What was that the soothsayer had said about it all ending in song? Not likely.

Leaving the Inn of the Centaurs, John stepped into a narrow sun-scorched street that was unusually deserted. Many of those who would normally have been hurrying along the street were likely lying in bed battling the Furies in their heads.

John couldn’t help noticing once again the large brass plaque beside the inn’s brick archway. The polished sign promised much more than the bare, dusty courtyard and run-down building beyond.

The elaborately engraved beast depicted below the inn’s name, half man, half horse, brought to John’s mind a vision of the bull-leaper, feet planted so surely on the bull’s back that she might have been part of the animal. He stopped, tempted to turn in the direction of the Hippodrome where he could inquire about the whereabouts of the troupe that had performed there.