Mary Reed - Nine for the Devil

“I am aware of that.”

“I forgot. You are from a humble background too.” Her expression softened momentarily. “At any rate,” she continued, “the method of baking requires extra firewood and extra wages for the bakers, money which otherwise could have been spent by the Cappadocian on luxuries and debauchery. This extravagance, as he saw it, offended him so he had uncooked dough delivered to the basement of the Baths of Achilles where fires continually burn to heat the water. He had the dough placed near this free source of heat until it appeared more or less cooked, then thrown into bags and shipped to Italy. Needless to say, the loaves started to rot before they arrived. My husband tells me you could smell them at the dock where the ship lay moored. Yet there was nothing else to eat. It was in the middle of a summer as hot as this one. Five hundred of my husband’s men died. He ordered the armies be furnished bread from the surrounding countryside. At our own expense, Lord Chamberlain.”

“It is good to know our soldiers have a champion like yourself.”

“You are sarcastic. Doubtless you think I only care about my husband’s fortunes.”

The cloying odor of the lilies and roses ranged about the room had begun to irritate John. He allowed his gaze to wander, avoiding Theodora and coming to rest in the painted garden outside the painted window behind Antonina’s couch. For the first time he noticed, half hidden amongst the elaborately painted leaves, a yellow bird caught in the jaws of a lion.

“I do not see the Cappadocian as a credible suspect,” John said.

“If you are looking for a better possibility, consider Justinian’s cousin General Germanus. If it weren’t for Theodora he would already have been accepted as heir to the throne. She did everything she could to cripple his career. Now he will thrive.”

“At your husband’s expense, Antonina. Aren’t you afraid he may supplant Belisarius both as Justinian’s foremost general and his eventual successor?”

John noticed Antonina’s fists clench and quickly relax again. “My husband has no designs on the throne. You remember that was the Cappadocian’s undoing. He mistakenly believed Belisarius to be a traitor.”

“Yes, and when he went to meet Belisarius you were there with officials from the palace.”

“He deserved it for thinking ill of Belisarius. My husband is an honorable man.”

“Honorable men are so rare at court, it is dangerous to assume honor in anyone.”

She glared at him again. John wondered if her approach to their conversation might be different were he more prone to fall to her artfully preserved charms.

“You are being unfair to me,” she said. “Germanus had more to gain by Theodora’s death than I did. Why do you insist on turning your suspicions toward me? I know how much you hated the empress. Do you hate her friends too? Which of your enemies will you choose to turn over to the emperor? Everyone is speculating and some are trembling. Am I to suffer for Theodora’s sins?”

Antonina got up, kissed her finger, and placed it tenderly against Theodora’s painted cheek. “My dear, dear empress. Even in death you are wronged.”

She faced John. “You’re frowning, Lord Chamberlain. Don’t you like my fresco? One of my servants doesn’t like it either. She’s a superstitious girl, the tedious and stupid sort who insist on finding omens in the shape of spilt wine or the movements of clouds. She will not enter this room for any reason, because she’s convinced my beautiful decoration foretold Theodora’s death. Were she not so clever at concocting dainty sweetmeats I would dismiss her.”

“It is not difficult to be wise after the event, and especially when the event is known to be inevitable a week or two before it occurs,” John pointed out.

Antonina gave a grim smile. “Superstitious nonsense, that’s all it is. I questioned the stupid child at some length. According to her the attendant shown lifting the curtain is unveiling the afterlife, the imminent departure for which is about to arrive for one of the women represented. Further, it seems the goblet Theodora holds represents an overflowing cup of blessings. The poor girl believes it foretold the blessing of the ending of her agony. There again, for others it may well be a warning we will drain the cup of sorrow. What do you think, Lord Chamberlain? Are there any clues to her murderer to be found in the fresco on the wall of this room?”

John stood. “As much information as you are likely to give me willingly.”

Or as much as anyone else at court will, he added to himself.

As he walked out of the mansion into the shadow of the Hippodrome, he wondered who would drain Theodora’s cup of sorrow. Not people like Antonina. People like Kuria, cast adrift from palace life with no prospects except returning to a life of selling herself to strangers.

The same people who always drank from imperial cups of sorrow.

If only the painted empress could lift the veil of mist that obscured his vision and reveal the solution he sought.

Though it had already been a grueling day, John decided to talk to General Germanus, another interview designed largely to satisfy Justinian. If Antonina was pointing an accusative finger at the emperor’s cousin others would do the same. However discreetly, once word reached Justinian he would expect to hear John had looked into the matter.

It was not his normal way of conducting an inquiry to be pointed this way and that, but then his inquiries normally revolved around an actual murder rather than one imagined by the emperor.

Or rather one that John feared was imagined by the emperor. He hoped for his own sake and his family’s sake that his initial impression was mistaken.

For the time being John intended to interview those he would be expected to interview. Once he had fulfilled that obligation, if nothing had shown up to point him in a specific direction…well, he wasn’t certain what he would do.

John was trying to dismiss such doleful thoughts, as well as thoughts of the dinner Hypatia had no doubt prepared by now, when a supercilious doorkeeper informed him that the general was not seeing visitors. John thrust his orders and the attached imperial seal he always carried under the fellow’s upturned nose. The man cringed and explained Germanus was not seeing visitors because he was not at home. He was at the Baths of Zeuxippos.

The baths, between the entrance to the palace and the Hippodrome, was an immense complex of pools, gymnasiums, lecture halls, meeting rooms, and shops. John bought a skewer of grilled swordfish from a vendor who had set up his brazier near the wide stairs leading up to the baths’ entrance. The vendor was better at cooking it than John, not nearly as proficient as Peter. When John finished, feeling only slightly less famished, he threw the skewer into the gutter, went up the stairs, and paid an attendant the paltry admission fee.

The atrium was as vast as a public square and packed with people. Some wore elaborately decorated garments, others leather leggings and dirty tunics. Voices echoed hollowly around the towering walls and up into the distant dome. None of the baths were visible but the air was noticeably humid. Corridors led off in all directions. It would have been difficult to locate an individual quickly but it was easy to spot the entourage which accompanied generals wherever they go. John found the contingent in a gallery lined with statues.

There were enough men and arms to have conquered the entire bath complex in less than an hour. They were big men, as broad and muscular as the larger-then-life-size bronze Hercules beside whose pedestal they stood. Germanus was one of the smaller men, wearing a subdued rust-colored dalmatic rather than a leather cuirass. In his early forties, Germanus was, like Justinian, a nephew of the late Emperor Justin. Unlike Justinian, his appearance betrayed his peasant origins. He had a blocky build, powerful, sloping shoulders, a thick neck. His dark hair and beard were trimmed almost to a stubble.