Mary Reed - Nine for the Devil

John questioned Germanus further but having delivered his prepared speech the general remained affable but effectively as silent as the bronzes. Christodorus might have ventured to guess what he was thinking.

John did not and took his leave.

As John walked toward the Chalke Gate he formed the impression he was being followed.

It was a sense an inhabitant of the palace soon developed.

He turned and went through an archway leading to the square of the Augustaion in front of the Great Church.

His pursuer had no intention of merely following. A towering, granite column of a man-the largest of Germanus’ guards-overtook him and spoke. “Lord Chamberlain.”

John stopped. “There was something your employer forgot to tell me?”

“That’s right. He is worried about your safety.”

“I appreciate that.”

Passersby streamed around the two men as if they were two rocks in a river.

“A high official should not be walking around alone, Lord Chamberlain. You never know who might be lurking around the next corner. Especially when you start asking powerful people the wrong questions.”

“Is that what Germanus said?”

“An intelligent man like you can deduce the answer.” The guard turned and plowed his way back through the crowd.

The man’s words puzzled John. He had been threatened too many times to be concerned about threats to himself. What he worried about was Cornelia and his daughter and grandchild.

He followed the retreating guard out through the archway. He would have preferred to return home to see if there had been any word from Cornelia, but after talking to Germanus he knew there was one more stop to make.

He had seen the sun rising over the palace gardens as he began the day’s investigations, and before he was done he would see it drop below the rooftops of the city toward which it was falling even now, stretching the shadows of buildings, statuary, pillars and pedestrians and stray dogs in the direction of the Sea of Marmara as if the shadows intended to drown themselves in the dark waters as night closed in.

***

Germanus stamped into the atrium of his house, cursing effusively. The servant who had met John at the door earlier shrank away.

“You never should have told him I was at the Zeuxippos baths,” Germanus thundered.

The servant had simply offered the usual report on who had called at the house and the general had started shouting.

“But what else was I to do?” The servant’s voice quavered. “He was acting under Justinian’s orders. He showed me the seal.”

“Next time tell him you don’t know where I’ve gone. Or that I’m off hunting in the Cypress Forest. Send him up the Bosporos looking for me. Tell him I’ve set sail for Egypt!”

“I tried to get rid of him as quickly as possible. I didn’t want him to run into-”

“No, certainly not! And what about our other visitor?”

“Gone to see the lawyer.”

“Again? What good will that do? I hope the lawyer knows enough to keep his mouth shut. I don’t like all this running around. Too much risk of being seen.”

The servant was visibly trembling and Germanus softened his tone. “You did well to keep the Lord Chamberlain out. No one is to get past the atrium, and if possible not even that far. Maybe you should say my cook has the plague.”

The huge guard who had spoken to John loomed in the entranceway.

“You had a word with him?” Germanus asked.

“Yes. I would have preferred to show him some steel to make the point clearer.”

“The Lord Chamberlain’s no fool. Steel isn’t necessary. Yet. Come with me.”

The two men made their way down a long many-doored hallway decorated with wall paintings and through the storage areas at the back of the house to a walled courtyard in which laborers were unloading sacks and crates from the back of a cart. An archway in the high wall opened onto a narrow alley. Two sentries were posted by the archway.

Germanus looked up and down the alley, which came to a dead end a short distance from the archway. “I want you to make sure that anyone coming in by the back way isn’t being followed,” he instructed the towering guard beside him. “Put someone out on the street to watch whoever approaches. Disguise him as a vendor or a beggar. And keep an eye out for people lurking around.”

“You think the house is being watched?”

“I hope not. I don’t like being visited by high officials carrying out imperial investigations.”

“There’s nothing you’ve done that anyone could prove was illegal.”

“Since when does the emperor have to prove anything? The less he knows the better.”

Peter was awakened by the banging of a door.

He turned his head to look at the window. Movement was difficult. His skull seemed to weigh as much as the dome of the Great Church. In the darkening sky above the dome he could make out a star.

Had the master returned home?

Peter thought about stars. Some said they were angels but there was nothing angelic about those cold, hard, sharp points of light. They were jewels on a rich man’s robe, caught in the church lights during a night vigil.

The pain in his broken leg waxed and waned like the unseen moon. A throbbing pain, as deep and intense as pain could possibly be. It brought tears to his eyes.

It wasn’t time for him to die. He must remain to see the master through this latest trial. He didn’t like to think about him going around the palace, questioning powerful people, any one of whom would not suffer for having him killed if it suited them. The master was a powerful man himself, but an outsider. Not to mention a Mithran. What would the Lord think about Peter having spent so many years serving a Mithran?

“Please, Lord,” Peter muttered. “Keep the master safe. His beliefs may be wrong but you should know him by his works, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

A noise interrupted his thoughts. Or had it awakened him? What had he heard?

“Hypatia?” He was startled at how weak his voice sounded.

There was no answer.

He had the impression Hypatia had opened the door a crack, peered in at him, and shut the door. It might have been his imagination. The girl was always underfoot. He ought to make it plain to Lady Anna that Hypatia was not to interfere in his kitchen. Her duty was to grow the herbs Peter needed. She was not a cook. It would not do for her to be in the way while he was standing watch on the pot boiling over the hot coals.

No. That had been years ago. Both he and Hypatia had been Lady Anna’s slaves before her death freed them and they came to work for John.

The potions Gaius had given him were making Peter light-headed.

“How can I manage in such a state? What was the scoundrel thinking of? Does he imagine I can lie around like the idle aristocrats he treats?”

He closed his eyes.

He remembered a young servant he used to meet at the back of a garden at the house he worked in years ago. He could feel the soft flesh of her rounded arms and her warm breath.

She would be an old woman now. He felt a sadness deeper even than the agony in his leg. What kind of a world was it where such beauty withered away?

Peter had never known a woman for long. For much of his life he had been on the move, as a camp cook, constantly on the march, as a servant moving from one household to another. He had always thought that some day he would find himself in the right situation and the right woman would present herself. But it had never happened. And without ever being aware of it, he had finally stopping thinking about it.

Now he was an old man and it was too late.