Mary Reed - Nine for the Devil

The place was unpleasantly noisy. At the counter the bald proprietor was arguing with a short man dressed in the mud-spattered garments of a laborer.

“You fool!” the proprietor yelled, waving a ladle. “I shall outlive the lot of you put together!”

The man he addressed ignored this prophecy, leaned forward, plucked another egg from a basin on the counter, and sent it winging out the door.

John looked at the egg he had caught.

“Hard-boiled,” Felix explained with a grin.

Gaius leaned forward to be heard more easily against the background noise and breathed into John’s face. The physician smelled as if his insides were fermenting, almost as nauseating as Artabanes. Obviously he had not stopped drinking since John had visited his surgery in the early afternoon. “You see,” Gaius said, “the fellow who owns this excellent inn is known as Alba. He has strange humors at times and will only eat white food. Hence his nickname. His real name is…is…do you know what is it, Felix?”

“Nobody knows,” Felix replied. “But his name is white and so is his diet.”

“Not healthy,” Gaius lamented. He shook his head sorrowfully. His words were thick.

“And tedious,” Felix agreed. “A man can’t exist by eating only white food. The very thought of carrots and parsnips and eggs and fish must choke the throat after a few years. Look at what’s it done to Alba. Every last hair on his scalp has fled in disgust.”

Another egg flew out the doorway.

The proprietor stepped around his counter, grasped the egg-thrower by the neck, and propelled him into the street, helped along with a boot in the laborer’s ample rear. Patrons raucously praised the entertainment. Wiping his hands on his grubby tunic, the proprietor came over to the trio. “Wine for you, sirs?” he addressed John and Felix. “Gaius, I know you’ll have more.”

John nodded. After spending dawn to dusk listening to aristocrats describe their enemies as potential murderers, he needed a drink. He presented the egg to the proprietor, who took it and began polishing the shell on his tunic as he walked back to the counter for wine.

“Alba’s a patient of mine,” Gaius told John. “We trade services. I get free wine, he gets free treatment. Now there’s a good deal for me, wouldn’t you say? I’ve been trying to persuade him to eat other foods, but he insists that good health and balanced humors are only obtainable by dining on white dishes.”

“With white food on them,” Felix put in.

“You see that bowl of black olives on the counter?” Gaius said. “I brought them myself this morning. I’m hoping he’ll be tempted to try one. If Felix leaves any for him, that is.”

“Dangerous to tamper with a man’s favorites,” Felix observed. “Especially food. So I thought I’d remove temptation.” Suddenly Felix’s voice sounded much too loud.

It was because the room had grown quiet.

An excubitor, clad in a leather cuirass and carrying a lance, filled the doorway. A curl of fiery red hair stuck out beneath his helmet.

Felix jumped to his feet, strode over to the excubitor, and exchanged a few words before returning to the table.

“I have to go. Justinian wants to see me. Immediately.”

John gave him a questioning look.

“No idea what it’s about. Except it’s urgent.”

“Maybe he’s had a sudden whim to have somebody executed,” Gaius mumbled.

As soon as Felix vanished with the messenger the room exploded into an uproar as every drinker offered his conjecture about what new disaster the red-haired excubitor’s visit might foretell. A couple of customers got up and departed, muttering about trouble being on the way.

“I haven’t seen much of Felix lately” John said to Gaius. “Justinian is keeping him busy. The emperor’s afraid Theodora’s death might give someone an opportunity to do away with him too.”

“Theodora, there was a woman!” The speaker was the proprietor, who had arrived at their table with a wine jug and cup for John. “Oh, I could tell many a tale about her. I knew her when she was a young woman, still working in the theater. Many’s the time she’s dropped in for a cup of wine after performances.”

“And borrowed the upstairs room for another sort of performance!” a patron sitting nearby declared.

The proprietor winked at John and set the jug down. He had peeled the egg and began to munch on it. “She has a couple of sisters,” he said between bites. “Both made good marriages with Theodora’s assistance. In those days they were not as well-dressed-”

“Undressed, you mean,” the patron interrupted.

The comment unlocked a torrent of reminiscences about the late empress, many of which involved Theodora’s famous act in which geese pecked grain from her private parts.

It seemed that most of the male population of Constantinople of a suitable age had had some acquaintance of the empress in her youth. In fact, to judge from the ages of the storytellers, she had debauched more than a few babies in their cradles.

“I’m amazed the palace cooks dare offer roast goose for imperial meals,” Alba remarked. “Though I suppose nobody would be so stupid as to snigger or mention grain shipments from Egypt during an imperial banquet.”

“Not within Theodora’s hearing,” John told him. “At the far end of the table, that’s another story.”

Alba went away chuckling. The next time he regaled his patrons with stories about Theodora he would no doubt tell them he had it on good authority, from a high official, that the empress was derided right under her nose by lascivious court wits.

“Speaking of roast fowl,” said Gaius. “Theodora’s cook has vanished. Everyone thinks he’s been executed, but there’s no reason to suspect him. The kitchen has more guards watching it than the Persian frontier. Not even Croesus could pay anyone enough to attempt to poison either of the imperial couple, given there’s not enough gold in the world to buy an easy death once you’re in the hands of the torturers. And in these cases, the servants are first to be taken underground.”

Gaius hid his face in his cup again.

John knew from experience there was no point arguing with the physician about his drinking. The best he could do would be to persuade him to leave and escort him safely back to the palace, luckily only a stone’s throw from the inn, but a long and perilous journey for a man alone and in Gaius’ present state.

Alba’s customers had begun trading stories about Theodora, and one man was describing for Alba’s particular attention what he had heard from a servant he knew. “A parsnip, he said it was. At a private party years ago. He could hardly forget it, though fortunately for him Theodora had forgotten him. Since I heard about her act I’ve refused to eat parsnips.”

“All the more for me, then, and better health as a result. But still the woman had courage.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It wasn’t a very large parsnip.”

“Forget the parsnip! I’m talking about the riots.” Alba finished peeling the shell from another egg and carefully excavated the yolk. “Everyone knows Justinian was all for fleeing but she insisted on staying.”

“A pity,” someone at the back of the room remarked. “But there again, what if someone like the Cappadocian had taken power after they fled? Eggs and taxes would cost five times what they do now for a start!”

Alba gulped down the last piece of egg before replying. “Yes, a nasty piece of work, the Cappadocian. Give him half a chance and he’ll take all you’ve got and your daughter and wife as well.”

“Not even half a chance!” said the man at the back of the room. “He’d squeeze us for taxes as if we were grapes in a wine press and keep most for himself. As for the women, he’s been known to boast making free with them is part of his job. Keeps the populace cowed, so it’s easier to collect what’s owed. You have to admit Theodora getting rid of him to that Egyptian monastery was about the only good deed she did.”