Mary Reed - Nine for the Devil

Anastasius licked his lips. He felt warm inside from the wine and its fumes seemed to be rising into his head. He didn’t care for the way Artabanes kept calling him “son,” particularly since it had never been made clear to him by what lineage, exactly, Theodora considered him her grandson.

“Yes,” he finally said with some difficulty. “Our situations are exactly the same but just the opposite. But, you see, the irony is if they weren’t exactly the same they couldn’t be opposite, so they are more the same than they are different. If you see what I mean.”

Artabanes nodded gravely. “You are a born philosopher, son.”

“But look, sir. I’m glad you didn’t harm grandmother, but the emperor could have overruled her, couldn’t he?”

“In such an affair? Unlikely.”

“Yet he could have. But he is weak. He even allowed grandmother to tell him which general should have command in Italy. She never liked Germanus, the emperor’s own cousin, and he listened to her.”

“Everyone who has a grievance against the emperor imagines that Germanus would be an improvement.”

“Wouldn’t he be?”

“Why ask me?”

Anastasius was distracted by women’s voices. He looked over the low hedge toward the front of the garden and saw a well-dressed woman in her thirties accompanied by a companion who had the air of being an attendant. The woman had dark hair and tawny skin. Anastasius thought she must have been attractive in her youth. The two women came down the path on the other side of the hedge.

Artabanes went on speaking, giving no sign that he noticed them. “You aren’t going to ask me to ally myself with Germanus in a plot against the emperor, are you? Every young, ambitious hothead in the capital is talking like that. It’s all it is, talk. Do you hear what I’m saying, son? Don’t pay attention to them. That’s enemy territory. We take no notice of what goes on over there.”

“Your wife?”

Artabanes gave a grunt of disgust. “I have no wife.”

The women strolled past, hardly an arm’s breadth away, chattering on about certain flowers which were beginning to bloom. Anastasius and Artabanes might as well not have been there.

Anastasius drank more wine. He realized hitherto he had been adding too much water to his wine. It was much tastier undiluted. It wasn’t surprising Artabanes would possess a store of very good wine. He was, after all, a general.

“It would suit you if Germanus took over, wouldn’t it? He’d banish Belisarius and Antonina. Then you and…uh…whatever her name is…could get married as Theodora planned. Without you having to kill your intended’s mother. They don’t like their mothers being killed.”

Anastasius studied the receding backs of the women over the top of his cup. It was rather humorous. He had to keep blinking or else he saw four women. He wondered how Artabanes had seen his intentions so clearly. He had thought it rather subtle. A way to remove Antonina’s influence, but not in a manner that would turn Joannina against him.

Artabanes struggled to his feet and clapped a hand on Anastasius’ shoulder, in either a show of companionship or simply to support himself. Before Anastasius knew what was happening Artabanes was refilling his cup from the jug he held.

Anastasius had begun to feel dizzy. Joannina wouldn’t want him drinking so much. She’d be angry if he arrived home inebriated. Well, he told himself, how dare she? It wasn’t up to her to tell him how much to drink. He was a man, wasn’t he? What business was it of hers?

He poured more wine down his throat.

“It’s not that I couldn’t slay the tyrant,” Artabanes was saying. “I’ve slain tyrants in my time. Gontharis for one. Let me tell you about Gontharis. We were at a banquet. Gontharis was drinking. He was drunk. You, son, pretend you’re the tyrant.”

***

John was on the way to the administrative complex when he heard his name called.

He turned to see a young woman running in his direction. Her robes-much too heavy and lavish for exertion-were disordered and her hair flew in all directions. At first he mistook her for Vesta, then he realized it was the girl’s mistress, Joannina.

She stopped beside him, gasping, hand held up to her heaving chest. “Lord Chamberlain! Thank goodness I caught you!”

“Is there some trouble?”

“It’s Anastasius. He visited Artabanes and the general tried to poison him.”

Having seen the sorry shape Artabanes had been in the previous day John found it difficult to imagine him having the ability, let alone the presence of mind, to attempt poisoning a visitor. “What makes you think Anastasius was poisoned, Joannina?”

“He told me so, after his bodyguards carried him home.”

“Carried him home?”

“He couldn’t stand up. He was horribly ill.”

“Did he by any chance smell of wine?” John asked, recalling that wine was a poison very much present at Artabanes’ villa.

“That’s what the poison was concealed in, obviously,” said Joannina.

“Do you think Anastasius is in danger?”

“No, he’s recovering. He told me it was lucky he only had a sip of the poisoned wine. If he’d drunk a whole cup…” Her lips began to tremble and she broke off. “I don’t want to think about it. You must have Artabanes arrested immediately!”

“What were Anastasius’ bodyguards doing while Artabanes was poisoning his wine?”

“They were waiting outside with the carriage.”

“So he was able to walk out to the carriage?”

“No. They told me they heard shouting from inside the house. The sounds of fighting. So they raced in. What about Artabanes? Aren’t you going to have him arrested?”

Joannina’s voice had risen to a screech and passersby gave the pair curious looks.

“Did the bodyguards say anything more?”

“They told me they ran into the garden and saw Artabanes attacking Anastasius.”

“It seems odd. Why would he do that if he had poisoned him?”

“Because the man is demented. He was swinging a stick and shouting ‘You’re dead, Gontharis I stabbed you in the heart!’ Demented, obviously!”

John recalled Artabanes reenactment of his killing the Libyan tyrant Gontharis “I see,” he replied. “And Anastasius was unable to fight back?”

“Only because his own stick had broken. And then he fell down and his bodyguards had to carry him home. Artabanes will no doubt claim Anastasius attacked him. People were supposed to think he had killed Anastasius with a stick in self defense, to cover up the fact he’d poisoned him.”

John’s opinion was that such a plan was beyond Artabanes. He made polite noises about looking into the matter further. Joannina began to calm down. Did she truly believe Anastasius wasn’t simply inebriated? “Why did Anastasius go to see Artabanes in the first place?”

“He didn’t tell me, Lord Chamberlain. I didn’t know he had gone there until the bodyguards carried him in and put him on the couch.”

“You shouldn’t be away from Anastasius too long. Go home and take care of him. I don’t believe Artabanes is dangerous.”

He managed to send her away slightly mollified and continued on his way, quickening his pace to make up for lost time.

John caught Felix leaving his office in the administrative building. The excubitor captain looked annoyed when John asked that guards be posted secretly to keep a watch on Anatolius’ house. “Do you suspect your friends now, John?”

“I’m not interested in Anatolius, but in who might be seeking his legal advice.”

“I don’t know if I can spare the men, John. Since Theodora died you’d think Justinian was fighting a war in the city, ordering guards here and there, usually for no reason I can see.” He ran a big hand through his bushy beard. A patch of white bristles had recently appeared in its center, like the first snow of the year glimpsed at the very peaks of distant mountains.