Mary Reed: Nine for the Devil

“Pay attention, Vesta!” Antonina was saying. “All you do is take several handfuls of petals and cover them with boiling water in a lidded bowl. When the mixture is cool, squeeze and remove the petals. As simple as that, but the women at court are too idle to make it themselves and too proud to admit their need of it. And that being so, they can hardly order their servants to make it for them. On the other hand, a visit to their old friend Antonina, a hint dropped, a gift given….”

A sly look came into her eyes as she continued. “Does your mistress ever use it, I wonder? After all, it inflames ebbing passions. Perhaps that betrothed of hers has a wandering eye? Has he ever made any obscene suggestions to you, Vesta?”

Vesta clenched her fists and began to wish she could poison Antonina to protect her mistress, or at the very least still the cold voice asking questions she had been ordered not to answer.

During the night a thunderstorm broke the oppressive heat.

John and Cornelia were startled awake by the crack of a lightning bolt. The strike was near enough to rattle the lamp on the bedside table and the water clock in the corner. John leapt up in time to force the shutters closed against a gust of wind. Then the skies opened. He and Cornelia lay awake, watching flashes of light flicker through gaps between shutters and window frame and listening to rain lash at the brick facade of the house.

John could imagine sheets of water racing along the streets, wisps of straw, rotting vegetables, animal droppings, and other debris swirling and eddying into corners and soaking baked mud to a soft, clinging consistency. As the air cooled, he and Cornelia drew closer together.

Around dawn John rolled reluctantly away from her warmth. Pulling on a light tunic, he went to the window and opened the shutters. Crows strutted around the square dragging long shadows behind them, pausing to peck at morsels washed there by the night’s downpour. Their eyes glistened like the wet cobbles.

“I count nine,” John told Cornelia, as he turned away from the window. “Nine for the Deofil’s own self.”

“Deofil?” Cornelia sat up in bed.

“It’s the way they say ‘devil’ in parts of Bretania.”

Cornelia ran a hand through her tousled hair and gave John a quizzical look. “Those crows are predicting the devil?”

“It’s not much of a trick. Constantinople has always been full of them.”

“That’s why we should move to that estate in Greece, the one you plan to retire to. I wish you were leaving the city with me today for good. Maybe the crows are telling you it’s time go.” She had let the sheet fall away and sat worrying at a knot in her hair. She smiled at him to show that her remarks had been meant teasingly.

A shaft of morning light draped itself from her shoulder, across her breasts, and settled against the rumpled sheets under her thighs. John felt a momentary tightness in his chest, no different than he had felt seeing her in the light of dawn decades earlier when he was a young mercenary.

He tried not to dwell on that other life.

Cornelia said, “You remember after we had news that Europa was pregnant we walked in the garden and you saw four crows and told me that our grandchild would be a boy, because the rhyme said four was for a boy?”

“We shall soon know if the crows are accurate.”

“The day Theodora died I saw a single crow sitting on the fountain in our garden. One for sorrow, you said. But how many people were sorry Theodora was gone? I wasn’t.”

“Perhaps the prediction was not for you. Perhaps the crow was meant to be seen by someone else. By Peter.”

“What? Would Peter feel sorrow over Theodora?”

“Maybe he is destined to overcook tomorrow’s diner. That would make him unhappy.”

Cornelia had finished with her hair but she made no effort to get off the bed. “What a funny rhyme for you to carry around in your head, here in the capital so far from its home. It seems out of place.”

“Like the head it is carried in,” John said. A secret Mithran serving a Christian emperor, the son of a Greek farmer, former mercenary, former slave, a man who had traversed the empire from Bretania to Egypt and Persia. He had spent almost three decades in Constantinople. He carried a map of the city in his mind. He knew the most intimate details of the imperial court and its intrigues. Even so, he did not feel he belonged.

“I don’t remember you mentioning nine for a devil before. Is it the last verse?”

“In some versions of the rhyme.”

“Are there many versions?”

“Probably as many as you care to make up. Julius was fascinated by fortune telling. He was the friend who introduced me to Mithra. We served together in Bretania. He used to talk to the natives whenever he had a chance. At night, in camp, he’d explain to me, for instance, how I should check the colors of the caterpillars to see if we’d have a cold winter. I’m not so sure some of the peasants weren’t just amusing themselves at his expense.”

Cornelia leaned forward attentively. “You remembered all the rhymes about crows?”

“Some of them. The rain reminded me.” John turned back to the window. Crows still stalked across the cobbles but he didn’t count them. “We had had downpours for a week. If you have never been to Bretania you can’t imagine what it is like. The bitter chill, the icy fogs. Despite the cold, Julius returned from his patrol full of enthusiasm. He had struck up a conversation with an old farmer who recited this new rhyme. Others Julius knew went to seven, or to ten or eleven. This one, he said, had nine for the deofil’s own self and wasn’t that strange since there was another rhyme that had nine for a kiss. Not that women don’t sometimes turn out to be devils.”

“And did he see ever nine crows after that?”

“No. The next morning we forded a swollen stream. We must have done that a hundred times. This time he lost his balance or maybe a devil grabbed his leg and dragged him down. Before I could do anything he was carried away in the current and drowned.”

He heard a soft footstep and then Cornelia’s bare arms encircled him. He felt her warmth press against his back.

“Come back to bed, John. The carriage won’t be here for a while.”

***

Cornelia left for Zeno’s estate before the sun had warmed the air. John had requisitioned one of the imperial carriages used to transport foreign dignitaries. Mist rose from cobblestones in pearly columns. John turned away before the carriage clattered out of sight beyond the corner of the barracks across the square. He did not like farewells. Under the circumstances he was glad to have Cornelia out of the city and not within easy reach of the emperor should things go wrong with the investigation.

Peter served John bread and boiled eggs, his lips drawn tight in unspoken disapproval.

“I know what you’re thinking,” John put his cup of Egyptian wine down on the scarred table. “If the mistress were here we would be having a proper breakfast. But when I was a young mercenary without a nummus to my name I would have been happy for such excellent fare.”

“It would have been a proper breakfast indeed for a young mercenary,” Peter replied. “When I was a camp cook we usually made gruel.” He refilled John’s cup. “I intend to visit the market, master. I’m going to see if I can get a really fresh swordfish to grill.” The look he gave John was almost challenging.

“Swordfish would be excellent, Peter.” John suspected his servant had recalled his fondness for the dish and thought it would cheer him with Cornelia away.

As soon as Peter limped downstairs and shut the door with an echoing bang that emphasized the emptiness of the house, John went his study to contemplate the Gordian knot he had been ordered to unravel. He wished he could solve his problem by waving a sword at it.