Mary Reed - Eight for Eternity

“It’s as good a guess as any, John.”

They set off without further discussion. John explained how he had been detained, described Hippolytus’ interview with Justinian on the terrace and his own conclusions about the murder of the Blue. The murder no longer seemed important.

“At least Justinian can’t accuse you of having failed in your investigation, even if it turned out to be of little consequence,” Felix remarked. “We’re fortunate he finally allowed Belisarius and Mundus to fight. But for such a strange reason. Only a Christian would ignore generals and heed a madman.”

They picked their way around the huge boulders of masonry where the Chalke had stood. Ribbons of smoke rose from the rubble. A scrawny dog worried what might have been an arm protruding from a pile of scorched bricks.

By the time they reached the Mese the terrible wailing had begun to die away and up and down the thoroughfare individual voices could be made out. The loud words of a dispute. Laughter.

Knots of people clustered under part of a colonnade that had survived the fires. The Hunnish hair-styles many sported marked them as Blues. A man with a long braid wandered in circles in the middle of the street. Seeing him, John could feel the wet rope of the braid by which he had pulled the drowned man from the cistern. A chill ran down his back.

“Dancing with Bacchus,” Felix muttered.

A burst of raucous merriment drifted from a nearby tavern which was apparently still in business, if somewhat smoke stained. A figure lurched out, staggered over to them, and put a hand on John’s shoulder to steady himself. Felix drew his sword.

John removed the hand from his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Felix. I know this man. What is it, Junius?”

The young charioteer swayed but managed to remain upright. “Good thing I saw you. Need to warn you. Stay away from the Hippodrome. Too dangerous.”

He exhaled a fog of wine along with his slurred words.

“You are telling us this because…?”

“So you’ll put in a good word for me with Porphyrius, for saving your life,” the other replied with what probably struck him as impeccable logic in his inebriated state. “Just been celebrating the triumph of Justinian, thanks to a benefactor of the Blues.”

Felix grabbed Junius by the arm and yanked him around so he could glare into the charioteer’s suddenly panic-stricken face. “Better to ask what all these Blues are doing out here drinking themselves into the gutter when people are being killed in the Hippodrome.”

“All of us were ordered to get out,” Junius stammered. “By Porphyrius. And I heard Narses was making money available out in the street, or at any rate the taverns would be serving free wine. I had to leave. All the Blues were leaving.”

Felix pushed Junius away. “So the Blues were paid to leave the Greens to their fate.”

He and John finished their journey to the Hippodrome at a run. The clatter of hooves greeted them on the concourse. A bleeding man stumbled across the open space. His mounted pursuer overtook him, ran a spear through his neck, yanked it free in a gout of blood, and rode back into the stadium. From its depths echoed isolated shouts, screams, and hoof beats.

“It’s over,” John said. “They’re hunting down survivors.”

He and Felix continued on toward the racetrack.

Bodies filled the stalls behind the starting gates-those who had tried to flee. John stepped over and around the dead until he emerged onto the track.

“Mithra!” he heard Felix mutter. Was it a curse or an invocation?

Both men had seen battlefields, but nothing like this. The Hippodrome was a well-filled abattoir. The dead covered the entire length of the track. They were heaped along the spina like debris drifted against the sea walls. John walked forward a few paces. It was difficult to find footing and where there was a space to place a boot, the sand was slippery. It had absorbed blood until it became saturated.

He accidentally stepped on a hand, cursed, and moved backwards, reflexively. The lifeless fingers appeared to have been clawing at the ground when they stopped moving for the last time.

The scene should have been still but the carrion birds lent to it a horrible animation. The birds hopped from corpse to corpse, stabbed with their beaks, and flapped away. The far end of the track might have been a refuse heap crawling with flies. The birds cawed and squawked as they fought over their banquet. Amidst the harsh screeching John could make out scattered moans. A single shrill, thin scream emanated from a distant point he could not locate. It went on and on. Already, he saw, several beggars had arrived to pick over the bodies.

A suffocating stench of blood and death hung in the vast enclosure.

“It was nothing more than a slaughter,” John said. “A crowd this size, packed in here. No need for strategy. They could scarcely move let alone fight. And there was nowhere to take shelter, even if they could have run. No proper weapons to speak of, either.”

He kicked at a sharpened stick in his path. “To think that I have been searching for the murderer of two men, and now this. Half the city dead and no doubt at all who killed them.”

“What choice was there, John?”

“There’s never any choice, is there?”

He was having trouble breathing. His chest suddenly felt constricted. The shock of seeing the carnage had driven everything else from his mind, but now he recalled why they had come here. To find Julianna.

Suddenly he did not want to continue the search.

Not here, where there was nothing left alive.

He walked amidst the dead, hardly seeing them. Afraid that his gaze would be caught by a lithe, familiar figure.

For some inexplicable reason he kept seeing Cornelia in his mind. But it wasn’t Cornelia he was looking for. She had been lost to him long ago, vanished into the countless masses of humanity, alive and dead, of whom John would know nothing until the day he died.

For the dead were all knowing.

No, he was searching for Julianna, a young girl who meant nothing to him at all.

Felix caught at John’s sleeve. “We can’t look everywhere. If she were here….” He let his voice trail off.

They were halfway down the track, approaching the huge box of the kathisma. There was no emperor to gesture imperiously at his audience of two far below. A hawk rose up from inside the enclosure, bearing away whatever dangled from its talons.

John narrowed his eyes as he scanned the tiers of seating “There,” he finally said. “Up there.”

It took an eternity to climb the tiers.

Julianna lay at the base of the kathisma wall. She wore the iridescent green robes she had worn in John’s garden. The wall was high, designed to keep the masses safely away from the emperor. An athletic young woman might have been able to climb it, using the ornate carvings for hand-holds-or she might have thought she could.

There was no blood. Her head rested on her hands as if she had laid down to go to sleep, except that her eyes were still open and staring.

“She fell, trying to get up to where her father was crowned.” John spoke quietly, though there was no one to overhear their conversation.

“Better that than her being trapped down there,” Felix said, “or sent to the gallows with the rest of her family.”

John bent down and pulled a wisp of green silk over the still face.

January 22, 532

John’s house was empty. All the furniture had been carted away. There remained only whispers and shadows.

John and Felix passed through the atrium, conducting a final inspection.

“If I were you I would miss this place,” said Felix. “Usually when people are promoted they request a larger house, not a smaller one.”