Mary Reed: Two for Joy

Balbinus, glancing from one to the other, looked astonished.

“I see by your expression you do not deny that part of it at least,” John went on. “That’s why Aurelius died, isn’t it? He taught at the Academy years ago and they were afraid he recognized them when we visited the shrine. Afraid their plan might be revealed before it could come to fruition.”

“We senators strongly counseled Justinian against letting those men return,” Balbinus broke in hotly. “He called them toothless old thinkers, as harmless as doves.”

“You are implying that I have been used, Lord Chamberlain?” Michael said sharply.

Balbinus gave a bitter laugh. “Isn’t it obvious? Of course you were. The philosophers were creating an opportunity for invasion. Who knows, perhaps they were even being paid to do so. What a sweet revenge that would have been!”

“The moment Justinian’s grip was loosened sufficiently Khosrow’s army would have been at the gates,” agreed John.

“I have never raised my hand against any man.” Michael’s spoke in little more than a whisper. “You accuse me of murder, yet I have never approached the walls of your accursed capital.”

“But at least one of your philosophers has been to the city every market day, visiting a house such as you say you intend to shutter,” John pointed out. “And I am willing to wager that while in Constantinople he also gathered information from Khosrow’s spies as well as dispensing further instructions to them, just as others had done throughout the years. Nor should we overlook the fact that such visits would afford the perfect opportunity to place fatal robes in offering baskets.”

“How could any of this possibly not have occurred to you?” Balbinus asked in an amazed tone.

“I am a simple person,” Michael replied, sounding suddenly tired.

Lucretia finally broke the ensuing silence. “John, these accomplices, these spies, whom do you suspect?”

He had no chance to answer.

With a sweeping blow of his huge arm, Darius leapt away from John’s side, knocking Balbinus out of his way. The senator shouted outraged protests, his dignity compromised more than his person injured.

The pair of unarmed excubitors on guard outside stepped uncertainly into the doorway. They had not expected a threat to come from this side.

“There’s no point attempting to flee,” John’s voice was tinged with sadness.

Darius paused for a moment to speak quickly in his native tongue. “I had to do it, John. It was for my family. Tell Isis I’m sorry.” Then he whirled around and bolted out of the room, knocking the unarmed guards aside.

John followed him into the nave as Balbinus lumbered behind, shouting “Stop him!”

But the sea of startled pilgrims had parted to allow passage for Darius, whose wild-eyed charge as he escaped through them resembled the bull to which he had so often been compared.

From behind him, John heard a woman’s screams.

Crouched in a dark corner of the cellar, heart hammering an anguished tattoo, Darius rummaged through the chest of clothing. From the nave above he could hear the excubitor captain shouting orders to his men to seek the Persian outside, his voice rising above the screams and cries of pain from roughly handled patients and pilgrims being shoved aside.

Would Michael’s followers manage to delay the pursuit long enough to allow him to make his escape? They owed him that much, at least, Darius thought wildly.

At last his hand found the unnaturally stiff fabric it sought. He yanked the garment out and threw it over his broad shoulders.

He had already left the waking world. Now as he burst out of the cellar, he moved through a dream landscape where white-robed acolytes fell away from him like wisps of mist.

The grassy field outside the shrine was the dry, sandy earth of his native Persia. The sounds that trailed him were not the shouts of imperial pursuit but the wailing lamentations of his poor family, the family he had failed, whom Khosrow would surely now order put to death, if he had not already done so.

Wavy hair streaming behind him, robe flapping, Darius ran madly along the embankment where the field sloped down to the dark waters of the Bosporos. As he fled he wept.

A momentary vision of Adula passed through his thoughts. What choice had he had? If only it had been one of the other girls who had worn the fateful robe he’d been given along with orders he had tried to refuse but, reminded of his family, could not…And all the years of spying, the deaths for which he was responsible, the lies he had choked on even as he told them, his terrible betrayal of Isis’ trust, in the end it had all been for nothing!

Breath laboring, he glanced back over his shoulder. The excubitors were gaining on him.

He stopped. He was a soldier as much as they. A soldier did not run away. His hands moved to discard the robe he wore. Then he remembered the justice Justinian meted out to spies unfortunate enough to be captured alive.

Turning his bearded face to the sky, Darius shrieked the terrible curse of a man about to die, calling down the gods’ vengeance upon Khosrow, demanding it for the innocent blood he had been forced to shed and his dear, lost family.

Then, screaming his wife’s name, he leapt into the embrace of the waiting Bosporos, into an unbearable explosion of heat that burned away the world.

“This supposed admission of guilt was in a language no one there but you understood,

Lord Chamberlain. While it was followed by self-immolation, it isn’t sufficient proof of the Persian’s murderous activities. Nor,” Theodora stated coldly, “will it serve to free Anatolius.”

The empress had perched herself with audacious impertinence on the throne in the chilly reception hall while Justinian restlessly paced its floor. The huge, echoing space around them reminded John even more strongly of a sarcophagus, perhaps because it looked increasingly likely he might soon be entombed in his own.

“After all,” the empress continued, “need I point out that Anatolius arrived at your house covered with Philo’s blood?”

“In a way he did, highness, since although it was mostly his own, some of it came from Darius’ tunic, bloodied when he committed the deed just before rescuing Anatolius.” John directed what he hoped was a reassuring look toward Anatolius, who stood in shackles a few paces away.

“We do not have time to waste on this trivial matter,” Justinian put in mildly. “You are fortunate indeed, Lord Chamberlain, that I did not have you summarily executed when Senator Balbinus appeared on your behalf, seeking an audience. And you, senator,” he added, with a slight nod toward Balbinus, “are lucky that that head of yours is still atop your shoulders rather than displaying its regal profile from a spike, given the dangerous company you have been keeping of late.”

Balbinus made no reply. His face had begun to take on the pale tint of the ivory panels mounted on the hall’s green marble walls.

The emperor paced over to the throne. With a fond smile, he put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “I know, however, that the empress is as determined as I that justice be done,” he announced to the small group, “and so we will grant you a little more of our time. Lord Chamberlain, you say that this doorkeeper Darius had been a spy for years?”

“Almost certainly ever since he first arrived in Constantinople,” John confirmed. “For after all, where would anyone find talk looser than such an establishment, one whose patrons included courtiers and palace officials?”

“Indeed! And now, since you’ve described to us this plot on the part of the philosophers and their fiendish fire weapon,” said Justinian, “do you believe it was Darius alone who was responsible for all the deaths we have spoken of?”