Mary Reed: Two for Joy

Justinian had not been much interested in Michael’s past, beyond the fact that she had left her profession to marry. The emperor was well versed in the legal rights accorded to husbands and realized she could not risk anyone revealing her whereabouts if the husband seeking her should arrive in Constantinople. She would not, he was satisfied, dare to come back. He had therefore ordered Anatolius freed and dismissed them all from his presence.

Anatolius, being more interested than the emperor in matters of the heart, prompted John to relate what he had learned.

In the darkening garden, John thought back to the words that had passed in private between himself and Michael after Darius’ charred body had been retrieved from the Bosporos.

The story he had pieced together from Michael’s soft, rambling words, directed as much to herself it seemed as to John, had been unremarkable, save for its strange ending. A husband who grew cold and became unfaithful. A wife who left and was pursued.

Studying Michael’s delicate, pale features, so clearly those of a woman, now that he knew the truth-now that he was no longer blinded by seeing her as a despised eunuch-John chided himself for having been deceived.

“There are many stories of women who for various reasons disguised themselves as men, and of men who did the opposite,” he said. “Afraid of being apprehended, she shaved her head and dressed as a man.”

Anatolius frowned and abruptly stopped walking. “Had it been Lucretia I would not have wanted to see her shear off all her beautiful hair. Do you suppose Lucretia and Balbinus will be reconciled now?” His voice was wistful.

John shrugged silently. It was the only tactful answer, particularly since it did not seem to have occurred to Anatolius that in effect Lucretia had sacrificed her freedom in exchange for his.

“Did she tell you how it was she came by her religious beliefs?”

“Why should she? It was a revelation from God, as she’d told her followers, and the rest of the world, often enough.”

“You believe that?”

“How do any of us come by our beliefs?”

“But what did Michael want, John? Did she truly aspire to be Patriarch? Was she merely an unwitting instrument of destruction?”

He admitted, he had not been able to fathom her motivation. “She professed ignorance of the extent of the philosophers’ plot. Yet she had suffered at mens’ hands and I don’t think she was completely averse to the possibility of revenge, even if it could not be directed at one person in particular. Then again, it’s quite possible that she also found herself swept along by events.”

A chilly breeze was beginning to rustle through the bushes crowding the pathway. They resumed walking.

“What exactly did she suffer?” wondered Anatolius.

John sighed at the question. Despite recent events, the younger man still had not learned to exercise tact. “Given her old life,” he replied, “much of what she underwent is easily imagined. But she did tell me that as she spoke to her followers on the night of your father’s banquet, she looked out into the crowd and saw a family. A family with a young child and a woman who was close to her time. And that reminded her of the child she had lost, a loss that was the beginning of the bitter estrangement between she and her husband.”

“Strange indeed,” mused Anatolius, “for it is sadly true that infants die every day without their deaths threatening to bring down an empire. But it seems stranger still that she would tell you all this, John.”

“Perhaps she felt the need for some human sympathy, for a holy man cannot receive very much of that.” John did not add that those who had suffered greatly often sensed it, unspoken, in others. Perhaps that had been the real reason for the confidences Michael had made to him.

Their walk around the garden had led them to the pool graced by the eroded stone creature. Anatolius looked thoughtfully into the water. A few dead brown leaves floated there, heralding the approaching winter.

“And what of Michael now?” he asked.

“I hear the gossips in the marketplace have it that Michael ascended to heaven from the shores of the Bosporos. In a fiery chariot, no less!” John gave his thin-lipped smile. “That fiery chariot, of course, was Darius. But if you are a follower, it is a much more satisfactory explanation for her disappearance than the truth, which is that she fled by a more ordinary method of transport, in the back of a cart or on foot perhaps.”

“But why did you allow her to escape?” Anatolius persisted.

“Everything considered, I realized if Michael sincerely believed in this matter of the body as holy vessel, to destroy such vessels was not something she would knowingly assist.”

Anatolius continued to look doubtful but said nothing.

“And there again although she’s free, she is not free,” John went on. “So long as she’s hunted, there will never be rest. She can never stop looking over her shoulder. Every day might be the day that her husband finds her. It will be the first thing she thinks of when she awakes, the last thing before she sleeps. But it is growing cold. We should go indoors.”

Their conversation continued in John’s study.

Anatolius again expressed amazement at their escape from death. “Perhaps Justinian was in a merciful mood,” he offered thoughtfully, lounging on the chair lately occupied by Philo.

“Perhaps. But if you ask me, it’s much more likely that I was exiled rather than executed so as to remove me from Theodora’s long reach and allow me time to complete my task,” John replied. “Of course, he could still have me executed on the spot.”

“Well, that applies to everyone,” Anatolius cheerily pointed out, “especially if he disagrees with them. Or even if he doesn’t.”

“True enough. And one thing with which Justinian most certainly would not agree is my opinion that the empire does not need ungodly fire weapons,” John said as he poured two cups of wine. Handing one to Anatolius, he went on, “Incendiary devices are one thing but setting water ablaze for stadia, killing everyone trapped in or on it, is another. War is a cruel enough undertaking as it is but more than that, there’s no honor in such a weapon.”

“But if the enemy has the secret…?”

John smiled grimly. “If they did, do you not think they would have used it long since? It would have been deployed immediately and doubtless they would have taken Constantinople by now. So, all in all, perhaps it’s as well those learned academicians were found dead in their cells just an hour or so after their capture at the villa Peter and I visited. It was poisoned wine, apparently.”

Anatolius had been about to put his cup to his lips. He paused abruptly. “What is this? Justinian orders wine served to those who sought to overthrow him?”

“Their guards are Mithrans.”

Anatolius understood. “And Hypatia is an excellent herbalist, isn’t she?”

“They knew what was in the wine and made their choice. I expected it to be mentioned during our audience, for Justinian certainly knew about it even if Theodora did not. She certainly knows by now. Hopefully she will assume that it was done on the emperor’s orders and inquire no further. So let us say no more about it, my friend.”

Anatolius set down his cup, wine untouched. “Your house seems very quiet, John.”

“Yes, Peter is resting and Hypatia went to visit friends. Felix went back to his own home this morning, even though he still needs to recuperate a while longer. But he also wanted to mourn his fellow captain in private.”

Anatolius said in a husky voice that he quite understood.

“And Isis,” John went on, “well, she is distraught over Darius, of course. It’s difficult to overcome affection for a person who has served you faithfully for many years, even when he betrays you. And of course Darius betrayed more than one of us. However, she went off an hour or two ago to visit the ruins of her house now that the streets are quiet again.”