Mary Reed: Two for Joy

“What is so fascinating about those numbers, madam?” he asked, his chagrin at his employer’s ignoring his advice momentarily overcoming his tact.

Isis ran her finger down a column in her account book, mumbled a few numbers to herself, and bit the full lower lip reddened with wine-dregs whose lush pout had helped accumulate the wealth whose extent she was now calculating. Finally she smiled and looked up.

“Well, my friend, numbers have their own beauty. Then too, my account book always makes me think of my father.”

Darius could not conceal his look of surprise.

“He was a tax assessor in Alexandria,” Isis explained. “He taught me about numbers. They balance, like lines in well-constructed verse. As I say, they have their own beauty.”

“You would have made a fine tax assessor.” Darius was thinking about Isis’ shrewd evaluation of the girls so often brought to her doorway for sale by their destitute families.

“But that is not a woman’s job, is it?” Isis put her account book down and took a handful of dried figs from the silver bowl beside her. “My father was often away from home, valuing estates and villages and such like. I had an uncle who sometimes visited while he was gone. He’d bring me trinkets and tell me stories about his travels for as long as I cared to allow him to sit beside me with his hand on my knee.”

She paused to chew thoughtfully for a moment or two on a fig. “This uncle of mine,” she resumed, “had traveled all over the country and had even seen the high falls of the Nile. But the story that impressed me the most was about the Saraceni. Apparently they were nomads who didn’t enter into matrimony as we understand it, but rather hired women to act as their wives for whatever length of time it was agreed the marriage would last. Well, you may say, that’s not so very different from my business here. But it wasn’t quite the same, really, for the so-called wife brought a dowry with her. More importantly, she had the right to leave her husband after a certain time, if that was what she wished.”

“What sort of savages must these Saraceni be?” interrupted Darius.

Isis laughed. “Oh, that struck me as a much more civilized arrangement than the one my parents had. But I had an even better plan, Darius. By reducing the time agreed to and placing the burden of providing the dowry upon the man, I have done quite well. Of course, this uncle of mine, as I later learned, had only heard the tale at second hand and wouldn’t have known the Saraceni from his sandals.”

Isis finished her figs and licked her sticky fingers daintily. “And what of your family, Darius? Do you have one?”

“Indeed I do, madam, and by making my fortune in this rich city I have been able to be of some assistance to them by sending them what I can.”

“But just lately I heard it rumored that you are the son of a village lord.”

Darius’ face reddened. So that explained his employer’s unexpected reminiscences. She had hoped to draw him out.

He asked her where she had heard such a tale.

“From a lady friend of yours,” Isis replied lightly. Then, her voice hardening, she added, “who is another employee of mine.”

“Madam, I am sorry. I should…”

Isis raised an imperious hand. “Do not explain, Darius. We both know the only circumstances that could produce such ridiculous boasts. Adula will believe anything she is told, which is an attractive trait in our line of work. In my day, I had a great deal of difficulty appearing so credulous. But you are aware of my rule.”

Darius hung his head, feeling as if he were being scolded by his mother. “I know, madam. And I assure you, I have not breached your rules before now.”

“I know you haven’t, Darius, or at least not too often. The wares we offer here would hardly be worth the price they are sold for if they were so poor that a man such as yourself could live among them without ever falling prey to temptation.”

“Thank you, madam.”

“But remember, although such indulgence might seem to cost my business nothing, unlike a baker’s assistant stealing a loaf say, yet each transaction increases the likelihood of those complications which contribute to our expenses. And Gaius for one has been talking about raising his fees for necessary remedies.”

Darius assured her that he would be careful not to break her rules again.

“You will have to be, Darius, for I fear Adula is quite smitten with you,” Isis replied. “Now, as I said, I have been asked to provide refined entertainment at the senator’s banquet. I’ve already chosen several of my most talented girls. They will represent the Muses and each will declaim poetry. I wish you to arrange for extra guards to look after the doors since you will accompany us because, as you just pointed out, the streets are unsafe right now. And of course even senators and their esteemed colleagues can become bestial after imbibing too freely. Besides,” she added with an impish smile, “with a loincloth and a pair of gilded wings you’ll make a most striking Eros. Rather a subtle advertisement for our business here, wouldn’t you say?”

As he entered the imperial reception hall with

Senator Aurelius the next morning, John’s quick eye noted that Justinian was wearing the scarlet boots that were his imperial prerogative. The boots formed an incongruous splash of color in the hall’s cavernous marble space, one that always made John think of an enormous sarcophagus.

Whether Justinian’s gaudy footwear had been chosen to reflect the importance of their audience or was simply an unfortunate result of inattention to dress, John could not say. Aside from the boots, Justinian was dressed in his usual careless manner which on this occasion meant a purple, gem-studded cloak thrown over a creased tunic that even from a distance looked as if it had been slept in.

“Leave us,” Justinian ordered the two excubitors who escorted his visitors into the enormous hall. “These men are known to me. They present no danger.”

He waved the guards away with the rolled parchment in his soft, heavily beringed hand. The excubitors withdrew but only as far the reception hall’s great bronze doors. No man, however trustworthy he might have seemed a day or even an hour before, was to be left alone with the man who was supreme head of the Roman Empire and God’s representative on earth.

The hall was chilly. Its green marble walls, graced by ivory panels webbed with delicate gold leaf traceries, soared up into the shadowed vault of the roof. The only other decorations were one or two statues of celebrated military figures. John had thought more than once that those fortunate enough to be permitted to approach the emperor’s throne were in no need of such reminders of Justinian’s absolute power over every living thing in the empire. Having observed countless such visitors approach and depart, John felt that most of them counted themselves fortunate to leave with their heads still on their shoulders. He, however, like all those serving at court, was continually camped very close to danger whether he was actually in Justinian’s presence or not.

“Caesar,” began John, but before he could approach the throne, a simple affair of inlaid wood looking as out of place as a shopkeeper’s stool amidst the soaring magnificence of its setting, the emperor leapt up from it. The jeweled fibula fastening his purple cloak slipped, allowing the precious fabric to drag on the floor as he advanced to greet them.

“Lord Chamberlain, I regret I must ask you to put aside preparations for the formal opening of the Great Church for yet another day since I have another task for you. However, no doubt you will be relieved to hear that it will not require you to climb pillars.”