The bathers couldn’t stifle their gasps. From one of the cowering attendants came a nervous, uncontrolled titter.
The fool turned his hooded, shadowed visage toward Theodora. “Ah. You’re smiling, I see, highness. You know how this works, then?”
“Do you think I don’t know half the population of Constantinople claims to have watched chickens peck corn from my groin in the days when I was working in the theater?”
“I’ve heard that on one occasion a certain high-ranking foreign official paid good silver to play the chicken,” the man informed her.
“Now that’s a slander that hasn’t reached my ears before now!” Theodora leaned toward the fool until her face nearly touched his. His eyes glinted within his hood. His shabby cloak appeared encrusted with grease, but the only smell about him was that of desiccated papyrus. “Sitting here with you like this reminds me of my past. People are amazed that a bearkeeper’s daughter can command senators to prostrate themselves at her feet. But, you know, senators have been prostrating themselves at my feet since I was…well…a child…”
The fool had taken hold of the chicken and was stroking its feathers idly. “The Lord will forgive your sins, if only you will ask.”
“Sins? It is I who was sinned against, fool.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I remember the first occasion my sister brought a man to me. Some high official or other he was, he claimed. A fat, nasty man. When my sister explained what he wanted to do, I didn’t know whether to laugh at how silly it sounded or cry with disgust at what he required. I couldn’t imagine why he would desire such a thing, but I’d learned to add up coins before I could read, so I knew immediately why I would allow him to…well…”
One of the attendants burst into noisy sobs, but was quelled by one look from Theodora.
“When my sister left, the old fellow began to paw me,” Theodora went on. “I pretended to cry. ‘Oh, sir,’ I whimpered most convincingly. ‘I want to obey you, but I’m so frightened. Perhaps if you pretended to be a little purring kitten I would not be so terribly afraid.’ Yes, I’ve always been an excellent actress…”
The fool grinned. “Indeed. And you have made a practice of humiliating rich and powerful men ever since those far off days. Isn’t that so, highness? Why, that’s a homily worthy of Chrysostom.”
A wet strand of hair had snaked over Theodora’s shoulder, trickling water down between her breasts. “How do you intend to entertain me? Be quick, fool, before I call the guards.”
Keeping the restless chicken grasped firmly in one hand, the man set the wet grain into two small piles. “I shall answer your questions. Or rather, my oracle here will. When I place this sagacious fowl between the piles of food, highness, ask it something, and then see toward which pile it heads to eat. The grain at my right hand means Yes, that to my left indicates No.”
***
Felix put his shoulder to the door of the imperial carriage standing in a small clearing, turned its latch, and heard it click into place.
From inside the conveyance came a thunderous growl, then the noise of claws rattling and scrabbling. The carriage rocked slightly. A few in the bedraggled group of excubitors surrounding it cursed bears in general, and this one in particular. Although it was now safely contained, there was more than a little blood to give evidence of their struggle to get it into the carriage.
“Lucky for us our big friend here didn’t escape from the grounds,” Felix rumbled, sounding decidedly ursine himself. “Someone, and I suspect it would have been me, would have had to pay for the mistake then.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” protested a young guard armed with a broken lance. “I didn’t make that cursed weak net…”
“You’re right. Still-”
“Captain, what are we, animal keepers?” protested another. “I didn’t join the excubitors to haul the empress’ pets around. It’s not supposed to be part of our duties, pulling imperial carriages occupied by bears!”
“Now you know very well that the empress has such a kind heart she ordered three of you harnessed to the carriage so that none of the imperial horses would be terrified by the smell of its occupant. Need I remind you that your job is to do whatever she orders, and do it fast and without complaint?” Felix retorted.
The excubitors immediately began to detail orders they’d prefer to take from the empress.
“Those are wishes not likely to be granted,” Felix grunted with a grin.
“Perhaps, but sometimes Fortuna surprises us.” The speaker was staring open-mouthed down the path leading into the clearing.
Hardly had he spoken when two naked women raced past them.
“Murder…at the baths,” shrieked one.
***
The hallway in the women’s wing of the imperial baths swarmed with aristocratic ladies in various states of panic and undress, the more panicked among them the least clothed.
“Mithra!” said the young man with the broken lance. “And I thought having to stand guard at banquets and smell all that food was hard duty.”
A decently dressed woman, an attendant no doubt, trotted by, glancing back over her shoulder.
Felix stopped her. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
“It’s Satan, sir. Satan’s flying from one pool to another, shouting all manner of blasphemies and obscenities. Flying about like a horrible black bird. Everybody in the baths ran away, naked or not. The shame of it, sir, to be seen naked in public…but it was a question of garments or souls and not both, so it was.” She looked down at the blue silk tunic in her hands. “Now I must find my mistress and get her decently clothed, sir.”
As she ran out of the building, a familiar figure raced down the hallway toward them.
No, Felix realized, the figure wasn’t familiar. It was its clothing, which was instantly recognizable. Its elaborate embroidered panels depicting the temptation in the Garden of Eden identified it as a garment he had seen the empress wearing.
It was not actually being worn, but rather was wrapped around the running figure. Whoever it was suddenly flung the robe off, straight into Felix’ face, and bolted outside.
Felix knocked the garment aside. He saw the back of the black-cloaked figure that had worn it and set out in hasty pursuit.
His boots slid on wet tiles and he fell heavily, taking two excubitors with him. For a short space, the hallway was a confusion of sprawled, armored guards, bare flesh, swords, and silks.
Felix found himself pinned beneath the not inconsiderable weight of a plump, pink-faced, matronly woman.
He gently lifted her off and scrambled to his feet, trying not to look at her. “Priscilla, my apologies. Please give my regards to your husband the senator.”
He contained his choice string of lurid curses until he was outside the baths.
“This way!” an excubitor shouted, gesturing toward the clearing down the path as his colleagues poured outside, heads swiveling back and forth, gaping after fleeing women.
“Look at me, men,” bellowed Felix. “Pretend I’m a pretty sight! Keep your eyes on your captain! Now, follow! He can’t outrun us!”
He was right. The leading excubitors burst into the clearing only a few paces behind their quarry.
Unfortunately, those few paces also marked the distance between the edge of the open space and the imperial carriage.
Without saying a word, the strange intruder grasped the carriage door and flung it open.
The furious bear erupted from its prison. In an instant it was on the excubitors like a storm howling in off the sea.
By the time they’d saved themselves their quarry was long gone.
Felix had just sent a number of his men with the tattered net after the bear when the empress made her appearance, properly dressed, albeit in someone else’s fine silks, and accompanied by her ladies-in-waiting.
“Captain Felix! You and the rest of your men escort us to our residence immediately! I must tell the emperor what the chicken had to say.”