He was as likely to run into her as he was to see his own daughter again.
Would he recognize either of them?
He thought he heard someone moving about in the hall. Rising from his plain wooden chair, he looked out. A single lamp flickered at the far end, where narrow stairs led up to the mostly unoccupied servants’ quarters. Nothing moved.
It hadn’t been exactly a footstep. It was a softer sound, similar to heavy garments brushing against a wall. Birds often got into the house from the garden or through the compluvium, yet he couldn’t help recalling Peter’s imagined heavenly visitor.
Zoe stared solemnly at him as he sat down again.
“Peter doesn’t like me talking to you, Zoe.” John could not have said whether he spoke aloud or not.
There was a hint of sympathy in the girl’s almond-shaped eyes.
“Strange to think, isn’t it, that my servant possesses what I do not? That is to say, a past.”
He brought the wine cup to his lips. It was a cup akin to the one he’d owned when he lived with Cornelia, the mother of his daughter. The vessel was a duplicate he had ordered made, down to the crack in the rim. It was all of the past he could bear to keep close to him. Of the man he had been before his capture and emasculation in Persia, there remained nothing.
As for the family and friends of the man he had been then, they had vanished as surely as if the emperor had ordered every one of them dragged off to the dungeons in the dead of night. Or as if his Lord Chamberlain had ordered it, for John could certainly wield such power if he ever chose to exercise it.
Still, he admitted, if only to Zoe, he missed hearing Cornelia’s light breathing as she slept in the bed beside him, when the night was as silent as this one.
He lit the lamp on the desk and stared out of the window for a while. In the darkness there was no sign of the horror that stalked the city’s streets. For that matter, it could be lurking within this very house. The plague could go wherever it chose.
John forced his mind back to his investigation. He had become a servant to his own servant, as Gaius had said. Yet Peter was part of John’s household, and if it were possible, John intended to find out who had killed Gregory. Elderly men like Peter did not have much time left to outlive their sorrows and disappointments.
“He’s already lost an old friend, but he at least has good memories of him. If I tell him the work Gregory did, will I murder those memories too? What do you think, Zoe?” John poured himself more wine.
Chapter Four
The bakery was deserted. Empty shelves in its front and cold brick ovens at the back confirmed what John had known as soon as he turned down the street and failed to smell freshly baked bread.
He crossed Eustathios the baker off the list on Gregory’s wax tablet.
There were now no names left. The list had led John to a succession of closed shops and silent houses where knocks had gone unanswered, their residents having departed to the country-or forever-or were perhaps too ill or frightened to answer.
He wondered if the names had in fact been Gregory’s itinerary.
That the bakery had been left open and unlocked indicated not only that Eustathios was dead, but that he had fallen prey to the most virulent variety of the plague, the type that took its victims within hours.
A muted thump caused John to turn quickly. Was there someone here after all?
He saw a cat, little more than an animated skeleton, stalking away from an empty grain bin. The cobwebs hanging off the animal’s whiskers testified to the extent of its hunting efforts. No baker meant no grain to feed the rats and no rats to feed the cats.
The creature glared balefully at John, who had nothing to give it.
Only a few coins.
No use at all to a hungry cat.
John realized he was hungry too. It had been a long time since the chunk of bread that had formed his breakfast.
The sun, now high overhead, drove all shadow from the streets here, a lengthy walk from the Great Palace grounds. John had made his way along the northern ridge from which, between buildings crowded conspiratorially together, he could occasionally glimpse the scintillant waters of the Golden Horn. He had planned his route to avoid climbing and reclimbing the seven-hilled city’s precipitous streets.
Now, however, he decided to walk down toward the docks.
When he reached a square facing the sea wall he was disappointed again. The seller of grilled fish, whose smoking brazier usually sat beside the marble statue of Emperor Anastasius, had gone. No sign of him remained except soot on the emperor’s chin and a few discarded fish bones, picked clean by seagulls.
There were still a fair number of pedestrians. A traveler unaccustomed to the capital’s jostling masses might not have noticed how relatively few they were or how most maintained careful courses, keeping a safe distance from strangers-rather like ships navigating the harbor, except that the ships in the harbor were not moving. There wasn’t a sail to be seen, only a forest of bare masts.
John recalled what Peter had said about his visits with Gregory. Sometimes they met at the Great Church or the Church of the Holy Apostles. Both were certainly places of some interest to Christians, but the latter was a long walk from John’s house. Was it was nearer to where Gregory lived? The thought occurred that there must be some record of where Gregory lived, either at the customs house or in the administrative warrens of the palace.
John turned away from the sea wall and started back up the steep thoroughfare. He often walked, since he found he thought better when his feet were moving. Thus he knew the alleys and byways of the city well. He crossed the top of the ridge, navigated a series of side streets not quite narrow enough to be called alleyways, passed under the Aqueduct of Valens, and eventually reached the Church of the Holy Apostles.
A motley assortment of associated ecclesiastical buildings all but hid the church. Not far beyond, the city’s inner wall stood guard. Impregnable to men, the walls had provided no defense against the plague.
John looked up and down nearby streets until he found an establishment that appeared to be open. A pyramid chiseled above its entrance bore the admonition The Wise Man is Prepared. A plaque beside the door identified the establishment as belonging to one Paraskeve, Builder of Tombs of Distinction.
John found the owner in the courtyard behind the shop, surrounded by the equivalent of a warehouse’s stock of marble, granite, and more exotic stones. Some were blank, awaiting the chisel, while others were in the midst of being carved into bas reliefs, cornices, or vine-entwined columns, or inscribed with appropriate verse.
Paraskeve hurried over to greet John, beaming. He had one of those round, snub-nosed faces that never age yet never look quite adult. Over his work tunic he wore an embroidered rectangular apron.
“How can I serve you, excellency?”
“I’m trying to find a man I believe may live in the area. Do you know a customs official named Gregory?”
“Yes, indeed I do.” Paraskeve looked crushed.
“I shall naturally reimburse you for the information.”
Paraskeve waved a stubby-fingered hand. “No. No, please, there is no need. I must apologize if my disappointment showed. The plague has all but carried my business off and I hoped you might wish to order…that is to say, for future use of course, not wishing any tragedy on your household, or in other words…” He floundered to a halt.
“I understand,” John replied. “Although I would have imagined a tomb builder would be overwhelmed by work in the midst of so much death.”
“The dead don’t purchase tombs, excellency. My customers are dying before they can make appropriate preparations. Constructing a proper tomb can take years. It’s not just hacking a few stones about, as some in the profession are wont to do.”