Felix looked nonplussed, as if he couldn’t decide whether the man was jesting or not. “I shall bear that in mind.” He proceeded to question Alkabaides closely, not about fragrances or vegetables, but about whether he had noticed anything the day Hypatius died? Nothing at all? Nothing unusual? What about a large young man affecting the sartorial style of the Blues?
The assistant screwed up his face in thought but, like everyone else to whom they had spoken that morning, was unable to offer any information.
“If I’d actually seen such a man as you describe, I’m certain I would have remembered him. However, I must admit that a company of demons could have been racing each other right past the door and I wouldn’t have seen them. I don’t go out into the street when I’m working. Those poor unfortunates living in the gutter would be in and out behind my back in the wink of an eye and a wheel of cheese or a handful of fish gone with them.”
“In which case for a day at least they would not be quite so unfortunate.”
Alkabaides looked offended. “The master often gives them coins. He is a kind man despite losing a wife to a fever and his son in an accident. Never mind that in my opinion such charity just encourages beggars to further boldness. They repay kindness with trouble, fighting and keeping decent citizens awake half the night with their running around screaming at all hours. Not that I am criticizing my master, sirs, he is a good Christian.”
“Sounds like some of those wild palace banquets one hears about. Does your master ever provide delicacies for any of those?”
The grocer’s assistant shook his head. “I doubt that courtiers would care to dine on salt fish, although our vegetables are much remarked upon.”
It appeared that Alkabaides had more to tell John and Felix about the grocery business than about the business that interested them. They left the shop.
As they retraced their footsteps along the Mese, John noticed that the beggar who had unsuccessfully asked them for alms had now moved to the other side of the street. John was suddenly struck by a thought.
“Felix, with respect, since none of the merchants have seen anything or anyone even remotely suspicious, may I suggest that those that nobody sees might possibly be more forthcoming?”
The other regarded him with a tired frown. “What do you mean?”
“The people who live on the streets. They’re so much part of the scenery that most of the time we don’t see them unless they hold a hand out. However, they always see us. And since they see us, who else might they have seen?”
“Not a bad idea, I suppose. You think well on your feet.” He gave John an appraising look. “I noticed that last night. And when you borrowed my sword, I could swear you handled it as if you’d used a blade to better purpose than slicing a bit of pork off a haunch. You’re in excellent condition too. Visit the gymnasium much?”
John did not take Felix’s interest as a sign of friendliness. That the other was trying to draw him out about his past was obvious.
“I exercise daily at the baths.” He didn’t mention that he found such bodily exertion helped still the furies that bedeviled him and thus enabled him to present at least a nominally calm face to the world.
“And a cautious man too. You occasionally have an almost military look about you. If I didn’t know what sort of man you were…” Felix appeared hopeful of further revelations.
John said nothing, but instead pointed to the beggar in the doorway. “I saw that man sitting right there the day Hypatius was murdered.”
“I don’t know how you can tell one bag of rags from the next. But if you saw him in the same place he might know something. There’s a good view of the Augustaion from this part of the street.” Felix started across the Mese. “He must at least have seen where that enormous Blue went.”
The beggar appeared to be less a bag of rags than a disorganized pile of them with a pair of incongruously newish boots protruding from it. Strangely, he did not jump up and run off, as most did when they realized they were about to become the objects of official attention. On the contrary, the eyes set in a web of wrinkles brightened with anticipation. As John and Felix approached, he held out a dirty, three-fingered hand.
Felix ignored it. Anxious to get back indoors, he began to question the mendicant brusquely.
The man looked up, his face fixed in a grimace that mixed a vacant smile with an expression of bafflement. Again he waved his open hand at Felix and then at John.
Felix roughly slapped the hand down. “We’re looking into a death! You will answer me or answer for it!”
The beggar shook his head, grunted and pointed to his throat and finally extended his hand hopefully again.
Felix looked puzzled. “What do you mean? You’re hungry? So are we. And cold. So for the final time…”
The man grunted even more loudly. A panic-stricken note entered his strangled noises.
John stepped to Felix’s side. “Your questions are fruitless. The man cannot speak.”
With an oath, Felix turned away. “Naturally! How can I be surprised when everyone else around here is blind and deaf?”
“There is one person we can be sure saw something.”
“Is that so? Who would that be?”
“The church doorkeeper who was stabbed just after Hypatius was murdered.”
Chapter Seven
The brick-built Hospice of Samsun crouched like a squat, homely beggar in the shadow of the Hagia Eirene. Devoted to healing the sick and broken bodies of the city’s poor, the hospice’s low-ceilinged rooms were inevitably crowded past capacity.
“It’s the doorkeeper of the Great Church I wish to talk to, Gaius,” Felix informed a ruddy-faced, harried-looking man in a bloodstained tunic. “Is he in fit shape to be questioned?”
They were standing in the entrance to Gaius’ surgery. The physician, an acquaintance of Felix’s, set a pottery bowl down with a thud on the long wooden table against one wall.
“Why bother to ask? Even if the poor man were at death’s door, you’d still insist on grilling him like St Lawrence. Doesn’t the Gourd have better things to do than pester my patients? And what’s this about you working for him anyway? Is it better than serving that doddering emperor of ours, or worse?”
John glimpsed Felix’s grin, hastily banished by a frown.
“My position in the Prefect’s office is temporary, I hope,” Felix replied. “As for Justin, he may be old and ill now, but he was once a mere excubitor like myself. He rose to his position by his own abilities. He deserves to be spoken about with respect for that if for nothing else.”
Gaius looked unconvinced. “A nice speech. Looking to rise yourself, are you? Justin may have been a man of some ability once, but he’s fading away by all accounts. Can’t even find his own boots in the morning, or so they say. I suppose it won’t be long before you’ll be coming around asking me where the emperor’s boots are!”
John, standing by the door, glanced down the corridor behind him. A hum of conversation, interrupted now and then by muted cries of pain, wafted along between its narrow plastered walls.
The hospice smelt of crowded humanity, sickness, and herbs, overlaid with the acrid, metallic tang emanating from the brazier at the far end of the corridor. He wondered if it was used to heat cauterizing irons.
The thought turned his attention to the surgery. Bare, whitewashed walls reflected such light as filtered in through a single window from a sky the color of a fresh bruise. Apart from the table and a low stool it was unfurnished. Scattered dark patches on the table told their own tale, as did the bloodied bronze scalpels in the bowl Gaius had just set down.