“Justinian’s man watches me, I watch him. He has revealed no more to me about his master than I have revealed to him about you.”
“Oh, nicely said! Proclus should recruit you to work in his office. Very well. What are they saying about me in the streets? That’s what really matters, as Euphemia advises me.”
Felix felt sweat trickling down his back. A shade had just walked into the room.
Justin fixed him with a rheumy glare. “I asked you a question. Why are you looking like that?”
Felix cleared his throat. His gaze was drawn to the crumb hanging from the emperor’s lip. He forced himself to look away. “I have heard nothing unusual.”
“The mob isn’t whispering against me? That’s how it always begins. In the streets, in the forum. Like a festering wound down in the leg whose poison creeps nearer to the heart with every passing day. Blood flows in some stinking alley and before long armed men are breaking into the emperor’s bedchamber to murder him.”
“You are much respected, Caesar,” Felix assured him.
“However, the Gourd has contained the unrest,” Justin went on, ignoring his comment. “A good man at his work. Proclus recommended him to me. Yes, he knows how to handle my nephew’s precious Blues. Personally, I’d like to set him loose on the actress.”
“There are many who oppose Theodora, both on the streets and at court,” Felix offered truthfully, happy to be able to tell Justin at least one thing he might want to hear.
Justin scowled. “My dearest Euphemia detests her and refuses to remain in the same room if their paths should cross by accident. Whatever can Justinian find to love in Theodora, the world’s whore? But young men tend to be ruled by their loins, not logic, and she has certainly had plenty of practice in the art of seduction.”
As Justin spoke he turned his head slowly until he was staring directly at the door. Felix was struck by an irrational fear that it was about to open to admit the dead Empress Euphemia.
“Caesar, about my mission. It is always a good plan when going into battle to be armed with detailed orders and-”
“But you have had your orders! Investigate the murder of Hypatius. Watch the eunuch while he works. Keep your eyes open, and your ears.”
Felix made a bow.
“Now, hold that pot for me.”
Felix looked at Justin in confusion.
The emperor gestured weakly at the plain ceramic vessel sitting on the floor at the side of his couch.
“My night soil pot. I wish to relieve myself. Yes, you could tell the time by me. I drip like a water clock.”
“Caesar, I-”
“You’re embarrassed for your emperor. Understandably.” Justin grimaced. “I don’t need a physician, Felix. What I need is a plumber.”
***
John sat on the edge of his pallet and tried to organize his thoughts. He had been certain Hypatius’ death was somehow connected with the sculpture. Not that there had been any obvious reason. It was simply a feeling he had, that bits of information were about to fall together to form a coherent whole.
He tended to take sudden leaps into the darkness of doubt. Usually he found what he half expected. This time, though, he had, perhaps, jumped in the wrong direction. Fortunatus’ words, coupled with the group of men John had seen at the baths, clearly damned Opimius as one of the political intriguers Justinian feared. And what did that mean for Anna?
Should he warn her? Use the servants’ entrance as she’d suggested? Perhaps he should see if the sculptor Dio had returned. Even if that avenue of investigation seemed fruitless, it would get his feet moving. As soon as his feet stopped his thoughts seemed to come to a halt.
He was just about to leave when Felix appeared.
“I hoped you’d be here, John.”
The excubitor looked pensive. John inquired about his meeting with the emperor.
Felix summarized the conversation. “I think the hardest fate for a military man like Justin is dying by degrees far from the battlefield. I hope neither of us suffers that fate. Tell me, John, what is your favorite tree?”
John said nothing. He expected to detect the reek of wine about the excubitor, but there was none. “You’ve come here to ask me about trees?”
“Well, if you understand…but if you don’t…”
John realized what he was really being asked. He offered Felix a thin smile. “I suppose I would have to say the fig.”
Felix visibly relaxed. “It is said the fig is sacred to certain proscribed deities.”
“To Mithra, you mean?”
“To Mithra, yes. You called upon Him when we were attacked, my friend. You mention any number of deities and personages when you become angry, and in most unflattering terms. You speak Egyptian well, don’t you?”
John looked at Felix, bemusement in his expression.
“Then I suggest you curse people in Egyptian henceforth, at least in public. It might be safer for you. For now, come with me.”
***
The shadowy mithraeum the two men entered was familiar to John, even though he had never set boot into this hidden underground temple situated on the palace grounds. He had seen several mithraea in his time, the first one in far-off, misty Bretania. This place of worship could have been any of them.
To reach it, he and Felix had passed through a doorway set deep inside the armory behind the excubitors’ barracks and then progressed through a series of subterranean corridors that reminded John uncomfortably of the path he had taken from the imperial dungeons to light and air only a few days before.
Finally they reached a stout door. An armed excubitor swung it open and they stepped into the mithraeum.
Felix kept his hand on his sword and a close watch on John. Passing between the statues of Mithra’s twin torchbearers, Cautes and Cautopates, flanking the entrance, John bowed his head to the bas-relief set at the far end of the low-ceilinged room. It was illuminated by the shifting light of a small fire on the altar before it.
A man wearing the dark mask of a raven stepped forward to greet them.
“Welcome, brothers in Mithra,” he said.
“This is John, a fellow adept,” Felix replied.
“I am accepted as such?”
Felix grinned. “Had you not given homage to Lord Mithra, you would not have lived long enough to tell anyone about it,” he said. Turning to their raven-headed companion, he added, “The ceremony will begin soon?”
“As soon as the Father and the initiate arrive.”
John glanced around the narrow space. A dozen or so men, some wearing the masks of their Mithraic rank, stood talking. Torchlight threw strange shadows across the walls, flickering across the sacred scene behind the altar where Mithra, cloak flying in an eternal wind, had plunged His dagger into the Great Bull, releasing its blood to gush forth to create animals and vegetation.
The new arrivals sat down at the end of the low bench running along the right-hand wall as their fellow worshippers took their seats both beside them and on the bench against the opposite wall. A hush settled over the cave-like temple, the only sounds the crackling of the sacred fire and the torches set in brackets.
John gazed at the holy figure of Lord Mithra. He had found praying to his god calmed his mind when it persisted in twisting and turning in on itself, the Furies raging back and forth inside his head until he felt it would split open.
The familiar scene depicted Mithra, Lord of Light, and to him he prayed nightly for acceptance of the terrible fate his rashness had brought upon him.
There was a clash of cymbals and those assembled stood as the Father entered the mithraeum. Behind him walked the man to be initiated, naked, his eyes covered in a red cloth tied tightly at the back of his head, his hands bound around with entrails and stout rope. His two burly escorts, wearing masks whose flowing manes identified them as adepts holding the rank of Lion, guided him to the altar where the Father waited.
The Lions pushed the initiate down on his knees and stepped a few paces back as the Father raised his hands in prayer.