Anna looked away. “I came in while you were still unconscious, when Gaius was examining you…”
“I understand.”
“John, it isn’t your condition. Not really. But actually seeing…it made me realize…and accept the truth. I have been deluding myself. About many things.”
Anna slid off the step and knelt beside John. He was enveloped by the fragrance of the roses with which she seemed always surrounded. “I would like to ask a question. You mentioned there was once a woman.”
John hesitated before speaking. “Yes. Cornelia.” Emotion warmed his voice.
Anna smiled sadly. “I can tell you love her, by the way your lips shape her name.”
“Can you? We met in Crete. I had been a mercenary, but she persuaded me there was much to be said for the domestic life. We lived together for some time, traveling around with a company of bull-leapers. We came to Constantinople. It was before I was captured and mutilated.”
He paused for a while. When he managed to continue the raw pain in his voice lent it a rasp. “I was eventually brought back here in chains. The troupe had long since gone and with it my Cornelia. I have heard no word of her since.”
Anna wiped her eyes. “What a tragic story. No wonder a dark look dwells in your eyes.”
John laid his hand on hers, wondering at his own daring. Anna’s warm fingers clasped his hand tightly.
“There is no need to grieve for me, Lady Anna,” he said gently. “The man capable of loving a woman died long ago, and he died loving her. As he still does.”
“No, John. He isn’t dead.” Anna pressed her lips against his forehead and then ascended to the door without further hesitation.
“Goodbye…Anna.”
She did not respond and John was not certain she had heard. He was left only with a faint memory of roses.
Felix returned. “Let’s get you on your feet,” he said gruffly. “Can you do that?”
John nodded. The fog in his head was beginning to clear.
Felix took hold of an arm, unnecessarily it turned out, since John managed to stand without assistance. “Excellent!” Felix paused. “Now must ask you something, my friend. When Gaius was examining you-”
“How pleasing to hear yet again that while I was unable to protest I was stripped and put on display like an old Greek statue!”
“Yes, well…but…you claimed your captors had…”
“I was castrated, Felix. You have seen. Is that not sufficient? Can you imagine how many times I have been questioned about this matter? The very thing I most wish to avoid ever discussing with anyone, let alone the drunken louts who are always the most obscenely curious? So I long since decided to give the prying bastards an answer that would make them wish they hadn’t asked.” A brief smile crossed John’s face. “Yes, they always regret hearing the details. I will not be giving Madam Isis any business. Now we had best be on our way to her house while I’m still able to walk.”
Chapter Thirty-One
John and Felix took a circuitous route to their destination. They dodged in and out of narrow passages and cut across noisome and noisy courtyards to avoid better traveled thoroughfares. Once they were on their way, the chilly air revived John further and they were able to make steady progress.
Before long they entered a crooked finger of an alley pointed toward the Mese. Halfway down its dim and debris-strewn length they were startled by the sound of running feet.
Felix’s hand went to his sword, but the noise was nothing more than a pair of filthy boys. The two urchins raced around the bend in the alley, straight toward John and Felix. Behind them limped a beggar, yelling promises of obscene punishments for some unspecified misdeed. From the way he hobbled, it was obvious he had no chance of catching the culprits.
In fact, the boys had time to stop and spit in the direction of John and Felix before disappearing from sight.
Felix reddened with rage, but allowed them to escape.
John, however, took several swift strides and grabbed the beggar’s shoulder as he turned to limp back the way he had come. “You!” he shouted, viciously shaking the ragged man. “You’re the one who bet his boots on our deaths! The cart driver came to our aid, but you were placing wagers we would die!” “Not so, good sir!” Alarmed, the beggar took a couple of steps backward until the rough masonry wall of a tenement overlooking the alley brought his retreat to a halt.
Felix trotted over and looked the beggar up and down. “You do appear to have lost your footwear. Unless you consider rag wrappings to be adequate. I’m not surprised you couldn’t catch those two. My advice would be to never wager what you can’t afford to lose.”
“No, no, you don’t understand. It was those…er…children. They stole my boots while I was asleep.” The beggar’s voice was feeble. He held up a deformed hand as if to ward off a blow.
John shook the man even harder. “No!” he shouted. “It was you! Do you think I wouldn’t remember your voice, making a wager like that? Furthermore,” he looked at the grubby man more closely, “when was your miraculous cure?”
Felix gaped at John for an instant. Then understanding dawned. “It’s the mute beggar we tried to question a few days ago!”
“Mute?” croaked the beggar. “Of course I’m not mute. As you can hear. There’s the proof! You must be thinking of the…uh…the mute beggar who hangs about in the Mese. An easy enough mistake to make. He’s my brother. People confuse us all the time.”
John grabbed the man’s dirty wrist and slammed his hand against the wall.
“I see you’re also missing two fingers, just like this mute brother who so closely resembles you. What a remarkable coincidence.”
Felix gripped the hilt of his sword. “You lying bastard! What are you hiding?”
“Nothing, nothing at all, good sirs,” the man replied in a wheedling tone. “I admit it was me you spoke to. It was just that I didn’t want to get involved with people in authority. Especially when they come around asking about someone dying. Can you blame me?”
Felix looked thunderous. “You’re telling us you know something about the murder we’re investigating and deliberately concealed it?”
The beggar’s expression crumpled at the words and the threat they carried. John thought if the man could have turned around he would have begun leaping up the tenement wall like a trapped mouse in a futile attempt to escape.
“No,” the beggar gasped. “I don’t know anything about any murder. It was an accident!”
“A man gets a blade in the ribs and you call it an accident?” Felix growled. “How could anyone be careless enough to accidentally fall on someone’s blade?”
“Stabbed? But I thought-”
“We were questioning you about the death of the man who was murdered in the Great Church,” said John. “What did you think we were asking about?”
The beggar opened his mouth, but whatever lie might have been forming died on his tongue when he saw the fury in John’s eyes. “When you said death, I thought you meant the death of the grocer’s boy. Timothy’s son. He was run over by a cart just the other day.”
Mithra’s light flared in John’s mental darkness.
The bits of information he’d accumulated, like fragments of colored glass, until now glistening and tantalizing, but meaningless, had finally converged into an image.
“Such accidents are common enough,” he replied. “Why didn’t you want to talk about it? Were you involved?”
“It wasn’t my fault, sir,” the man whined. “It was those accursed boys. The ones who spat at you. They were friends of the grocer’s son. The three of them were always tormenting me. My own personal Furies, they were. Then when I went after them that particular day, they ran away across the Mese. Right into the path of a cart. It ran the boy over and crashed into the column in front of his father’s shop. They’re still trying to repair it. But I had no part in his death! It was the carter’s fault anyhow. It was a small cart. Far too small for that huge marble it was hauling.”