“Satan walks among us all right,” bellowed a nearby Blue, a young man with a spotty face. His voice was thickened by wine. “It’s not the madman perched up there, though. It’s the King of the Demons who’s just mounted the throne, not to mention the new empress!”
A portly, middle-aged man with the look of a clerk in his stooped shoulders and pale face pointed an accusing finger at the younger man and yelled furiously at him.
“Whoever rules, the populace is going to suffer! You should be on your knees asking for forgiveness instead of stirring up trouble!”
The young man he addressed replied with an exaggerated low bow. “Such fine talk from one about to die!”
“Not at your hand, you idiotic fop!”
“Is that so?” The Blue drew his blade. “I think you are wrong!”
The Blue grabbed the man’s throat, but before he could make another move a familiar voice cut through the tumult.
“No, my young friend. I believe he is right.”
It was the Gourd. He strode through the crowd, which shrank away from him, clearing his path as if by magick.
“No indeed,” he remarked in a conversational tone. “He’s not going to die at your hand. In fact, it is you who will die at mine. But then, you already knew that, didn’t you?” The Gourd hardly paused before casually running his blade through the Blue’s stomach.
Felix stepped between John and the Gourd.
The Gourd nudged the lifeless body at his feet with the toe of his boot, then addressed the stunned and silent onlookers. He tilted his monstrous head toward a knot of Blues. “Quite a few of you may soon be joining this fellow in the afterlife. As I have warned, riots will be crushed without mercy. I do believe that one was brewing here.”
Archdeacon Palamos stepped toward the Gourd. “More killing won’t resolve anything. In the name of the Lord, I command you to leave this holy place immediately!”
Dozens of the Gourd’s men poured into the vestibule, herding terrified people before them. Another contingent emerged from the nave, having entered through a side door.
The operation was well planned. It would not be long before troublemakers, real and imagined, would be hauled off to the dungeons. Nor would it be long before the Gourd’s men, methodically examining the crowd, discovered the tall thin Greek whom their master wanted dead.
John glanced at Timothy. The grocer still embraced the marble figure. Though no longer the center of attention, he grinned with apparent delight at the incipient slaughter.
Then John turned his gaze on the Gourd and drew his sword. He could do some good before he was discovered.
Felix caught his wrist in a crushing grip and shook his head slightly.
The Gourd’s men had closed their ring around the crowd, forcing it into a tight mass. The portly man cursed as he was crushed against the statue, and again as more men were forced against him by the tightening circle. A number of the crowd sought safety by clambering up onto the pedestal next to Timothy.
“The bastard’s going to set his men loose,” whispered Felix. “He wants a bloodbath. He’ll call it a riot afterward and who’ll contradict him?”
Even as Felix spoke, the Gourd began to raise his sword as a signal for the sort of slaughter John and Felix had witnessed near the Strategion.
Before the signal could be completed, the mass of men clinging to the looming sculpture unbalanced it.
The great Christ figure rocked backward and then toppled forward, shedding human barnacles as those who had sought its safety leapt away.
The sculpture hit the floor and shattered in a thunderous, echoing explosion. Chunks of marble went spinning and rolling across the vestibule.
An unearthly scream mounted into the shadowed vault overhead before trailing away in a chilling gurgle. For a heartbeat John thought of the death bellow of the Great Bull slain by Mithra.
Even the Gourd stood transfixed.
The Christ lay stretched out toward the church entrance like a toppled marble tree. The head lay in one corner. Here was a hand, there a part of the cross beam. One or two of the crowd lay moaning on the floor, but the only person seriously injured appeared to be Timothy.
John knelt beside him.
The grocer’s eyes were closed. Blood flowed from his mouth, but his chest still moved in a shallow fashion.
Felix was at John’s side instantly. “Hurry! We have to get out of here! You’re sure to be spotted!”
“No, Felix. There’s one last thing I have to know.”
He shook Timothy’s shoulder roughly. The grocer’s eyes opened. His lips moved. Blood bubbled out. He spat and began to speak. “He was my son. My only child. He was playing in the street. Didn’t the driver see him? Heaven should have blinded him for it. I have been faithful to the Lord all my life. Why did He take away my son? And do it with a cart carrying a likeness of His own son? Was it some horrible joke? What have I done to deserve this?”
John heard a choking sob. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Archdeacon Palamos standing a few paces behind him. He turned back to Timothy. “Yes, we understand that. But why did you attack Opimius?”
“I saw him talking to Hypatius here in the church…admiring that blasphemous piece…so I thought he must also be connected with it…”
“But in attacking Opimius you ended up killing a devout old servant trying to protect his master.”
“A master so arrogant…he went about with only a tottering old slave…for a guard! He’d still be alive…if he hadn’t fought so hard…I ran off and hid in my perfume shop after stabbing him…it’s in the Augustaion…very close to the alley by Samsun’s Hospice….” Timothy’s voice was fading. “But the old man should not have died…I have prayed for the Lord’s forgiveness…”
“You think your Lord will forgive you for snuffing out the lives of five people?” John said quietly.
“No, not five…I did not mean to kill the old man…so his death does not count.” Timothy’s eyes glistened. “I was only given time to kill four…four for a boy. Yet forty or four hundred…would not have been enough!” Anger made his voice stronger. “And there were others waiting to die too…that drunken physician at the hospice…said he could do nothing for my son…didn’t even try…”
“His Lord may not be very ready to forgive,” Felix observed quietly to John, “for it’s always possible that Timothy will live to see the inside of the emperor’s dungeons.”
“And so will both of you.”
John looked around. The Gourd loomed behind them, sword at the ready, several of his men at his back.
The Gourd inclined his massive head in John’s direction. “Or will you survive? There’s blood soaking through your tunic, I see, John. Been fighting, have you? What does heaven have in store for you, I wonder? I suppose heaven does as it pleases, but since we are not in heaven, what would please me most?”
“Halt!”
A man in full military regalia strode into the vestibule.
“Mithra,” breathed Felix. “It’s the captain of the excubitors!”
The captain, his face a mask of contempt, came to a stop before the Gourd. “By order of Justinian, I place you, Prefect Theodotus, under arrest!” he declared. “Arrest him, Felix!”
Felix grinned and clapped his big hand on the Gourd’s shoulder. “With pleasure!”
Epilogue
John and Felix watched as workers finished unloading a cartload of marble busts and commemorative diptychs, and heaped them haphazardly under a portico before rumbling off.
Felix surveyed the large pile of castoff public monuments. “It looks as if Emperor Justin is thinking of doing some redecoration.”
The obscure square they were crossing had been used for years as a repository for discarded statuary. An eerie crowd of motionless dignitaries surrounded them.
“Look.” John paused to read an inscription chiseled next to the foot of a man dressed in military garb. “It’s Vitalian.”
Felix shivered. “Is this cold ever going to leave? Even the sun doesn’t seem inclined to celebrate Justinian’s sudden recovery.”