“It is the kind of story a boy would like.”
“I became a Christian right away. It sounded exciting. I didn’t like the story about the crucifixion at all. I couldn’t help imagining how it would feel to have nails pounded through my hands. And the idea of a dead body rising and walking out of a cave-that kept me awake.”
“Your mother was wise to start with Tobit.”
John’s own faith-or at least his adherence to the strict, soldierly ethic of Mithraism-had come to him as an adult, following the drowning of his friend Julius, and had strengthened during his enslavement and castration by Persians.
When they had served together as mercenaries, he had resisted Julius’ efforts to teach him about Mithra. After John had suffered, the words of his dead companion returned to him, and he realized he had not truly heard them before. Thus had Julius spoken from the dead.
Mithraism was a religion of endurance and acceptance. If John had not run away from his philosophy studies to become a mercenary he might have become a stoic rather than a Mithran.
He studied Peter uneasily. He shared John’s stoicism and his tendency to keep his thoughts to himself-particularly his darker thoughts. It was unlike Peter to speak of such personal matters.
“Master, would you…would you open the chest at the foot of my bed? I can’t reach it. You’ll find a sandalwood box there.”
It sat in a corner of the chest, pushed down beside neatly folded garments. The box held a flat, terracotta flask no longer than John’s thumb. There were handles on each side of the tiny artifact. Engraved into its oval center was a simple picture of a man, with a camel on each side.
“It is the Saint Menas flask I brought back from Egypt,” Peter said. “It contains holy oil from the lamp that burns outside the saint’s tomb.”
John thought it ironic that the current patriarch, who did not strike him as a saint but rather just another of the powerful men who ruled the empire, should share his name with a holy man. “Do you want me to set it on the table beside your coin and amulet, or do you want to hold it?”
“If you would open it for me, please, master? There’s a bit of wax over the neck. If I had enough strength to lift my arms I would do it myself. They say Constantine’s daughter was cured by holy waters from beside the saint’s tomb. I have saved the flask for years. Now, I feel, it might be time to use it.”
John scraped off the wax and held the flask tentatively between thumb and forefinger. What did one do with holy oil?
“Could you place a drop on my forehead, master? I know I should not be asking you, but…”
“It’s little enough to ask, Peter.”
John turned his hand and a drop of oil ran out onto the tip of his finger. There was nothing mysterious about it. It was simply a drop of lamp oil. He dabbed a bit onto Peter’s parchment dry forehead.
“If you could draw another across that one…”
John did so, uncomfortably aware he was mimicking the sign of the Christians.
He put the flask down, propped it upright against the amulet in case oil remained inside.
Peter let his eyes close. His breath whistled in and out, more regularly now.
Had he gone to sleep?
John rose quietly and went out. He didn’t care to wait.
He was half afraid Peter would next be asking that he pray for him.
Chapter Thirty-seven
When he reached the bottom of the stairs leading down from the servant’s quarters, John paused. He was exhausted. After a day of investigations, followed by a largely sleepless night and then being dragged out to his interview with Justinian, he felt as if he were carrying the dome of the Great Church on his shoulders.
He went into his bedroom and lay down to take a brief rest before deciding what to do next.
He opened his eyes to total darkness.
It took him a little while for his eyes to adjust and grope for the lamp and striker on the bedside table. Hypatia must have closed the shutters to keep out the dust stirred up in the square by the constant comings and goings of the excubitors.
What time was it? He checked the clock in the corner. The water in the basin had sunk to the eighth hour of the night.
Dawn was four hours away, even if they were the shorter hours of summer, but now John was awake he decided to take a walk.
John was familiar enough with the layout of paths and gardens to make his way around the palace grounds by the vast dome of starlight. He usually untangled problems while he walked, but tonight, though he turned his thoughts toward the various matters bedeviling him, his peregrinations did not seem to help.
Perhaps he should seek assistance elsewhere.
He left the path and plunged into a sculpture garden where ghostly white figures depicting mythological figures stood in consecutive circles, as if poised to dance with each other. Pan blew his pipes opposite a stately Minerva, Zeus stared haughtily at that troublemaker Eros, the lame god Vulcan leered at Venus, at whose narrow feet a bold and exceedingly stupid lover had left a bunch of now fading roses.
John walked on, leaving behind ordered flower beds and groves. Passing by a chapel he was misted by wind-blown spray from the fountain set beside its entrance.
As he moved further away from the more cultivated areas he took a nearly invisible track between flowering shrubbery nearly twice his height. Beyond lay an artfully designed wild area planted for the delight of those who enjoyed less formal gardens.
John had long regarded the wild area as a useful place for those inclined to plot ill will, since it boasted numerous hiding spots and was well away from the more traveled parts of the grounds.
His footfalls deadened by moss, he soon approached the low buildings housing the imperial storerooms adjacent to the kitchens.
A guard nodded to him in recognition. Perhaps the man wondered what the Lord Chamberlain was doing prowling around the palace in the middle of the night, but it was not his place to ask.
John passed through a shadowy alcove which seemed to have been constructed of stacked amphorae, went through a side door, and entered the rear portion of the kitchens. Here and there unquenched embers in long braziers sent ghostly, shifting fingers of dim orange light up plaster walls and into the rafters. The light glittered off enormous copper pans hanging from the walls like shields. It sparkled on multi-colored glass bottles crowding shelves and tables, reflected dully from myriads of earthenware jars filled with everything from spices and olives to honey and nuts.
Someone coughed nearby.
John peered through the brick archways opening into the middle portion of the kitchens and saw the vague silhouette of a man moving past tables and braziers and storage shelves.
He had only a brief glimpse of the figure before it passed through a doorway and was gone.
It was enough. He recognized Justinian.
Rumor had it the emperor never slept. That he wandered the buildings and grounds of the palace at night, often without his head.
At least the emperor had not discarded his head this time.
It had been impossible to tell whether his face had relaxed into the demonic aspect certain people swore they had glimpsed as he passed by.
John knew for a fact that the emperor kept strange hours but then, tonight at least, so did John.
At the far end of the room a shadowy figure guarded an obscure door which looked as if it might conceal a cupboard. The man, dressed in laborer’s garments, issued a challenge, “How was he born?”
“From a rock,” John responded, referring to Mithra.
The man opened the door and stood aside. There was no formal gesture of acknowledgment to one of superior rank, for in Mithra all were equal and this entrance was one of two ways to reach the hidden underground temple dedicated to John’s god.