A Mithran or any man knew his duty and the fact that a duty had suddenly became more onerous did not alter the necessity of fulfilling it.
He was also relieved to be out of the house. Though he had arrived home late from the banquet, he had slept poorly, confused thoughts of Leukos, Cornelia and Europa, Justinian and Theodora, Berta, running imperceptibly into nightmares of which he awoke with no memory aside from the last trembling echoes of some overwhelming horror.
The presence of the two women in the house he shared with Peter seemed palpable. More than once he thought he heard voices or footsteps but when he came fully awake he had realized it was only the sounds buildings make at night or the wind. He feared for the safety of the women. Should he have asked for a guard to be posted?
A cat raced past him as if all the demons of hell were after it. Startled, John paused and looked around for whatever was chasing it. A stray mongrel seemed the most likely culprit, but nothing appeared. So perhaps the cat was the pursuer and not the pursued. It was often hard to distinguish in Constantinople.
John heard the shriek as he came to the archway leading to the inn.
His first thought was someone was being murdered. He raced across the courtyard, into the inn, and following the continued shrieking, sprinted upstairs.
There was a crash and a rusty brazier rolled out of a doorway at the end of the hall.
Entering the room he saw a distraught Kaloethes standing, a fleshy Mount Athos of despair, while his wife screamed and stamped around.
“He’s disappeared in the night!” she bellowed. “The cheating old fraud! If I catch him, I’ll tell his fortune with his own gizzard, and it won’t be a pleasant fortune either, nor a long one!”
“What happened here?” John asked quietly.
His sudden entrance didn’t detour Mistress Kaloethes from her anger. “The miserable old vulture has gone without paying me a single coin! And with all the rich folk who came up to listen to his lies, he must have made a fortune! Money up their arses, they have!”
“How do you know he’s not returning?”
“He’s taken all his possessions, such as they were,” put in Kaloethes. “Just a few things. Tools of his trade.”
“Tools!” his wife spat out. “Some colored rocks and his fancy chicken-splitters. You call those tools?”
John’s gaze scoured the room. “I wanted to speak with him. When did you see him last?”
“At the evening meal yesterday, when else? Christ himself couldn’t have broken enough loaves!” The woman took an enraged step toward the window, perhaps intending to see if the missing man might still somehow be lurking in the courtyard below. She winced as her bare foot came down on something. She picked the object up. John recognized the round, green stone as one of the charms Ahasuerus gave to his clients. A brief search garnered several similar stones. Why hadn’t he gathered them up before leaving? Could he have been in such a hurry?
“You have no idea where he might have gone?” John asked.
“No,” spat Mistress Kaloethes. “To hell I hope.”
“It’s just the opposite,” came a voice from the doorway.
To his amazement John saw Peter, hair tousled, clothes disheveled.
“I saw the soothsayer taken away under armed guard last night,” Peter continued. “I followed them. They escorted him to the palace of the patriarch.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
John’s first thought as he stepped into the nave of the Church of the Holy Wisdom was that Justinian was unknowingly erecting a tribute to Mithra, Lord of Light.
The overwhelming impression was one of light. The enormous dome overhead curved upwards gradually, as if the sky itself had been pulled earthwards and brought close enough for its true immensity to be grasped. The dome was pierced with numerous, blindingly bright openings through which sunlight flooded, filling the vast space beneath with the other-worldly radiance that presages a violent storm.
John’s second thought was that the events of the past few days, the deaths of his friend and of Berta, the reappearance of his old love, must have upset his humors, rendering him dangerously susceptible to his emotions.
He became aware of the smell of wet plaster and the echoing of hammers. He lowered his gaze from the dome and scanned the interior for the patriarch. John was determined Epiphanios would explain why he had sent guards for Ahasuerus.
The patriarch found John first. “Lord Chamberlain! You have finally graced my church with your presence!”
John turned toward the querulous voice. Scaffolding clustered on all sides. Laborers were ill-defined shadows flickering against the brilliant openings in the dome. Dust filled the air.
The patriarch was a bent figure dressed in simple white robes.
“It is as magnificent as everyone claims,” John replied.
“High praise indeed.” The voice was forced and thin, a whisper from a sickbed. “It is nearing completion. The mobs who burned the old church merely cleared the ground for a more glorious tribute to the Lord.”
“I noticed that you have the building well guarded.”
The patriarch shrugged bent shoulders. “There are forty thousand pounds of silver decorating the sanctuary alone. Each seat will have silver revetments.”
“An impressive tribute to one who lived among beggars.”
“It is a measure of our Lord’s power, is it not, that man must spend a fortune in silver and gold to achieve merely the palest imitation of the glory found in the poorest part of His creation?”
The patriarch looked at John with red and watering eyes. Perhaps it was the dust. John ignored the question.
“Let me show you my church, Lord Chamberlain. Over there, we are already installing the reliquaries.” The skin of the bony hand that gestured toward the shadows at the base of the wall behind the columns and scaffolding was ancient parchment through which John could see the faded writing of veins. “The fragment of the True Cross will be displayed in that spot, for example. One day many of the most holy relics of the city will be gathered in this magnificent place, and we are in the process of obtaining even more, both minor and major.”
John, who believed a saint’s bones to be indistinguishable from the bones of any other man, changed the subject. “The effect of the light is remarkable.” The quality of the light, insubstantial as it might be, struck him more forcibly than any physical manifestations of the patriarch’s religion.
“Wait until the lamps are lit, Lord Chamberlain. There will be hundreds, suspended from the dome, fastened to the columns, set in wall sconces. The architects were instructed to leave not a single shadowed place. The whole of the interior must be illuminated.”
“Surely a man passing by a lamp will cast a shadow?”
The patriarch allowed himself a weak chuckle that turned into a rasping cough. “You are a theologian. But then, in Constantinople, who is not?”
They walked out into the center of the nave. Beams of sunlight, given tangible shape by the dust clouds filling the air, appeared from this vantage point more substantial than the dust-obscured pillars along the aisles.
“You attended the funeral of the Keeper of the Plate?” asked the patriarch suddenly.
“Yes.”
“What was it like?”
“A simple ceremony. It might well have been in the countryside. Birds were singing.”
“It was a dignified burial then?”
“Very much so.”
“Excellent. I had opportunity to deal with Leukos frequently. He looked after some of our reliquaries, ceremonial goblets, and the like. After the last fire, much of what would usually be stored in the church treasury was placed temporarily in his care. He was a good Christian.”