“There, and I’m glad to be done with the nasty thing. They do get in the way. And that’s a small one compared to some we’ve used on stage. How vexing they must be.”
She covered her face, burying her failed smile. When she finally looked up her pale makeup was half gone, showing fine wrinkles at the corners of reddened eyes.
“What is it you want to know? I haven’t seen Agnes for days, as I told you. And now, now I will never see her again. I’ll miss her.” She paused. “But before you ask, I know little about her private life. Women like us are always busy. Even when sharing a room we don’t see much of one another and we don’t share our woes. They’re all the same anyhow. When that bastard Opilio kicked her out I offered her shelter. If you got those sausages from him, I’d have a servant taste them for you before you eat them.”
“Did she have other friends, Petronia? I’m not here to cause anyone trouble. I’m trying to find out who murdered her.”
“You really are from the palace, aren’t you? Who do you think killed her? Who’s usually responsible when an…an…actress is murdered?”
“I realize it is a dangerous profession. I have reason to think this might not be related to her work. Did she ever mention a man named Menander?”
“Didn’t have to. We all know about Menander. He’s one of our most generous benefactors.”
“Could there have been a closer relationship between her and Menander?”
A sound between a laugh and a sob escaped Petronia’s lips. “What would Agnes see in an old man like Menander? What would Menander do with an actress? But I understand what you mean. I might as well tell you. I don’t want you to think I’m holding anything back. Talk to Troilus.”
She got to her feet, supporting herself with a hand on the pudgy thigh of the gilded Cupid. “Yes, Troilus might know more than I do. He’s a handsome young man. Youth seeks out youth, doesn’t it? His shop is just in the back there. He sells all manner of curiosities.”
She pointed toward a doorway on the end of the exedra, then, seemingly overcome by emotion, swayed, and fainted.
Chapter Eighteen
John caught Petronia as she collapsed and lowered her to the ground. Several of her fellow actors rushed over and before long had her head propped up, pressing her discarded phallus into service as a pillow. Petronia made unintelligible moaning sounds and her eyelids twitched without opening.
“I brought her some very bad news,” John told a dwarf who glared at him. The dwarf held three wooden balls of the sort used by jugglers, and looked ready to hurl them in outrage. “A friend of hers, a girl named Agnes, was found murdered.”
The statement sent the troupe into uproar.
John decided it would be futile to seek further information from them, and went to the door Petronia had pointed out.
Troilus, the young shopkeeper who knew Agnes, had not bothered to erect a sign advertising his business.
Inside the building, doors appeared at intervals along a short hallway scarcely illuminated by light entering from the entrance. Beneath the dust coating the plaster walls John could distinguish faded paintings depicting the delights once for sale on the premises.
The artist had possessed more imagination than skill.
John pushed open one of the doors and glanced in. The bare, cobwebbed cell was filled almost entirely by a bench large enough to hold a mattress. Were the cells in Theodora’s foundation for former prostitutes much different?
The hallway ended at another corridor running across it at right angles. At the juncture, part of the wall had been knocked out and a crude plank frame inserted in the exposed brickwork.
John peered through the opening, recalling the flight of steps that had led him down to the cistern where he had discovered Agnes’ corpse. There were four steps here, formed by worn blocks that might well have once served as bases for statues. By the flickering light of some torch beyond his range of vision, John saw the area at the bottom of the makeshift flight of steps was dry.
The subterranean room was little more than a dim empty space from which shadowy archways led into darker spaces. No doubt this was the basement of the building abutting the structure of which the exedra formed a part, or else had belonged to a building that no longer existed.
Underneath the streets of Constantinople lay a bewildering geography of basements, vaults, sub-basements, cisterns, and ruined foundations, buried and forgotten as new structures succeeded the old, a continual rebuilding necessitated by the forces of fire, earthquake, riots, imperial power, and commerce.
John did not have to puzzle over which direction to take. On a crate in front of him lay a stained and cracked marble arm. It might have broken off of a statue of a Greek philosopher. The forefinger was raised, but now, instead of emphasizing some profound truth, it pointed toward one of the archways.
To John’s disappointment, the wide corridor beyond slanted down to a closed iron grating set in the wall. He bent over and tested the chain attached to the grating. It was locked to a bolt in the concrete floor.
He put his face near to the bars. A dark abyss on the other side of the grating swallowed up the weak light from the corridor. He could make out nothing. A chill draught touched his face bringing with it the smell of dampness and mold.
He gave the bars of the grating a tug. They didn’t even rattle.
“Not the first philosopher to point to a dead end,” John muttered to himself.
Then again, the marble arm might have belonged to an orator or an emperor. It was impossible to be certain with nothing more than an arm to go by.
“If you’re looking for Troilus, he’s out.”
The voice had the pitch of a rusty hinge. The pallid face from whose thin, colorless lips the words issued poked out from a dark gap in the wall on one side of the grating.
“To whom am I speaking?” John asked.
“My name is Helias, sir, and I am a maker of sundials.”
The speaker was nearly as short as the thespian dwarves John had left tending Petronia. “I can tell you are a man whose business requires punctuality,” Helias continued. “A man without an hour to spare. This is why you are vexed at Troilus being unavailable. You would find one of my portable sundials invaluable.”
“A portable sundial?”
Helias’ small head, barely reaching John’s chin, bobbed up and down. “A most excellent device. Please, allow me to demonstrate.”
John followed the little man into his shop. He had long since learned that the surest way to secure information from a merchant was to show an interest in his wares.
Two clay lamps on a work table provided Helias’ workshop with light. After two paces the masonry floor gave way to dirt. The sound of dripping water filled the air, not a result of moisture running down damp walls, John realized, but from assorted water clocks strewn everywhere.
“Some of my time keepers are in need of repair or adjustment,” Helias said. “The bowls are all sound. My water clocks are guaranteed to make no more noise than sunlight sliding across a smooth marble dial. I do not want my customers to count the hours they are kept awake by their clocks, although they would be able to do so most accurately, sir.” Helias gave a creaking laugh.
John stepped over a shallow bowl whose interior featured a mosaic of the night sky, avoiding a copper clock decorated with an etched Poseidon emerging from the descending water to indicate the passage of time.
When he reached the work table Helias held up a silver sunburst, by appearances an ornamental medallion of the sort used to fasten a cloak at the shoulder.
“You see, sir, it opens like a jewel box,” Helias demonstrated. “But inside, rather than jewels, you have the time.” With his thumb he pushed up the hinged gnomon in the center of the miniature dial. “Each sundial has an inscription, chosen by the client. This one was commissioned by a silversmith, and will be inscribed ‘All my silver will not purchase an extra hour.’ A thought we might all ponder. Yes, indeed we may.”