“I’m sure Crinagoras would be apologetic if he realized what he’d done,” Anatolius offered.
“I’d appreciate your not bringing him to my house again. Everything he sees or hears is liable to be spread far and wide in bad verse. I particularly do not care for people eavesdropping on my conversations.”
“You must be fair, John. As I explained, Peter said you were in the garden. I left Crinagoras beside the door to go and look. When you and Cornelia walked into the atrium arguing about a woman-someone called Zoe-he could hardly fail to notice.”
“So he imagined Cornelia and I were arguing about Zoe? A most welcome sort of visitor!”
“I told him it wasn’t what he thought.”
“And explained who Zoe was?”
“Well…yes…I suppose I shouldn’t have. But what was I supposed to say? That she was a real woman you and Cornelia were arguing over? Crinagoras means well, John. I’ve known him since he was a boy and it’s true he now spends time communing with his muse…”
“But I talk to a wall mosaic. Is that what you mean?” John’s lips tightened. “Cornelia was distressed at my muttering to the wall, as she said in Crinagoras’ hearing. It is my way of clarifying my thoughts. People will murmur as they read. It keeps one’s thoughts from racing away out of control.”
Anatolius looked at his feet.
“When I was a boy I memorized Homer by reciting to myself while I walked,” John went on. “However, I’m not likely to write a poem titled Crinagoras Bores His Muse. As I said, I do not wish to have him in my house. It’s not just my own privacy I have to worry about now, as you know.”
Anatolius said he understood. “When I confronted Crinagoras about it, he assured me that he had raced over to Francio’s with the verse. Flew as if he had Mercury’s wings on his feet is how he put it. The ink dried as he ran. He swore he had only the copy that Francio made him burn. He never recited the poem to anyone else. In fact, he never had time to memorize it. His poems write themselves, or perhaps his muse does. He tried to explain it all to me.”
“I do appreciate you looking into the matter, Anatolius. It narrows my field of inquiry.” John kept his gaze on the men standing at the base of Theodora’s statue.
The group was still in conversation. A stiff breeze carried laughter and an occasional word wrapped in the smell of the sea to the two watchers.
“I believe I can wander close enough to get some sense of what they’re discussing,” Anatolius said. “Best if you stayed here, John. If they see the Lord Chamberlain coming they’ll scatter like gulls.”
John watched his friend cross the dazzle of the square. The younger man passed in and out of the long shadows cast by the statues and decorative columns that jutted up, a sparse forest of stone and metal.
If Agnes had become involved with plotters, or moved among them, she might have intended to give John a warning. That would have been reason enough for her murder.
Ever since he had begun looking into her death John had moved through an eerie calm. He had encountered no hint of danger, no sign of an adversary.
Those who could best conceal their intentions were the most dangerous.
A shout drew his attention.
A man standing at a distance from the group had called out to a small ship which glided by nearly on a level with the court. The creak of the rigging was audible.
John squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. The image of sunlight flashing on the dark sea swells lingered. When he opened them again he thought he could make out the woods on the opposite shore and what may have been meadowland. It reminded him of the bucolic scene on the wall of his study.
He had sat alone with a jug of wine late into the night. Peter had been wise enough not to pause by the doorway. Cornelia had given him over to his humors.
He stared at Zoe and tried to see Agnes in the glass visage. Not the grotesque face of the drowned woman or the living face he had glimpsed in the square. Was there truly a resemblance? Could the mosaic maker have captured a likeness in tesserae?
How could the solemn little girl have grown up to be an actress or a prostitute?
Not that John considered Zoe a child. Her dark eyes had seen too much.
She had the form of a child. What was she really?
Would he know, if he discovered who Agnes was and what had happened to her?
Did he want to know Agnes?
“John!”
Anatolius approached, trailed closely by a man John recalled seeing at more than one official function at the palace.
Procopius was of average height and build, remarkable only for his immaculate dress and grooming. Above a high forehead, his perfectly trimmed hair lay as unmoved by the sea breeze as the hair on a sculpted bust. The stripe along the hem of his unwrinkled robe and at the ends of his sleeves-not too wide, not quite purple-matched the purplish stone in the silver clasp that pinned his cloak at the shoulder.
“Lord Chamberlain. I am deeply honored. I have explained to your companion that I am not seeking the emperor’s head.”
Procopius may have been smiling. It was hard to say. He had the impossibly smooth skin of a girl. His dark gaze fixed on John with the glittering eyes of a snake.
“I spoke to Menander,” Anatolius put in. “He told me that some friends like to meet here to take the air. It’s a reasonable distance from the palace. A sensible spot for those who are still in Justinian’s good graces and might prefer not to be seen with old acquaintances who have fallen out of favor.”
“And are you one of these old friends, Procopius, or were you asking Menander for more scandalous tales about Justinian?”
“I was questioning Menander, Lord Chamberlain, as you so astutely observe. And what a wealth of tales these people have. What glorious grievances. Indeed, if one could pay an architect with grievances there would rise halfway to heaven a temple dedicated to the condemnation of our noble emperor that would put the Great Church to shame. Alas, you cannot buy pretty churches with grievances. You can’t even eat grievances, though you can live by them. And just as well because grievances are all they have left, thanks to the evil emperor’s rapacity and vile treachery. He has robbed each and every one of them. These are their words, not mine. But then I do not have to explain that to a man of such perspicacity as yourself.”
“How do they suppose they’ve been robbed?” John asked.
“Why, let me see, every way under the sun, and many ways known only to the dark. False accusations are a specialty.” Procopius began to tick off the ways on perfectly manicured finger. “He has accused some of polytheism, others of heresy. One is accused of being an Arian. See there, gathered at Theodora’s feet, you have pederasts and defilers of nuns. Some of those men spoke treasonously or sided with the Greens. And one poor fellow arrived at the law courts to discover his dear father had named Justinian as his sole heir and done so in handwriting more like a court scribe’s that of the departed.”
“Justinian never assigned me such a task when I was his secretary,” Anatolius said. “I knew all the scribes. I’d have heard about anything like that.”
“Certainly such villainy would never have got past you. It’s all sheer fantasy. The flowers of bitterness taken root in idleness. But how very fascinating these tales are!”
John thought Procopius sounded a bit too interested in such slanders and said as much.
“I can see how it might puzzle you, Lord Chamberlain. In fact, I am composing an encomium to our matchless ruler. But consider, one cannot look into the sun.” He raised his hand slightly to gesture at the bright orb which had risen well above the sea. “To gaze at such glory is to be blinded. Even its reflection on the water hurts the eyes. But you can look at the shadows it casts. A great man’s enemies are his shadows and in their grievances against him you can see his virtues.”