The man squinted up at John suspiciously. One eye was blackened, the other watered profusely and he blinked it repeatedly. While considering the unexpected offer, he gulped down a bit of fish and nearly choked.
“My apologies, excellency,” he gasped when he had stopped coughing. “I thought you was after my hard earned dinner.”
“All I want is information.” John angled his hand so the two copper nummi in his palm caught light from a nearby torch. “Have you noticed anything unusual around here lately?”
“No, excellency. This is a quiet street once the shops are closed for the night. There’s no reason for anyone to be creepin’ about up to no good and there’s not enough taverns to attract them Blues and Greens.”
“It’s deserted here at night?”
“There’s usually just carts, excellency, passing by on their way from the docks. In an hour or so no one will be around. Well, there might be something going on in the alleys, but it’s the same all over, isn’t it?” he leered.
The squeal and crash of another grate being lowered further up the street seemed to bear out the beggar’s words.
The rags piled behind the beggar suggested the doorway was his residence. John asked whether he had been in the same spot a little more than a week earlier.
“Oh yes, excellency. I like this place. The last fool who tried to take it from me found out just how much I like it. Which is not to say I didn’t do him a good turn because a one-eyed man gets more handouts and that’s a fact.” He gave a hoarse chuckle, his gaze fixed on the coins glinting in John’s palm.
“You’re observant. You must be to spot a bounty like that fish quickly enough to beat everyone else to it. Now, try to remember eight days ago, around dawn. Did you see anyone who might have seemed out of place at that time of the morning?”
“I’m not sure. Time does run together. I hardly know what day it is unless I’m due for an audience with the emperor.” The fish eater emitted a coughing laugh. “What sort of person was you thinking about?”
“A young lady.”
“Ah, yes. Now I remember. Yes, a young lady went by here just when you said.” A greasy hand reached out.
John closed his fingers over the coins. “What did she look like?”
The beggar licked his lips. “Young she was, sir. A lady.”
“As I’ve just said.”
The beggar’s good eye blinked rapidly. “No, excellency, I mean dressed like a lady, or rather dressed to look like one. A tart if you ask me. Some men like to pretend they’re paying a lady for…well, that’s surely worth them two coins in yer hand.”
“What do you mean by saying she looked like a lady?”
“I mean she weren’t a lady. But the first time I seen her, I thought, what’s a high born woman doin’ out here this time of the morning and with no attendants at that? Then, when she got closer, I seen her clothes was all bright colored like, but not much better than mine.”
“You’ve seen her more than once?”
“Yes, excellency, every so often. She must live ‘round here to be out on the streets on her own like that. Not respectable, is it?”
“The last time you saw this woman was about a week ago?”
The beggar nodded.
“Was anyone following her?”
“No, excellency. No.” His voice trailed off. “Why do you want to know?”
John said nothing.
“Yer from the palace, aren’t you?” The beggar shrank back into the doorway. “It’s some trouble, isn’t it? I din’ have nothin’ to do with it, excellency. Swear to our Lord.”
“Nothing to do with what?” John demanded.
“With nothin’, excellency, nothin’ at all.”
John bent, grabbed the front of the man’s garment, and yanked him to his feet. “Nothing to do with what?” he repeated.
The rotten fabric tore and the beggar tumbled backward. John squatted down and addressed the blubbering figure, now groveling in the remains of his feast.
Tears streamed from the beggar’s unclouded eye. “Mercy, excellency. Have mercy. I seen her. I don’t know nothing more. I knew there must be trouble of some kind, what with one like you askin’ about her. It were about a week ago. She came along here just before dawn. You can have me tortured, excellency, but I won’t say different. Trust a tart to get a man minding his own business into trouble. If I see her again I’ll-”
John stood. “Here.” He added another coin to the two he still held and tossed them into the heaped rags behind the huddled, trembling man before him.
John strode away down the street.
The hollow feeling in his stomach had nothing to do with hunger.
He wished he could give up for the evening and return home to Cornelia.
He knew he had to keep following Agnes’ footsteps.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
John continued through the alternating shadows and torchlight beneath the colonnade.
Only days earlier Agnes must have passed the same way. She might have been pondering whatever it was she intended to tell him. Did she realize she was in danger? Is that why she had arranged to meet in an obscure square while the city was still coming awake?
Here and there sculpture graced an alcove or a pedestal. Likenesses of long dead rulers and poets, the statues served as reminders of the empire’s ancient heritage.
Where had Agnes’ journey been interrupted? Had she gone past that marble Sophocles? Had she noticed him frowning at her? Was his bearded face the last thing she had seen before her attacker leapt from the black mouth of that nearby alleyway? Or had her assailant been hiding, masked behind the chiseled robes of the ancient playwright?
The red ruin of the woman’s battered face floated to the surface of John’s thoughts. He hoped it had been over too quickly for her to be aware of what was happening, that her killer had not dragged her away into darkness to complete his task in a leisurely fashion.
John brushed a spark from a sputtering torch off his shoulder.
There was no one to question. The only people on the street were of polished stone.
The thoroughfare crossed the street where Figulus kept his mosaic workshop and passed in front of the Church of the Mother of God, before running along the back wall of the law courts. To reach the square where John had been waiting for her, Agnes could have turned and gone past the courts or proceeded on for a short distance and gone up the street which went by the courtyard housing the make-shift theater, the dyer’s emporium, and the entrances to the underground establishments of Helias and Troilus.
John guessed Agnes would have gone by the theater since it was most likely a route she took often to see her friends.
He continued toward the intersection, past Opilio’s shop. A faint smell of spice drifted out through its lowered metal bars.
The giant, sausage-shaped sign looked even more obscene in the twilight.
The narrow way leading to the square, with its overhanging structures, was darker than the colonnade. The hot breath of forges and furnaces issued from archways.
In such an area why had the killer chosen to conceal his victim’s identifying tattoo with dye? Perhaps he had not had access to a furnace. There was also the problem of the smell of burning flesh. Dye was easy to come by. Jabesh’s establishment was not far from the alley leading to the cistern where John had found the body.
But then why not just carve the tattoo from the dead flesh?
Had Agnes come within shouting distance of the square? Surely whoever wanted to prevent the meeting would not have taken such a chance.
If, indeed, her ambush had been planned in advance.
Nothing moved in the square, aside from a dog which slunk away at John’s approach. Scattered shop front torches hardly penetrated the gloom. The stylite’s column rose from darkness into a gray rectangle of sky where a bright star winked between ragged clouds.
There was no light atop the column. No doubt the holy man would consider artificial illumination a luxury, a vanity of the world he had left behind. Would he, like Helias the sundial maker, be aware of the passage of time as the relentless sun drove his shadow around the top of the column or that of the column itself around the square?