Peter glanced into John’s bedroom.
Through the crack left by the slightly open door he could see a form on the bed in the shadows.
John had remained in his room all day. It was deeply worrying.
Every time Peter checked, John had been asleep despite the noise caused by the workmen downstairs carting barrels and sacks of tesserae, plaster, and straw through the atrium.
It must have been the blow to the head.
The matter worried him. Long ago during his military days, a soldier Peter knew had been struck on the head by a Persian sword. It seemed the blow had left the man unharmed. For two days he showed his helmet around camp. The force of the blow had split it open.
It had been a miracle.
But on the morning of the third day, while the soldier filled his bowl with gruel and described yet again how he prayed each day to the military saints Sergius and Bacchus, he dropped dead.
This is how close to death we all are, Peter thought. We never can be certain we will finish our breakfast.
Death was close to old men such as himself. Some nights, alone in his room with the lamp extinguished and the only light that which came through his tiny window, the faint effulgence of the city, light from thousands of torches under colonnades and the glowing dome of the Great Church, Peter could sense the Angel of Death standing on the other side of his door. He would hold his breath, praying silently, waiting for the knock none could refuse to answer.
He heard nothing, could see nothing. Yet he could feel a presence. So far the angel had always chosen to go away.
Peter peeked around the edge of John’s door, reassured when he saw John’s chest rising and falling as he breathed.
He intended to prepare the sweetened cakes John liked but had found the jug of honey on the kitchen shelf was almost empty. Fortunately there was more in the storeroom at the back of the house.
Peter went downstairs. He wondered how the work was progressing. He’d be happy when he no longer had to repeatedly sweep away the straw and plaster dust the workmen dropped.
He sighed. Once again muddy footsteps pointed the way to the bath. Worse, the mud had been smeared all over the floor by whatever the inconsiderate fellow had dragged behind him.
Peter clucked in annoyance, then stopped himself. Cornelia might be in earshot.
Her residence in the house made him self conscious. He no longer felt free to sing his favorite hymns while he worked. The house had changed since she had arrived. He never knew when he was going to run into her rounding a corner or coming out a room. She was a kind woman, if ill tempered, he thought with a smile, and devoted to John.
For that latter he was grateful.
However, he knew both he and his master had become used to their solitude.
It was true that John had hired the Egyptian girl, Hypatia, who had once worked in the same household as Peter in the days when they were both slaves. But now she worked in the palace gardens.
He wondered if she might be persuaded to return.
Peter’s trips in search of fresh produce took longer now. He had found a new market, farther away than the one he usually frequented, which, he had convinced himself, sold superior leeks. He also spent more time in the garden, trying without success to keep alive the herbs Hypatia had planted.
Perhaps John would ask her to return. Anyone who had lived in a house such as this would be dissatisfied with a cramped room elsewhere.
Perhaps…
The artisans were finished for the day, but had left tools and material littered along the hallway.
Good workmen would not be so careless with their tools, Peter thought as he picked his way between barrels.
Peter paused and glanced around.
Not that the mistress could have any objection to his checking to see how far the delicate task had progressed.
He opened the door and entered.
The activities portrayed in the mosaics, he noted, were shocking. Not anything a good Christian would take pleasure from. He hadn’t seen their like outside a brothel.
His lips tightened as he suppressed a smile. The room always reminded him of an incident from his youth involving a pretty servant and his owner’s bath. At the time he had cursed his stupidity for inviting punishment for the sake of a brief tryst with a girl he had never seen again.
Now, decades later, he could recall the young lady down to the smallest detail-and often did-while he could not even bring to mind the vaguest image of his owner’s face.
The Lord would forgive him. After all, it was the Lord who chose to make young people the way He had.
Red light from the dying sun spilled down from the circular opening in the roof and caught the voluptuous torso of a marble Aphrodite, sparkled across a heedless couple depicted on the wall behind her, and limned the figure seated in the basin at her feet.
Peter stepped forward and took a closer look.
An old man sat at the bottom, a big fellow with a craggy face and bushy, white hair. A purplish bruise circled his neck.
His eyes were wide open but he was not looking at anything so earthly as the mosaics. He was clearly dead.
Chapter Thirty-One
The official sent by the Master of the Offices climbed out of the basin in John’s private bath. “Menander, you say? I seem to recall the name.”
The man’s pinched features suggested he had suffered long employment by the prickly administrator. “A little too vocal about the emperor’s revenue raising methods, wasn’t he?” he added. “I suppose it’s Menander who got the last laugh. He ended his days in the palace after all. I don’t suspect you, Lord Chamberlain. I’m certain you have a servant who would do the job. Some sturdy, youthful fellow.”
The official glanced at Peter who stood on the other side of the room, alongside Cornelia and Anatolius, both of whom had walked in on the unexpected drama. If there had ever been so many people in the tiny facility before it had been during the tax collector’s ownership.
“I can assure you John didn’t kill Menander,” Cornelia flared. “Or for that matter order his death.”
“Makes no difference to me,” the official replied. “It would if it was Theodora lying there. A Lord Chamberlain’s free to remove anyone who troubles him so long as the disappearance doesn’t displease the emperor.”
While his assistants wrapped the body in a length of canvas, the official studied the wall mosaics. His pained expression didn’t change.
The body was pulled up out of the basin and strapped to a board. Before long Menander, the official, and his assistants vanished down the hallway, Peter leading them.
“It’s not Peter’s fault,” Cornelia said. “He tried to keep an eye on the comings and goings today but there’s only one of him. Not that I’d want an army of servants underfoot. It would make me nervous to have people waiting on me.”
Anatolius laughed. “I’ve never seen such a household. You’re both better suited to be hermits. A nice cave or a pillar might do.”
“I wouldn’t care to live on a pillar,” John told him. “I like to walk while I think.”
As they turned to leave, a glint from the bottom of the basin caught John’s attention. He descended the steps and picked up the object. It must have fallen from Menander’s garments.
A tiny glass portrait of an angel, similar to the icon in his room full of treasures.
“Menander has left a few of his hours behind,” John observed. “He doesn’t need them anymore. If you have a little time to spare, Anatolius, come up to my study.”
Peter had not lit the lamp on John’s desk so John did so. The bawdy gods on the wall mosaic took up where the ones in the bath mosaic had left off. As usual, as her maker had piously arranged, Zoe kept her dark eyes averted from the lewd activity around her, perpetually innocent.
“I visited to inquire about your health, John. Rumor has it you were almost killed.”