Anatolius had a sudden thought. “Doesn’t anyone ever leave this place except in disgrace or out a window? I’ve been told about a woman who arrived here of her own accord and renounced her profession, but then left. Agnes was her name.”
“It’s not one I’ve heard,” the girl replied. “If she was here, she managed to get away. Who was she?”
“She was the daughter of a tax collector. Her father ran afoul of the emperor. He lost his head and the family was thrown into the street, which was where Agnes found work. She had herself tattooed with a pagan symbol. When she decided to change her ways she declared her intent by having a cross overlaid upon it. She must have been bored here also, to wish to leave such sanctuary.” This history was mostly conjecture and invention, but Anatolius did not reveal that.
Agnella knelt down again and made a few desultory swipes at the stones, as if deciding to resume her cleaning. “I’ve never heard tell of a woman like that. It must be even harder to come here once you’ve lived at the palace. There was a girl who arrived a while ago fleeing someone from the palace. Imagine that! I don’t know what her name was. I heard about it, never talked to her myself.”
“What was said about this woman?”
“The story I heard was while she was working, a regular customer of hers-a high official-took more than the usual sort of liking to her. He insisted he wanted to marry her. Some day, not right away, and yet talk that any girl would hope to hear, I should think.”
“High officials are not usually free to marry prostitutes, whatever they might say.”
Agnella’s expression was one of disapproval. “That’s what she thought. I say you take your chance. What better opportunity are the likes of us going to get? But she fled here, hoping to be forgotten. She didn’t like it any better than I do. Finally she left.”
“She was allowed to leave?”
“Only because this official wouldn’t let her alone. He kept appearing here and pressing the abbess to release her. I suppose the abbess was tired of being annoyed.”
“Or she feared the palace might get involved. ”
“The abbess isn’t likely to give any of us girls any reasons. All I know is she let her leave.”
“When was this?”
“Oh. I have no idea. It was just a rumor. Recently, I believe.”
“I don’t suppose you have any inkling of where she intended to go?”
“Why yes, sir, I do. It caused much tongue wagging. She knew an actress in the city and was going to stay with her. And the abbess let her go, despite all the talk about our souls.”
Agnella directed a mournful stare at Anatolius. “Such a pity when I am so terribly bored and you have such a nice face. But then, I suppose, in your condition, you are never bored in that way.”
Chapter Forty
The boy had fled into the Copper Market and vanished into thin air.
It was as if he was a demon, according to the guards who had pursued him. Or so said Theodoulos, who had not himself witnessed the pursuit or disappearance.
John had not been able to locate and question the guards concerned. Perhaps they had been executed, just as the dwarf had said. John did not trust Theodoulos.
The Copper Market was not an enormous quarter, but its streets and alleyways seemed without end. John had lost track of how many thoroughfares he had hiked up and down, wide streets and narrow, straight and twisted, a few boasting colonnades, most without.
He had spoken to shopkeepers, servants on their way to market, beggars, laborers going to and from their jobs, and prostitutes, not to mention several members of the Blue faction swaggering around in search of a reason to start a fight.
No one recalled seeing a boy pursued through the streets by guards from the palace. Was it surprising? It had been at least ten years ago. In that time riots, fires, and the recent plague would have buried such a trivial incident deep beneath more dramatic and horrific memories.
Still, it was not every day a boy vanished into thin air.
“What did you say? Palace guards?” The wizened man in the candle shop turned his head toward John, as if straining to hear the question. “Yes, I remember that, sir. I looked out and saw soldiers. There was a big man with a beard. Someone was lying in the street. Couldn’t make him out too well. He wore dark robes. He was probably some dandy from the court who came looking for trouble and got more than he bargained for.”
John thanked the shopkeeper and returned to the street. What the man had recalled was the aftermath of the attack on John.
Somewhere in the labyrinth of shops, tenements, and foundries there was someone who would have reason to recall a minor event from years ago. Perhaps the boy had knocked over a servant on his way home from the market and scattered a perfectly good basketful of vegetables onto the street and the guards chasing the lad had trampled most of them before he could retrieve them from the cobbles.
Unless the servant could somehow replace the goods, he would remember such an incident.
Especially if he was employed at the palace, where discipline could be harsh.
That was grasping at phantoms, John realized. The chances of him finding such a witness were almost non existent.
He had come to the entrance to the courtyard where the theatrical troupe was located. He had already passed the spot once. Troilus was too young to have maintained his establishment at the time of the chase. What was now used as a theater would have been a brothel. Should he interview the dye maker Jabesh? Perhaps not. Those John was seeking in the crowded, cramped city-plotters against the emperor and Agnes’ murderer, or murderers, one and the same or not-could not be far away.
Unless they had fled Constantinople.
Word might have already reached them, since he had spent all morning and half the afternoon trudging around the area repeating the same questions. By tomorrow morning rumors would begin to spread and people would be convinced a boy had been seen fleeing soldiers from the palace. So and so had heard it from a most reliable source.
The tale of the fleeing boy might well replace the inevitable gossip about a tall stranger who had been seen again and again in the Copper Market.
John walked on until he found himself at the square where he had met Agnes, the center of the entire affair.
Rising up over the rooftops at one end of the square was the granite column of the stylite.
Who had lived up there for how long? The stylite would have been able to see not only the square, but the surrounding streets and alleys as well.
He had this same thought days ago. Then he had wanted to question the holy man-Lazarus, his acolyte had called him-to establish whether he had noticed anything on the morning Agnes had been killed.
The acolyte had said Lazarus would not speak of worldly things and at the time John had not considered it worthwhile to press the matter.
Now he would not be deterred.
Let Lazarus speak for himself-or not.
John craned his neck to look upward.
He could make out the stylite’s motionless, bowed head through the window of his ramshackle shelter. How did he pass the time? Did he meditate on the evils of the world? Pray silently?
A life so constrained, such rigid self control, was not unknown. John had seen a stylite glistening in the morning sun on a bitter day, the man’s emaciated body covered with a sheen of ice from the driving rain of the previous night.
A lifetime of bodily suffering was a transitory inconvenience compared to the eternal glory such men anticipated.
The door in the back of the column swung open when John pushed. Lazarus and his acolyte put more faith in their god than in locks. He ducked under the low lintel and started up a stairway resembling a stone ladder. Light filtered in from above. There were two landings, both almost blocked by wicker baskets. John did not pause to examine their contents. When he reached the second landing he could see the open trapdoor leading out to the platform atop the column.