John suggested that Lazarus had simply decided to leave.
“No,” said the acolyte. “His legs were all but paralyzed from living in such a confined space, and besides, they were so deformed from disease and hardship he would have had to be carried down the stairs. He couldn’t have walked away unaided.”
John looked down once more at the soldier with the gleaming metal face, hands frozen in eternal prayer.
Stephen stepped over to the railing, put a hand on it, and gazed out across the city. “Lazarus was not like other men. Perhaps…” His voice was unsteady. It had been a shock discovering John up here, finding his secret had been uncovered after so many years. What would he do now if John chose to make his deception known?
John had climbed to the top of column in search of a missing boy and learned instead of a stylite who had vanished just as mysteriously. “How long ago did Lazarus disappear?”
“As I said, all my days are the same. The seasons blend into one another. It might have been ten years ago.”
“Did you have any forewarning? Did anything unusual happen before the automaton appeared up here?”
“Only that Lazarus stayed in his shelter for a long time. That’s why I finally decided to investigate. I thought he might be dying. Or dead.”
“You didn’t communicate with him regularly?”
The other shook his head. “Lazarus said little. The man I replaced described the sermons Lazarus had once given. He knew them word for word, hearing them every day. He could recite them like a pagan can recite Homer. Lazarus painted the most glorious vision of heaven, but as the years went by he fell silent. Sometimes he talked to the Lord, but his words made no sense to me.”
John thought anyone’s humors would become unbalanced after perching atop a column for years. He could understand why the acolyte had not wanted to simply take the holy man’s place. “How long did he remain in this shelter before you decided to investigate?”
“A week or two. Lazarus sometimes retreated into his shelter to meditate for long periods. In the evenings, as usual, I sent baskets of food up by means of the rope and pulley you see attached to the railing and in the mornings the baskets were returned empty. So far as I knew he was avoiding the sun while he pondered. They say there are those who worship the sun rather than the Lord. He used to denounce them most vehemently. But then several days passed and the basket I had sent up remained up here, untouched.”
The sun whose worship the stylite had abhorred, and John had embraced, had begun its daily descent. Two moving shadows-low flying gulls-swept across the platform.
“And what did you do when you found the automaton in your master’s place?”
“I thought it must be a miracle. Yet the world seemed the same. The city still stretched around me. I could hear gratings being pulled up in front of shops, dogs barking, see the ships on the water moving, just as always. If I had witnessed a miracle wouldn’t the world feel different?”
The acolyte sighed before going on. “Then I feared some villains had abducted Lazarus. For all I knew they might have been trying to extort money from the Patriarch or even the emperor.”
John thought that if that was the case they would have soon and in a very painful manner learnt their error. He said he would have been surprised to learn that this had been the case.
“But he was a holy man and the Patriarch and Justinian would be concerned about his welfare,” Stephen said. “The kidnappers would have left the automaton there so as not to draw attention to the fact that Lazarus was missing, and yet, if they sought to benefit from his kidnapping, they had to announce he was gone. I soon realized such actions were contradictory and dismissed the notion. Then it occurred to me he might simply have been murdered. The Blues and Greens are often involved in mayhem. One of them might have killed Lazarus for the sheer enjoyment of it. Or perhaps they were blasphemers who wished to see if he would return to life as did his namesake.”
His own words seemed to upset the acolyte. His rasping voice quavered. “Or it may be a thief suspected Lazarus had been offered valuables which could be stored up here. Whoever killed him left the automaton so that no one would notice for a time.”
John nodded. “The longer the time that passed, the smaller likelihood of the culprit being caught.”
“That was my thought. Then when some weeks had gone by and nothing happened I decided to continue Lazarus’ ministry. There’s nothing more I can tell you.”
John looked down at the automaton again. It resembled the one he had seen in Troilus’ shop. On the other hand, he had purchased much of his stock from Menander. Might both have been in Menander’s collection about the time the boy purporting to be Theodora’s son had escaped?
If only everyone kept as precise a track of time as Helias the sundial maker.
John moved toward the trapdoor. “If it is necessary for me to question you again, where can I find you?”
“Here at this column. I have no home. I usually sleep in a doorway.” The acolyte clasped his hands together in distress. “What is to become of me? What will you do?”
“You have no need to fear, Stephen. There are no laws against moving automatons around,” John replied as he swung himself down through the trapdoor.
Chapter Forty-Two
Had the automaton on the pillar come from Menander’s collection?
Menander could no longer answer the question.
However, Alba, the pious woman John had interviewed at the hospice, had mentioned she’d first known Menander when they were both newly exiled from the palace.
The flooded alley leading to the wooden tenement behind the Church of the Mother of God had dried out. Tracks of foraging dogs and feral cats criss-crossed the hardened mud. The rent collector sat in the same place at the bottom of the rickety stairs. After John spoke to her and went up she made the usual charcoal mark on the wall.
This afternoon Alba was not at the hospice. She met John at the door of her cell-like room on the top floor of the tenement.
“You tell me Menander’s room has been emptied of his possessions, Lord Chamberlain?”
“Whoever was responsible left the door open. They didn’t leave behind so much as a cobweb. You didn’t notice anything?”
“No. It would have been better for Menander if he had put aside his earthly goods long ago. Now I fear the weight of them has dragged his eternal soul down into the fires of hell. Let us pray that the Lord will show him mercy.”
Alba wore the same black attire as at the hospice, the veil fastened under her chin so that only her bone white face showed. She let John into the room and sat on the edge of a low cot. “Please make yourself comfortable, Lord Chamberlain. I can offer you nothing better than a stool. I do not entertain visitors.” She spoke with the well bred tones of a woman raised at court. It was the sort of voice that usually invited one into lavish reception halls or beautiful private apartments.
John sat down near the brazier. His knees almost touched the cot. Through the room’s single window he could see the brick wall of the church, an arm’s breadth away. A window there gave a glimpse of a wall where vestments hung from pegs.
“Alba, you told me that you tried to persuade Menander of the error of his ways. Did you ever see his collection?”
“Only once. He insisted. I have no interest in such vanities but I did not want to be impolite.”
“Do you recall any automatons? Men made of metal?”
“Indeed I did. How could I forget such monstrous works of blasphemy? An artist may depict a man in stone or bronze or bits of colored glass. Such things are clearly meant to be nothing more than representations. To seek to mimic the living flesh with metal that moves…that is to pretend to a creation that is God’s alone.” Her tone remained even but her pale, unlined face tightened as she spoke.