He knew that he could not hold his breath much longer.
Perhaps he should let go and accept his fate as serenely as he could…
A hand suddenly yanked painfully at his hair, pulling him back up into blessed air and the roar of the waves.
It was Paul, who had somehow found the strength to bring John to safety.
Half-blinded and gasping, the two men reached the island. Their sodden clothing dragging like lead weights, they crawled, shuddering with cold, beyond the eager reach of the waves and collapsed on the beach.
Shingle crunched beside John’s head and he found himself staring at a boot.
A child’s boot.
Looking up, he realized that he had finally discovered the whereabouts of Barnabas, who had indeed crossed the waters, just as the goats had informed Zeno. But the mime had only fled as far as the island where the oracular animals resided.
***
The rutted path to the island’s summit seemed full of holes waiting to trap the careless foot or loose stones eager to cause the unwary scrambler to slip and fall. John continued grimly on at the best pace he could manage between shock, cold and a throbbing knee but moved hardly fast enough to keep ahead of Paul. As John slogged upwards, for the first time since his flash of insight he wondered if, in fact, Sunilda and Minthe were not on the island.
“I haven’t seen them,” commented Barnabas, who was leading the way, “but then small as this island is there are plenty of places to hide, and I have to stay inside most of the day anyhow.”
John grunted, concentrating on finding his footing.
“You’ll appreciate that I had no choice but to flee, Lord Chamberlain,” Barnabas went on, stepping smartly along. “I’d spied on Theodora and Castor. I don’t think she saw me but what if she had? After all, what’s the theft of a few scrolls compared to running off with one of the empress’ secrets?”
Barnabas had quickly described the scene in Castor’s library as they huffed along, confirming what John had begun to suspect. Although Justinian habitually turned a blind eye, Theodora’s proclivities for amorous adventures were well known, not to say notorious, in Constantinople. Wandering Zeno’s garden unattended, as Zeno had mentioned she had lately been in the habit of doing, allowed her not only a breath or two of fresh air but also the opportunity to slip unobserved through the private door to Castor’s estate. Why else had the empress chosen an eccentric, elderly scholar to be host to the twins for the summer when any estate would have served as well and there were several closer to the city? Clearly it was because Zeno was Castor’s neighbor.
And given Castor’s claim on the Italian throne, John had a suspicion that Theodora’s interest had not been entirely carnal.
Hardly out of breath as he forged ahead, Barnabas continued with his rapid explanation. “I grew up in this area and knew that the villagers don’t dare set foot on the island. They’re a superstitious lot. I intended to hide here for a while and then take ship for foreign parts as soon as it was safe.”
He then admitted to hiding in the mithraeum on the night of the banquet.
“Unfortunately,” he continued, “even though it’s very well hidden, the search seemed to be getting too close for comfort. So I scaled the wall and hid on Castor’s estate for a while and then stole a boat and came over here. Been here ever since, hauling these wretched goats around.”
They had come to a tiny, rugged field, hardly more than an indentation in the side of the peak. Its rough expanse was strewn with several of the stuffed animals. On the opposite side of the uncropped grass the rocky and crumbling cliff resumed, rising jaggedly above them. A bird called from somewhere in the straggly brush growing at its base.
John’s throat clenched as he looked upward.
“Don’t worry,” Barnabas assured him, “there’s a path up to the top. You’ll see it when you get closer. It’s extremely steep, though. Watch out for loose stones and….”
“It’s too late,” Paul gasped breathlessly, pointing a shaking finger to the top of the cliff as he spied what John had already glimpsed.
Two figures were nearing the top of the precipitous path, picking their way slowly as the smaller helped the other.
Now, too, a blood-red line of incandescence was touching the summit.
John’s leap of deduction from the darkness of doubt to the light of certainty had been correct, but had it come too late?
He limped at as rapid a pace as he could manage across the open space populated by departed goats. He was bound to attempt the climb, although he saw with a sinking heart that the path was a series of switchbacks, an impossible distance to traverse quickly even on two good legs.
Mithra aid me, he muttered, plunging up the stony track as quickly as he could. He glanced over his shoulder, expecting to see Barnabas about to overtake him, but the mime wasn’t even on the path. Instead he was running off towards the base of the cliff.
The dwarf’s short legs gave him an awkward gait. Under other circumstances it might have been a comical sight. Now, with a child’s life at stake, his inexplicable action was horrifying.
Then John understood as Barnabas carefully chose his spot and began working his way up the side of the rocky precipice. John would have said it was a nigh impossible feat, but Barnabas was somehow finding unseen hand-holds, his powerful arms and legs pulling and pushing him quickly upward as surely as they had propelled him through hundreds of the comical acrobatic stunts for which he was justly famous.
John continued painfully on a journey that seemed to take an eternity. Each time the crumbling track began to point directly to the cliff top it soon looped back on itself, forced away from its course by a sheer rock face or an impassable outcropping. He could have climbed Mithra’s seven-runged ladder faster, John thought grimly, as he fought his way up the hellish incline.
As he finally emerged between two boulders marking the end of the path, a wash of sunlight stabbed out over the windswept rocks forming the flat peak of the island.
And there, at the edge of a precipice overlooking the sea, stood Minthe, her torn garment testimony to a struggle. Her long silver hair streamed down her back.
A small distance from her Barnabas crouched, holding Sunilda firmly in his arms.
The girl looked over his shoulder at John with eyes that might have seen a hundred lives.
“Lord Chamberlain,” she greeted him calmly. “I am very happy that you and Barnabas have arrived, for I am afraid that Minthe has betrayed me. Porphyrio has not appeared despite his promise. In fact, there’s nothing below this high place but jagged rocks. I conclude from this that Minthe intended to kill me and that she is not, after all, my friend.”
Minthe made no reply.
From the mainland came a rousing cheer. So unexpected and loud was the sustained sound that John’s gaze was drawn back toward it for an instant.
Sunilda screamed shrilly.
John whirled. The child was lying almost at the edge of the precipice with Barnabas’ hands clamped around one of her thin ankles.
Minthe was gone.
“She jumped,” shrieked Sunilda hysterically. “I didn’t want her to die. I tried to grab her.” Now she was sobbing. “Minthe, Minthe, come back! I didn’t mean what I said!”
“She squirmed out of my arms,” Barnabas explained. “I only glanced away for a heartbeat…”
John hurriedly pulled the bitterly sobbing Sunilda away from the drop, away from anything that might be visible below.
As he turned back towards the path, he saw Paul standing silently between the boulders, staring at the girl with a strange expression on his face.
Sunilda grew quiet and deathly still. It was the sort of shocked reaction John had seen soldiers experience after a battle.
Barnabas helped the girl back down the path. John and Paul followed slowly. As they left the summit, Paul turned to stare toward the precipice where Minthe had been standing not very long before.