“Before you lost it?”
John read the copy letter quickly. It contained the usual lengthy honorifics, followed by a demand for an audience. Then came the dire prophecies Justinian had described. John sighed. There seemed little to be learned from it. Had Anatolius placed himself in danger to no gain?
“Of course,” Philo was saying, “Anatolius may have copied the words accurately but not their arrangement. These things can be very subtle indeed. Not everyone grasps this significant detail.”
John’s attention was suddenly snagged by one of the sentences. He reread it, half aware of Philo droning on beside him, having realized that by seeking cryptic hidden clues the philosopher had seemingly overlooked the content of the message itself.
“Philo, did you notice this?”
The old man glanced at the letter.
“It is this sentence,” John pointed, “‘And lo for each of these holy entities the heavenly fire shall claim a sinner, so that all the world shall rejoice in the might of the True Number.’…”
“That must refer to some formula,” ventured Philo, eyes brightening at the prospect of a mathematical puzzle to solve.
“No, Philo, I don’t think so. According to the second letter, these Michaelites worship a fourth holy entity, the human vessel, that they consider co-equal with the usual trinity. That makes four. So their so-called True Number must be the same. Thus this supposed heavenly fire was prophesied as taking four lives. But on that night only three died.”
Philo understood immediately. “Could the girl at Aurelius’ house have been the fourth?”
“Possibly. But possibly not, for I heard Michael predicted more fiery deaths in a sermon the same evening as Aurelius’ banquet.”
“Then what can it mean?”
John was about to reply when there was a thunderous knock on the house door. Going downstairs, he curled his fingers around the hilt of the dagger at his belt.
Cracking the door open cautiously, he was surprised to see Darius looming outside.
“Madam informed that you wanted to question me, so I thought I should attend at once.”
John let him in and shut the door against the windy night.
Philo had vanished when they entered the kitchen. Since he could not have avoided hearing Darius’ distinctive voice booming up from the entrance hall, perhaps he was not anxious to have one of Isis’ employees confirm his recently denied patronage of her establishment.
“It’s a bitter night and I would have been happy to speak to you tomorrow,” John said, gesturing Darius to take a seat.
It was obvious from his visitor’s red eyelids and blotched features that Darius had been weeping and was attempting, with little success, to suppress more sobs. “I was right next to her, Lord Chamberlain,” he said. “It was my job to guard madam and the girls and I could not even do that.”
“You did all you could.” John looked pointedly at Darius’ enormous hands. They were covered in blisters from his efforts to extinguish the fire that had killed Adula. He hoped Gaius would not charge too steep a fee for the amount of unguent that would be needed for those burns. Better still, he thought, he would arrange for it to be given to Darius at no charge and pay the cost himself. “You will display the scars from your brave efforts for the rest of your life. And rest assured, we will find out who is responsible for her death.”
“No. No, I fear not.” Darius’ eyes glistened. “It was surely the work of some dreadful and malign deity.”
“I am certain that there was no such intervention involved, Darius. Now, reflect. You were closer to the girl than anyone else. Perhaps you saw something unusual, something strange, that might be helpful in discovering the villain responsible?”
Darius shook his head. “I’ve spent hours thinking about it, over and over, trying to remember exactly how it was. But all I can remember is that one instant I was standing there and the next, there was a terrible scream. I looked at Adula and already she was being consumed by flames.”
John went to the kitchen window. Its glass was opaque with condensation. He ran a finger around one of the small rectangular panes and the lights of the city leapt into view.
“Everyone has said that, that the fire was suddenly just there. Yet it must have originated somewhere.”
“I believe it came from within, John. Her eyes… they looked as if there was an inferno raging behind them. I can’t forget that…”
“Perhaps you heard something?”
“Well, there was madam’s flute, poetry being declaimed, people talking and laughing. Just the usual things you would expect to hear at a gathering such as that.”
As Darius wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand, his sleeve slipped back to reveal oozing burns on his wrists. Most men with such wounded flesh, John reflected, would be crying from pain rather than with grief.
“It is a strange world, Lord Chamberlain,” Darius went on. “Everyone knows that you and Senator Aurelius were sent on a diplomatic mission to Michael. And now the senator is gone. He is not the only one dead, either. If I was asked, I would tell the emperor that if he wants these deaths to stop he should make peace with Michael. No human hand can stop him.”
Having secured the house after Darius’ departure, John retired. On the way to his bedroom, he paused for a moment at the doorway of his study. For once, his gaze was drawn not to the mosaic girl Zoe but to the pagan gods cavorting lustily in the heavens above the bucolic scene. As the flickering light from the lamp he carried gave lewd animation to the figures, he wondered afresh. Had that subtly shifting scene been specified in its owner’s original commission or was it a sly joke on the part of the artisan, directed at the despised tax collector who had owned the house until his head was sacrificed by Justinian in an attempt to placate an enraged populace?
The old gods in the mosaic reminded John of Aurelius, a staunch pagan yet, he sensed, despite his jesting almost convinced he had been granted a miraculous cure by a man whose religion he did not follow. Darius likewise was no believer and certainly no coward, yet he was already frightened sufficiently to counsel immediate surrender. It was obvious that if Michael could so easily persuade the minds of men like those, it was equally certain that Justinian would not be able to control Constantinople’s largely Christian population for very much longer.
John’s last glance around his study touched the shatranj board. A thin smile briefly illuminated John’s lean face. During his brief discussion with Darius, it had occurred to him that small though the scrap of parchment that had been hidden under it was, it was the only thing offering a shred of hope. Its message demonstrated that Michael was not as all-knowing as everyone appeared to believe.
Chapter Fifteen
By first light next day John was standing in the long shadow of a stylite’s pillar set at the center of a nondescript forum not far from the docks. Unlike three other columns in the city, this pillar was still occupied.
As red-gold light crept over the surrounding rooftops, the stylite, a tall figure dressed in a long black tunic, addressed the knot of pilgrims who had already gathered, despite the early hour. A cool breeze carried the rank smell of decomposing fish around the spacious forum along with the elevated man’s ornate phrases. This morning he warned of divine retribution against imposters who mounted pillars and subsequently preached falsehoods to pious pilgrims.
At John’s approach some of the faithful drifted away. He had dressed in a simple white tunic and thrown a dark woolen cloak over his shoulders, yet there was something in the quality of his clothing, perhaps the hint of silver thread along the hem of his cloak, that, coupled with his bearing, alerted even these simple travelers to at least some suspicion of his rank. And, John reflected ruefully, no matter how much senators and high court officials might boast of their efforts to better the lot of the general populace, those thronging the streets sensed their enemies as instinctively as a rabbit knows the fox. It was a pity that many ordinary folk apparently suspected anyone holding rank as inevitably harboring rancor directed against those lower on the social scale.