John entered Scipio’s emporium just as a man dressed in rags and a few stray flower petals was leaving.
The bookseller, fussing over the enormous mound of flowers the ragged fellow had left on a table near the door, looked up at the sound of John’s footstep.
“Welcome, excellency! Let me guess the reason for honoring me with another visit. You have been thinking about The Rustic Versifier and decided you must have it after all!”
“I fear I must disappoint you, Scipio.” John brushed a few stray petals off his cloak. “Aren’t all these flowers expensive?”
“My ragged friend offers them for a very reasonable price. Of course, there are many abandoned gardens in the city these days, but if it helps him buy a crust of bread…well…Are you certain you are not interested in the work of your friend Byzos?”
“No, I’m here to ask about something you said to Crinagoras.”
Scipio raised his eyebrows. “You’re a friend of Crinagoras? A man blessed by the Muses! But then you will already know that.” He tossed down the flowers he had been holding, rummaged in a crate under the table, and pulled out a piece of parchment. “I have a superb selection of his work, ready to be beautifully copied out by one of my excellent scribes.”
John found himself asking why Scipio had nothing already copied on hand.
“Why? Well…you know Crinagoras’ poetry, excellency. Whenever my scriveners copy it out…uh…they’re so moved…well…it’s all so tragic…they’re no good for anything until the next day, so I try not to overtax their sensibilities.”
“There is that, not to mention some might not find his work to their taste.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I was getting at,” Scipio nodded. “Very upsetting for them, it is, having to copy such, well…Nevertheless, even the poorest words copied out in a fine hand on good quality vellum, perhaps, and enclosed in an expensive leather cover would please a lady. And isn’t it true that the most pleasing ladies are not necessarily the most literate?”
“I’m not here to buy Crinagoras’ poetry, Scipio. I’m seeking information about the fellow who calls himself a holy fool. I’ve been told you’ve been taking an interest in him.”
Scipio dropped the parchment back into the crate. “I hope to eventually be able to offer an account detailing his visit to the city and his antics while he was here, but I have yet to find an author. It’s a pity, because I’m certain it would sell very well.”
“That being the case, have you any notion where I can find the fool?”
Scipio brightened. “We can do business after all, excellency. The fool has been keeping me abreast of his exploits.”
John expressed surprise.
“The strange fellow got a ride with Byzos one day,” Scipio explained. “By what I hear, the fool has an unhealthy affinity for the dead. After Byzos had disposed of his cartloads of the departed that particular day, he brought the fool around here, to share a meal with him. I suppose Byzos thought he looked as if he needed some nourishment, but that’s the nature of these holy men. Always as thin as shadows. However, it gave me an opportunity to strike a deal with the fool. He drops in every morning for a loaf of bread and tells me where he’s going to be that day in exchange. I can always find a street urchin to follow him around and report back on the latest hijinks. I note them down for the chronicle I am collating. When this plague has passed, people will want to read all about the fool’s exploits. You can depend upon that, excellency.”
“No doubt. Meantime, where will he be today?”
***
From where John stood at the sea wall none of the burial pits Peter so feared were visible. A heavy pall of smoke half-obscuring masts and sullen water alike was the only evidence of municipal efforts to cope with the grim situation.
The raucous sound of squabbling gulls rose up on cool air redolent of the sea, overlaid with the sound of voices. Not the shouts of individual dockworkers, but rather the murmur of a group of people speaking all at once.
John trod to the bottom of a slippery flight of steps leading to a rocky strip of shoreline littered with rotting seaweed and other debris. There he halted to observe the situation.
A short distance away several people talked and gestured excitedly. A sudden shout directed John’s attention toward the water. Scipio’s information had been correct. He could see a spindly figure some way out.
It appeared as if it were dancing on the surface of the sea.
“Came out of nowhere, so it did,” someone loudly remarked.
“It’s magick, I tell you!”
“Smoke and sea spray. That’s all.”
“No, it’s him! That holy bastard!” The speaker was a long-armed, lanky fellow, with shoulders as wide as a spar and an untidy bowl of blond hair.
“Performing miracles now, is he?” The blond man had a companion of comparable size, but darker and bearded.
“I’ll give him miracles,” cried the blond. “He’s the bastard who insulted my wife when the cart came for her!”
The figure identified as the holy fool spread his thin arms as if they were wings and swayed perilously from side to side, his feet moving in place as if to keep a precarious balance on the water.
The fool began to laugh wildly.
His merriment enraged the two men even further. They ran to the shoreline, shouting virulent abuse, which was amply returned in kind.
More epithets followed. Then the pair splashed into the water. It had risen up to their waists before they reached the fool, who was still lurching from side to side.
“Have you been baptized, my sinful friends?” he cried, kicking spray into their faces.
The lanky blond grabbed the fool’s arms.
“Now let’s see you do another miracle, you old goat!”
He shoved the fool’s head under the water.
Eerily lit by strengthening sunlight, the two big men forcing the slight figure beneath the frothing surface might have been chiseled in marble. For an instant John remained frozen in place by the prospect of entering the dark depths in which a murder was taking place.
He ordered himself to move.
He did not have time to obey the order, or to disobey it.
A stiff arm emerged from the roiling water and slapped the blond assailant’s leg.
The man let out a yelp of disgust and then he and his companion were retreating to the shore, dragging the fool in their wake.
John glimpsed a bloated face leering from just below the surface and a swollen torso, rotating slowly as it drifted away.
The disturbance created by the fool and his assailants had set in motion the floating corpses upon which the fool had been balancing.
Back on land, the enraged pair began to beat the fool. Between coughs and sputters he taunted them, spitting blood in the bearded man’s face.
The onlookers drew back, apparently disinclined to come to his aid.
The blond man pulled out a long blade.
Now John did move, and quickly. “In the name of Justinian, I order this ended!”
Three startled faces turned his way.
“And who might you be?” sneered the man with the blade.
“I know who it is!” came the helpful reply from the fool. “It’s the Lord Chamberlain!”
“He’s no more Lord Chamberlain than you are holy, you stupid, blaspheming bastard!”
The fool rolled on to his side and propped his chin in his dirty palm. “A fool I am, but not stupid. Look at his clothing.”
“It’s worth more than I make in a month,” growled the bearded man.
“No one’ll notice another naked corpse,” his companion suggested, lifting his blade.
John turned his head toward the stairs. “Guards!”
The blond grabbed his friend’s wrist. “Bodyguards! Now who’s the fool? You think he’d be out walking about alone?”
The murderous pair took flight up the shore, not pausing to look back in their panic. The rest of the crowd followed.
John turned his attention to the man he had rescued.
The fool’s face was sunburnt and creased with deep, innumerable furrows. His eyes were black and glittering, deep wells sunk in a parched desert.
With a shock, John realized he knew the man he had just saved.
Years before the fool had claimed to be a soothsayer.
***
“Ahaseurus?”
Thomas downed a gulp of wine and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Ahaseurus is the holy fool? I can’t say I’m surprised though, since going by what I’ve heard about his antics, he isn’t much of a holy fool. There was one in Antioch you could track through the streets by his spoor. That would have been very useful in your quest to find him, wouldn’t it?” He gave a hearty laugh. “But leaving that aside, the question is what’s Ahaseurus doing in Constantinople?”
“That’s what I hoped you’d be able to tell me,” John replied, pouring more wine into his cracked cup.
He had returned to a house occupied only by Peter. After a word or two with the elderly servant, John allowed himself to lie down and awoke late in the day to the fragrant smell of boiling chicken.
Evidently Hypatia had found a suitable fowl in the marketplace.
After the evening meal, when dusk cast a kindly veil over the city, Hypatia lit the lamps. As she and Europa chattered in the kitchen, John had invited Thomas into his study.
Thomas regarded the wall mosaic and pondered John’s question. “I have no notion why Ahaseurus would be in Constantinople posing as a holy fool. Why do you think I would?”
“Am I wrong to suspect you were associated with the rogue in some manner the last time he was here?”
Thomas ignored the question. “If he really was a soothsayer as he claimed, you’d think he’d have avoided Constantinople, because he’d know if he came here he’d be riding around in a cart hauling the dead or getting himself assaulted by murderous ne’er-do-wells.”
“He was fortunate today. Tomorrow he may not be so lucky.”
Thomas shook his head in admiration. “Dancing on the sea! What a sight it must have been and yet so simple to accomplish when you know how it’s done. Provided one had the agility. I’m sure Europa could have done it. Not that I would allow her to try. Still, why wasn’t the trick of it apparent at once?”
“During our conversation he claimed he is able to make people see only what he wants them to see, not to mention that he can also stop them seeing things he does not wish them to see.”
“An excellent skill to have, I’d say. Apart from gallivanting about the city getting up to no good and being rescued by Lord Chamberlains, what else is he doing? Is he still working as a soothsayer?”
“He mentioned he continues to practice the art, except instead of reading a chicken’s entrails, the chicken itself does the fortune telling. He claims he was recently consulted by the empress at the palace baths, no less.”
“He showed a chicken to Theodora in the baths and lived to tell the tale?” Thomas guffawed. “Mithra, but you have to admire the old rogue’s tale spinning! Did he happen to mention what the chicken supposedly revealed?”
“Apparently the empress asked it if she would die of the plague and the answer given was that she would not. However, Ahaseurus added that as an oracle the bird was not too reliable because people often don’t ask it the right question and it can only answer yes or no.”
“I suppose time will tell if Theodora outlives the plague.”
“Indeed. On the other hand, according to Ahaseurus, while Theodora definitely will not die of the plague, she also has no notion of just how close she is to the end of her life.”
“I wouldn’t like to be the chicken that told her that little tidbit, would you?” Thomas grunted. He stared at the mosaic figures animated by the flickering lamplight.
“Speaking of seeing things or not, John,” he went on, “that god up in the clouds and the woman with him…It must be the result of working at Isis’ establishment. It stirs up one’s, um, imagination.”
“You mean the flute-player? In daylight she’s properly clothed. However, the tesserae are set an angle, so they present a different picture by lamplight.”
“Very different! The little girl with the big eyes looks the same, which is to say just as disturbing.” Thomas took another gulp of wine. “Did you learn anything useful from Ahaseurus?”
John shook his head. “All he would say about Gregory’s death was that it was due to the hand of heaven.”
“It would be exceedingly difficult to bring heaven to justice, I fear. Did he happen to say where he’d been all these years?”
“To the ends of the earth. Much like you, Thomas.”
The two men sat in silence for a while, passing the wine jug back and forth. Darkness pressed conspiratorially against the room’s diamond-shaped windowpanes.
Laughter drifted along the hallway.
His daughter’s laughter.
John ran his finger along the crack in his wine cup. He thought of the woman with whom he had shared the original.
“I’ve noticed you haven’t been spending much time here, Thomas. I could almost suspect you were avoiding me.”
Thomas denied the suggestion.
“No matter. I wanted to question you concerning Cornelia, but not in front of Europa.”
“She’ll be here as soon as she—” Thomas stopped abruptly and uttered a ripe curse under his breath.
John kept his gaze level on Thomas’ broad, flushed face.
Inside he began to tremble.
“I should have told you right away, John, but, well, Europa, I mean, her mother…You’ve guessed, haven’t you?” Thomas fell silent, tugging unhappily at his mustache.
A chill settled over John. “Something has happened to Cornelia? Something Europa knows nothing about?”
Thomas nodded. “Forgive me, my friend. Cornelia charged me with bringing Europa safely to you, and she would never have left her mother’s side if she’d known.”
“Known what?”
“Just before we left, Cornelia promised Europa she’d send word if she were going to be delayed more than—”
John leapt to his feet.
Dark foreboding encased him in a clammy shroud. “The truth, Thomas! Has Cornelia gone to someone else? Or…Mithra! No! Not my Cornelia!”
Thomas bowed his head sorrowfully. “She didn’t want Europa to see. While Europa went to get her cloak so we could leave right away, she told me she had certain symptoms, but insisted I was not to reveal this to Europa or you on any account. Difficult though it was, I have done that. But by now Cornelia…”
He looked up, wiping streaming eyes, as a sudden draft made the lamp flicker.
The study door stood ajar.
John had gone.