It is easy to imagine that after the fall of the Roman Empire, barbarian hoards overran Rome, civilization collapsed and the world entered the Dark Ages. It wasn’t really like that, and these last two stories prove that point. For a start, the Emperor Constantine had moved his imperial capital away from Rome to Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in AD 330. After the death of Theodosius I in AD 395 the Empire was split between the West, centred on Rome, and the East, in Constantinople. Even after the Empire in the West fell in AD 476, the Empire in the East continued for another thousand years. In the first few centuries the traditions of the Roman Empire remained, though it became increasingly influenced by Near Eastern tradition. The following story is the third by Mary Reed and Eric Mayer about John the Eunuch, Lord Chamberlain to the Byzantine Emperor Justinian, who ruled from AD 527–65.
Because Theodore was a meticulous man, a virtue in his former profession as a barber, every member of his household, save one, was able to mark the hour at which his wife Anna was found dead in her bedroom. To insure that he would never be late for anything, and that nothing would ever be late for him, Theodore had placed clocks everywhere in the elegant city home which had formed a part of his wife’s dowry.
So Peter, who was stirring the dates he was stewing in honey when a high-pitched cry startled him, was able to see the time by checking the height to which the measuring stick had floated in the urn beside the kitchen brazier.
And when the wailing began next door to the guest room in Lady Anna’s apartments, where Lady Sophia was just removing her veil and shaking the dust of the street from her cloak, she immediately shot an annoyed glare at the water clock on the dressing table and noted the level to which the cross-shaped float had descended in its silver bowl.
Even Hypatia, who was in the garden shoveling the last spadeful of dirt on to the spot in the flowering herbs where she’d buried her mistress’s cat, when she heard screams coming from the house, had only to turn her dark-maned head towards the sundial which had not yet been reached by the shadows cast by the surrounding walls.
Only Euthymius, Anna’s attendant, did not note the time, because when he announced himself with a soft knock, tiptoed delicately into his mistress’s room and nearly tripped over her body, the elaborate mechanical clypsedra there had been knocked out of its wall niche onto the floor.
Now John the Eunuch, Lord Chamberlain to the Emperor Justinian, knelt beside the remnants of the clypsedra. The bent tubes and bits of decorative metalwork were scattered across the tiles. The thin, sunburnt Greek carefully picked up the engraved face of the clock. Its rod and flotation device hung limply from the pointer which the ascent of the water in the clock’s vessel had pushed to the ninth hour on the dial. It was now the eleventh hour.
John tested the pointer with his finger. It was set firmly enough, he supposed, to have resisted the impact when it hit the floor. He applied more force until it slipped backwards along the dial. If only time could really be reversed.
‘As Christ is my witness, it was the tenth hour when I heard Euthymius cry out,’ said Peter. The wizened cook’s eyes were red, as if he’d been crying.
‘I too was disturbed at that time,’ agreed Sophia. She dabbed at her eyes with a silk handkerchief.
Hypatia, the young gardener, looked on mutely, dark eyes wide. She had only just stopped crying for the poor cat. She was not ready to cry for its owner. Finally John reassured her in Egyptian and she answered quietly in her native tongue.
Euthymius, whose shrill cries had alerted the rest of the household, now stood by silently, tears streaming down his pudgy face. John felt an irrational revulsion toward the eunuch attendant.
In the cramped room, the fragrance of perfume mingled with the smell of death. All was in preparation for evening. Anna’s finest robes had been laid out across the yellow and white coverlet of the nuptial bed, a pair of white gloves lay on the dressing table, alongside her jeweled combs and brooches, and white rose petals were strewn across the floor, bed and furniture.
‘She must have died an hour before Euthymius discovered her,’ mused John. ‘She must have fallen against the clock and knocked it to the floor. The dial stopped when it hit. Is there anyone in the house other than those present? Was anybody else in the house earlier?’
‘No one today.’ Sophia was firm. ‘Except for your friend Anatolius. But you know that, because he is the one who brought this dreadful news back to the palace. It was to be a special day, after all,’ she added, bringing the handkerchief to her dry eyes again.
None of the others disagreed. ‘I want no one to leave the house, then,’ John announced. He had no power under law to give such an order but who in this modestly wealthy household would contradict the Lord Chamberlain? Aside, perhaps, from Anna’s husband, a man of modest origins who had never accepted his place. John was afraid Theodore might insist upon the authorities being brought in at once.
But the horror of his wife’s shocking death had at least temporarily humbled even the former tonsor. A handsome man with a carefully clipped beard, he had placed his back to the far wall as if to remain as far as possible from the body of his wife. He did not try to contradict the Lord Chamberlain but simply nodded towards the two excubitors (watchmen) John had recruited to accompany his small party to Theodore’s house.
‘See the entrances are guarded.’ The tone of command used by the master of the house came easily for he had ordered more than one great man to lower his head, the better to shave the back of his neck. ‘You,’ he indicated the larger of the two, ‘station yourself at the tradesmen’s entrance. Euthymius, show the guard where he is to take up his post.’
The watery-eyed attendant composed himself with a visible effort and led the excubitor away.
‘The tradesmen’s entrance opens on the alley,’ Theodore explained to John. ‘If anyone tried to force his way in, he would probably choose that door.’
‘I’m more concerned with anyone who might try to leave,’ John softly replied.
‘Well, I can assure you we will all remain here, for the night at least. But, when the sun rises . . .’ Theodore’s voice cracked and John saw his eyes move toward the body of his wife. ‘. . . When the sun rises, I must . . . begin making arrangements. I –’
‘I understand. In the meantime, you may move her to a more suitable spot, Theodore. But, please, touch nothing else in the room.’
Theodore nodded, but remained silent. His face was nearly as ashen as his wife’s.
‘What killed her?’ John asked the physician.
Gaius made a frown, as if he were just considering the question, although he had examined the body for some time while John stood by. He was stout and had the bulbous red nose of one who worshipped Bacchus too freely and too often. He was not pleased, being dragged at a moment’s notice to a consultation. And even less pleased because he’d not been sought out for his expertise but merely because his place of business was on the way to the house. ‘There was evidence of vomiting,’ he said at last. ‘That would implicate the digestive faculty, some imbalance in the upper part of the stomach, not the lower. Notice the yellow bile – please forgive my drawing attention, Theodore – on the front of the tunic – honey produces yellow bile. A tainted sweet, perhaps?’
John looked down into Anna’s face. Her skin, beneath white chalk, was tinged with blue. John had talked to her at more than one formal dinner at the palace. Her features had been plain, her mind a rich embroidery. Now only the unremarkable features remained, incongruously painted, thin lips ochered, narrow eyes surrounded with kohl, stubby fingernails reddened, her hair braided with beads. How humiliated she would have been to be seen like this by others than her husband.
‘A tainted sweet,’ John mused. ‘Do you mean one turned bad, or poisoned?’
Gaius hesitated. As a physician at the Byzantine court he had seen even more poisonings than John and had learned discretion. ‘Ah, as to that, I cannot be sure. I fear a physician serves not the dead but the living.’
‘Among whom you count yourself,’ snapped John.
Gaius reddened.
‘And what about the blue around the lips, Gaius? I am not a physician, but I have seen poisonings.’
‘An imbalance of the humours may be brought about by means both natural and unnatural, Lord Chamberlain. If only I had been summoned sooner . . .’
John laid a thin brown hand on Anna’s pale, upturned palm and bid her a silent farewell. He had been fond of her. Like John, she had been forced to be more a creature of intellect than she might have desired.
John climbed to his feet. Bringing him closer to Gaius’ flushed face. He smelled wine on the man’s breath. The physician had been drinking when Anatolius pounded frantically at his door to summon him.
‘Yes, I’m sure you would have balanced the humours by letting the blood. Well, our friend’s humours have found their ultimate equilibrium without your help.’ John’s words displayed a glibness he did not feel.
John faced Anatolius across the scarred wooden table in the kitchen. The air was still redolent of honey, leeks, mussels, and the rest of the special dinner Anna had ordered but would never consume.
‘I want to speak to you first, my friend. You know the grounds well, don’t you? Especially the gardens?’
‘Yes. I’ve been here . . . often . . . lately’
Despite the renowned beauty of the grounds of the Imperial Palace, Anatolius, personal secretary to Justinian, had never before been one for gardens, unless perhaps to dally with his love of the hour, among the fragrant blossoms of the yellow garden or, if he was fortunate, the darker groves where light would be the last thing lovers would wish. John’s young friend was, it seemed, cursed with a sensitivity to plants. His eyes and nose tended to stream in their proximity. He was prostrated as easily by a flower as by a woman.
It had, therefore, been a source of puzzlement to John that lately Anatolius never turned down an invitation to dine at the house of Anna and Theodore. For Anna was as famous for her devotion to her garden as Theodore was for his devotion to his wife.
Now, John was faced with another, more somber puzzle.
‘You haven’t asked me why I didn’t call in the authorities.’ John was blunt.
‘Nor have you asked me why I alerted you rather than the prefect.’
John smiled thinly. ‘I speak a little Egyptian, from my years in Alexandria. The new servant – Hypatia – I see she is a lovely young thing. From Egypt. Named after the philosopher, no doubt. It is something to do with her, I imagine.’
‘So why didn’t you call in the authorities?’
John paused, choosing his words. ‘The authorities are very clumsy. They are used to dealing with clumsy criminals, who slit throats in dark alleys. There is something – delicate – about this murder.’
‘You don’t believe it was tainted food, do you?’
‘The lady retired to her room, when?’
‘The seventh hour or maybe the eighth, according to what Theodore told me.’
‘And before then she had been perfectly well.’
‘Theodore said she’d had a bit to drink. To calm her nerves. She was agitated at times.’
‘But she wasn’t sick before she retired to her apartments. And she wasn’t there more than an hour or two. Tainted food doesn’t work so fast. She must have been overcome quickly. No one seems to have heard her call for assistance.’
‘You think she was poisoned in her room?’
John ignored the question. ‘I intend to speak to everyone before I come to any conclusions. This Egyptian girl, with the dark hair and the high cheekbones. The gardener. You’ve taken an interest in her?’
Anatolius was taken by surprise. ‘She is not only beautiful but extremely knowledgeable about plants, especially flowers and herbs.’
‘And what do they say at the court about poor, plain Anna, that there would always be dirt under her nails, if she didn’t keep them perpetually ragged with her gardening. So a slave with such knowledge was especially valuable to her.’
‘A slave? Yes. You’re right, John. But I can’t think of her as a slave. Catullus wrote about a flower that grows concealed in an enclosed garden. Unknown to the cattle, not bruised by any plough. Breezes caress it. The sun makes it strong.’
‘Many long for it.’ John finished the verse.
A breeze from the open window overlooking the gardens in the inner courtyard caused Anatolius to blink and sniff.
John smiled wanly. ‘Yes, my friend. I understand. And I understand why you would ask me here, because who is more skilled at poisoning than one who knows herbs?’
In the courtyard, long evening shadows had moved across the face of the marble sundial, so that time could no longer be read from its lines of inlaid bronze. It was necessary therefore to tell time in the manner of the older empire, when the citizens of Rome had measured their days by the position of the sun over familiar columns, statues and walls. And although John was not so familiar with the house of Theodore as was Anatolius, who though by his side was deep in thought, it was easy enough to calculate that if the rays of the summer sun no longer reached over a three-story house, then the last measured hour of the day must have arrived, even if dusk had not completely fallen.
‘I fear that when the dawn arrives, Theodore will not be persuaded from calling the prefects,’ John commented, as much to himself as to Anatolius. ‘And who knows where they will point.’
‘Why? Some new edict of the Emperor?’
‘No. People are more reasonable in the daylight.’
‘You have twelve hours then.’
‘If only they were the longer hours of a winter night.’
‘Do you really think fingers will be pointed at Hypatia?’
‘I can’t say.’ John did not voice his conclusion, which was that Hypatia, an herbalist and a foreigner, newly arrived in the city, would be the obvious suspect if not presumed automatically to be the culprit. Nor did he tell his young friend that she might well be responsible. If that were so, he would have to prove it beyond question. As if even an incontrovertible truth would save their friendship under such circumstances. John was not one to flinch from the unpleasant, but he truly wished he could be somewhere else this night.
He tried to turn his thoughts toward the facts. What did he know of Lady Anna, except that she had been an intelligent and pleasing conversationalist? At even her best, she had been a plain woman – a dusty hen in a court of peacocks – but her father was a senator and she had carried with her a good dowry. Even so her marriage to the handsome Theodore had caused a seven-day wonder at the court. Several prominent matrons’ tongues had been viperish at the prospect of the union lasting, although John, noting all had unwed daughters, rather suspected their tattle was fueled by thwarted maternal ambition. Yet several years had passed and the marriage, though sadly childless, had flowered and flourished as had the gardens Anna loved so much. And, after all, Theodore may have been a most well-proportioned man, and had made himself comfortable as the court’s most sought-after tonsor – still there was a limit to how high a barber could elevate himself socially and how much wealth one could clip from the beards of the rich. And to say that the marriage was of mutual convenience was not to imply that it could not be much more as well.
They found a bench artfully concealed in a miniature copse near the back of the gardens. The air was heavy, as the gathering darkness drew up and held the scent of flowers and herbs. Occasionally the sounds of the street, the clatter of cart wheels on cobblestones, the shout of an itinerant merchant, penetrated the sheltering walls, only faintly.
‘Country in the town,’ John said suddenly.
‘Martial,’ Anatolius identified the author of the epigram.
John nodded. ‘Very apt. Tell me what happened today, Anatolius.’
The young man sat down beside John. The Lord Chamberlain wondered if his friend had shared this artfully secluded seat with a more suitable companion.
‘It seems unbelievable,’ Anatolius began. ‘I was here only last week, and Anna and Theodore were planning a celebration for the anniversary of their union. Theodore said he would dress her hair. Of course, he knew about such things, being a barber. He’d color her nails, patch her blemishes, as he’d done for his customers. And now she’s gone.’ His eyes welled, whether because he was recalling Anna or due to the effect of the flower-perfumed air on his allergy, John could not say.
The Lord Chamberlain remembered the unkind remarks the wags at court had made when Anna and Theodore had first married – that she’d taken him for a lady’s maid – and later, that maybe Theodore should trade duties with his wife’s attendant Euthymius, because the eunuch might have as much chance fathering heirs as her husband had.
‘But how did you come to be here, today, Anatolius?’
‘I ran into Theodore at the market beside the Mese this afternoon. He’d been looking for plantings for Anna’s garden. The yellow one, he said. She had devised a little conceit. Apparently her favorite color is – was – yellow and so half the flowers were to be yellow. And the other half were to be white, which she also loved.’ He made a snuffling noise, as if even the thought of so many flowers disturbed his faculties.
‘I remember Lady Sophia once claimed Theodore had purchased all the white roses in the city to give to his wife on the feast of Venus,’ John mused. ‘She seemed put out. I think she wished someone would bestow such attention on her. They are lovely flowers.’
‘Yes, Anna planned to plant white roses, he told me and apple trees – white blossoms, you see. Also pears, I believe. Sacred to Athena, they say. Yellow flowers had been more difficult to find but I understand she had already established a few. Hypatia pointed them out to me the other evening. She is really quite wise in these matters. She was telling me some of the uses of plantings.’
‘Lord Chamberlain, so this is where you’ve been hiding.’
John was startled because in the shadows the figure which had appeared suddenly on the path between the shrubberies appeared ghostlike. But only for a moment would anyone mistake the Lady Sophia for some flimsy wraith.
‘Sophia, I’m sorry to see you again –’
‘Under such sorrowful circumstances. Yes, I know. And also very inconvenient circumstances. My chair is arriving in an hour. My attendants will already be on their way.’
John, feeling at a disadvantage, stood. ‘I’m afraid they will have to return in the morning,’ He was glad her expression was half-concealed by the shadows.
‘Surely you don’t intend to detain me also?’
Detain someone who, due to the predatory tax collecting of her late husband, was one of Constantinople’s richest women and thus entitled to a life free of petty inconvenience, was what she meant, John thought. But he confined himself to pointing out that he would need to ask the lady a few questions, later on.
‘Without my dear Anna’s company I have no wish to spend the night in this house. Attended by Euthymius. Poor Anna, she had no taste in servants.’
‘It is maddening, isn’t it?’ put in Anatolius, bounding to his feet. ‘Come, Sophia, Theodore has a magnificent stock of wines. The air’s getting cold. Maybe we can find something to ward off the chill.’
Taking her by the hand he pulled her politely away, all the while prattling brightly. John thanked his friend silently.
The old cook, Peter, had reclaimed his kitchen. He was very slowly sweeping up the freshening sawdust he had spread over its floor, singing some lugubrious Christian hymn to himself, tunelessly but loudly, when John entered the room. John, being a Mithran did not recognize the hymn. He hoped it was not one of the Emperor’s own compositions, any or all of which he feared he might one day be asked to incorporate into an imperial ceremony.
‘Peter, may I talk to you for a moment?’
‘Lord Chamberlain, I would be honored. I am flattered you know my name.’
John’s perfect memory for names was the least of his talents. More remarkable was his grasp of the relative locations of each person so named in the palace hierarchy.
‘Tell me, John, what were you preparing for this evening?’
The old cook hobbled over to a cupboard, using his twig broom as a support, and pulled out a scrap of parchment. He squinted hard and began to read, haltingly. ‘Sea mussels with leeks, oysters, melons cooked with mint, a pear soufflé in honey and wine sauce, cooked apricots –’
‘It sounds like a feast.’
‘A private celebration, for my master and mistress.’
‘Private. Yes, I see. Might some of those recipes inflame the passions?’
Peter’s walnut-wrinkled face darkened. ‘It wasn’t the pleasures of the flesh that were wanted, your excellency, but only that a holy union be fruitful in the eyes of Our Lord.’
‘Of course.’ John refrained from pointing out that Theodore and Anna did not worship Peter’s Lord but the older gods. ‘Was the food fresh, Peter?’
The old cook straightened his back, outraged. ‘I learned my trade in the camps.’
‘Yes, we used to say a careless cook could put a legion on the run faster than a troop of mounted Persians.’
‘As you say.’
‘Who has access to your kitchen?’
‘When I am cooking? No one.’
‘Are you sure no one was in here while you were preparing the meal?’
‘There was no chance for anyone to slip anything into the food,’ said Peter, stiffly. ‘After I left the military I worked for a time at the palace. I keep my eyes open. Besides, the lady ate nothing this morning. Not so much as a piece of fruit. She was too nervous.’
‘Is that why she was drunk?’
‘Drunk? Hardly. She took a little wine, I believe.’
‘And what are these?’ John indicated a basket set on the stone floor by the brazier.
‘Just some sweets.’
John bent and plucked one of the sticky confections from the basket.
‘I was cooking them when I heard Euthymius cry out. I finished preparing them. I didn’t realize, until later –’
‘Dates. Stuffed, I see. What’s in them?’
‘Ground nuts. I sprinkle them with salt and stew them in honey,’ Peter explained with pride. ‘A little specialty of mine.’
John popped the date into his mouth and chewed. ‘Very good,’ he remarked.
John left the kitchen and wandered thoughtfully through the house. The air was hushed. He could hear the oil lamps sputtering. He found himself in Anna’s apartments. The rooms were deserted. The unseemly invasion by men who would never have dared enter while the lady was alive had ended. John felt he was trespassing in this woman’s place, although, he realized uneasily, by custom eunuchs were also allowed access to such apartments.
A low groan drew his attention and, following his ears, he came to the bedroom where Anna had died. Her body had been removed from the room, which had been left otherwise undisturbed, according to John’s instructions, except that someone, perhaps the overly well-organized Theodore, had not been able to resist placing the broken clypsedra back into its niche.
Or perhaps it had not been Theodore who had replaced the clock, but Euthymius, who stood in the middle of the room, moaning softly, tears streaming down his cheeks, worrying a fingernail – for all the world like a small, distraught child.
John stepped quietly through the doorway. A few white rose petals floated on the puddle of water left by the clock. A mercenary in his youth, the Lord Chamberlain was inured to a different sort of death, where the end of one’s span was measured by the flow of blood from the veins.
‘Euthymius.’
Anna’s attendant turned. He wiped brimming eyes. ‘I’m sorry I – but, then, you – you understand, of course.’ Euthymius’ sentence ended in a hiccoughing sob.
John fought back revulsion. ‘No,’ he said, too loudly. ‘No, I don’t understand. What do you mean when you say I understand?’
Euthymius looked confused.
The Lord Chamberlain was a thin, hard man. He had served as a soldier for years before his – wounding. He had killed men and loved women. Euthymius, on the other hand, had been castrated as an infant. He was the typical eunuch. Surely no one would mistake John for fat and ungainly Euthymius? His whimpering disgusted John.
‘No one was to enter this room,’ John said curtly. ‘You’ll have to leave.’
‘The master asked me to fetch a coverlet for her, and yellow was her favorite.’
‘She has no favorites now.’
‘Yes, Lord Chamberlain.’ Euthymius began to sob uncontrollably. ‘They moved her. It was my job to do that. They moved my poor mistress and didn’t even tell me. They had no right.’
John concealed his surprise. A slave – even a distraught slave – did not speak of the ‘rights’ of his master.
Euthymius managed to regain some control. ‘If you want to speak to me about –’
He took a step toward John who stepped aside. The overpowering pomade on the eunuch’s curled hair buried the room’s gentle scent of rose petals, but did not quite mask a more offensive odor.
‘If I need to speak to you, I will summon you.’
John waited until the attendant had left. Then he turned his gaze on the room. He was sure the answer lay here. Anna had been poisoned here. Regardless of what had been said, it was almost certain someone had brought something into the room to her. A lady did not retire, in perfect health, to her private chambers only to be found dead a scant two hours later.
But John wanted to speak to the household before he examined the room. In his own way, he was as methodical as Theodore. Although, John realized, a more genuinely scientific mind than his would have wished to find a physical cause before peering into the human souls which could have set that cause into motion. Yet while there were opportunities to commit crime at every turn, it was the motivation that was usually lacking.
A thought struck him. Had Euthymius moved anything other than the clock?
He was distracted by raised voices from the next room, the guest room. Theodore stormed past Anna’s door. John opened his mouth to speak but Theodore made a dismissive gesture.
‘Not now. I have a long list, Lord Chamberlain. Certain things must be done.’ Evidently realizing then the imprudence of being rude to one so high at the court, he abruptly shifted to a conciliatory tone. ‘I’m just distraught, John. And Sophia, she was Anna’s best friend. Practically lived here. She is stricken. Please excuse me.’
He pivoted and hurried off, his footsteps echoing on the marble. John looked into the room his reluctant host had so lately left.
‘Forgive him, Lord Chamberlain. We all have our own ways of dealing with grief.’
The Lady Sophia’s way was to lounge on a couch, a goblet of wine at hand, and color her fingernails.
John did not judge her harshly. He was familiar with the patrician class. It was not uncommon for those of rank to disdain a vulgar display of emotions in front of those they considered not their equals.
‘I am taking your friend’s suggestion, you see.’ Sophia paused long enough to bring the goblet to her mouth. ‘Theodore does have a splendid stock.’
Her face was flushed with wine. Perhaps it was that, coupled with the way the flickering light from the single lamp on the dressing table softened her features, or maybe just the artfully applied make-up, that made John realize, abruptly and for the first time, that she was young as Anna had been, and that one might almost consider her lovely – a term he would not previously have associated with the widowed Lady Sophia.
Sophia, her senses honed as sharply by court life as John’s, noticed he was appraising her.
‘Don’t tell Gaius I’m drinking. He claims I drink too much. Not that he has any right to talk. He’d insist I drink nothing but barley water.’
‘You’ve seen the physician professionally? Is he reliable?’
‘I see him as seldom as possible. He hasn’t treated me for poisoning, so I can’t vouch for his expertise there, if that’s what you mean.’
John paced over to the dressing table. The cross in the clock’s silver bowl had already sunk toward the ring marking the second hour of night, as the water escaped through a small aperture in the bowl’s bottom into a holding vessel. The lamp beside the clock flared, illuminating a make-up box whose lid hung open revealing compartments for jars of unguents, rouge, kohl, ochre and a dozen other artifices. Most of its jars were jumbled on the table next to Sophia.
‘I understand this was to be a special day for Anna and Theodore?’
‘Indeed. And the matter being so private – why was I here?’
John nodded.
‘I had agreed to come over to hold her hand, if things didn’t go right. Anna was overwrought. She’d confided her plans to me, of course. We were very close. She sometimes lent me her jewelry, since she didn’t wear it too often. Too cumbersome, she said. She gave me some of the new creams and potions and such that that new servant of hers concocted. A clever girl, that young Egyptian. But too clever for a servant, if you ask me.’
John enquired when had Sophia arrived at the house.
‘I was just taking off my cloak when I heard Euthymius cry out. I’m here often, of course. I have no one at home, any more.’
‘Anna’s father, he was a supporter of your late husband, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes. He spoke out for Victor in the Senate, when the . . . troubles came.’
When the taxpayers demanded his head, thought John. And they’d been given it too, in the end. Literally. But not the deceased’s money. That had been left to Sophia.
‘But how did a senator’s daughter come to be betrothed to a barber?’
Sophia looked irritated. ‘The senator likes the way his beard is trimmed. He gives away his daughter. What do you think, John? Why do people fall in love? But, then, you wouldn’t understand that – men and women – any more than poor fat Euthymius.’
John bit back his thoughts. ‘But, financially, it must have benefited Theodore?’
‘Theodore wasn’t just an ordinary tonsor, John. He had raised himself up. He employed assistants. He was a man of substance. Quite a charming man. Not all are born to their rightful place in society. Some must make their own fortunes.’
‘Nevertheless, Anna’s dowry –’
‘Would pass to her children. Not to Theodore.’
‘But there were no children.’
Sophia glared up at John in a manner that made him forget any impression of loveliness. ‘They didn’t know that was going to happen, did they? Certainly they tried hard enough. Theodore was – not able to father children.’
‘You know that?’
‘As I told you, I was her friend.’
The faint light from the sickle moon illuminating the bronze bands of the garden sundial could not reveal that the second hour of the night had passed.
‘Thank you for helping to ward off the chill, earlier, Anatolius. Lady Sophia seemed much calmer when I finally spoke to her. What of the others?’
‘Theodore is with Anna. In the main reception hall. Euthymius has been wandering about in an agitated state. He says he needs to talk to you.’
‘Later. I doubt the attendant has much of value to say. Too flighty. What about Gaius?’
‘Ah . . . our reluctant recruit . . . he has taken up residence in one of the sitting rooms and has granted an audience to a selection of Theodore’s wines.’
‘Taking up where we forced him to leave off, in other words. I’m surprised the man has such a good practice at the court.’
As John’s eyes grew accustomed to the soft darkness he could distinguish the pale glow of Anna’s white and yellow flowers against the black masses of their leaves.
‘You asked Hypatia to meet us here?’
‘Yes.’ Anatolius gave a sudden oath. ‘A thorn,’ he explained, putting his wounded hand to his mouth.
‘You should learn to curse in Egyptian, as I do.’ John smiled thinly. ‘You run less risk of offending.’
Anatolius plucked a white rose from the bush. ‘It is a mystery, isn’t it, that beauty can hurt so? If only I were a poet!’
‘You don’t need to be a poet to appreciate beauty – or to see irony.’
‘Look, here is a beauty more stealthy than the rose.’ Anatolius indicated a tall plant with pale delicate flowers. ‘This is one of Anna’s yellow plants. I have heard it called Hecate’s flower. Hypatia’s name for it I can scarcely pronounce. Its root can produce a deadly poison. Is it something like that you suspect?’
John touched one of the leaves. ‘Such things are certainly no secret to anyone who gardens.’
‘But I understand in smaller quantities it is effective against fevers and relieves the toothache. And I am told it can even be used in aphrodisiacs.’
‘Yes. In Egypt it is sometimes added to what they call manzoul.’
‘You know of such things?’
John laughed, softly. ‘Ah, my friend when I was in Alexandria there was a girl, Cornelia. I had no need of manzoul then.’ John’s tone was matter of fact. He had long since come to terms with his affliction. ‘Hypatia would be able to tell you how to make it, I’m sure. It’s a mixture of oils with spices and honey added to sweeten it. They swear by it in Alexandria. In fact madams quite often keep a supply on hand in case certain of their clientele need its assistance. Of course, they also charge double for such cases, or so it is rumored.’
‘Besides that, thieves use it to render chickens unconscious, the easier to make off with them.’ It was Hypatia, who had been listening in the shadows. She spoke in Egyptian. ‘You know the customs of my country, Lord Chamberlain.’
‘I hope the information I have been giving Anatolius was correct.’ John replied in the same tongue. He noted wryly that this was the second time he had been surprised in the thickly-grown garden Anna had so diligently cultivated.
‘Indeed. And you speak my language passably.’
In the dim moonlight Hypatia’s tawny skin appeared much paler than it had inside the house. Her large eyes were black wells. John could understand why Anatolius had been attracted to the girl.
‘I am sorry to have to question you at this hour.’
‘No one will sleep tonight.’
‘It must have been a shock, the Lady Anna’s death.’
‘Don’t think badly of me. I haven’t been able to cry for her. I know it makes no sense, but I can’t seem to stop crying for her poor Nefertiti. That was what she called her cat.’
‘You’ll cry for your mistress soon enough. How long have you been here?’
‘Four months. I am new to your country.’
‘You arrived in time to help with the spring plantings.’
‘She loved her gardens. A day never went by when she didn’t pull on her gloves and work the earth.’
‘But you assisted in other ways?’
‘That is so. I helped her with her toilette.’
‘I see you helped her dress for tonight?’
‘Oh, the master told you?’ The question was without guile.
‘Her hair is dressed after the Egyptian manner or as it was, as I recall, when I lived there. But wasn’t that Euthymius’ job?’
‘That is true. But my lady Anna liked to talk with me. We shared interests.’
‘You were friends?’
‘She was my mistress,’ Hypatia was almost curt. ‘Anyway, the master sometimes helped out in that line too. I had other tasks also. I made perfumes and unguents for her hands, cosmetics, things like that. Sometimes, I would brew potions if she had ailments of the throat or – ’ she hesitated for a second, ‘– feminine problems such as ladies sometimes have.’
‘I have heard that there was tension between man and mistress?’
Hypatia looked at the starry sky and John saw a fleeting reflection of the sickle moon in the depths of her eyes.
‘The master adored her. Anything she wanted, he would ensure it was hers. He waited on her like a handmaid. This very morning, since it was their special day, he did her toilette himself. He was an expert, of course. My lady told me that the court dandies expect their tonsor to stick as many patches to their faces as any woman would wear. But my lady had lovely skin.’
John wondered if the departed gentlewoman had also told her beautiful young servant that the ladies of the court joked that none of them would have taken as a lover a man as homely as she? ‘I know about his devotion,’ he said, ‘but, between husband and wife, there should be more.’
‘My mistress loved him with all her heart. She was sad that there were no children to bear the family name, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Had the master grown cold to her?’
‘Sometimes, after awhile, those who cannot are afraid to try.’
‘I noted many of the banquet tidbits were those which the superstitious believe will inflame a man.’
Again the girl nodded. ‘She had prayed to Venus that she would be fruitful, and then she dreamed –’ the husky voice faltered and the dark wells of her eyes brimmed salt.
John nodded, ‘Yes, I do understand. And tell me, did you brew anything to assist her? Peter had cooked a meal for passion, and Venus’ flowers were all over the bedroom. It would seem –’
‘Yes. She asked me if I could make something. To encourage him.’
‘It was manzoul? Perhaps you erred in measuring the ingredients?’
‘I am not so careless. Besides, the manzoul was never finished. I brewed the potion yesterday, in my room. I knew there wouldn’t be time this morning. There was the kneading of the sweetmeats, in which the potion was to be placed. But when I went to the kitchen to make them, there wasn’t enough honey left.’
‘Peter had stewed dates in honey. Wasn’t there more in the house?’
‘I don’t think so. Lady Anna instructed Euthymius to buy some. He always spends an hour or two at the market in the afternoon. The mistress preferred that I help finish her toilette. The master had been assisting earlier, but she was so nervous, she went out to the gardens and pulled weeds. Her hair came undone and I had to dress it all over again. The mistress was pleased. It was a new style for her. She even gave me a goblet of her wine. And afterwards I went out for a walk in the garden and – I found poor Nefertiti.’
‘Where was this?’ John asked gently.
‘Just over there, in the corner, by the statue of Eros. It was like some terrible omen. It must have been an omen. I had no idea that – that –’
Hypatia could hold back tears no longer. She bowed her head, John placed his arm around her shoulders and felt her shaking. Now, he suspected she was crying for her mistress. Tears, John thought, not the water in Theodore’s clocks, were the truest measure of this day.
Nearly a third of the summer night’s short hours had passed by the time John’s interview with Hypatia ended. As he passed through the colonnades and re-entered the house with its guttering lamps and dripping clocks, his mind refused to settle but fluttered and drifted, a butterfly in a windswept garden. It was his way. He did not find his way step by step, but leaped, sometimes blindly, often to the wrong places. His leaps sometimes took him places plodders could never reach. In the course of his official duties as Lord Chamberlain he clung to the rigid details of court ceremony, while his mind wandered freely.
Now he wished he had the night-time hours of winter, longer than those of the summer, for the Romans insisted on twelve equal hours of night and day. It was an amazing audacity, that man would try to fit to a procrustean bed, time, which could not be seen, or heard or felt.
On his way out of the garden, where he had left Hypatia and Anatolius, he had passed the patch of freshly spaded earth where the cat had been buried. Had it been an omen, that the cat was found dead at the base of the statue of Eros?
Or a warning?
The perfume of roses met John when he entered the reception hall. Theodore had had Anna’s body placed on a couch between two pillars near the back of the room, away from the lamplight. An enormous bunch of roses sat in a vase atop a nearby table. A few petals had fallen on to the inlaid tabletop. John picked up a petal, its sweet silkiness sliding through his fingers.
‘They say all roses were white, until your goddess of love walked on them, a thorn pierced her foot and her blood dyed the blossoms scarlet. Isn’t that the legend, Theodore?’
Theodore was lingering near the center of the hall, facing the couch where his wife lay. It was as if he were afraid to approach her, stranger that she had become.
‘You call it a legend,’ he said finally. ‘You’re like Peter, you worship a newer god.’
‘Not Peter’s God.’
‘Jupiter, Jesus, Mithra . . . the gods change, the world doesn’t.’
‘Do you have any idea who might have done this, Theodore?’
‘You really believe Anna was . . . no, I can’t imagine. This is a small household. Surely it might have been an accident? Something tainted?’
‘She had eaten nothing. So the servants tell me.’
‘I’ve written down all necessary arrangements. In case I cannot carry on tomorrow.’
‘I will see to everything if it should become necessary to do so.’
‘Thank you, John. You were a good friend to Anna.’
‘She had a great spirit, Theodore. I regret I must ask, however, before you retire, can you tell me anything more about today?’
Theodore continued to direct his gaze toward his wife. ‘What do you wish to know? I was away from the house most of the day. I met Anatolius in the market.’
‘Earlier?’
‘Anna had planned something special. She was secretive. I helped her with her toilette. Rouged her cheeks, colored her nails and did her hair, that kind of thing. We were in the kitchen so I would have good light to work by. The sun comes in there in the morning. I know many laugh. But, it was my profession to assist all to look their best, and it has served me well. I was most familiar, you understand, with her imperfections and so knew what had to be done. I was better at it than her attendant. Better than her little friend the Egyptian, for that matter. Though Anna seemed much taken with her. Not that I assisted Anna often in that way. It wouldn’t be a manly thing.’
‘No,’ agreed John, ‘I can see that.’
John climbed to the servants’ quarters on the third floor on the opposite side of the house from Anna’s apartments. The old cook, alerted by the creaking stairs, opened his door when John reached it. The Lord Chamberlain wedged himself into Peter’s living quarters, finding standing room between the mattress, whose straw stuffing erupted from one corner, and a rough wooden chest. He placed his feet carefully to avoid an earthenware chamber pot.
‘Yes,’ admitted Peter, ‘the master attended to the mistress’s toilette in the kitchen. When I said no one comes into my kitchen when I’m cooking, I didn’t mean the master and the mistress. Who am I to order them about? Besides, I hadn’t started cooking. I was cleaning and chopping.’
‘How was the mistress?’
‘She seemed as well as I’ve ever seen her. There was no need to paint her like that.’
‘And her spirits?’
‘More than one of your pagan poets was quoted. I tried not to listen, Lord Chamberlain. It was private.’
A flickering candle on the small chest revealed no decorations apart from a large wooden cross hanging over the worn mattress. Although Peter had embraced cold Christianity in his old age, John guessed the former legion cook had drawn warmer and less demanding mistresses to him in his youth. ‘You don’t approve of the old gods.’ His curiosity was piqued.
‘There are no old gods, if you’ll pardon my saying so, excellency. Even though some will worship anything – lightning, a tree, a bull or a cat, the sun and moon or the sea.’
‘I understand that you would not eavesdrop, Peter, but surely you could not help seeing? What, exactly, were these preparations that you mention?’
‘Exactly? If I’d watched that closely I’d have dumped some of my fingers into the pot with the melons I was chopping. You’ve seen the painted ladies at court, Lord Chamberlain? Well, after she was rouged and such she looked like that. Then she was off straight out to her garden. She thought it would calm her down. She liked to have her hands in the earth. She’ll be part of it now herself, God rest her soul.’
John changed the direction of his questioning. ‘Is this part of the house used much?’
‘Only by the servants. The other rooms were to be for the children. The master had them closed up, finally. The master and mistress haven’t set foot on the stairs for a year or more. Now she never will.’
The old man made a mystical sign that the pagan John recognized as Christian.
Anna’s room had grown cold. John had found a candle in a hall cupboard and discovered it was notched – another clock. He felt it was wrong somehow to start the hours again in this room where the disarmed clypsedra stood guard. Better for it to remain timeless.
Nevertheless, he needed light, so he moved around the small space, lighting lamps on the dressing table and in the twin wall niche opposite the clypsedra. Oil hissed and flared up, spilling an orange glow across the tiles and on to plain plaster walls.
Anna’s apartments were directly opposite her husband’s suite. Looking out of the open second-story window, across the gardens, John could see the black rectangle of Theodore’s window. Ironically, he could just make out the glimmering statue of Eros below it.
John sighed. It was quite usual for married couples to maintain separate rooms and was as likely to signify a show of wealth as any lack of affection. The poor, in the crowded tenements of Constantinople, had no choice but to share their verminous straw.
He turned back to the room which looked as plain as its owner. A low wooden bed with turned legs hugged one wall. Anna’s robes still lay across the yellow counterpane draped over the bed. A chest, with an inlaid top, and next to it a simple wooden chair, completed the furnishings.
Not only had Anna died here, but it was here she had ingested the poison that had killed her so quickly. Of that, John was certain. And yet, she had retired to this room and not emerged. Nor had anyone entered.
John could believe Anna would have retired to her private apartments to await her husband’s return. Theodore had definitely been away from the house. Anatolius’ meeting with him in the market attested to it. Yet Anna had been dying even as Theodore spoke to Anatolius. Euthymius had also been to the market, as usual. And Sophia had not yet arrived. Peter was in the house, cooking, and hadn’t left the kitchen, or so he said. Not that Anna would have accepted anything from him in her room, since, aside from a husband, men were not allowed within a lady’s apartments. Which left Hypatia. Who had been with Anna earlier, who had become a great favorite with her and spent more time with her lately than even Anna’s attendant Euthymius, or so it seemed.
John wished he could examine the room in daylight. It seemed empty of any clue to what had occurred. The top of the chest was barren. What had he expected? A crumb, from a secreted sweet? A telltale ring from a wet goblet? The floor was bare, save for the mat beside the bed. Anna’s clothes lay undisturbed. John noticed the pair of gloves draped across the bed’s headboard were rough work gloves, soiled with earth. Her gardening gloves.
John directed candlelight into the corners. Something glinted. He bent and picked up a pearl-worked brooch.
He got on his knees to shine the light under the bed. Something near the wall cast an elongated shadow. Flame licked back along the shortening taper, burning his hand. He bit back an oath. The candle hit the floor and went out.
John put his shoulder to the tiles, reaching under the bed. His fingers slid across grit. There. His fingertips touched something more substantial, pushed it away. He shifted his body, until his ear was against the cold floor, stretching further, straining, until he had whatever it was under his fingers.
He pulled it out. In the fitful light from the lamps he examined his prize. Embedded in a clump of hair, dust, fingernail parings and dried insect husks, was an apricot pit.
John smelled pomade over the more subtle, pleasing scents of damp earth and slumbering flowers before he saw Euthymius looming between the columns at the edge of the garden. The Lord Chamberlain had retreated to the steps of Theodore’s private bath house, to be alone, to think, before the night fled entirely. It was more than half gone now, according to Theodore’s accursed clocks. The lady’s chambers might be reserved to the women and the third floor to the servants, but clocks were everywhere, and so was Euthymius, it seemed.
‘Lord Chamberlain. I have to speak with you.’
To John’s discomfiture the big eunuch dropped down on to the marble step beside him.
‘You’ve spoken to the others, already, haven’t you?’ Euthymius sounded plaintive.
‘Yes,’ John admitted. He probably should have spoken to the attendant earlier, although he doubted Euthymius could add anything to what he had already ascertained.
‘It was terrible, finding her like that.’ The attendant’s voice was piercing. John reminded himself that it was not Euthymius’ fault, the eunuch had not chosen to be what he was. Still, John found himself sliding away.
‘I thought she’d fainted,’ Euthymius was saying. ‘Then I bent over and touched her cheek and she was cold. Cold.’ The big body shuddered.
‘She seemed well in the morning?’
‘She was wonderfully well. The master helped with her toilette. Usually that is my job. Oh, she loved the way I did her hair. We talk, you know, about everything. She tells me all about court, about the fine ladies, who aren’t so fine in private. She confided in me, did my lady.’
‘Did she confide in you about any troubles she and her husband may have been having?’
‘There were no troubles between them. Who told you there were troubles? Was it that Egyptian girl?’
‘No. It seems to be common knowledge.’
‘Common is the word. Not everyone was in my lady’s confidence as I was. It was all tittle-tattle. That Egyptian girl. She has her big eyes on the master. I have seen the looks she gives him. She doesn’t know, but I see things.’
Euthymius’ whine grated against John’s ears. What he said did not ring true. Or was that only John’s prejudices?
Who in the household, when it came down to it, except for Hypatia, could have concocted a quick-acting poison? She had, in fact, by her own admission, done so in her room. And only she and Peter had been in the house when the murder occurred. The solution was so obvious, aside from the actual administration of the poison, that it was really surprising no one had reached the same conclusion.
And why had John avoided it? Because of his friendship with Anatolius. No matter that in the normal course of things that youth would have forgotten Hypatia in a month. At the moment she was the light of his life. And if John were to state what appeared to be a simple truth, that she had killed her mistress in hopes of seducing the master, his passionate young friend would never forgive him for extinguishing that light.
People would do many things in the name of friendship. Yet how could John allow a murderer to go free? If only he could determine exactly how it had been accomplished. If the method could be demonstrated beyond doubt, perhaps Anatolius would have to admit her guilt – if she were the guilty one – and would forgive John any necessary actions.
‘Euthymius, tell me, did you bring anything into Anna’s room for her to eat? Did you see her with anything?’
‘Nothing. She was too agitated to think about food.’
John glanced around as he cogitated further, deciding on his next question. The path leading away from the bath house was a lightless tunnel. At its end loomed an indistinct shape, imperceptibly lighter than the inky mounds of surrounding vegetation. John identified it as the statue of Eros. This put a thought into his mind.
‘The cat,’ he asked. ‘do you know anything about it? Hypatia said she found it beside Eros.’
‘Found?’
‘It was dead.’
‘Dead? I didn’t know. The Egyptian doted on that cat. I cannot say I’m surprised. It was like her, the nasty thing. Devious.’ The eunuch did not sound distressed. He added, ‘I saw her carting it up to her room more than once.’
‘They say the amount of poison in the root of Hecate’s flower varies, according to the soil and the climate,’ John mused. ‘Hypatia was a foreigner. She may have mixed what would have been an appropriate amount of root for Egypt into the manzoul. But perhaps a root grown here would be more poisonous. There may have been too much added to the mixture.’
Anatolius looked stunned. ‘But even such an accident, involving a foreign servant and a lady –’
He didn’t have to complete the thought. Such an event would prove as lethal to the servant as the mistress.
‘Here. This must be it.’ John took a small porphyry jar from the windowsill of the girl’s small room. The jar was half-filled with a gummy concoction that stung his nostrils.
Hypatia was not there. John wasn’t surprised. The cramped quarters would have felt like a prison. He suspected she was somewhere in the shadowed garden below.
‘How can you be sure it is the . . . potion?’
‘I’ll have to turn this over to the prefect. They will probably test in on some poor creature or other. You will swear I found it here?’
‘If I must.’
A glint of illumination caught his eye. Across the narrow hall, old Peter had cracked open his door, allowing a hint of candlelight to escape. As John turned, the door closed discreetly. ‘Those creaking stairs might as well be an alarm bell,’ he remarked.
‘What about Peter?’ Anatolius suggested. ‘He was preparing food, after all. He was also in the house at the time Lady Anna seems to have died.’
John shook his head. ‘The prefects look for the physical method. Yet, if the inclination exists, there are innumerable methods. I prefer to look for the inclination. What reason would old Peter have to kill his mistress?’
‘She was a pagan.’
John balanced the porphyry jar in his hand, feeling its weight. ‘Religious zealots have done worse, it is true.’
And infatuated young men grasped at straws.
Gaius the physician had drunk the third toast to Zeus hours before, and hadn’t stopped there. When John and Anatolius reached the reception hall, Gaius was roaring and staggering in circles like a wounded bear at the games.
The noise had brought the entire household to its source. Even the excubitors had abandoned their posts. They lurked in the back of the room, uncertain with how to deal with one of the party they had accompanied the previous day.
Although Gaius’ tone was unmistakable, the sense of what the physician was trying to say in his slurred rage was harder to fathom.
‘Not worth it to you? You think I won’t tell what I know? I’ll give it out for free and take my pleasure in seeing you both rot in the dungeons.’
Theodore and Sophia had arrived before John and Anatolius. Theodore had placed himself protectively in front of the couch where the body of his wife lay. Sophia stood on the other side of the room, fists clenched. John moved quickly to her side.
‘He’s crazed with drink,’ Sophia mumbled. Her own eyes were glassy. She swayed slightly.
‘So the great Lord Chamberlain has arrived to represent our mighty emperor,’ growled Gaius. ‘And your fellow creature, too, I see.’
John looked towards the door where Gaius directed his gaze. Euthymius was approaching, timidly and ponderously.
Gaius made a sweeping, theatrical motion of greeting with his hands, bending low, nearly falling forward. ‘Come in. Everyone come in. Ah, there you are, Peter. Old, yet more a man than most of those present. And our little beauty, the clever gardener. All here, now, are we? What do you say now, Sophia, your great ladyship? And you, Theodore, beard trimmer. Is the price still too steep? When the rats in the dungeons chew your ankles, you’ll wish you were sticking patches to gentlemen’s pimples again. You’ll wish they’d hire me to sew you up.’
‘Be quiet,’ Sophia shrieked. ‘Stinking drunk! Liar!’
Gaius laughed. ‘Too late, I’m afraid. The offer is withdrawn.’
‘Make him keep silent, John.’ Sophia’s speech was nearly as slurred as the physician’s. ‘Can’t he at least respect the dead, if not the living?’
‘This is intolerable, Lord Chamberlain,’ Theodore broke in, outraged. ‘I must call for the prefects.’
‘Gaius, what is this about?’ John’s voice was firm, but with no hint of anger. He knew men could say terrible things when drunk.
‘Haven’t you deciphered it yet? All night you’ve had, too. It’s nearly dawn, the water’s run out of all the clocks.’ Gaius whirled about and leapt toward Anna’s couch. Theodore, who had until now seemed reluctant to approach too near to his dead wife, put his back to the couch, blocking the crazed man’s path.
‘So warm to her in death, so cold in life,’ sneered Gaius. ‘I delivered more than one of your bastards, Theodore. You think patients don’t talk? But that is court life, is it not? And if a man wishes to keep his interest in his wife’s dowry, rather than father heirs who will claim it from him, well, we are men of the world. But murder, Theodore. That is something else. That was worth something to conceal. Or so I thought. Until the Lady Sophia told me otherwise.’
Sophia took a step forward but John grabbed her shoulder. ‘Filth! You are filth!’ The spittle she directed at her tormentor dribbled down her chin. She was, after all, a lady and not versed in such skills.
Gaius laughed again. ‘Don’t you know a woman with child should be more careful of her health? This is my medical advice to you, my lady. You don’t want Theodore’s bastard born dead.’
Sophia shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No . . .’
‘You both wanted Lady Anna dead, didn’t –’
Gaius’ oration came to an abrupt end as Theodore, moving swiftly, grabbed a gesticulating arm, yanked it up behind Gaius’ back and flung him headfirst onto the tiles. His head hit the floor with the hollow thump of a dropped melon. Luckily for the physician, a melon that fails to break. He lay still, but his chest still moved.
In the ensuing silence John’s voice sounded loud, although he spoke softly.
‘Theodore, is what he said true?’
‘Of course not. Anna was my wife. I loved her.’
‘Liar! Beast! How dare you say such a thing!’ Sophia escaped John’s grasp and leapt across the room. She lashed out at Theodore, her sharp talons drawing blood from his cheek. At a nod from John, the excubitors moved forward, and restrained her.
Theodore looked stunned. Red pearls of blood welled up on his smooth cheek.
‘You’re drunk,’ he said to Sophia, as if only just realizing this fact. ‘I was only saying what –’
‘You didn’t have the courage, after all,’ whispered Sophia. ‘She was right. You aren’t a man.’
‘It was the Egyptian, not the master,’ came the quavering voice of Euthymius. The eunuch had stopped tearing in nervous exasperation at his fingernails. ‘The girl wanted to take her place. She took my place. The mistress chose her. She chose her.’
‘John,’ Anatolius began, ‘please, don’t –’
But John did not hear him. There was, for a moment, a strange look in his eyes, almost confusion. Because his unruly mind had caught a glimpse of the truth and leapt into the void, and now, he looked around, amazed at where he found himself.
The Lord Chamberlain walked over to where Anna lay.
‘Thank you, Euthymius. You have been very helpful.’ He spoke to Theodore. ‘I was puzzled by the cat. The girl says she found it by the statue of Eros in the garden. That is beneath your window.’
Sophia laughed harpy-like. ‘I should have known. You promised you’d do it but you had to test the poison first, of course. So meticulous. Everything planned. Except this child in my belly. I knew you wouldn’t have the courage. Did the cat cry out in pain?’
‘It was the Egyptian who killed the cat,’ shrieked Euthymius, ‘not the master. She dropped it out of her window. Her room is on the third floor. Right over the Eros. I wondered why she was taking the cat away.’
‘No, I never would.’ It was Hypatia. ‘The cat is sacred.’
In her panic, the girl had shouted out her protest in Egyptian. ‘The cat is sacred to Egyptians,’ John translated, for the others in the hall. ‘She would never have killed a cat. It represents one of their gods.’
Peter gave a loud sniff of disapproval.
‘And you never saw Hypatia take the cat up the stairs, Euthymius,’ John added. ‘You think Peter wouldn’t have noticed and mentioned such a thing when I spoke to him? It was, after all, the mistress’s cat.’
John saw that Anatolius had managed to move over toward Hypatia. She had accepted his comforting arm around her shoulder.
‘I know what goes on upstairs,’ confirmed Peter. ‘I would have seen anything unusual.’
‘Including the master, had he mounted the stairs and gone looking for the poison in Hypatia’s room.’
John paused, waiting for the room to fall quiet. A bird chirped, outside in the garden, signaling the as yet unglimpsed dawn more accurately than any of Theodore’s clocks. Gaius, prostrate on the floor, groaned as he began to wake.
‘I was puzzled by the manner of the poisoning,’ John confessed. ‘I jumped to the obvious conclusion that it was the potion made from Hecate’s flower that was used. And I was right. But it seemed to me that Anna must have ingested the poison when she was alone in her apartments. Unless someone was lying.’
Theodore glared at him. He was beginning to look very tired.
‘When I searched Anna’s room I found nothing. That was not suprising. There was nothing to find, except this.’ The Lord Chamberlain produced the apricot pit he had pulled from beneath the bed. ‘This pit suggested poisoned fruit. But Anna had not eaten all day. And the pit, you can see is an old one, dried out. What should have attracted my attention, but what I never thought about until Euthymius reminded me by his own habit, was the bit of fingernail with all the other debris from the floor. Anna bit her nails, didn’t she?’
‘The nail color,’ Theodore looked amazed.
‘Yes. Her nails weren’t perpetually ragged from the gardening, as they joked at court. Anna wore gloves to garden. Her nails were ragged because she bit them when she was nervous. And when would she be more nervous than on this important anniversary? You painted her nails, Theodore. The slightest amount of the potion is fatal. I was convinced that what killed Anna was in her room. And, indeed it was, until I allowed you to have her body removed.’
‘I didn’t do it,’ denied Theodore. ‘You heard Peter. I never go up to the servants’ quarters.’
‘I know,’ John agreed. ‘I said you painted her nails, not that you put the poison into the color. That would have directed attention to you. Oh, you intended to kill her – you and Sophia planned it. But you had some idea of administering the poison later, in private. You knew you would be in private today, of all days.’
‘You can say what you like, but I warn you . . .’
‘So the murderer did not have to be in the room with Anna, or even in the house, when the poison was ingested.’ John continued. ‘That was when she bit her polished nails. And even better, from the murderer’s point of view, as soon as you finished painting her nails, she pulled on her gloves and went out to garden. Maybe the poisoner suspected she’d do that. So an hour or more had passed before the gloves came off and the poisoning actually occurred.’
‘You have no proof that I intended to poison her. And the cat might have been found under my window, but as Euthymius says, it must have been Hypatia’s doing – no matter what the girl says about her odd religious views.’
‘Yes,’ agreed John. ‘You are innocent of Nefertiti’s death also. The cat, having attested to the potency of the poison, was dropped, in a deliberate manner, from Hypatia’s window. Peter would have noticed you moving about upstairs, Theodore, but not Euthymius. He was a servant too, and they were servants’ quarters.
‘And Euthymius took care of Anna’s unguents and cosmetics. Not only could he move about freely upstairs, but he had access to the apartments where the cosmetics were stored.
‘Euthymius was unhinged by jealous rage because, as he saw it, his mistress had forsaken him and preferred the company of the new Egyptian servant. He intended to take his revenge on both, by killing her and pointing the finger at the only person in the house who could have done it.’
The eunuch said nothing, but began to sob. John motioned the excubitors toward him.
John turned to Anna, placing his thin hand gently along the side of her head.
‘It reminds me of the verse you recited, Anatolius, about a flower growing concealed in an enclosed garden. This lovely flower was concealed by its own plain features. And, as the poet said, many may long for that which grows concealed.’
Theodore laughed.
‘You are amused at your wife’s death?’ John’s tone was sorrowful rather than sharp.
‘Isn’t it humorous how the Fates arrange our dispositions?’
‘You think that what you set out to accomplish has been achieved, don’t you?’ John’s voice was gentle.
‘I don’t know what you mean, Lord Chamberlain. Can’t you see, I am bereaved? It wasn’t I who poisoned poor Anna.’ A grin was spreading over Theodore’s handsome face.
‘You wished her death though, and even planned it.’
‘Did I? Surely I didn’t say that?’
The first tendrils of daylight crept in from the garden beyond the window, illuminating in starker detail the group in the reception hall.
‘You would have killed her,’ Anatolius stalked over towards Theodore. ‘This is what you wanted. It isn’t right.’
‘We cannot be prosecuted for our wishes or plans, can we?’ Theodore sneered.
‘Fate can be kind to some and unkind to others,’ said John. ‘But it is not always unjust.’
Theodore laughed louder. ‘Well, Lord Chamberlain, I’m sure Sophia and I will have many happy years to reflect on that. Now, I must ask you all to leave. Suddenly this long night has caught up with me and I feel my hospitality waning.’
He extended his hand toward Sophia. She looked up at him numbly. Her anger was gone. In her eyes there was some other emotion, pity perhaps. Gently she touched the cheek she’d scratched, wiping away the blood.
‘I’m sorry, Theodore,’ she whispered.
Theodore took her hand impatiently. ‘Come away, now,’ he said. He pulled her after him.
John drew his hand gently across Anna’s forehead, brushing aside an errant strand of hair. He was aware of Anatolius at his side.
‘Such a nimble mind, she had, Anatolius. She would appreciate this, I know. You see, after Theodore finished coloring her nails, the make-up box was left on the dressing table in the guest room. Anna’s good friend Sophia often helped herself to the rouge, and the kohl – and the nail color. Yes, the master’s lover was coloring her nails when I spoke to her last night.’
John bent toward Anna. ‘Your husband will be joining you presently,’ he whispered. ‘I would like to hear that conversation.’
The Lord Chamberlain kissed Lady Anna’s cold forehead.