Anatolius felt his throat tighten as Senator Balbinus’ wife stepped into the reception room with a whisper of fine silk. The embroidered hem of her white dalmatic, its broad blue edging matching a narrower strip of decorative border at the neckline, floated behind her like memories and old regrets.
“Lucretia! I didn’t expect to see you!” Anatolius blurted out. She regarded him silently.
“Well, that’s not exactly true,” he admitted, forcing a smile. “I was hoping for at least a glimpse of you. It has been some time since we last met.” He ended in a forlorn tone, “Actually I’m here to see your husband.”
Did his former lover’s pale patrician face betray some fleeting emotion or was it only his imagination? Anatolius had put this visit off and gone to his office instead. No matter what assignment John might give him, his duties to the emperor came first, he had told himself, but the fact was that as he neared the city his eagerness for this reunion had begun to turn to fear.
“Yes, it’s been a very long time,” Lucretia said. The neutrality in her tone pierced him as sharply as a blade. It was more terrible than the coldness he had dreaded he might hear. “Please sit, Anatolius.” Lucretia sank down into the cushions of a couch. “I have ordered wine be brought for you.” Her voice still held the same husky quality he recalled too well.
The young man sat awkwardly next to her, his stiff posture betraying his unease. “Thank you. The senator will be here soon?”
She shook her head. She still wore her dark hair in ringlets, Anatolius noted. “He is attending a business meeting.”
“Then I had best not linger, Lucretia.”
“Stay a little while longer, Anatolius. Tell me all about your latest escapades. I hear that you have visited Severa Flavia quite often lately?”
Anatolius reddened. “She is a very gracious lady.”
Lucretia smiled. “It seems you have learned discretion. She often dines here as my guest and has mentioned your affectionate nature increasingly of late. Alas, she is not as careful with her confidences as you seem to have become with yours.” Her voice was warmer, with that hint of breathiness that he so fondly recalled. She patted his knee playfully.
Anatolius was thankful for the distraction of the arrival of the servant bringing wine. He got up from the couch, cup in hand, to inspect the reception room’s frescoes.
They had obviously been inspired by tales taken from mythology. Here, a handsome Narcissus leaned down to admire his reflection in a tranquil pond. There, Paris presented the golden Apple of Discord to voluptuous Aphrodite while Athena and Hera looked on vengefully. In the background the misty towers of Troy slumbered peacefully, unaware of their terrible fate.
Relieved to move away from Lucretia and be less tormented by the musky sweetness of her familiar perfume, he took a hasty sip of wine and stared at a scene showing the abduction of Proserpina. “What wonderful artistry,” he said with the poet’s appreciation for beauty. “I have rarely seen finer.”
“Neither have I, Anatolius. My wife chose the scenes to be depicted and I am well pleased with the artisan’s work.”
Senator Balbinus strode into the room. His regal features were familiar to everyone at court but Anatolius noticed only how much older the senator was than Lucretia.
“I am happy to see you extending hospitality to a guest, Lucretia, although I would have preferred that you asked him to return when I was at home. Servants will gossip.”
“Anatolius has come to see you on a matter of business,” she replied serenely.
Anatolius set down his cup on the table by the door. “Senator, I regret the intrusion but I am here on an errand of some urgency.”
“I shall leave you gentlemen to your discussion,” said Lucretia. Eyes averted, she brushed past Anatolius and disappeared down the hallway, leaving only a faint memory of her perfume.
Balbinus had helped himself to wine and was pacing back and forth. His deliberate tread and stiffly set shoulders expressed his disapproval of Anatolius’ irregular visit to his wife, but he said nothing more, contenting himself with inviting the young man to state his business. “However, I would appreciate it if you could declare it quickly for I have another meeting soon and must not be late.”
Anatolius hastily gathered his wits. “I have the honor to convey a personal request from the Lord Chamberlain.” His formality covered his severe discomfort at being discovered chatting with Lucretia even though, as he reminded himself, their affair had ended before she married Balbinus.
Ah, but was it truly over came a whisper from the depths of the past. Pushing such treacherous notions aside, he quickly outlined John’s request for information that would be of assistance in locating Balbinus’ nephew.
The senator was not helpful. “Castor often travels, Anatolius, and when he does he does not provide me with his itinerary. Indeed sometimes he does not visit my wife and me for a month or more. He is not a gregarious person. We are more liable to receive a note from him than a personal visit.”
“He does seem the sort of scholar who is most comfortable with word delivered by the pen,” Anatolius acknowledged. “You haven’t seen him during these past few days?”
“If I had I would have said so, would I not? And before you ask, no, Castor and I have not fallen out. Our relationship is amicable enough, even though I feel I must lecture him now and then on his—well, on his lack of worldliness, his intellectual extravagance. There is nothing my nephew doesn’t know about, or at least have an opinion on, except getting along in the world in which he finds himself. So I have tried to be something of a father to him.”
Balbinus fell silent. Anatolius was taken aback by the senator’s sudden vehemence, but before he could give it much thought, the man began speaking again with his usual bluster. “I’m sure you have heard of my brother Bassus, Castor’s father, or at least know his reputation,” he said. “Everyone at the court considers him a dreadful embarrassment to my family. My brother died much too young, of course, and I barely knew him. He barely knew himself. Had he lived longer he might have become wiser. Needless to say, over the years I have done my best to see that Castor avoided his father’s fate. But then, we all have our weaknesses, don’t we?”
Was Balbinus making a remark directed at him, Anatolius wondered uncomfortably. But perhaps the senator’s comment came because his gaze had settled for an instant on the frescoes. It was obvious Balbinus had no inclination to talk about his nephew further, presumably because doing so would remind him of his wayward and dissolute brother, surely a painful topic. However, Anatolius was thankful to make his escape although he felt vaguely guilty without, he told himself, any reason he should.
Leaving Balbinus’ house, he looked over his shoulder into the cool atrium. Did he catch a glimpse of pale silk there as the heavy street door swung shut behind him?
As he strode away down the street the thought came to him that the frescoes in Senator Balbinus’ exquisitely decorated reception room had a common theme, and it was that of love and loss.
***
The door of John’s house opened a crack to reveal Hypatia’s tawny face peeking out.
“Master Anatolius!” Surprise and, oddly, what sounded like relief were obvious in her tone. She opened the door wider and stood back to allow Anatolius to step into the tiled entrance hall. He was one of a very few people admitted without question to John’s home at any hour of day or night.
“I decided I’d make a brief visit since I happened to be passing this way,” Anatolius lied valiantly. In fact, his steps had brought him to John’s house without conscious direction, just as he had first wandered back to his office on the palace grounds. Two blotched parchments later, he had abandoned his task of copying Justinian’s letter to the Patriarch of Antioch and gone out to walk around for a while. Unlike John, who often walked to think, Anatolius usually walked to forget.
The air in the atrium of John’s house was sweet, pleasantly imbued not with perfume but rather honey and a hint of spices.
Following the lithe Egyptian woman upstairs to the kitchen, Anatolius noticed anew that her hair was the same raven’s wing color as Lucretia’s. She offered him a cup of wine, seeming ill at ease.
“Just continue with whatever you were doing, Hypatia,” Anatolius said. Various chopped herbs were set out on the kitchen table. “What are you making? A new kind of sweetmeat, perhaps?”
“Not exactly, sir. I’m experimenting with one of Peter’s recipes while the master is away.”
“And also while Peter is absent.” Anatolius grinned, well aware of the elderly servant’s aversion to sharing his kitchen.
“As you say. However, I think Peter will enjoy this new dish. He has something of a fondness for sweet things, unlike the master, although he does occasionally indulge in honeyed dates.”
“They’re probably the Lord Chamberlain’s only indulgence,” Anatolius remarked.
Hypatia raised her eyebrows but, as befitted a servant, made no comment on his observation, merely continuing to stir the mixture bubbling gently in a pot set on the kitchen brazier.
Glancing idly around the room, Anatolius noticed a small clay figure sitting on a shelf.
“What’s this, Hypatia?” Picking up the statuette he saw, with some alarm, that it was a crudely fashioned scorpion. The creature was significant to Mithrans and was to be seen in bas reliefs and mosaics of Mithra’s battle with the sacred bull. He could not imagine John being so careless as to leave such an emblem of his pagan beliefs lying about in plain sight. Obviously it was not his.
“Peter won’t like you cluttering up his kitchen with this, Hypatia,” Anatolius said in a jocular tone.
The woman gasped and dropped her ladle. It landed between them, spattering hot liquid on both Anatolius’ boot and her bare foot. She did not seem to notice. “Sir…” she said faintly, “I…”
Anatolius, seeing her so distressed, carefully replaced the scorpion on the shelf. He seemed to be blundering into all sorts of difficulties with women today, he thought ruefully. “What is it for, Hypatia?”
The woman suddenly burst into tears. “It’s a charm against demons, such as we swear by in my country. It has to be displayed in order to drive them away.”
Anatolius stared at her. “Demons?” he repeated.
“Demons,” Hypatia nodded, sniffing and swiping tears from her cheeks with her knuckles.
Anatolius considered putting a comforting arm around her but decided the action might be misconstrued. He had displayed some fondness for her before she had entered John’s employ. No wonder he was always having difficulties with women, he thought. Sometimes he thought he had never encountered one who hadn’t turned his head for a day. He stood looking awkwardly at the girl, not knowing quite what to do or say.
“I myself don’t believe in demons,” he finally said. “It must just have been your imagination. You’re all alone in this big house—”
Her tears began to flow again. “No, pardon me but it’s not that, sir. Something very upsetting happened early this morning. I was woken up by a strange noise. It sounded like the scratching of a beast’s long claws. I’m not certainly exactly how to describe it. I was half asleep, you see. It was just a dream, I told myself. The house creaks terribly in the wind at night. You’d think that vile tax collector who first owned it had decided to return and was walking about, looking for the head Justinian relieved him of. Then that horrible, strange noise started again.”
Anatolius, intrigued, asked her to continue.
“Well, sir, I got my lamp lit and crept down to the entrance hall but by then the noise had stopped. It must surely have been a rat, I thought, a rat that sounded much louder than usual because I heard it when I was half asleep.”
“That would certainly be what it was, I’m certain of it,” Anatolius said.
“But it wasn’t a rat!” the woman blurted out in a panic-stricken voice. “Because as I turned to go back upstairs, that terrible sound started again and I could tell that the creature was right on the other side of the front door!”
Anatolius tried to reassure her. “Surely if it were really a demon it would have burst straight in, not politely scratched on the door waiting to be admitted, Hypatia. Don’t you think if it wasn’t a rat it must have been one of these feral cats that prowl the palace grounds?”
Hypatia shook her head. “I wish it had been. But it wasn’t. You see, whatever it was, I felt I had to see it, so I went into the master’s study.” She suddenly blushed. Her next words explained why. “Lamplight brings out, well, to be blunt, obscene details in the wall mosaic in there that I would not even dare to speak about. I’d never seen something like that before.”
Anatolius immediately pointed out that it had been the tax collector who formerly owned the house who had commissioned the mosaic in question and not John.
“Oh, yes, I know that, sir,” Hypatia nodded. “I blew out the lamp but that scary little girl still seemed to be staring at me out of those big eyes of hers…But anyhow I crept to the window and peeked out. And then I saw the thing…the demon…scuttling off across the square. It wasn’t human. So I made a charm to protect the master and his house and everyone who lives in it,” she ended simply.
Anatolius put his arm around her shoulders. She pressed her face into his chest and sobbed. Meant to comfort her, his gesture made him distinctly uncomfortable. He reminded himself that there was absolutely no possibility that John would suddenly burst into the kitchen and find him standing there with his arms around his servant.
The Lord Chamberlain was on Zeno’s estate. Anatolius wondered whether John’s investigations had been more fruitful than his own. At least John was not having to deal with hysterical women who believed in demons and magick, he thought with a sigh.