Felix had paid him, he thought smugly. It had not been difficult to convince the gruff excubitor captain that John had recommended that his old mentor assist in the investigation and for only minimal remuneration. Certainly, given the success of his questioning, John would forgive him the small lie.
“Could you tell me what precisely you observed?” Philo asked the Galatian pilgrim, interrupting the nearby man’s droning recitation of sacred verses.
“Just what everyone’s been saying. He was consumed by fire from within. One moment he was looking down over the railing, spreading his arms in benediction, the next he was on fire. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“You mean you think you saw, but you’re half blind,” put in a stout, clean-shaven man who had joined the growing cluster of curious spectators around Philo and his informant. “But what I heard was that a fiery hand reached down out of the clouds.”
“Nonsense!” someone at the back of the group shouted. “I was right here at the time. The flames came out of his fingertips and ran up his arms.”
“The fingertips of what?” inquired another voice. “Matthew’s hand or the hand from the clouds?”
It was no different here than at the other columns. Everyone had seen it happen or had heard in detail about the event, but no one could agree on any of the particulars. Perhaps it was not surprising, thought Philo. He had himself observed no more than anyone else since Matthew had already been on fire when he looked up.
“Do you know anything about Matthew’s life?” Philo changed his line of questioning by contriving to appear a garrulous old gossip.
The pilgrim he addressed inclined his head slightly. “Why, I believe he was from Cappodacia,” he began vaguely. “What he did before he began to preach I couldn’t say. But I did hear that before he journeyed here, he lived in an abandoned church on the road to Pergamom. A cousin of mine lives nearby and he told me about this church. Years ago, it was invaded by demons, so it seems, but Matthew entered it anyway and dared to spend that night and many subsequent nights. For weeks, it seems, the foul beings pelted the church with stones that appeared out of thin air, but finally he vanquished those ghastly beings.” The pilgrim paused thoughtfully and a look of pain crossed his weathered features. “Yet it would seem he was actually having commerce with demons all the while. My wife will be sorely disappointed when she hears about that and I shudder to think what my cousin will say.”
Several of those standing near Philo became engaged in arguments about the origin of the fire, the nature of the stylite and the exact wording of the scriptural verses recently recited. Philo shook his head. These Christians, he thought, could never agree upon anything.
Leaving them to their arguments, Philo paced thoughtfully around the granite column. It was the tallest of the three he had visited. This afternoon there were no baskets of offerings at its base, he noticed. The pilgrims had apparently gathered there out of curiosity or perhaps to share their stories, or possibly because they had undertaken long and arduous journeys with this destination in mind and wanted to rest for a while before returning to their distant homes with an astonishing tale to tell. Philo glanced around idly, not certain what it was that he sought.
The Galatian pilgrim had become embroiled in a loud dispute with the crooked-nosed man who had now apparently lost his need of the stick on which he had been leaning, considering how vigorously he was shaking it at his opponent.
“You question Michael?” shouted the stick waver. “Stand back, sir,” he cautioned Philo, “for this evil one is about to erupt into flames. Move away for your own safety!”
“I was merely wondering about Michael’s choice of sinners to strike down,” countered the florid man hastily. “Matthew’s secret heart may have been blackened with sin, but no-one can dispute that he suffered exposure upon his pillar, while some of his so-called brethren dwell in comfortable huts atop theirs. And,” he added with a sniff of outrage, “Eutropius, as is well known, crawls through a trap door into the hollow of his pillar when darkness falls, there to spend the night well protected from unkind weather.”
“Calumny!” raged the other. “Eutropius has braved the elements day and night these fifteen years!”
“It’s merely thirteen-“
“Stand back, sir!” his opponent addressed Philo. “Guard your fine robe! Can’t you see sparks beginning to emerge from this vile creature’s ears?”
The philosopher could bear no more. He, a man who had spent his life debating the nature of beauty and order, was now cast adrift in a city where zealots came to blows to claim for their particular religious champions the most disgusting cases of extreme physical mortification. It was intolerable.
Still, hawkers in the streets did cook the most succulent piping hot peas, he reminded himself, having just noticed one such vendor on the opposite side of the forum.
After filling his stomach while hardly emptying his purse, Philo decided to abandon his investigation and turn his steps homeward. It was not a long walk to John’s house. He had merely to go past the Church of the Holy Wisdom, a building that was certainly magnificent but, according to John, was not yet consecrated, then by the Baths of Zeuxippos, skirt the wall of the Hippodrome and so into the palace grounds. He would be back in plenty of time for the evening meal. Perhaps Peter had prepared duck again.
Two hours later with the sun already grazing the roofs of the surrounding tenements, Philo was forced to admit to himself that he was lost. He had vainly tried to orient himself by the relentlessly dropping sun, but the streets and alleys he followed obstinately refused to lead him in the proper direction.
He was aware of the narrowness of the peninsula on which Constantinople was located. Simple logic, he told himself, proved that he was either moving in a circle, or had somehow turned inland-west-for otherwise, considering how long he had been walking, he would have already fallen into the sea. Logic, however, refused to reveal to him exactly where he was. And small as it was, Constantinople was enormous compared to the familiar grounds of the Academy with its ordered paths.
At first, from sheer stubbornness, he had refused to ask passersby for assistance. Now, he noted with alarm, he seemed to have wandered into a shabbier quarter. Its few pedestrians had a rough look about them, so since he thought it would be extremely imprudent to reveal himself as a stranger to the city, alone and lost, he kept walking.
The narrow street he was now traversing was rendered prematurely dusky by the overhanging tenements that crowded out the fading daylight. He strode along at the best pace he could muster, fighting off exhaustion and trying to appear confident of his destination rather than terrified. Lining the way there were only the blank walls of the tenements’ lower floors and workshops already closed for the day, or perhaps shut forever, having ceased trading entirely. Looking ahead, he noticed a patch of sunlight where the street opened out on to another forum. He forced his suddenly shaking legs to move faster. Surely, at last, he was coming to some familiar landmark?
But when he emerged into the open space, he found only an empty, weed-infested expanse of flagstones. Atop a dry fountain set in their middle, some forgotten ruler surveyed the surrounding warehouses holding the empire’s children with an imperious and uncaring marble gaze.
Philo had already walked past this fountain once.
Or had he?
Exhausted, he dropped down to sit on its rim, sending a rat skittering away.
Again his thoughts turned to the Academy. He had never expected to be cast out of those ordered and tranquil surroundings into the unruly and dangerous world beyond.
He commanded himself to settle his mind and consider the problem, as if he had become one of his own flighty students. Which had been the last place he had recognized? The Forum Constantine? Well, it was huge and circular and who could mistake the statue of the city’s founder glittering atop its central pillar? He had considered going from there down the Mese, since he knew it would lead him straight to the Great Church.
Why hadn’t he done so? He had been lost for some time before he stumbled into the Forum Constantine. But instead of thanking the gods for their favor, he had chosen instead to insult their kindness by electing to take what he foolishly thought would be a quicker route home. Thus, he had crossed the forum, plunged into an alley, and almost immediately lost his way again.
That moment of decision was so clear in his mind-and so maddeningly irretrievable. If only he could return to that time and rectify his mistake. Well, such was life, he told himself, realizing even as he muttered the words that if he were, indeed, still at the Academy, his erstwhile colleagues would scornfully demolish such a shallow and uninstructive bit of trite philosophizing.
