the door there would be no time for explanation. But he could not force himself to move, even though his heart pounded with fear.
“It is indeed a pity,” she whispered, her piquant breath hot against his face, “that you are presently spoken for. I am sorely tempted to inform the lady’s husband and claim you for myself.”
Anatolius stared at her lips, stained fashionably red, the furtive movements of her tongue visible behind dainty teeth. Then she leaned forward and her lips touched his so lightly he would wonder afterwards if he had only imagined it. Before he could respond she was turning away towards the door.
“The poem, dear Anatolius,” she said, firmly. “You won’t forget, will you?”
He was left alone with the wraith of her perfume.
In a daze, he moved to the cluttered desk where he would sit writing as Justinian restlessly paced the small room, dictating letters carried by imperial couriers to all corners of the empire. Clearly the empress was playing with him. But to what end? Had his verse angered her so much? Was he to be made to suffer before his inevitable demise? Or did she have some other purpose?
He forced himself to look quickly through the correspondence on his desk. Her scent seemed to cling to him, reminding him that it was everywhere rumored that the empress’ lovers were often of a much lower class than a senator’s son. But a senator’s son…
Immediately Anatolius was horrified that he could even allow himself such speculation. Perhaps it would be safer were he, like John, beyond such unthinkable folly. He became aware of the sour odor of his sweat.
He found the missive he sought and sat thankfully down.
His hand trembled as he put kalamos to a scrap of parchment. An errant blob of ink spidered across one corner of the original document. It did not matter, Anatolius told himself as he started to work. All John needed was a verbatim copy of the first message delivered from Michael.
Hektor the court page was bored. It was his job, along with the other boys who served as pages, to ornament Justinian’s court. Elaborately and fancifully dressed, lounging and strolling about the palace and its grounds, they served their emperor as small, glittering gems in the splendid tapestry of imperial power, tales of whose splendor awed ambassadors would carry back to their distant homelands.
“For all its vast magnificence, the Great Church would be but a dark cavern if not for the ten thousand lamps burning inside,” the Master of the Offices had told the boys. “Likewise, each one of you is a shining lamp in your emperor’s court.”
The pompous old fool had not added that pretty perfumed boys could also perform certain services for palace officials that shining lamps, not to mention in many cases the officials’ wives, could or would not.
However, the religious zealots camped on the other side of the Golden Horn were casting a gloomy shadow into the palace. Receptions were delayed, banquets cancelled and foreign emissaries sent away while court officials prowled about with long faces. It was as if that ghastly holy man was already in charge, thought Hektor.
So he was bored-and that usually heralded trouble.
Already he had painted and repainted his face and tried on four different garments before making his final choice of finery for the day. Then he had ruined his azure tunic by lying in ambush in one of the palace gardens for a hour, hoping to catch the small brown cat he had seen hunting there. No doubt a captive cat would have afforded the inventive boy an hour or two of pleasure. However, the animal had not hunted that morning. Perhaps it had succumbed to religious fever and rejected meat, as had the emperor long ago.
He wandered idly through the well-kept grounds until he arrived at the menagerie, not far from the stables. Most of the enclosures were empty, the imperial couple having temporarily lost interest in exotic fauna, but the largest cage was still occupied.
The boy snapped a branch from one of the carefully pruned ornamental trees clustered nearby and banged it furiously at its bars.
“Hey, Felix!” he shrieked, that being the name he had given the caged bear.
The shaggy animal shifted sluggishly in its shady corner and emitted a half-hearted deep rumble. It seemed hardly more awake than a mosaic.
Disappointed, Hektor poked the branch through the cage bars, jabbing at the bear. The animal raised its furry head tiredly but made no effort to lash out.
“Ah, Felix, you’re a sorry excuse for a murderous beast,” Hektor grumbled. It was hard to believe the huge animal had killed a man. That was why Theodora had insisted it be brought to the palace, or so Hektor’s fellow page Tarquin had claimed. But that wasn’t so surprising, was it, considering that the empress had an affinity for bears. After all, her father had been a bearkeeper for the Greens and she must have spent a good deal of time around them as a girl.
Spent time with both bears and Greens, Hektor thought with a pleased smile. No doubt that was where she had acquired some at least of her more violent tendencies. Unfortunately, two years or so of captivity seemed to have taken its toll on Felix’s murderous instincts.
“If I were to set you free, would you show your claws?” Hektor asked the bear, darting around the side of the cage and jabbing his branch sharply into the bear’s face. The animal snarled more in dismay than anger but the boy at least got a glimpse of the long yellow teeth that had torn out a human throat. He wondered, idly, what it would feel like to take a man’s life. He felt certain he would appreciate the experience more than a bear ever could.
Still bored, Hektor bid farewell to the animal and wandered away in the afternoon sunshine, eventually venturing into that part of the palace Justinian used for his offices, a place where there was seldom much call for pages.
As he strolled along the corridor, the boy’s thoughts wandered back to his thwarted interrogation of the hateful cat, which had now transformed itself in his imagination into a heavily disguised spy, a cunning and evil foe to be dealt with most severely when apprehended. But his daydreaming ceased abruptly when he saw Theodora emerging from one of the offices.
Hektor quickly retreated around a corner to the shelter of the nearest doorway. As skilled as he was at being conspicuous he had an even better facility for hiding, both exceedingly useful talents at the court in conjunction with a well-developed instinct for knowing when, where and in which circumstances to employ each.
Theodora, he was certain, did not notice him as she swept away in the other direction. He immediately crept around the corner and moved stealthily back through the trail of her perfume to the room from which she had emerged.
What Hektor saw when he peeked inside made him forget the nefarious spy disguised as a cat. There sat Anatolius, looking dazed. Anatolius, of course, was just a harmless fool, but the fool’s eunuch friend John had spoken most impertinently to Hektor on more than one occasion.
The eunuch had made a grave mistake, the boy thought, his mouth tightening at the humiliating recollection of those slights. Hektor might yet be young but he knew much. He was aware, for instance, of Theodora’s deep enmity toward John. It sprang, he suspected, from jealousy. How often had he had seen her glare at John as he departed after a private conference with Justinian, her angry look touched with panic? After all, she had made it plain to all that the emperor’s opinion was for her alone to influence. What the emperor truly believed, what actions he intended to take, these were in the nature of marital secrets. Yes, the empress would certainly richly reward the person who found a means to end the unseemly intimacy between her husband and the eunuch John. That was something else Hektor knew.
So it was with special interest that he observed Anatolius sitting at his desk copying something. It was not an unusual task for a secretary, but Hektor’s court-sharpened instincts immediately detected something amiss. Perhaps it was the man’s posture or possibly a subliminal hint of his sour, nervous sweat.
Hektor peered more intently around the door post. There was a blotch of spilt ink on the corner of the document Anatolius was rapidly copying. Moving quietly back down the corridor, the boy smiled to himself. He would wait for Anatolius to depart and then read whatever he had been transcribing. Perhaps he would discover something that could be used against him and his friend the eunuch. Yes, he thought, he would obviously have to keep a close eye on John’s movements for the next few days. Suddenly, he was no longer bored.
Chapter Nine
