piercing noise Isis had managed to wrest from her instrument.
Then he realized it was a scream.
Pandemonium broke out in the garden as a pillar of flame blazed up from the fountain. A dark figure writhed in its midst. Darius had grabbed a vase and was throwing water and roses onto the burning girl, trying futilely to douse the conflagration.
John leapt forward as Isis began to beat at the flames with her bare hands. Shouting a warning in her native tongue, he pushed her aside before her billowing veil could catch fire. She fell to the ground. The Muses shrieked hysterically as John tore off his heavy cloak and threw it over the girl, hoping to dampen the flames. Then, leaping into the shallow basin of the fountain, hardly aware of the cold water splashing around his knees, he helped Darius thrust the girl deeper into the water.
By the time the flames were dowsed and the girl had been pulled from the fountain it was much too late.
It was not Calliope, who stood nearby covering her face with her hands and sobbing, but another.
“Adula,” Darius whispered and then began shouting a string of curses in Persian, so dire as to confound John’s considerable powers of translation. One tiny gilded wing still clung to Darius’ broad back. Screaming obscenities, he ripped off the gauzy conceit and hurled it away in a fury, as if wearing the wings had somehow rendered him impotent to avert the tragedy.
Isis stood beside her charge, shaking and pale, apparently oblivious to the ugly burns already blistering her hands and arms.
“She just burst into flames,” one of the senators said loudly in an incredulous tone. Others shouted their agreement. The silence that had initially descended on the garden in the face of the horrible spectacle gave way to a cacophony of agitated conversation.
“Master,” came Peter’s familiar but trembling voice. He had appeared from the kitchen, Hypatia at his side. “It was heaven’s judgment,” he went on, his voice rising. “Heaven’s judgment upon those who practice an unchaste profession.”
Isis looked at him with hatred.
“You’re burnt, Isis,” John said quickly. “Where is Gaius? He can treat you immediately.”
“I saw him a few moments ago, unconscious in a corner like a common reveler in the gutter,” a nearby senator remarked. He had been staring down, fascinated, at the charred form. John directed a look at the speaker that caused the man to slink hastily away.
“Perhaps Hypatia can make a poultice to treat your burns until Gaius can be roused,” John said to Isis. “You really shouldn’t have tried to beat those flames out with your bare hands, Isis.”
“I had no choice.” She stifled a sob. “I had to try to save my investment, didn’t I?”
John looked around the torch lit garden, struck by a sense that he had overlooked something. He realized what it was. Felix remained inexplicably absent.
“Mithra!” John muttered. “Has something happened to him as well?”
As if summoned by the question, the man’s bear-like figure appeared. To John’s surprise, Felix walked right past the dead girl and stopped in front of Anatolius. The excubitor’s bearded face was grim.
The young man stared at him with alarm. “What is it, Felix?”
Felix paused. His gaze dropped to the ground for an instant and then he forced himself to look up again into Anatolius’ eyes.
“My friend,” Felix said gruffly, “it is your father. He is dead.”
After Felix had placed the exits of the senator’s house under guard and sent one of his men to the Prefect to report the deaths, John accompanied a dazed Anatolius to Aurelius’ study.
The senator was slumped over his desk, under the merry gaze of the frolicking cupids so beloved by the wife with whom he was now reunited. Beneath his hand lay the notes for the speech that would have announced his son’s new appointment. He had planned it to be but the first step toward armoring Anatolius for that dangerous future when the frivolous young man would be left alone to fend for himself. Now, shockingly, that future was already upon him.
John could see that the room was undisturbed. Aurelius’ bluish lips revealed to John what he needed to know.
The senator had been poisoned.
By the time the rising sun turned night into the first day that would go unseen by the senator and the prostitute, the throng of banquet guests had been reduced to a group of excubitors, the Lord Chamberlain and a stocky, petulant shoemaker.
“As I have already told you,” the latter was whining, “my name is Kalus. Surely you must have noticed my large workshops not far from the Forum Bovis. How could you miss them?”
The man’s breath formed a faint mist in the chilly air of the garden. John was grateful for the cold. It was helping him stay alert, for he and Felix had spent the night questioning senators and courtiers one by one before permitting them to leave. Most, he noticed, had been more disgruntled by their personal inconvenience than grief- stricken over their host’s murder. Perhaps it was as well that Anatolius had withdrawn into the house. Now, standing beside Felix, John looked on as the bearded excubitor captain patiently made another notation on Calliope’s tablet.
“Have you written that down correctly this time?” demanded the shoemaker. His fleshy face was red with irritation and his double chin waggled indignantly. “I spoke only briefly to Senator Aurelius last night. As I have already explained, we discussed the possibility of a mutual investment in a shipment of olive oil. I’d thought to use the profits to pay for the family mausoleum I’m having built. Why would I murder a potential business partner?”
“No one suspects you,” John put in soothingly. “Please understand, we need to ascertain if anyone saw anything…”
“And since I am just a common shoemaker, of course I was detained to the very end. That’s always the way, isn’t it?” Kalus puffed out his chest, a pugnacious pose that would doubtless be immortalized in marble in the mausoleum the man had mentioned.
“How do you suppose the emperor’s soldiers would fare against their foes were they to go into battle barefoot?” Kalus railed at them. “At least Justinian knows the value of a good shoemaker.”
“The emperor can always find more shoemakers if he needs them,” growled Felix.
“You questioned those senators right away,” Kalus complained. “Epirus, now, when did he leave? I am worth twice what he can boast, yet he already sleeps in his own warm bed. I have an army of craftsmen under my command. I employ six eunuchs at my summer villa alone.”
“You are free to go,” John said curtly, wondering if the man was trying to be provocative or was just extremely careless in his manner of speaking.
Felix glanced questioningly at John as the shoemaker marched off. “He didn’t say anything about the girl, you notice. Should I summon him back?”
John shook his head tiredly. “I don’t think we need hear anyone else tell us one instant they were listening to Calliope’s recitation and the next Adula was on fire. As if by magick, or as if the hand of God had struck her down, or she was consumed from within, whichever way they wished to put it.”
Hearing John repeat the same descriptions they had been listening to all night, Felix admitted he supposed that John was right.
Looking around the garden which had seemed so festive only a few hours before, John noticed a small bird perched on one of the ivy garlands decorating the peristyle. For the bird it was a morning like any other. Its world was no different. It was fortunate indeed, John thought. The subtle political maze through which the court moved changed each time a person of rank died. What had once been an open path might be blocked, a former barrier perhaps removed. What had the senator’s death changed? It was too early to ascertain.
The bird took flight, vanishing into the sky, and John, wishing he could fly off as easily, forced his attention back to the matter at hand.
“Nor do we need anyone else to assure us that they never left the public rooms, Felix,” he said, “not to mention that of course they had no notion of where Aurelius had gone, let alone which room he used for his study. Was it a politically motivated murder, do you suppose?”
