The carriage wheels creaked. John was jolted continually. He couldn’t tell where he was being taken. At least the carriage had not been moving downhill, which would indicate that the destination was the docks or some lonely stretch of sea wall beyond which the hungry waters waited for the emperor’s offerings.
Instead, the carriage was going uphill. It slowed, turned, came to a halt.
“Mithra!” John muttered.
The door swung open. Powerful arms pulled him into the night and dragged him along before he had a chance to get his bearings.
Abruptly he was released.
He stood amidst massive sarcophagi illuminated by torches in curving walls.
Was this some kind of horrible jest on Justinian’s part?
John realized he had been brought to Constantine’s mausoleum behind the Church of the Holy Apostles. Around him lay emperors, who having lived in the purple slept for eternity enclosed in the imperial color. Purple porphyry folded angular arms about Constantine, Theodosius, and other departed rulers. Although Zeno lay under dark green Thessalonian stone, veined in white.
Thinking of the emperor reminded John of Anatolius’ uncle Zeno, on whose estate John’s family was currently living.
A hand shoved him forward.
He moved through a haze of incense, its sweet perfume foretelling the gardens of heaven.
He might have been dreaming.
An excubitor stood on each side of him. He could see the steel of their drawn swords glinting.
Light flashed from the mausoleum’s gem-studded gold fittings, icons glittered in lamplight glowing from silver dove-shaped lamps suspended on long chains from the frescoed roof, reflected in marble walls.
They passed out of Constantine’s burial place and into the mausoleum Justinian had only recently had completed.
The excubitor with the red hair stopped and clamped a hand on John’s shoulder. “Far enough!”
The guards at John’s side moved away.
A prickling sensation ran from the nape of John’s neck down his back.
Where would the steel penetrate?
He remembered well the feel of a blade cutting through flesh.
He had endured the pain before and he would endure it one last time.
***
Hypatia stood in the dark kitchen, trying to overcome her fear. The clatter of the carriage moving away across the square still seemed to reverberate through the house,
The Lord Chamberlain may have been called away on business, she told herself. Though it was before dawn, it would not have been impossible. Affairs of the empire did not keep regular hours.
But he would never have left the door open or gone without leaving word with her.
Would he?
Then again, he had been working too hard. He was exhausted. It was plain in his gaunt features.
What about the raised voices? Had they only sounded overly loud and angry because they had startled her in the middle of the night?
She told herself not to leap to conclusions. The Lord Chamberlain did not explain his comings and goings to her.
Perhaps he would return soon.
She preferred not to think the worst.
She pulled a chair up to the table, sat down, and waited.
Chapter Twenty-five
John waited to die in Justinian’s mausoleum.
But the sudden pressure he felt against the middle of his back was not sharp steel but flesh. One of his guards gave him a shove.
John took three stumbling steps forward before he saw the emperor kneeling by Theodora’s sarcophagus.
How horrified the empress would be if she could see the emperor kneeling in the presence of one of his subjects.
Justinian got to his feet. At those times John had seen him since Theodora’s death his demeanor had been so stolid John had wondered if he really was a demon exhibiting a false face to the world as many believed. Now, however, very human tears glistened on his gaunt cheeks. Justinian’s face had grown so thin it resembled the skulls of Timothy, Luke, and Andrew, three of the most sacred treasures held in the Church of the Holy Apostles. The impression had scarcely formed in John’s thoughts when Justinian smiled wanly in his direction.
“I shall be laid to rest next to the empress in due course,” the emperor remarked in an even tone. “But I feel as if I were already entombed. I feel like Emperor Zeno. The story goes that he was locked in his tomb while still alive and called from his darkness for three days before his voice fell silent forever.”
Justinian patted Theodora’s sarcophagus fondly, as one might caress the head of a child.
John fought to reorient himself. Mention of the former emperor inevitably reminded John of Cornelia and his daughter Europa at the estate of Anatolius’ uncle Zeno.
“It is a beautiful creation, excellency,” he replied automatically. The color was strangely appropriate. For Theodora was enclosed not in the purple of imperial majesty but by reddish-brown, as if the stone had taken on the hue of her murderous nature.
“Sardian stone,” Justinian said. “I commissioned it three years ago, never expecting…she was only forty-five at the time and…” He stopped and for an instant John thought the emperor’s voice would break and he would begin to sob. If he had been about to do so, he controlled himself. Instead he traced a finger along the top of one of the the fluted columns carved on each corner of the sarcophagus. John saw the finger trembled.
John, himself, was trembling, the effects of his stressful journey. He hoped it didn’t show.
“Look here, Lord Chamberlain,” Justinian said. “See how the doves circle the heads of lambs, indicating her nature. And there at the end, and on the lid, the olive wreathes enclosing crosses.”
John said nothing. He found it impossible to imagine that even the man who had been married to her could have believed Theodora’s nature to be reminiscent of doves and lambs and olive wreaths.
Perhaps least of all the man who had been married to her.
And the emperor knew how Theodora had hated John. Did he expect to convince John now of his wife’s saintliness? Or did he have something else in mind?
“I did everything in my power to help her,” Justinian went on. “But what did it come to in the end? It is commonly said I have the power of life and death over every person in the empire, but in truth I have only the power of death. It’s not a great matter, since death is certain anyway. And what can I do now, to serve the empress in death? I promised to allow those heretics she sheltered in the Hormisdas Palace to remain there. I will do so, but would it not be better if there were no heretics?”
His gaze fastened on John. Did Justinian know his Lord Chamberlain was a Mithran, a heretic? Did he care?
“You have always done your best to mediate between the opposing factions, excellency,” John said.
Justinian looked at the sarcophagus. “Yes. Without success. It is even more urgent now that this wretched matter of the Three Chapters be resolved. What do you think of the Three Chapters, John?”
The Three Chapters was the name by which the current religious controversy had come to be called, due to the fact it revolved around three writings by long dead churchmen which some deemed to be heretical. John couldn’t believe Justinian had had him abducted from his home and driven to this mausoleum in the middle of the night to discuss religion. “I lack your expertise in theology, excellency,” John replied.
“It is a knotty problem,” Justinian acknowledged. “Countless tomes written debating the nature of Christ. Over years of study I have come to the conclusion that it is all exceedingly simple. Nestorianism, you see, is the
