Chapter Thirty-six
Hypatia met John as he came up the stairs. Except for bruising on her neck she showed no ill effects from her recent frightening encounter.
He asked if there had been word from Cornelia. “No.” She hesitated, then added, “If I may say so, it’s barely been three days. Babies don’t keep appointments, master. They arrive when they feel like it.”
John reflected again on what Isis had said about the past becoming muddled. It seemed to him as if Cornelia had departed a week before Theodora’s death, not two days afterwards.
“Hypatia, if you need to take the rest of the day off-”
“Oh, no, master. I’m fine. I have to keep an eye on Peter.”
“And how is Peter?” The puffiness around her dark eyes showed she had been crying.
“Worse. I managed to get some of the potion I made down him. It seems to have helped the pain but I think he’s drifting away. I’ve propped him up against a pillow so he could breath more easily. He’s been asking for you.”
John went up to the servant’s room slowly and with trepidation. Peter would never normally ask to see him. He would not consider it his place to make requests of his employer.
Peter was motionless, head slightly elevated, eyes shut. It would have been impossible to tell he was breathing except for the faint erratic, whistling that issued from his dry, slightly parted lips.
“Is that you, master?”
“Yes, Peter. Hypatia said you wished to see me.”
The old man’s eyes fluttered open. “I am sorry to trouble you, master.”
John pulled a stool to the side of the bed and sat down. He saw laid on the bedside table the coin from Derbe which Peter had found in Isauria during his military days, a lucky coin or so he claimed, because it came from a city visited by Saint Paul. Beside it, on a leather thong, lay the Egyptian amulet Hypatia had given him years before when she had worked for John. And then there was the wooden cross above the bed.
All equally ineffective.
“It’s no trouble, Peter. How are you feeling? Hypatia tells me she made a potion for you.”
“A lovely girl, master, even if hopeless at cooking.” Peter lapsed into silence. His creased face was gray, inert and heavy as if eternity had already begun to insinuate itself into his flesh.
From the open window came the clump of boots on cobbles. Excubitors were returning to the barracks. Or leaving. A gull screeched and others returned the shrill call.
John did not have words of comfort for his long-time companion. Christians were quick to assure the sick and bereaved they would pray for them. It came automatically, provided them with comfort. Not that John had ever known such prayers to alter fate. Was that surprising? Even the gods of Olympus had been subject to fate. Why not the Christians’ god?
John’s own Mithra was not a god who would look kindly on pleas that he alter the natural course of life. It was up to the Mithran to deal with life, whatever that might entail, to survive uncomplainingly, to serve.
Peter spoke at last. “Don’t trouble yourself over me, master. If my time has come, I’m ready. Only I’m sorry it has to be now, with your grandchild not yet arrived, and when Hypatia has just returned.” He fell silent for a heartbeat, his eyes turned toward the blank plaster of the ceiling. “Do you know,” he resumed. “I was dreaming just now of my mother. I was a very small child and she was telling me the story of Tobit. It is my favorite because it was the first story my mother told me. Tobit went to sleep by the side of the house and was blinded by bird droppings. That got my attention.”
“Yes, it would.”
“Tobit’s son-just a boy-goes on a long journey. His dog accompanies him. I liked that. And the angel Raphael is his guide, except he doesn’t know his companion is an angel until the end. They battle a giant fish and drive away a demon. My mother didn’t tell me it was a demon of lust, though.”
“It is the kind of story a boy would like.”
“I became a Christian right away. It sounded exciting. I didn’t like the story about the crucifixion at all. I couldn’t help imagining how it would feel to have nails pounded through my hands. And the idea of a dead body rising and walking out of a cave-that kept me awake.”
“Your mother was wise to start with Tobit.”
John’s own faith-or at least his adherence to the strict, soldierly ethic of Mithraism-had come to him as an adult, following the drowning of his friend Julius, and had strengthened during his enslavement and castration by Persians.
When they had served together as mercenaries, he had resisted Julius’ efforts to teach him about Mithra. After John had suffered, the words of his dead companion returned to him, and he realized he had not truly heard them before. Thus had Julius spoken from the dead.
Mithraism was a religion of endurance and acceptance. If John had not run away from his philosophy studies to become a mercenary he might have become a stoic rather than a Mithran.
He studied Peter uneasily. He shared John’s stoicism and his tendency to keep his thoughts to himself- particularly his darker thoughts. It was unlike Peter to speak of such personal matters.
“Master, would you…would you open the chest at the foot of my bed? I can’t reach it. You’ll find a sandalwood box there.”
It sat in a corner of the chest, pushed down beside neatly folded garments. The box held a flat, terracotta flask no longer than John’s thumb. There were handles on each side of the tiny artifact. Engraved into its oval center was a simple picture of a man, with a camel on each side.
“It is the Saint Menas flask I brought back from Egypt,” Peter said. “It contains holy oil from the lamp that burns outside the saint’s tomb.”
John thought it ironic that the current patriarch, who did not strike him as a saint but rather just another of the powerful men who ruled the empire, should share his name with a holy man. “Do you want me to set it on the table beside your coin and amulet, or do you want to hold it?”
“If you would open it for me, please, master? There’s a bit of wax over the neck. If I had enough strength to lift my arms I would do it myself. They say Constantine’s daughter was cured by holy waters from beside the saint’s tomb. I have saved the flask for years. Now, I feel, it might be time to use it.”
John scraped off the wax and held the flask tentatively between thumb and forefinger. What did one do with holy oil?
“Could you place a drop on my forehead, master? I know I should not be asking you, but…”
“It’s little enough to ask, Peter.”
John turned his hand and a drop of oil ran out onto the tip of his finger. There was nothing mysterious about it. It was simply a drop of lamp oil. He dabbed a bit onto Peter’s parchment dry forehead.
“If you could draw another across that one…”
John did so, uncomfortably aware he was mimicking the sign of the Christians.
He put the flask down, propped it upright against the amulet in case oil remained inside.
Peter let his eyes close. His breath whistled in and out, more regularly now.
Had he gone to sleep?
John rose quietly and went out. He didn’t care to wait.
He was half afraid Peter would next be asking that he pray for him.
Chapter Thirty-seven
When he reached the bottom of the stairs leading down from the servant’s quarters, John paused. He was exhausted. After a day of investigations, followed by a largely sleepless night and then being dragged out to his interview with Justinian, he felt as if he were carrying the dome of the Great Church on his shoulders.
He went into his bedroom and lay down to take a brief rest before deciding what to do next.
