“I’m a surgeon, not a theologian,” Getorius said, controlling his anger. “Death is not caused by supernatural means.” He continued, softening his tone, “Archdeacon, Sigisvult was a patient of mine. I want you to get permission from the Bishop for me to examine his body and see what caused his death.”
“A dissection? Impossible. Besides, I told you. It was God’s judgment. I witnessed it.”
Charadric had evidently heard the commotion and it was he who came into the room, instead of Sigisvult’s guard. He saw the body on the floor, had heard some of what Renatus had said, and decided he wanted no part in the way God settled scores. He turned to leave.
“Wait, Charadric.” Getorius pulled him back, searched out a coin, and pressed a half-siliqua into his hand. “Tell your tribune that his prisoner is dead, but I want the body left here with nothing disturbed. Understand?”
“I…I’ll tell Tribune Lucullus.” Charadric half-saluted and hurried out.
“Renatus. Go to Bishop Chrysologos now, so I can begin an examination—short of dissection—as soon as possible. I can do it here. While you’re gone, I’ll get my medical case.”
“Let me cover Sigisvult until we get back.” Arcadia pulled a blanket off the cot and knelt to lay it over the architect’s body.
Outside, Getorius took his wife by the elbow and strode toward their villa. “Judgment of God,” he scoffed. “I need to find the physical reason that caused Sigisvult’s death.”
“Then don’t walk so fast.” Arcadia took a circle of broken glass out of her purse. “This may help you.”
Getorius stopped to examine the round shard. “This is the bottom of the glass that held the wine. How did you get it?”
“From under the cot, where you kicked it when you grabbed Renatus.”
“After you bent down to cover Sigisvult?”
“Yes. I’ve seen these before. Gold leaf images fused into a commemorative glass, but look at the design on this one.”
“Peter and Paul, the two Apostles. Appropriate for a Communion cup I suppose.”
“Look at their symbols, a sword for Paul and a cockerel for Peter. Martyrdom and betrayal.”
“Another furcing rooster!”
Arcadia ignored his outburst. “Getorius, I’m admittedly only an apprentice medica, but I think Sigisvult was poisoned.”
“That entered my mind too, but by the archdeacon, practically in our presence? Why would he do that?”
“Perhaps Renatus didn’t know. Someone else may have prepared the wine for him…a presbyter, or one of his deacons.”
“He did act totally distraught…almost incoherent.”
“He didn’t expect us to be there.”
“And it was a coincidence that we were.” Getorius ran his finger around the inside rim of the glass. It was still damp with dregs of wine. He smelled, then tasted the residue, and grimaced at the bitter taste. “Atropa…you’re diagnosis was right. That explains the color of his face and the convulsions Renatus described. I won’t have to look further than his esophagus for traces of poison.”
When the couple returned to Lauretum Palace, the Gothic guards had been replaced by Huns, who made it clear that neither one of them would be allowed inside the building.
“So much for examining Sigisvult’s body,” Getorius remarked as he walked back down the stairs. “The guards’ commander must have spoken to someone higher up.”
“Flavius Aetius?” Arcadia suggested.
“Possibly. Or even the Gothic Queen.”
Getorius had turned toward the clinic when Arcadia pulled him back by the arm. “Would workers be at the mausoleum on Sunendag…the Lord’s Day?”
“Work has been suspended and the building placed under guard, but I doubt if they’d be on duty today.”
“Let’s go over there, Getorius.”
He nodded agreement. “With Sigisvult dead, we should look around inside.”
Immersed in trying to understand the architect’s murder, the couple said nothing as they retraced the same route to the mausoleum they had taken on the deadly evening. The fields alongside the Vicus Galla Placidia were still muddy, and rain had halted construction on the new villas.
There were no guards at the point where they had been challenged the night before, only the damp ashes of the men’s fire. Ahead, attached to the narthex of the Basilica of the Holy Cross, the mausoleum stood as a stark, octagonal entombment for present and future dead.
Arcadia abruptly stopped and grasped her husband’s arm. “Getorius, that’s two murders in as many days. Perhaps we shouldn’t be here after all.”
“Cara, it was your idea to come,” Getorius pointed out. “We’ll be fine.”
“I’m reconsidering. This isn’t our business.”
“True. Someone from the judicial magistrate’s office would be investigating if the Gothic Queen hadn’t sworn us all to secrecy about the librarian’s death. Still, I believed Sigisvult when he said he was innocent. I’d like to go back inside and look around.”
“I guess you’re right,” she relented. “We owe him that at least.”
They found the mausoleum unguarded; even its door was not locked. Getorius surmised that Tranquillus, the presbyter at the adjoining basilica, must be having dinner with Bishop Chrysologos in the Episcopal Palace.
Inside, the cruciform building was as it had been the evening when Placidia brought the group in, but now a soft light entering through eight high alabaster windows, revealed the splendor of the mosaics and a marble wainscoting that was installed as background for the sarcophagi.
Getorius saw that the niche was still open. The small weapon that had shot the deadly bolt had not been removed. He traced a trajectory with his eye across to the mosaic of the Imperial Shepherd. The missile had hit at lower left, gouging out green landscape tiles between three of the sheep. The shattered wooden shaft and its iron head still lay on the floor beneath.
“What shot the arrow?” Arcadia
