Four for a Boy (22 page)

Chapter Thirty-One

John and Felix took a circuitous route to their destination. They dodged in and out of narrow passages and cut across noisome and noisy courtyards to avoid better traveled thoroughfares. Once they were on their way, the chilly air revived John further and they were able to make steady progress.

Before long they entered a crooked finger of an alley pointed toward the Mese. Halfway down its dim and debris-strewn length they were startled by the sound of running feet.

Felix’s hand went to his sword, but the noise was nothing more than a pair of filthy boys. The two urchins raced around the bend in the alley, straight toward John and Felix. Behind them limped a beggar, yelling promises of obscene punishments for some unspecified misdeed. From the way he hobbled, it was obvious he had no chance of catching the culprits.

In fact, the boys had time to stop and spit in the direction of John and Felix before disappearing from sight.

Felix reddened with rage, but allowed them to escape.

John, however, took several swift strides and grabbed the beggar’s shoulder as he turned to limp back the way he had come. “You!” he shouted, viciously shaking the ragged man. “You’re the one who bet his boots on our deaths! The cart driver came to our aid, but you were placing wagers we would die!” “Not so, good sir!” Alarmed, the beggar took a couple of steps backward until the rough masonry wall of a tenement overlooking the alley brought his retreat to a halt.

Felix trotted over and looked the beggar up and down. “You do appear to have lost your footwear. Unless you consider rag wrappings to be adequate. I’m not surprised you couldn’t catch those two. My advice would be to never wager what you can’t afford to lose.”

“No, no, you don’t understand. It was those…er…children. They stole my boots while I was asleep.” The beggar’s voice was feeble. He held up a deformed hand as if to ward off a blow.

John shook the man even harder. “No!” he shouted. “It was you! Do you think I wouldn’t remember your voice, making a wager like that? Furthermore,” he looked at the grubby man more closely, “when was your miraculous cure?”

Felix gaped at John for an instant. Then understanding dawned. “It’s the mute beggar we tried to question a few days ago!”

“Mute?” croaked the beggar. “Of course I’m not mute. As you can hear. There’s the proof! You must be thinking of the…uh…the mute beggar who hangs about in the Mese. An easy enough mistake to make. He’s my brother. People confuse us all the time.”

John grabbed the man’s dirty wrist and slammed his hand against the wall.

“I see you’re also missing two fingers, just like this mute brother who so closely resembles you. What a remarkable coincidence.”

Felix gripped the hilt of his sword. “You lying bastard! What are you hiding?”

“Nothing, nothing at all, good sirs,” the man replied in a wheedling tone. “I admit it was me you spoke to. It was just that I didn’t want to get involved with people in authority. Especially when they come around asking about someone dying. Can you blame me?”

Felix looked thunderous. “You’re telling us you know something about the murder we’re investigating and deliberately concealed it?”

The beggar’s expression crumpled at the words and the threat they carried. John thought if the man could have turned around he would have begun leaping up the tenement wall like a trapped mouse in a futile attempt to escape.

“No,” the beggar gasped. “I don’t know anything about any murder. It was an accident!”

“A man gets a blade in the ribs and you call it an accident?” Felix growled. “How could anyone be careless enough to accidentally fall on someone’s blade?”

“Stabbed? But I thought—”

“We were questioning you about the death of the man who was murdered in the Great Church,” said John. “What did you think we were asking about?”

The beggar opened his mouth, but whatever lie might have been forming died on his tongue when he saw the fury in John’s eyes. “When you said death, I thought you meant the death of the grocer’s boy. Timothy’s son. He was run over by a cart just the other day.”

Mithra’s light flared in John’s mental darkness.

The bits of information he’d accumulated, like fragments of colored glass, until now glistening and tantalizing, but meaningless, had finally converged into an image.

“Such accidents are common enough,” he replied. “Why didn’t you want to talk about it? Were you involved?”

“It wasn’t my fault, sir,” the man whined. “It was those accursed boys. The ones who spat at you. They were friends of the grocer’s son. The three of them were always tormenting me. My own personal Furies, they were. Then when I went after them that particular day, they ran away across the Mese. Right into the path of a cart. It ran the boy over and crashed into the column in front of his father’s shop. They’re still trying to repair it. But I had no part in his death! It was the carter’s fault anyhow. It was a small cart. Far too small for that huge marble it was hauling.”

“The sculpture of Christ, you mean? The very one Hypatius died in front of?”

“Why, indeed sir. That is true. You know everything.”

“Yes, I think I do.”

“His father’s shop.” Felix’s tone was thoughtful. “That means the shopkeeper has a reminder of his son’s death every time he looks out.” John did not reply. His thoughts were on the intricate mosaic that had formed in his mind’s eye. He barely heard the beggar.

“And the boy was his only child,” the ragged man was saying. “Thank the Lord Timothy does not know how it came about. I would fear for my safety if he did. Yet,” he concluded sadly, “I would not blame him if his grief unhinged him. I had a son myself once, but I don’t know where he is now, or even if he is still alive. At least until I know otherwise, I can believe he is living somewhere in the city and that I may see him again one day. Timothy does not have that comfort. Not in this life.”

John was not listening. He had already begun to walk away in the direction of the Mese. Felix followed.

“John, what is it?”

“Fortuna has smiled on us, Felix, by bringing us here. She has allowed us to complete our interrupted investigation. We’ve found the final fact I’d hoped to find. Not that I had guessed exactly what it would be.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Timothy the grocer’s son is the final piece. Now the picture makes sense. We knew all the deaths were connected to the sculpture, but not why.”

“Well, so the boy’s death was connected to the sculpture too. The cart ran him over. You mean… the cart driver? He killed the boy and also…but Dio, wasn’t he killed after—”

“The boy died first, Felix, as the marble was being delivered. It was his death that started it all. One might blame the cart driver, certainly. But then, if one were grief stricken, one might also blame the Christ figure itself.”

“And everyone associated with it,” murmured Felix. “We had better get to the grocer’s shop at once.”

***

They were almost too late.

As John and Felix hurried across the Mese, a man bolted from Timothy’s emporium, raced down the street, into the Augustaion, and headed toward the Great Church.

John and Felix gave pursuit. By the time they reached the church vestibule the man had scrambled up onto the high pedestal supporting the sculpture and was embracing Christ’s legs. The man began to harangue the shocked onlookers.

“Don’t put your faith in the Lord!” he screamed, his agonized tones echoing in the cavernous space. “For He is full of deceit! He did not allow me time enough to complete my task!”

“That’s the gray-haired fellow who tried to help the carter the other day.” Felix looked at John in confusion. “I thought we were after a murderous grocer. Why did this man run off when he saw us?”

The man heard him and shouted down, with a twisted smile. “Because I realized you were coming after me. I am the man you’re seeking, fool! It was me, Timothy, who delivered the death blow!”

He tightened his grip on the figure of Christ. “Yes,” he shouted even louder, “that carter often passed down the Mese in the course of his work. I had to watch him, the murderer of my son, drive past almost every day. Ah, but I was just waiting for my chance. When he gave it to me by coming to your aid, I stabbed him. In all the confusion no one noticed. You might say I helped him. Helped him on his way to Hell!”

A woman screamed and made the sign of her religion. Some men began shouting virulent curses at Timothy. Curious spectators were filling the vestibule, a number of them drawn from the church itself by the commotion. A group of Blues, sensing the anger in the air, appeared from the street to add their vulgar jeers.

John caught bits of panicked conversations.

“What is it? What’s happening?”

“…dead. Murdered!”

“…treachery, so they say.”

Suddenly several more Blues, obviously intoxicated, burst into the vestibule. “Beware the Gourd!” They surged unsteadily through the crowd to join their companions. “We’re in for some sport now!”

“Justinian’s dead!” one of the new arrivals screamed. His shrill, slurred cry cut through the clamor echoing in the vestibule.

“No!” another shouted even more loudly. “Justin was murdered! His bodyguards have all been executed! Justinian has proclaimed himself emperor!”

Archdeacon Palamos appeared from the body of the church, shooing away several small boys who sought to follow him. “Someone remove that blasphemer immediately!” he shouted in thunderous outrage, pointing at Timothy.

Felix grabbed the grocer’s legs and got a boot in the face for his pains.

“Archdeacon,” John said swiftly. “You must hear what this man has to say.”

Palamos stared at Timothy in horror. Wild haired, his eyes glaring, the grocer resembled a demon.

“Yes, listen to me, archdeacon!” Timothy demanded. “I executed the cart driver and others too, all of them connected with this blasphemous statue. I started with Hypatius, one of those who sponsored it. That was as quickly done as it was with the cart driver. Yes, I wept tears of joy over the carter. It’s amazing what you can do in the middle of a rioting crowd without being noticed.”

“Come down and speak to us privately,” Palamos coaxed.

Timothy simply laughed and continued. “The sculptor, Dio, he was another.”

“You were outside the monastery and overheard Fortunatus tell me where Dio could be found?” John guessed.

“You are clever, Excellency,” Timothy said, “but not half as clever as I am. I already knew where Dio lived. Hadn’t Hypatius bragged all over the city about the expensive sculptor he had employed? No, Dio would have died sooner had he not been away the day I first visited his studio. However, when I overheard Fortunatus say he would shortly be back, I was there first thing next morning to warm his homecoming.”

“And to set the Prefect’s men on me,” John said.

“A marvelous stroke of good fortune, that was. I noticed you coming up the Domninus as I was leaving. I’d been keeping my eye on you as much as I could anyway, ever since my assistant told me you’d been asking about Hypatius. So I helpfully alerted the first of the Gourd’s men I could find.”

“You wouldn’t have to look far,” Felix growled. “They’re everywhere. What’s more, they’re sure to be here soon to deal with this disturbance. John, we’d better grab him and make our escape while we can,” he muttered in an undertone.

John shook his head. “We must make certain of the facts, my friend, while we have the archdeacon as a witness. Tell me about Viator, Timothy.”

“Viator! Wasn’t that a wonder? I asked for the Lord’s help in finding all the people who were involved with this disgusting sculpture, and was granted heavenly aid! It was a true miracle! To begin with, at least. Even you and your friend were part of it,” he said to John. “I hadn’t yet been able to find out from whose warehouse the marble had come. Then you obligingly led me to it. Not only that, you also frightened the importer so badly that he ran away practically unguarded. I soon stopped his flight with a blade in the ribs!”

“So Dominica and Fortunatus were spared because they chose not to talk publicly about their co-sponsoring the sculpture with Hypatius?”

“Again you are wrong! I knew them for the murderers they were. I own a perfume shop too, you know. My wealthy clients tell me many things. They might have thought nobody knew, but their contributions were common knowledge among the high born.”

Timothy’s gloating grin turned into a sorrowful scowl. “The problem was they were too well protected. The widow never stirs without a small army of guards. As for Fortunatus, it’s true he has a name of good omen, yet he does well to skulk in the monastery. I had planned to climb over the wall one night and see if I could catch him at his devotions.”

Palamos shuddered. “I’ve heard enough. This man is Satan himself.”

“You think I’m Satan?” screeched Timothy. “Think it then. I’m just doing the Lord’s job since He wouldn’t do it Himself.”

“Satan walks among us all right,” bellowed a nearby Blue, a young man with a spotty face. His voice was thickened by wine. “It’s not the madman perched up there, though. It’s the King of the Demons who’s just mounted the throne, not to mention the new empress!”

A portly, middle-aged man with the look of a clerk in his stooped shoulders and pale face pointed an accusing finger at the younger man and yelled furiously at him.

“Whoever rules, the populace is going to suffer! You should be on your knees asking for forgiveness instead of stirring up trouble!”

The young man he addressed replied with an exaggerated low bow. “Such fine talk from one about to die!”

“Not at your hand, you idiotic fop!”

“Is that so?” The Blue drew his blade. “I think you are wrong!”

The Blue grabbed the man’s throat, but before he could make another move a familiar voice cut through the tumult.

“No, my young friend. I believe he is right.”

It was the Gourd. He strode through the crowd, which shrank away from him, clearing his path as if by magick.

“No indeed,” he remarked in a conversational tone. “He’s not going to die at your hand. In fact, it is you who will die at mine. But then, you already knew that, didn’t you?” The Gourd hardly paused before casually running his blade through the Blue’s stomach.