“I don’t know anything about the herbs they claim to have found in my room,” she told John, in response to his next query. “I don’t even know what they were, excellency.”
“You sometimes delivered herbs to Antonina. You were not storing any in your room to take to her on your next visit?”
“No, Lord Chamberlain.”
“Antonina did not ask you to keep certain herbs in your room?”
Vesta shook her head. Her prominent chin might have been characterized as strong, but at present it was trembling. “No, no, I never saw those herbs, excellency. I was working here all day and when I returned to my room I was arrested. They never even showed me the herbs. I don’t believe there were any!”
John did not mention that despite her being released she was still considered the main suspect by the City Prefect.
“Herbs can be found in shops and homes all over the city. A bunch of stalks and leaves is not the same as a bottle of poison,” Vesta said. “Do you think they will leave me alone now, Lord Chamberlain? I could hardly sleep last night. I kept expecting footsteps outside my door. It’s a terrible feeling to enter your home and find strangers lying in wait for you.”
John gazed out into the brilliant sunlight illuminating the garden beyond the soft, light shade beneath the awning. “You told me you visited Antonina with your mistress’ knowledge, that Joannina hoped to reconcile with her mother and thought your assisting Antonina might help.”
Vesta nodded.
“Did your mistress ever send you with a message for her mother?”
“She did. She asked Lady Antonina to make a healing potion for the empress. Lady Antonina replied that since Theodora was a close friend, she was already doing so. And she was. Theodora was sending me to see Lady Antonina for that very reason, as I must have told you already.”
In fact, John recalled her telling him that Theodora had given her notes, that she had not known what they said, or what the packages she had brought back for Theodora contained. Had she been lying to protect herself or simply confused? If Theodora had been trusting enough to take Antonina’s potions, Antonina could have easily poisoned her to save Joannina from marriage, if thwarting the marriage was indeed her overriding desire.
“Did you notice if any potions Antonina sent had any effect on Theodora?”
The girl’s eyes flashed with anger and for an instant she truly resembled her mistress. “They made her worse, excellency. She would sleep for a short while. When she woke the pain was greater than ever.”
“Is that why you pretended to be unsure about whether Antonina had sent potions? Why you told me you didn’t know what was in the packages you delivered? Were you afraid the potions had been poisoned? That you had had an unwitting hand in it?”
“No! Not at all! When I said the pain was greater, I meant it seemed greater. The empress expected relief and none came. Nothing she took seemed to give her any real relief. The only thing that helped was when she prayed with the clergyman who visited late in the evenings. She looked more at peace after the visits.”
“Who was this clergyman?”
Vesta bit her lip, looked away, then looked back. “Oh please, Lord Chamberlain. I don’t think I am allowed to say. I believe the visits were supposed to be secret, and I don’t like to tell the secrets of the dead.”
“Why do you think they were supposed to be a secret?”
“Because he…the clergyman…wore a baggy robe with a hood pulled forward so you could hardly see his face.”
“It wasn’t Patriarch Menas?”
“No, from what I could see, his build, his height, I could tell it wasn’t the patriarch.”
“Did you recognize who it was?”
The girl looked at him pleadingly.
“Vesta, I am certain the empress would approve of you telling me if it helps me find her murderer.”
The girl looked worried. “Excellency, it won’t help you find her murderer.”
John asked her why.
“Because…because…the pope would hardly have murdered Theodora.”
John did his best to betray no sign of emotion. He prided himself on being unflappable, but this was a surprise. “Why do you say the visitor was Vigilius if you couldn’t see his face?”
Vesta nodded almost imperceptibly. “Once, when the empress was speaking, when I happened to go past the door…I wasn’t eavesdropping…she…she said something to him like ‘as head of the church’ and it shocked me, because I knew it wasn’t Menas so who else could she have addressed that way, except for the pope?”
Chapter Forty-nine
“You couldn’t seriously suspect me of murdering the empress.” Vigilius’ prim mouth tightened. John was not certain if the short, white-bearded man was frowning or trying to suppress amusement. “I occupy the throne of Saint Peter. I am God’s representative on earth. What did you imagine, that I’d presented Theodora a copy of the scriptures with poisoned pages?”
The two men were walking through the inner courtyard of the Hormisdas Palace, the refuge for Theodora’s collection of religious heretics.
When John arrived at the Hormisdas, a scarred flagellant had pointed his bloody lash in the direction of Vigilius’ rooms. On his way, John had encountered Vigilius in a corridor.
They went into the courtyard to talk. The air there was slightly less malodorous than that inside the building. The stench created by hundreds of holy men, many intent on humiliating the flesh, in many cases by not washing it, was almost enough to choke John. It reminded him of the smell of a battlefield two days after the fighting ended.
“I do not believe you gave the empress poison,” John told Vigilius, not adding that in his experience the rich and powerful did not dirty their own hands.
“As I have explained, I did not visit Theodora. Why would she want to see me? She is responsible for having me detained in the city. She is the one who ordered me to stay in the Hormisdas Palace, this wretched tenement. The empress thought I betrayed her. I had more to fear from Theodora than she had to fear from me.”
The Hormisdas Palace had been home to Justinian and Theodora before the former acceded to the throne. Now it was hardly a fit abode for anyone. Over the years Theodora had given sanctuary there to the persecuted of her religious persuasion. Monophysites, who would otherwise have been exiled to the far corners of the empire or executed outright, had been granted safety there, bishops and holy beggars alike, clerics who had lived in palatial mansions and zealots who had occupied columns in all weather. The place was filled to bursting and still they came to sanctuary, like cats who knew where to find discarded scraps, thought John, noticing a dark, feline shape slinking through the weeds.
“You have a much better chance of being allowed to return to Rome with Theodora gone,” he told Vigilius. “It is a motive, and when I learned you had been a visitor to her sickroom, I could not ignore the information.”
“So-called information surely, Lord Chamberlain?”
“It appears Vesta was deceived. Who might the empress request provide spiritual comfort?”
“Menas springs to mind,” Vigilius observed.
The courtyard was an overgrown wilderness. Bronze emperors and marble philosophers lay entangled in vines and rank brush, the pedestals upon which they had stood occupied now by ragged stylites whom, John supposed, remained continuously on their low perches just as they had remained for years atop their tall columns. An enormously fat man resembling a huge toad had taken up residence in the dry basin of a crumbling fountain.
“Menas visited her only a few times,” John said. “The empress and he reconciled over the years, to an extent, for political purposes. He displaced her hand-picked favorite Anthimus in the patriarch’s palace but not in her affections. Although that was years ago.”