Peter looked alarmed. “My apologies, mistress, but I am not certain such an act would be a Christian thing for me to do.”
“We don’t have time to learn magick,” John added.
“That’s so,” Cornelia admitted. “What about a bit of play-acting? We sometimes did that, you’ll recall, and you could easily-”
John raised his hand imperiously. “Cornelia, I’m not a performer.”
“How can you say that? You take part in all those elaborate processionals to the Great Church and the Hippodrome and other such tedious ceremonies without looking bored. Of course you can act!”
***
“I am Empress Theodora, and I demand you fetch the Lord Chamberlain immediately! There is an extremely delicate problem of great urgency that requires his immediate attention!”
The visibly trembling old man thus addressed bowed obsequiously and scuttled off.
The imperial speaker peered up toward the tip of the obelisk beside which she stood, and slowly stroked the monument’s warm sandstone. “I’m glad to see Egypt, and it seems Egypt is glad to see me.”
A few onlookers guffawed. Cornelia adjusted her crown, which John had cut from a dried melon rind. Although she spoke Coptic nearly as fluently as John, she had chosen to speak in Greek, realizing that in this part of Alexandria, so near to the docks, most passersby would speak that language.
“Now that I’ve traveled all the way from Constantinople,” she continued, “what would my loyal subjects like to hear about? My charitable works on behalf of former prostitutes? Or would you prefer I relate my theological discussions with the Patriarch?”
“Tell us about the chickens and the grain,” someone yelled.
Peter, playing the empress’ aged servant, had returned and now held his hand up to the side of his mouth and addressed the growing audience in a loud whisper. “Don’t insult the empress by mentioning her past indiscretions! She’s a good Christian now, you know.”
Then, his orthodoxy offended by the line he had spoken, he added, “Even if she does believe the monophysite heresy that Christ has not two natures, but only one, and that fully divine.”
“We all agree with the empress here, old man,” retorted one of the now considerably larger crowd.
“And knowing Theodora, if He really had two natures she’d bed them both,” offered another.
A flurry of other remarks followed.
“How many bishops has she got hidden in the Hormisdas Palace now?”
“At least she claims they’re bishops…”
“I wonder what kind of services they offer her?”
Peter covered his ears in horror.
The shouted demand came again. “Tell us about the chickens and the grain, empress!”
Cornelia stamped her foot. “It’s always that wretched matter! Do you really believe that in my youth I would strip off my garments, lie on the ground, and allow chickens to peck grain from my private parts? I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Peter stood silently by, until he noticed Cornelia glaring at him. “Ah…” he muttered, “…er…Highness, I just heard the chickens…ah…talking.”
“Talking chickens?” Cornelia clapped her hands. “This is truly a miracle! And what did these remarkable fowl say?”
“Dinner’s on the empress!”
This brought forth coarse laughs and applause.
“Highness, here is the Lord Chamberlain!”
The crowd began to titter as a tall, thin figure in a tattered tunic approached with obvious reluctance from behind the obelisk.
A few wits continued to add their comments to the performance.
“If that’s a Lord Chamberlain I’m a pharaoh.”
“What cave did you drag him out of?”
“In Constantinople they starve their Lord Chamberlains and dress them in rags, didn’t you know?”
“What is this most urgent problem, highness?” asked John.
“A most intimate matter, Lord Chamberlain. It concerns the emperor’s heir. I wish you to arrange for the child to be presented to the court with appropriate ceremony.”
“Heir? But surely everyone knows there can be no heir?”
Cornelia gave John an exaggerated scowl. “I do not understand your meaning. Make yourself clearer immediately.”
“Highness, everyone knows the emperor is not a man, but a faceless demon and therefore incapable of siring children in the usual fashion.”
“True,” Cornelia purred, giving the obelisk a tickle, “but I am an unusual woman. Servant, bring the imperial infant here at once.”
Peter bowed and presented his satchel to Cornelia. She pulled out a diminutive figure wrapped in what might have been swaddling clothes, but when she held it aloft the withered, whiskered face of Cheops the mummified cat glared reproachfully at the audience.
The first coins landed beside John’s boots.
Chapter Twelve
Anatolius stopped halfway up the steep incline. He bent over and stood, staring down at his boots and catching his breath. His destination, the house of Senator Symacchus, sat atop the ridge overlooking the Golden Horn. It was all but invisible from below, hidden by apartment buildings, warehouses, workshops, and bakeries piled in a jumble of brick and mortar along the hillside.
After his heart stopped pounding, Anatolius took a deep inhalation and continued the climb. He cut from one precipitous street to another, navigating by the only part of the senator’s dwelling he could see-the monumental rooftop cross that towered above everything else.
Except for this ostentatious declaration of religious belief, the late senator’s home turned out to be as modest as many of its neighbors. The unremarkable brick facade offered no clue to the high status of its departed owner.
At Anatolius’ rap, the sturdy door opened a crack.
“Can I help you, sir?” A wan face peeped out.
“I’ve come from the palace on a matter of business.”
There was movement behind the narrow gap, a chain rattled, and the door swung open. “If you have an appointment with the senator, I fear he will not be able to see you.” The deep voice didn’t match the young man’s slight frame.
“I’m aware of your master’s tragic passing. I’m investigating the matter.”
The young man gestured Anatolius into a long, dim vestibule and shut the door. “From the palace, sir? For a heartbeat I was afraid…but never mind. One has to be very careful these days, and of course with the senator so recently departed…”
The servant’s boyish face was exceptionally pale and framed by long fair curls. He looked familiar but Anatolius couldn’t recall any previous meeting.
“I will be reporting to the captain of the excubitors,” Anatolius said, truthfully. “I wish to ask the servants a few questions, in case they can shed light on this recent tragedy. And you are…?”
“My name is Diomedes. As to whether I can help, I will try, but I was merely the senator’s reader.”
Diomedes led the way into the atrium. The spotless black and white floor echoed similar tiles lining the ornamental pool gracing the airy space. A cross hung on a whitewashed wall, while an alabaster statuette of a crocodile displayed on a pedestal looked strangely at odds with the general impression of stark Christianity.
Light spilled down from the compluvium and through the open entrance to an inner garden, visible beyond an austere office.
The light accentuated the heavy powder on the young man’s face. Anatolius now remembered where he’d seen the servant before. It was in the halls of the Great Palace a few years earlier, among the band of similarly made-up and ubiquitous court pages.
Now, however, Diomedes was too old to serve as a decorative object.
“First, I wish to talk to the senator’s head servant,” Anatolius said.
“Achilles? I fear he is not here.”
A faint smell of herbs and flowers filtered into the atrium.
“Then we shall talk in the garden.”
Anatolius selected a bench shaded by a stunted fig tree. The location had the benefit of keeping their conversation private as well as allowing it to be conducted out of sight of most of the crosses sprouting from flower beds set around the edge of the green, quiet space.