Chapter Thirty-six
Germanus and his guards tramped noisily into the immense atrium of the building the populace referred to as the Palace of Narses. The clatter of boots on marble reverberated around the Greek statuary and multi-colored pillars, rising toward the distant vaulted ceiling from which depended golden lamps on silver chains, as numerous as the stars over the Marmara.
Narses came forward to meet Germanus. The eunuch’s own guards remained at a discreet distance, posted all around the atrium. Shrunken, bent, and bald, Narses appeared an insignificant figure before the tall, muscular general. So too did a vulture look insignificant perched on the corpse of a lion.
“Do you really need to march in here like an invading army?” Narses’ reedy voice sounded petulant. His beady gaze swept along the tracks created when the men had entered. “You could have knocked the dirt off your boots, couldn’t you?”
“Dirt has never bothered you, Narses.”
“What business do you imagine you have with me?” Narses asked.
“The captain of the excubitors tells me he has been threatened by Porphyrius.”
“If the former captain says that a former charioteer is threatening him, why do you come to me? And why would you care what transpires between those two anyway?”
“I made inquiries. Whether or not Porphyrius is out for the captain’s blood, you certainly are.”
“You speak plainly, Germanus. Should I not be on guard against those in high positions who plot against the emperor? And again, why should you be interested in this complaint? Ah, but wait, Felix is a friend of yours, isn’t he? Or should I say follower? Or ally?”
Germanus resisted rubbing his watering eyes. All around the atrium smoky tendrils from burning incense coiled up from silver urns. The air was as thick as that in the inner sanctum of an oracle. Perhaps the creature he confronted required this exotic atmosphere to survive. “If the captain of the emperor’s excubitors claims that a private person is threatening him, shouldn’t that be looked into?”
“Felix never reported the matter to the urban watch. Nor to me, although why anyone would report such threats to me…”
“Because you are close to Justinian and anything that endangers the emperor’s officials endangers the emperor. This assault-”
“It is an assault now?”
“Perhaps you’re working with Porphyrius,” Germanus said.
Narses’ vulturine eyes glistened. “Why would I? I’m not interested in racing.”
“I’m not surprised. It’s much too straightforward a contest for those like you. Perhaps you want Felix out of way for your own reasons, just because he was a friend of John’s. Or perhaps because he is, as you put it, a friend of mine.”
“I assume you mean because he was a friend of yours. It would not do your reputation any good if you were known to a close associate with a traitorous criminal.”
Germanus scanned the vast, smoky space. He could see Narses’ guards looking in his direction, no doubt meeting the gazes of his own bodyguard, exchanging silent challenges, sizing each other up. Which was why he had come here. To engage Narses, to put him on notice if he intended to work against him, in whatever way, for whatever reason, Germanus would push back hard.
Germanus said, “You mean you hope to make Felix look like a traitorous criminal to blacken my reputation enough that Justinian won’t dare appoint me to replace Belisarius.”
“So you admit it! Your ambition is to replace the heroic Belisarius!” Narses voice had grown shrill.
Germanus smiled. “Yes, I admit what everyone in the city knows and what most desire, considering the shambles Belisarius has made in Italy.”
“Granted, he has been a disappointment. But do you suppose you are the only candidate to replace him?”
“Who else could?”
“I could.”
Germanus stared down at the dwarf-like figure in disbelief. “You? You’re old enough to be my great grandfather, if you were actually a man!”
After the brief meeting had ended with nothing apparent accomplished and Germanus had returned to his home, he kept thinking in amazement about the twisted little eunuch’s ambition. He had pictured him as a vulture perched on a dead lion. Now he saw a vulture perched on the carcass of a once mighty general.
Chapter Thirty-seven
A pale figure floated silently through the dark halls at the rear of Antonina’s mansion. Now it paused beside a closed door, listening, now it peered stealthily around a corner, now it eased a door open a crack to see the dim shape of the cook’s assistant sleeping on her cot within.
Antonina’s servant Tychon, going about his nightly rounds, was certain he had heard a noise, something more than a rat in the walls or a cat prowling the gardens.
He bent down where two corridors intersected. The dim light from the guttering oil lamp in a wall niche slanted across the floor, picking out what looked like scuff marks. Tychon ran a finger across them, detecting a hint of dust.
Hadn’t the hallways been cleaned during the afternoon?
He got to his feet and stood, a pallid apparition. In the nearby rooms the rest of the staff slept. He heard the cook’s muffled cough, the sonorous snoring of the pretty little cleaning girl.
Nothing unusual.
Perhaps he had been imagining things. Even after years of working for Antonina she still frightened him, witch that she was. He much preferred the house when she was away on expeditions with Belisarius. At least Karpos was gone. Wouldn’t Antonina have liked to know how her young man had been prowling the servants’ quarters looking for a girl more his age?
It had created some problems for Tychon, but now that was all resolved, and Tychon knew how to keep his mouth shut.
He went out into the garden. Is this where the mysterious sound had emanated? Had it been the rustle of bushes heard through open windows? There was no breeze to stir the vegetation. Shrubs, trees, and flower beds were clumps of deeper darkness in the night. Over the enclosure’s high walls the night sky shone with the faint, gray luminescence from the city. The smell of roses filled the humid air, stronger at night than in the daytime.
There was nothing to see or hear. A few steps away the miniature marble pillars of Antonina’s workshop glimmered. Enough laboring, Tychon told himself, as he strode into the workshop.
Sufficient light came through the doorway for him to pick his way through the familiar room. Although outwardly it had been designed to look like a Greek temple, inside it resembled a kitchen with a long brazier and heavy wooden tables. Bottles lining shelves gave off faint glitters, captive stars. The acrid stench of the last mixture Antonina had been brewing almost overpowered the dry scents of herbs tied in bundles hanging from the ceiling and a vague, incongruous odor of incense.
Tychon knew the workshop well. Without needing to search for them, he could put his hand immediately on belladonna, equally prized for enhancing women’s eyes and disposing of enemies, or the walnut infusion favored by ladies of the court for treating blemishes of the skin. There were small pots of soothing emollients tinted and perfumed with rose petals, jars of comfrey leaves, a number of the forked roots Antonina called Circe’s plant, a jug of the elder bark purgative much disliked by the household servants, and a hundred other ingredients for nostrums and potions. He also knew where his mistress kept the excellent aged Italian wine she drank when the brazier filled the workshop with infernal heat.
He retrieved a cup he kept hidden behind empty amphorae in the bottom of a cupboard and filled it from the enormous lidded earthen jug sitting beneath a tall, narrow window at the end of the room. He would never have dared drink from any unfamiliar container from the workshop, no matter how well cleaned. Seated on a stool he could just see through the window into a black tangle of rosebushes.
He took a sip of wine. It was the sort meant for the lips of emperors. Not servants. Which was what appealed to Tychon more than the taste. To his palate it hinted at mold. The effects the wine had, on him at least, were no different than those of the near vinegar one could buy for a couple of copper coins at the lowest tavern. Did the aristocrats who imbibed such rare ambrosia as Antonina kept in stock experience some heightened form of inebriation in keeping with the cost? Tychon doubted it.