“Wait, Bertrada,” Hero called after her. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have spoken so hastily.”
She half turned. There was something in what he’d said about Felix, she admitted to herself. The soldier was certainly a lot older than she.
“Come inside and let me show you the improvements I’ve made to the hand. You know I’m making it only for you. A woman naturally wants a man who is whole.”
Affecting an expression of irritation, she nevertheless followed him into the workshop. “If you’re making the hand on my behalf why are you so eager to boast about it to everybody, Hero? Do you think I don’t know that everyone in the villa has seen it?” Her complaint sounded weak, even to her own ears.
“Ah, but nobody has seen the latest adjustments I’ve made to the leather straps and wires,” Hero explained. “Soon I will be able to hold you with two hands and not just one.”
The girl reddened again.
Hero looked around a cluttered work table, scowled, and walked over to an equally over-burdened shelf by the window.
“I must have put it away.” He reached for a large box set on the low shelf. “Now, it’s only in the very early stages and there are still some problems to be resolved, but wait until you see-” He hefted the box onto the workbench and then removed the lid as he spoke. As he looked down into the container his flow of words was suddenly cut off as cleanly as his arm had been severed.
“It’s gone! Setesh take the bastard who’s stolen it!” His shocked expression presented a ghastly sight as he turned toward the girl, his remaining huge fist clenched in a knot of fury.
***
Godomar tugged at the stubborn door of the low wooden cupboard beside Bertrada’s bed. He gave a harder yank and the door came partially open with a loud creak. For an instant he held his breath and listened intently. Through the open window he heard Sunilda’s faint laughter. So Bertrada was playing with the child in the garden, he thought. It was remarkable how little heed the young paid to mortality. It seemed strange that with her brother dead and her young playmate lying desperately ill the child could even laugh at all.
He eased the cupboard door open. The lone shelf held only a terra cotta lamp and a small box that investigation showed contained Bertrada’s few pieces of jewelry.
Crouched beside the bed, he peered around the room. Its whitewashed plaster walls were bare. Aside from the bed, beneath which he had discovered only dust and a baked-clay playing piece from some board game or other, its furniture consisted of a wooden stool, a storage chest holding several robes, and the small cupboard just inspected.
The same perfume that so often accompanied the young nursemaid faintly permeated the air although Godomar had not found any perfume bottles or unguent jars. He sniffed again. Calyce. It was the scent in which the lady-in-waiting habitually soaked herself. Yes, he thought sourly, she was exceptionally concerned with worldly vanities, was Calyce, and thus doubtless a bad influence upon Bertrada.
A pile of discarded clothing lay in the narrow space between bed and window. He bent over the untidy heap. Overseeing the proper upbringing of children was an onerous affair indeed. However, it was the task he had been assigned by Theodora personally and he dared not shrink from even its most distasteful aspects, such as searching a woman’s bedroom.
The odor of perfume assailed him more strongly. Gingerly he plucked up a thin linen tunica. His lips tightened as he discovered what the artfully disarranged clothes concealed.
It was a stack of codices topped by a collection of John Chrysostom’s homilies. The volumes below were much less commendable. Moving aside a history of the Goths he pushed open the leather cover of the codex lying beneath it.
He noticed first the curse inscribed within:
“May long-clawed demons rend out the eyes of whoever steals this from the library of Aulus Livius Castor”
Then he read its title. It was Ovid’s Art of Love.
His long fingers twitched as he hesitated, debating whether or not to continue. He lifted the volume and noted it fell open at a certain place, no doubt because it had been consulted often. Here was something he did not wish to know, as a decent man. Yet, however unpalatable it was, would he not be remiss if he failed to learn the precise nature of the vile error into which his charge had obviously fallen?
The verse was nearly illegible, words and whole phrases had been crossed out, others substituted between lines and in the margins. It looked as if someone had been correcting Ovid’s meter. He had no time to reflect on this before a voice interrupted him.
“Why don’t you read a few verses to me?”
Mortified at being discovered, Godomar twisted around to see Bertrada standing in the doorway.
“You’ve left Sunilda unattended!” He spoke brusquely.
“She’s with the Lord Chamberlain, Godomar. Surely you have no objection to that?”
“How dare you speak to me in that tone! Furthermore, I insist on knowing where you obtained this pagan filth.”
“Ovid? He’s the finest of poets, pagan or not. Besides, what are you doing creeping about in other people’s bedrooms?”
“The Lord will forgive your disrespect because you are as yet an uneducated child,” the prelate replied wearily. “But as for the woman whom I suspect obtained this obscenity for you, I cannot venture to say.”
“I think that poetry is beautiful. With all the awful things that have happened here lately, is it so wrong to be reminded that there are beautiful things in the world too?”
“I shall instruct a servant to return these to our neighbor immediately,” Godomar said. “In the meantime, I remind you that I am not only Sunilda’s tutor but also her guide in spiritual matters. Any reading material that enters these apartments must first be approved by me. There are enough wholesome writings to keep you occupied during your remarkable apparent idleness without the possibility of the child finding such disgusting works as this.”
Bertrada made a face. “More than enough. The church fathers wrote so much it’s a wonder they ever had time to pray. What a lot of boring old men. Is the world a better place for all their writing? Not one of them could use a sword to any great effect, I’ll wager. Or anything else, for that matter.”
“What sort of talk is that?” Godomar was horrified. “And pin up your hair, Bertrada. Why is it hanging down like that? It isn’t seemly.”
The girl patted her long, blonde hair, which was rioting past her shoulders rather than plaited in her usual style. “Some people might prefer my hair this way,” she said with a sly smile.
Godomar began to speak, then decided against it.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Bertrada told him. “She looks just like the Whore of Babylon! Isn’t that right?”
“You are obviously distraught by the tragedy that befell your charge, Bertrada. That’s entirely understandable. Nevertheless, I shall have to speak with Livia about your behavior.”
With that Godomar picked up the offending works and stalked out, hoping that Theodora would forgive him if Sunilda should innocently repeat any of her nursemaid’s blasphemous nonsense in her hearing.
He was halfway down the corridor when he met Peter. The servant seemed to have so little to do that one might have suspected the Lord Chamberlain had brought him to the estate just to give him a holiday, Godomar thought sourly.
“I was assisting in the kitchen but Master Zeno’s cook is a very insolent man, and careless to boot,” Peter explained when Godomar questioned him concerning his duties. “He refused to follow any of my suggestions and in fact just said, very rudely indeed, that I must have something more pressing to attend to elsewhere. Everyone seems eager to put me to work except my master. I am becoming weary from not having enough to do. Besides which, I find my thoughts are constantly turning to the things I see all around me. It makes me very uneasy, sir. I imagine it must give a pious man like yourself a great deal to ponder on also?”