Calyce looked dubious. “Gaius? You mean the palace physician? I was there when he examined the girl. He was full of talk about an excess of yellow bile. Apply cold compresses, he told us, and meantime if her condition worsens, we are to summon him again. Yet how long has she slept now? And we are merely to apply cold compresses! I think it is past time we sought a physician’s help again. Preferably a different one.”
“Poppaea still sleeps, but her condition has not worsened. Gaius did not think it would. He does have some experience in treating the effects of poison, Calyce. In fact, he told me that in this particular case, Poppaea’s youth will serve her recovery better than any treatment he-or any physician-could administer.”
Calyce gave a sniff of disdain. They walked in silence for a while. “And when will Anatolius be returning?” Calyce finally asked.
“Soon, I’d think. Tell me, Calyce, is Bertrada trustworthy?”
“Trustworthy? Certainly. A bit flighty, perhaps, but she is young. She has handled the twins very well. They were a difficult pair of children, Sunilda in particular. She seems to live in a world of her own invention.”
“I’ve noticed that. Could it be due to Bertrada’s influence in some way?”
“Oh no, excellency. My only concern for Bertrada, although really it’s none of my business, well…I shouldn’t say.”
“What is it that worries you?” John prompted her.
“Well, it’s this inexplicable fancy she’s taken to the excubitor captain, Felix.”
***
As Felix approached a bend in the flagstone path he detected the sound of running. He drew his sword as he looked keenly around.
Despite the light remaining in the sky, dusk had already settled under the surrounding shrubbery and insects had begun their discordant night songs.
A small form crashed through the bushes. Felix leapt back, raising his sword. Then he himself looked down at Sunilda, who returned his surprised stare with a wide grin.
The girl uttered a piercing shriek and then bolted away down the path behind Felix just as John strolled around the bend after her. He seemed remarkably untroubled by his charge’s flight. Turning to look after the child Felix saw the reason for the Lord Chamberlain’s unconcern. Bertrada was approaching.
Sunilda raced to her nursemaid’s side and clung to her tunic, hopping up and down and looking over her shoulder in mock terror.
“It’s a bear,” she cried. “Help! Help! A big bear’s going to get me.” She began screaming again but the screams dissolved into laughter.
Bertrada leaned over. Her blonde hair swung down fetchingly as she put her slim arms around the girl. “Oh, my! You’re right!” she smiled. “But he’s such a handsome beast, don’t you think? He won’t harm us. See, he’s putting away his sword. Why, we might even be able to lure him home and keep him for a pet.”
Sunilda giggled. Felix felt his mouth go dry. He stood speechless, tugging at his beard.
“It’s a pity you don’t have any honey, Bertrada,” John smiled. “You could have lured that bear away with it! Still, Sunilda and I have had a fine walk.”
“Yes, we talked the whole way,” the girl said, suddenly solemn.
The nursemaid wondered what topic could have occupied them for so long.
“Philosophy,” Sunilda told her.
The two men looked after Bertrada and her small companion as they vanished along the shadowy path toward the villa. Felix wished now he had not confessed to John how much Bertrada reminded him of Berta. The Lord Chamberlain did not say much, however, but merely stared thoughtfully into the thickening shadows and then, after a word of encouragement, left Felix to complete his patrol and departed down the path himself.
Felix continued through the darkening garden. As he marched along, he turned his bushy-haired head this way and that in a semblance of alertness, but in fact King Khosrow could have led half of the Persian army past under his nose and would still have remained undetected. No matter how much he tried, Felix could not put Bertrada out of his mind. He muttered a curse or two and then began tunelessly humming a marching song.
The figure appeared before him as silently as an apparition, a glowing vision set against a dark background of shrubs. And as impossible as it seemed, she was completely naked. Her form was more perfect than Felix could ever have imagined.
It was also sculpted in marble, he realized, even as he felt his heart jump like a rabbit in a snare.
All the same, as he passed by the statue he couldn’t help but touch her reassuringly cool hip. The ancient Greek artist had certainly done a remarkable job, he told himself, although the effect had been aided more than somewhat by his, Felix’s, unrestrained imaginings.
And his imaginings now turned to other matters.
Felix felt uneasy. Who or what threatened the little girl? As commander of the men guarding the palace, he was accustomed to shadowy enemies that could not be confronted directly and honorably on a field of battle, but in this instance the enemy seemed even more nebulous, not to say ludicrous. He and his men had been dispatched to secure an estate against a venomous dwarf who seemed invisible, able to come and go at will. How would his next attack materialize? By poisoning the entire household? Or letting loose another mechanical device to wreak mayhem?
Felix turned and began to march back along the path. He had gone only a few paces when he spotted the second figure moving across the garden. For an instant he wondered if it was his overactive imagination at work but at the crack of a dry twig as the figure stepped forward, Felix knew this was not a vision.
Barnabas!
He sprinted toward the intruder.
Then he realized that the figure was not as short as the mime but rather more the height of the nursemaid who had been tormenting his thoughts until recollection of the accursed dwarf had driven her out of them.
The figure had long, light-colored hair.
It was Bertrada.
Running swiftly up, he lightly grabbed her arm to turn her around. “Bertrada, you shouldn’t be out here alone! You know it’s dangerous!”
The face that turned up toward his was wrinkled. The light hair was not blonde, but rather silver.
“My name is Minthe,” the woman informed him with quiet dignity.
***
Calyce was waiting at the back of the villa as Minthe had said. The herbalist had scorched Felix’s ears on the way there. Didn’t he know she would be treating Poppaea?
Felix had quickly regained his senses. “But if you’re going to be healing the girl, why do you have to come skulking in like this, not to mention in the dark?” he asked shrewdly.
“Poppaea’s mother has expressed some misgivings about the origin of Minthe’s skills,” Calyce explained. “So we thought this would be the best way.”
Minthe was blunter. “The truth, Captain Felix, is that if she knew I was here, Livia would not allow me to set foot in the poor child’s room. Yet it is my potions that will bring her daughter back to full health. I’ve come to see how she’s doing. She will be awake soon, and there are certain mixtures to be prepared for her.”
“Livia is distraught and hardly knows what she is saying right now. She’ll be grateful to you in the end, you’ll see,” Calyce assured the woman.
Felix’s orders from Justinian had not included instructions concerning dealings with Theodora’s ladies-in-waiting. After their brief discussion and reassured that Minthe was expected, Felix allowed them to go inside, glad to see them go. Glad to be entirely free of women, young, old and in-between for a while, he thought wearily.
The torches set in brackets by the villa door sputtered and flared. Something brushed his cheek, as lightly as a memory. It was a moth, now circling one of the torches, its fluttering shadow on the wall looking larger than a bird’s.
A vision of Bertrada returned, painfully, to flutter in his mind’s eye. No, what was he thinking, he scolded himself. The well-loved face smiling in his memory was Berta’s.