The girl hopped out of the chair and accompanied him outside, talking all the way. She was wearing a plain linen tunic that contrasted strangely with the golden comb in her dark hair.
“Bertrada says it’s my crown,” she explained, when John complimented her on her hair ornament. “That’s because I will be queen of Italy someday. But Livia contradicted her. She’s just jealous because Poppaea will never be queen even though they’re from a very old Roman family. Poppaea can be my lady-in-waiting, though. Her mother I think I will throw in the dungeons unless that would make Poppaea too sad.”
They followed the path leading through the olive grove while the girl chattered. Brilliant sunlight accentuated the dark clouds massing along the horizon as they emerged and began walking towards the shore.
“My father and my great-grandfather were kings, of course,” the girl said airily, as if everyone had royal blood. “My grandmother ruled too. Then again, I might decide to marry a general. Bertrada says she wants to marry a general. She likes that big bear Felix, you know.”
“Felix is neither a bear nor a general but an excubitor captain,” John pointed out.
“Ah, but a man can better his position in the world if he sets his mind to it, isn’t that true, Lord Chamberlain?”
John admitted that it was so, thinking that he doubted the phrase was one that the child would normally have used.
They had arrived at the beach and were strolling along it, the murmur of waves sounding hypnotically in their ears. “It will be a long time before you must concern yourself with matters of queenship, Sunilda,” he concluded.
“My father became king when he was only a boy,” she said pertly. “Bertrada has told me many stories about him.”
“I see,” John replied, positive that the nursemaid had not told Sunilda that her father had almost certainly been murdered because he was unprepared to rule at a tender age. “And your great-grandfather Theodoric grew up in Constantinople. Just think, he might have gathered shells on this very beach.”
“Yes, he might have. I’ve heard many stories about my grandmother too.”
“From Bertrada?”
“Some of them.”
A patrolling excubitor stopped to greet them. John exchanged a few words with him before he continued on his way.
“Is he searching for Barnabas as well?” Sunilda asked. “Bertrada says everyone is looking for him.”
Without waiting for a reply she ran down to the string of debris at the high water line that delineated the disputed border between the kingdoms of land and sea.
It occurred to John as he followed a few paces behind that he could barely remember being eight. Of his own daughter at the same age-the child conceived before his terrible fate-he knew nothing. His only meeting with her had lasted just long enough to open an aching wound of a sort he would never have thought he could suffer, one that still caused him pain.
Would Europa have been so wise beyond her years at that age? Or at least grown so skilled at repeating the words and sentiments of her elders as to give an appearance of wisdom?
“Oh! It’s horrible! Quickly, Lord Chamberlain! I’ve found a monster!”
The girl’s shrill cry brought John to investigate the thing she was prodding with a piece of driftwood. The dark lump was partly concealed by seaweed; from it the ends of several appendages protruded like fingertips. Another prod revealed them to be not fingers but rather half-decayed tentacles.
“It’s just a sea creature, Sunilda, something your friend Porphyrio would have for his evening meal.”
“Porphyrio isn’t here today or he would have come to shore to meet me,” the girl said confidently, throwing the piece of driftwood into the sea.
John looked out over the choppy water. There was nothing to see but rapidly advancing thunderclouds and the jagged peaks of the island.
“We’ll have to cut our walk short,” John told her. “The storm will be here soon.”
“But I wanted to visit the goats’ shrine,” the girl complained petulantly.
“There isn’t going to be time.” John gently took the child’s hand. She pulled it away.
“I must visit the goats’ shrine,” she said in a louder voice.
Powerful as he was, the Lord Chamberlain was not accustomed to giving orders to children, an action even the poorest peasants took for granted. Apart from his absent daughter, the only child he knew was Zoe and she was always perfectly quiet and attentive on his study wall. Well, there were also the court pages, he reminded himself, but those painted and powdered creatures could hardly be classified as children, young though they were.
“We’ll walk down to the shrine for a very quick visit, Sunilda, but you must answer a question on the way.”
“Is it about my brother?”
John indicated gently that it was.
“Let’s not talk about that,” she replied firmly.
“I am sorry but we must,” John replied softly. “I want you to tell me what you remember about the night your brother had his accident.”
“Bertrada put us to bed early. I went to sleep. I don’t know when Gadaric went out. I’ve told you all this already.” With that she was off, running, the sticks of her bare legs flashing beneath her tunic.
John strode rapidly after her. A cold, isolated drop of rain landed on his face. The downpour would soon arrive. They would have to hurry.
When he reached the shrine Sunilda was standing on tiptoe, peering into the bowl set into the pedestal. John ducked in to see what she was staring at with such interest.
“Someone left a question for the goats.” A few burnt scraps of parchment lay at the bottom of the deep bowl. The girl poked at them. “I wonder what it said?”
“Only the person who left it and the goats who answered know exactly what it was,” John told her.
“I’ll ask Minthe about it next time I see her,” the girl said thoughtfully.
John refrained from commenting on the perils of superstitious belief. Godomar was surely better qualified than he to offer that sort of guidance. He felt relieved that the girl’s gloomy tutor had not observed her interest in the shrine.
Sunilda grabbed John’s hand. “Let’s go and visit Minthe right now!”
The light was fading quickly, as if torches were being extinguished one after the other along a long hallway. The wind was rising ahead of the fast approaching storm, blowing sea spray into the shrine.
“We don’t have time now, Sunilda.” John led the girl back up the gentle slope to the road. As they went toward the villa, there was a clap of thunder.
They increased their pace, passing Minthe’s strange house, and proceeded quickly on up the road as repeated drum-rolls of thunder grew closer. Then a dazzling bolt of lightning struck the greenish-gray sea. John’s ears rang. Another deafening peal drowned out Sunilda’s shout.
“…over there.” She gestured excitedly. They had reached a spot where the high ground extended a blunt finger out toward the beach, ending in a steep hill rather than the cliffs that lay further up the road. A stone hut was barely visible at the seaward end of a path leading across the promontory. Lightning forked over the sea again, followed almost immediately by the concussion of thunder.
“Very well,” John agreed.
Sunilda jerked her hand free of his grasp and ran ahead. John followed her down the path, through the weedy garden behind the hut and past an overturned rowboat sitting beside it. They arrived at the hut’s rough plank door just as the heavens opened and sea and sky were lost in a waterfall of water.
John stepped warily forward, hand on the blade at his belt.
“Don’t worry, Lord Chamberlain. I know Paul very well,” the girl assured him. “He’ll be glad to see us.”
The room they entered was empty, pungent with the mingled odors of garlic, onions and cheese.
Rain thrummed loudly on the roof. The shutter covering the small building’s single window banged back and forth as the wind dashed its fury against it. John looked out into shifting, translucent sheets of water. It was the view one might have from the mouth of a whale, he thought uneasily.