Even as he worked in his comfortable post on Castor’s estate, Briarus had waited for a better opportunity to present itself. So when disaster fell upon him and the excubitors had marched him off to this soft but secure room, he had simply gone on waiting, certain that one of the hours still between him and Justinian’s dungeons would offer him the chance he needed to escape.
Nevertheless, being locked in the cramped room was burdensome. Aside from the bed and a small wooden table, there were only a clay lamp, a religious tract, and a chamber pot whose necessary use had rendered his surroundings somewhat malodorous. He intended to complain about that at the next opportunity, but unfortunately the Lord Chamberlain had not appeared to question him again.
Not that Briarus would have anything more to say about the matter, having immediately pointed out the noticeable lack of proof of any misdoing on his part. Unfortunately, he knew very well that this undisputed fact would not be something he could turn to his advantage once he was escorted to the palace.
Now the night was well advanced. Briarus fingered the tract but made no effort to read it. At this point he was more intent at avoiding eternity than in preparing for it.
During the day, listening occasionally at the door, he had overheard a man berating someone of the household for a dalliance and, later on, his guard sharing scurrilous jokes about the empress with someone with a booming laugh. Swift, light footsteps had run past once or twice, accompanied by childish laughter. He had eavesdropped on grumbling about the heat and learned that someone in the house liked to sing hymns, although unhappily in a dreadful, tuneless manner. Nothing that he had heard seemed useful in resolving his current dilemma.
Now as he sat quietly pondering the situation he heard a footsteps outside. They sounded almost too quiet. Stealthy, in fact. He padded over to the door and listened intently.
There was no sound of a key being turned but rather an odd scratching. Something was scrabbling at the wall outside.
Then Briarus smelled lamp oil, its light odor hitherto masked by the stench from the chamber pot.
Looking down, he saw that a stream of lamp oil had run in under the door and was rapidly soaking into the carpet.
He reacted quickly, reaching down to pull it away from the oil before it became saturated.
It was too late.
His hand closed on flames as a rivulet of fire raced into the room.
He grabbed the chamber pot and threw its contents over the carpet but it had no effect. The glowing fire spread rapidly across the floor as Briarus began to shout hoarsely, pounding at the door.
A wave of heat washed against his back. Turning, he saw the bed was catching fire.
Streamers of flame crackled up the wall hanging. Briarus opened his mouth to yell again and heated air poured down his throat like boiling water. Smoke filled his lungs.
Coughing and cursing, he kicked at the door frantically. Surely he would be heard and help would arrive. Where was his guard?
He screamed louder, choking on the swirling smoke.
Briarus was still waiting to be rescued when he lost consciousness and fell to the blazing floor.
Chapter Twenty
John raced across the atrium toward the sound of hoarse shouting and arrived at Briarus’s temporary quarters to find Felix wielding an axe powerfully against its door. Splinters flew, then the onlookers were assaulted by a gust of scorching air carrying whirling sparks and a cloud of thick smoke out into the corridor.
Coughing convulsively, Felix pulled a body away from inside the room and the flames licking around the doorpost. He bent over the limp figure and gave a grim shake of his head.
“Suffocated,” he growled to John.
Several servants rapidly formed a line and passed slopping buckets filled with water from the courtyard fountain hand to hand. The threat of fire had spurred Zeno’s generally lackadaisical staff to efficient action. Unfortunately the buckets of water simply vanished into the room to produce clouds of hissing steam with no apparent effect upon the conflagration. A large scrap of flaming wall hanging whirled out of the smoke and landed in the corridor. Felix leapt forward and stamped the flames out, accompanying his heavy-booted dance with lurid curses.
Suddenly a noise like distant thunder rose over the crackling roar of the flames. Heat and smoke were forcing the men further away from the room as Zeno trotted briskly into view, closely followed by two husky servants pulling a cart carrying a deep wooden vat. The cart rumbled to a stop and at Zeno’s order the two men sprang onto raised steps attached to each side of the cart and began vigorously working the narrow beam linking a pair of rods extending up from inside the vat.
It was a large water pump, John realized.
Zeno rushed to the front of the device and grasped the leather pipe protruding from its base. As the pumpers strained at the beam there was a clunking, wheezing noise as pistons started to do their work. Suddenly water gouted out of the pipe with enormous force.
Zeno directed the powerful stream first at the walls of the burning room, then into its corners, soon smothering the worst of the flames. Before long the bucket carriers were able to assume their work and eventually advance into the room to douse the smoldering remnants.
Zeno bustled over to John with a proud smile. “It’s Hero’s work, of course. A wonder, isn’t it? A real life saver.”
“It didn’t save Briarus’s life,” Felix pointed out, “although it’s certainly prevented the villa from going up in flames. Fortunately, the fire hadn’t got into the walls.”
Zeno looked stricken. “Castor will be devastated at this news,” he said somberly. “He absolutely depended on the man, you know. Briarus was a good businessman and an excellent employee by all accounts. Yet a despicable villain too, as it turned out! Dare I say that it’s only fitting that the gods gave someone who murdered a child such a terrible death?”
“We haven’t definitely established that Briarus was the culprit,” John reminded him.
“Well, John,” Felix put in, “I have to say that if you’d taken my advice and sent both prisoners immediately to Constantinople, we would have had a chance to find out the truth of the matter. As it is, how are you going to explain this latest development to Theodora’s satisfaction?”
Zeno blanched at the mention of the empress and observed in a timid voice that he trusted that there would be no repercussions over what was, in all truth, merely a terrible accident.
Felix grunted. “An accident? When one conspirator dies hours after the other is set free?”
John requested that a servant be sent to summon the Egyptian inventor for further questioning and that the rest be dismissed to their beds.
Likewise, the excubitors were ordered back to their duties with the exception of the man who had been on guard in the corridor.
“You were obviously not at your post when this fire broke out!” Felix barked at the latter. “Otherwise the alarm could have been given earlier. Where were you?”
“There was a suspicious noise in the back courtyard, captain. Since the prisoner was securely locked in, I went to investigate. I discovered that the statue of Eros was knocked over and its arm was smashed.”
“That statue was a gift from a close relative,” remarked Zeno. “The lady is deceased now, alas, so she won’t mourn its loss.”
“How long were you absent?” John asked the guard.
“There was someone moving about in the bushes so I searched them for a brief while, excellency, before returning to my post and immediately raising the alarm.”
Felix scowled. It was obvious that a lot more would be said to his subordinate once the two men were in private. Meanwhile, he curtly dismissed the excubitor, who escaped thankfully down the corridor in the footsteps of the servants departing with their buckets.