A red-eyed and trembling Bertrada met them in Sunilda’s room. She looked desperately toward Felix for an instant but the excubitor captain avoided her glance.
Perhaps he did not dare offer her the comforting words she sought-at least not in front of John.
John asked her bluntly how she could have allowed Sunilda out of her sight. “We have had this conversation before, Bertrada,” he added. “I hope the answer you give is not going to be the same as the one you gave last time.”
He glanced at Felix, who had reddened above his bristling beard.
“You offend me mightily, John,” his friend snapped. “Do you think I can’t separate pleasure from duty?”
“Usually I trust your judgment implicitly, Felix, but there seems to be some sort of malign enchantment over this entire estate. I’m not certain I can be sure of anything right now.”
“You can be absolutely certain that neither Bertrada nor I have neglected our duties. Tell the Lord Chamberlain what you told me, Bertrada.”
Bertrada nervously ran her hand through her disheveled blonde hair.
“Go on,” Felix prompted her irritably.
“But it all sounds so unbelievable. You see, Lord Chamberlain, what happened was that an intruder broke in and carried her off.”
“And what did this intruder look like?” John asked patiently.
Bertrada shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Surely you saw whoever took the girl? Are you saying you didn’t get even a glimpse?”
Bertrada blinked back tears. “Sunilda insisted we stay indoors because of the awful fog, Lord Chamberlain. She said she did not feel too well and indeed she looked rather pale. She stayed in her room and I lay down to rest for a while. I fell asleep and when I woke up, she was gone. There was evidence of a struggle.” She put her face in her hands and began to sob.
Felix stepped toward the girl and put an arm around her shaking shoulders. “That’s all she’s able to tell you, John. I’ve already questioned her at great length.”
“Zeno’s estate seems to have become more dangerous than Constantinople’s worst alleyways.” John glared. “We’ll have to discuss this further, Felix.”
He had a sudden vision of Sunilda, chatting away happily as they walked along the beach, and the boulder in his chest shifted painfully, almost cutting off his breath.
“We’ll find her,” Felix said grimly.
“Just as we’ve managed to find Barnabas?”
***
Like giant fireflies, bobbing torches spread out from the villa into the night. An owl flying overhead would have observed bright patterns form and reform as groups of excubitors combed the garden, crashing through shrubbery and spinneys, trampling on the flower beds and through the olive grove, meeting now and then in clusters of torchlight to consult each other on where next to proceed in their futile search.
Zeno flapped back and forth among them, an anxious orange-plumed bird bearing constant reports back to Theodora who, with her ladies-in-waiting, occupied the villa’s main reception room.
After another fruitless foray and a quick word with Felix, who was standing on the colonnade directing operations, Zeno returned to the large room to find Theodora sitting by a window looking out into the night. The pearls along the hem of her robe mirrored the color of the pale moon rising above the dark, twisted mass of the olive grove.
She turned to look at her host. With a sinking heart, Zeno noted that although the empress’ perfectly made-up face was in repose and her hands were folded quietly on her lap, one small purple-shod foot was tapping impatiently.
“Highness,” Zeno began, suddenly realizing there were three ladies-in-waiting in the room and valiantly trying to suppress hysterical laughter at the notion, “Captain Felix has directed his men to spread out along the coast road and search the shore and the village while my servants continue to criss-cross the estate. I’m certain that we’ll soon find the girl.” His voice trailed off.
Calyce directed a wan, encouraging smile at the elderly man but Livia, seated beside her on the red upholstered couch, merely glared venomously. Whether she was angry with him in particular or at the prospect of being kept up in attendance on the empress all night, Zeno could not surmise. Nor did he particularly care at that instant about the opinion of anyone in the room other than that of the empress.
“It would be best if the girl were found sooner rather than later,” Theodora said in a voice as cold and smooth as the snow that occasionally fell in the hills. “For everyone’s sake, but for yours and the Lord Chamberlain’s in particular.” She looked out into the darkness again. “I am not pleased with his dereliction of duty.”
Zeno’s heart sank into his boots. “Highness, the entire blame cannot be laid on the Lord Chamberlain’s shoulders-” He stopped at a quick gesture of warning from Calyce. “That is to say,” he continued hastily, “it may be that Sunilda is merely hiding somewhere, playing some silly childish game, rather than some harm has come to her.”
“Yes, that’s true, Zeno,” Theodora said. “But little girls do not inconvenience empresses and when she is finally found, we will make certain that she remembers that in future. However, beyond that I intend to personally request the emperor to ensure that the Lord Chamberlain will not have the opportunity to fail in his duties again.”
The other two women blanched. Zeno began to feel nauseated.
“And in order that the emperor will not be forced to suffer further embarrassment,” Theodora went on, “naturally I shall recommend that his solution be a permanent one, which is to say that the Lord Chamberlain and his head should part company as soon as possible.”
To Zeno the air in the room was suddenly, unbearably hot. He felt a wave of giddiness and looked at the floor. He knew the empress and Lord Chamberlain had been at cross purposes many times but he had always thought that John would remain immune from her enmity because he was so much in the emperor’s favor. But it had hardly been two decades since another eunuch Lord Chamberlain, Amantius, had been put to death by Justin, Justinian’s predecessor, for his alleged designs on the throne. And many of his associates had suffered as well. Zeno remembered those events well. He forced himself to look up and saw a smile curving Theodora’s thin scarlet mouth into a sickle that matched the rising moon, a sickle hanging uncomfortably close over his head as well as John’s.
***
John made his way quickly along the twisting garden path. He reasoned that Sunilda might well have taken a familiar route if she had decided to play a joke on everyone and so he was retracing the route he and his young charge often followed during their walks. It looked different at night, with thick vegetation reduced to solid walls of darkness receding from the flaring light of his torch. Of all the flowers that brightened and sweetened the daylight hours, only a few light-colored blooms could be picked out, glowing with a uniform whiteness from the scanty moonlight.
More than anything else John noticed the quiet. Instead of Sunilda’s constant chatter flowing like a river in his ears, there was only the sound of his footsteps, his breathing, the slight susurration of his robe as it brushed past twigs encroaching on the path.
“Sunilda!” He called again but there was no answer. Would he, or anyone else, ever hear her voice again?
He continued at a brisk pace, half-hoping to see her sitting on the marble bench where they often paused for a while or beside the fountain where she invariably insisted on throwing a pebble into the water. The visions of her in all these places leapt so vividly from his memory that when he turned this corner and that to find only shadows, her absence seemed all the more foreboding.
He returned to where Felix was stationed. The captain had a grim reply to John’s inquiry about the progress of the search. While his excubitors could be relied upon to conduct it diligently, he pointed out, it was now almost certainly too late.