“What is it?” John asked in an undertone.
“Nothing, excellency, nothing. I’m just sorry I arrived too late to help save that poor creature from flinging herself into the sea. Although to tell the truth, I imagined that I saw the girl…but no, my eyes are old and dim and surely I was mistaken. Now, thank the Lord, we can forget this terrible nightmare. It is surely ended now.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Choppy waves rocked the boat as it carried Paul, John, and Sunilda back to the mainland. The girl seemed to have recovered with remarkable rapidity from her ordeal and showed them where the boat that had brought Minthe and herself to the island had been hidden.
John did not voice his thought that for Minthe to navigate the dangerous strait between land and island during a thick fog indicated how pressing she considered the mission to be accomplished. The effort must have cost her enough to allow Barnabas to scale the cliff before she and Sunilda could make the climb to its brink. And he, too, and Paul, had risked all in the same mad crossing.
Now the girl was talking of her friendship with Minthe. The men remained silent as she poured out her love for a woman who had treated her as her own child and was now gone forever.
“She has gone to join Gadaric,” she insisted. “You shouldn’t have stopped me following her, Barnabas. And as for you, Lord Chamberlain, I am not at all pleased with your interference.”
John was silent, intent on rowing.
“You see,” the girl went on, “Minthe was the only one who really cared about me. She was very clever, too.”
It was not what Sunilda had said about the woman a short while ago. The girl was, John thought, already constructing a much more pleasing reality for herself. He also sensed that once they reached land, Sunilda would never again speak of the lost woman, so he took his opportunity to inquire how the seemingly magick abduction had been accomplished.
“It was easily done,” the girl replied with a slight smile. “Minthe gave me a sleeping potion to put in Bertrada’s wine. Then I knocked over a stool, threw the bedclothes around, and crept away into the fog without any of the other servants even noticing me leaving.” She finished and sat staring silently at her feet, her face as blank as a block of stone waiting for the chisel.
The journey seemed to John to take much less time than their voyage to the island. The tide must be on the turn, he thought, assisting their passage. Paul, who already looked uneasy at being carried along by the labor of one so highly placed as John, looked more and more disturbed the faster the small boat cut through the water.
“It’s not natural,” he muttered at last. “The current’s all wrong.”
John, concentrating on getting back to solid ground as quickly as possible, did not mention his gratitude for the sea’s assistance in his task, replacing the whale.
As they approached the shore, he could see knots of villagers still clustered on the headland despite the fact that the ceremony had ended. Doubtless they were waiting for Theodora to withdraw to the villa, signaling permission for them to return to the village. Godomar’s service would have concluded by now. John wondered if Peter had found it at all enlightening.
Although from his viewpoint most of the coast road was blanketed with trees and bushes, John’s eye was caught by movement half concealed by the vegetation. He had the impression of a group of people moving purposely toward the headland.
Then his attention was diverted by a thump against the side of their boat. Sunilda let out a brief shriek.
Looking down into the water John saw what it was-the half deflated leather ball that formed the head of the straw man. Seawater had made its painted features run into a leer. The rest of its body was nowhere to be seen.
“Look!” Sunilda pointed up at the looming headland as the keel finally grated on shore nearby. “Bertrada’s waiting for me.”
The faint sound of bells came to their ears. It was very strange, John thought, because they sounded exactly like the ones suspended from Theodora’s litter which, he could clearly see, still sat on the headland. Furthermore, there was no breeze.
In fact, the air had become preternaturally still.
Paul made his religion’s holy sign as he stared out toward the island.
“The goats…” Paul muttered, his superstitious fears seemingly undiminished by his discovery of the creatures’ true nature.
John now realized what he could not have noticed while surrounded by the murmur of the sea and the creaking of the oars. No birds were singing to welcome the dawn.
Sunilda leapt out of the boat and started up the path to the headland, calling out to Bertrada.
John stepped quickly out to follow her, relieved to be standing on solid ground once more.
Except that the ground was trembling slightly and the bells on the empress’ litter were jangling even louder.
John started after Sunilda as, on the headland above, a raw-boned young man with straggling hair leapt onto the seat of the cart carrying Hero’s mechanical musicians.
“The prelate is right. It’s these accursed figures!” the man shouted. “They must be destroyed before a disaster happens!”
There seemed to be a great many people gathered on the headland, more than John had noticed while rowing back. He could distinguish one familiar form, taller than the rest.
John recalled the group he had glimpsed moving up the coast road. Had Godomar decided to lead his congregation forth to do battle with the evils he had railed against?
A grinding roar suddenly filled the air, whether from the mob or from the stronger shaking of the ground or both John could not say.
A familiar voice rose above the clamor. It was Felix, barking orders to his men. A phalanx of excubitors immediately picked up Theodora’s litter and moved swiftly away from the precipice.
The ground shook sluggishly again. The excubitors swayed like drunkards. John saw Livia running beside Theodora’s litter, dragging an hysterical Poppaea. Bertrada, weeping, trotted behind them, accompanied by a perfectly composed Sunilda.
Even so, the child was still John’s responsibility, especially now that Felix was otherwise occupied. John looked around, quickly gauging the situation, and then back toward Bertrada and her charge.
But they had vanished in the general confusion. For now he would have to trust the nursemaid’s good sense. He had no other choice.
“These ceremonies are blasphemous. The Lord is displeased!” the young Jeremiah was telling everyone in a voice rivaling that of Godomar.
By the time John arrived on the headland Zeno was struggling feebly with the young man on the cart while Felix and his remaining excubitors expertly herded the screaming crowd away from the headland.
“We must destroy these machines of Satan!” the malcontent shrieked. He shoved Zeno down, seized one of the lyre-players and began dragging it towards the precipice.
A few steps more and then he had tipped the automaton over. A moaning noise drifted up as the strings of the falling lyre vibrated with the swift passage of air through them on the way down to the sea. The automaton’s companions soon followed.
John glanced around rapidly. The panicked crowd forced back by Felix and his men was streaming back toward the village, although several had left the main mass and were running through the olive grove. More than a few had fallen in their haste.
“Have you seen Sunilda?” John shouted at Zeno as he helped him up.
“They ran away towards the villa, John,” Zeno gasped, looking dazed and as pale as a lily. John made his way there as quickly as he could. As he approached, he could see cracks had opened in its façade. Part of the colonnade had collapsed. Amid shouting and lurid curses, villagers were rushing in and out.
Two red-faced men appeared, dragging the serpent-slayer automaton by its feet. Its head was missing but it blindly and repeatedly shot an arrow that had long since flown elsewhere.