“Belisarius has finally won his way in Ravenna,” he told Castor, “but as yet there’s been no indication that Justinian plans to put Sunilda forward as Theodoric’s heir.”
“Perhaps his plans are more subtle than that?”
They sat in silence for a while, sipping their wine. A gust of the rising wind rattled the shutters.
“When Balbinus brought your codices, did he tell you about Minthe?” John finally asked.
“Yes, Lord Chamberlain. It grieves me greatly that I never knew her. She would have had a far easier life if I had. But nobody ever told who my mother was or what had become of her. It was a matter that was never to be discussed or even mentioned. Of course, I occasionally saw Minthe from a distance. I feel as if I should grieve for her since she was, after all, my mother, but somehow I can’t quite convince myself…it all seems unreal…I am not describing this very well, I fear.”
John wondered if his own far-off daughter would feel the same way about him should some stealthy blade finally find his back.
“But you surely realize that by attempting to remove Sunilda she was seeking the same high position for you as Theodora?”
Castor’s eyes filled with tears. “No, Lord Chamberlain, I had no notion, no idea at all….”
“Apart from everything else, consider what she claimed the goats were telling Zeno. According to a recent conversation I had with him, they said that, first, sorrow was to be expected.”
“Every life has sorrow in it and some have a lot more than others,” Castor observed. “I would not make much of that, Lord Chamberlain.”
“As you say. Then they supposedly claimed that the tallest knew what Zeno sought. Such a vague statement sounds mysterious and important but of course means nothing.”
Castor agreed. “Surely all this nonsense about goat oracles is your usual case of interpreting vaguely worded statements to fit a given situation?”
John shrugged. “But now consider the third answer provided to Zeno, which was that the twin would follow and take high office. Naturally, Sunilda sprang to mind. However, Castor, you are named after a mythological twin. Obviously this third statement was another ploy by which Minthe contrived to prepare the way for you.”
Castor nodded. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “But to accomplish it by such means….” He hastily gulped down the rest of his wine and then tried to push back his grief by taking refuge in scholarship. “From your description, I’d guess a distillation from poppies was involved. Zeno grows them around one of those pagan shrines of his, you know. You can make an excellent sleeping potion from poppies but it’s deadly in larger doses. Fortunately, however, there’s an antidote. It’s belladonna.”
John gave him an inquiring look.
“Some years ago I made an extensive study of poisonous plants,” Castor explained. “I’ve always been curious about the world and all its wonders, as you’ve probably heard.”
John nodded silently. It had obviously not occurred to Castor that by preparing a deadly potion from a plant found on Zeno’s estate but not in her own garden, Minthe had cleverly arranged to deflect immediate suspicion from herself. As for its antidote, well, while it was true it was a well-known poison, its popularity with Theodora’s ladies-in-waiting as an eye cosmetic provided a legitimate excuse for Minthe to keep a supply on hand, in order to replenish theirs as needed.
The two men were not alone in the room. John could feel another presence, the unspoken thing that both knew must finally be said aloud.
“You know, don’t you?” John asked quietly.
Castor took a quick sip of wine, spilling a few drops on his chest. “Yes. Theodora told me after the banquet. She said it had been an accident but then she went on to say that since Gadaric was now dead, it fortuitously meant only one other heir was left. I am not a violent man, Lord Chamberlain, and certainly not a murderer of little girls.”
The wind banged the shutters even harder and the lamp on the table guttered as a draught found its way into the room.
“I’d already left for Constantinople before her lady-in-waiting delivered Hero’s artificial hand to my estate,” Castor went on. “No doubt Theodora intended it as a warning of what would happen if I refused to carry out her order.”
“Indeed.”
Castor belatedly asked John how he had deduced Theodora’s role in Gadaric’s death, not realizing that his admission had indirectly provided John with confirmation of what up to then had been merely speculation.
“I originally debated who would want the boy dead,” John replied. “But later I realized it was fruitless to pursue that since the boy was not the intended victim.”
He explained this astonishing statement by relating how the solution had begun to coalesce around Castor’s library, the library of an estate neighboring the property where Theodora had insisted the twins spend the summer, the library of a man who, as it turned out, was another heir to the Italian throne-and a library that would doubtless be irresistible to a bibliophiliac mime.
“When I was able to question him,” John went on, “Barnabas confirmed what I suspected, which is to say that he had observed you and the empress in your library late at night.”
Castor sighed. “Yes, Lord Chamberlain. She would take Zeno’s key and slip through the private door between my estate and his.”
“As it happened, on this particular occasion she left the mud and leaves on your library floor that so distressed your estate manager. Briarus had to brush similar vegetation off his clothes after he showed us your caper beds and the door itself, but of course I didn’t attribute any significance to it at the time.”
John stopped to collect his thoughts before continuing. “So the question to be answered turned from who might have wanted Gadaric dead to who might have desired Barnabas dead? Barnabas didn’t think the empress saw him peeking into your library window, but he still thought it best to flee rather than take that particular gamble. Subsequent events proved it was a wise decision. Even though he’s a favorite of hers, she wanted him eliminated to protect her own interests, if not yours.”
Castor turned pale at the thought and took another hasty gulp of wine. “Does he suspect Theodora of killing the boy?” he finally asked in a faint voice.
“I think he must. Naturally, he didn’t say so to me.”
“But how…?”
“It’s reasonable to suppose that Theodora stepped into the workshop to get a closer look at the mechanical whale before the banquet or perhaps to talk to Hero. He wasn’t there, being otherwise occupied with Bertrada, but she heard someone moving around inside the whale. Now, nobody was allowed to touch the contrivance except Hero and Barnabas. Who else then could it be but the mime who was, after all, due to portray Jonah very soon and would be expected to be making one final check to see that everything was in order for his performance?”
Castor nodded wordlessly.
“It was probably a sudden decision,” John continued. “Hero liked to talk about his ingenious constructions and during one of her previous visits would certainly have shown her the artificial hand. She’d been quick to realize its murderous possibilities. It wouldn’t have taken long to find it, open the trapdoor in the whale’s head and then, seeing the small shape sitting down there in the dark mouth of the beast-for the lamps lit automatically and it was not yet time for them to flare into life-to extend the artificial hand downward…”
Castor hastily stopped him.
“When I spoke to him, Barnabas revealed that when he climbed into the whale during the performance and discovered what was inside, he got out immediately. Naturally the other actors were puzzled, but he’s nothing if not ingenious. He explained that another scene had been written at the last moment especially for him, one that required him to reappear not from the whale but under the banquet table. You can imagine the coarse humor that such a notion provoked. Then he set the beast in motion and seized his opportunity to flee while he still had time,” John concluded.