The air of the kitchen, warmed by a glowing brazier, carried a comfortingly familiar faint odor of onions and boiled poultry-and before long the dog-like smell of wet wool.
John hung his dripping cloak near the brazier. He glanced at the two aging men, Philo trembling from the chill, Peter obviously terrified, and he felt that stabbing awareness of mortality that more commonly beset him when he lay awake in the middle of the night.
“What precisely was it that you saw, Peter?” John went on more for Philo’s benefit than to cheer Peter, “It must have been truly terrifying to upset a tough old camp cook like yourself.”
“Please do try to be brief, if you would be so kind.” Philo warmed his hands. “We’ve just had quite a shock ourselves.”
John had tactfully left room near the brazier, but Peter evidently preferred to remain by the doorway. His gaze seemed inexorably drawn to the fogged rectangular panes of the kitchen window.
“It was this way, master. I had retired to my room,” Peter finally began, “for I like to perform my devotions there. You can see all the crosses on the rooftops and the dome of the Great Church catches the light of the setting sun. A glorious sight it is too. But today the window panes were streaked with rain and darkness seemed to arrive earlier than usual.”
He paused briefly to collect his thoughts.
“I had just began to sing a hymn,” he went on. “It’s a particular favorite of mine for it was written by the emperor himself. Then I heard a cry, a wailing that turned to a terrible keening as if some mighty hand had torn open the doorway to Hell and the lamentations of the damned were issuing forth.”
“It’s very windy,” muttered Philo.
Peter appeared not to hear. “I peered out of my window,” he continued. “What with it getting so dark and rainy, at first all I could see was the light shining from the dome of the Great Church. Then I began to pick out other bright flickerings here and there around the city. They were much brighter than torches, more like bonfires.
“And that seemed to me to be very strange, because the rain was still pouring down. It’s such weather as Noah must have seen.” The elderly man drew a deep breath. “It’s buildings set on fire by lightning, I thought. Nothing unusual in that. But several at once? I feared that the whole city would be going up in flames, and my master and his guest out in the streets. But then the rain shifted and I could see the nearest fire more clearly. And I saw…”
The old man’s gaze flickered up to the kitchen ceiling as his voice faded. His hand traced the sign of his religion.
“What was it you saw, Peter?” John persisted gently.
“The fire…it wasn’t a burning building. It was hanging above the rooftops, up in the sky. And in the middle of the flames I could see the dark figure of a man.”
Peter swayed and his legs seemed to give way. John leapt forward and caught his servant’s shoulders, but as he lowered the limp body gently to the kitchen tiles Peter’s haggard face turned ashen and his eyes closed.
“Mithra!” John muttered.
As he bent over the unconscious man it occurred to him that Peter must have seen the stylite he and Philo had observed. Burning like a torch, distorted by the rain-streaked window of his room, the sight must have been enough to frighten him almost to death.
“I’m going for a physician,” John told Philo.
Outside, the rain was slackening. John did not waste time seeking help at the barracks across the square from his house. Gaius, the palace physician, lived some distance across the grounds but would arrive quickly if John personally summoned aid.
When John attended the Academy, Philo had constantly chided him about preferring its running paths to the sheltered walkways where students and teachers strolled serenely while engaged in leisurely debates.
“Perhaps you should leave us for a while, John,” Philo had once counseled him. “Go out into the world. Run until you have tired your body. Then you will be more prepared to use your mind.”
The words echoed in John’s memory as he loped rapidly along meandering paths through the earthy smell of rain-soaked shrubbery.
Hair hanging in dripping rat tails and soaked to the skin, he presented a startling sight to the dark-haired servant girl who answered his frantic pounding on the physician’s door.
She peeked out in terror. “He cannot assist you, excellency,” she quavered, “He is engaged. That is to say, he is not here. He was summoned to see the emperor.”
The distressed girl glanced over her shoulder into the murky depths of the house. John had noted the fresh bruise under one eye. It did not surprise him. Gaius was surly when intoxicated.
“Engaged in entertaining Bacchus, you mean!” John snapped, cursing that it would be this of all nights the otherwise competent physician had chosen to drink himself into a stupor. He was certain Gaius was lying in an addled heap inside, but even if he had hauled the physician out bodily, in such a condition he would be of no value to any patient.
Reining in his temper, John apologized to the girl for his abruptness and prepared to depart. “If you are able to tear your master away from his goblet,” he said as he turned to go, “and get him back on his feet, be so kind as to impress upon him that there is a dying man who needs his assistance. At the Lord Chamberlain’s house.”
“The Lord Chamberlain…oh…” The girl gave a stricken moan.
John was not a man who believed in oracles or prophecies, but, as he rapped on his house door, he experienced a chill as if a cold draught had found a crack in his mental armor and penetrated to his soul. He abruptly knew, with an absolute and terrible certainty, that Peter was dead. So he was surprised to find his servant sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of watered wine.
“Master,” Peter reproached him, his voice weak but steady. “You should not have gone for help. You must have forgotten that I am the servant.”
John looked at Philo.
“Remarkable, isn’t it?” smiled his erstwhile tutor jovially. “When you insisted on running heedlessly off as usual, I gave the matter some consideration. Then I recalled that curious token I found beside the stylite’s pillar. You’d mentioned it was of the sort used by the faithful as a medicinal remedy. I wasn’t certain how to administer it, so I crumbled some of it into a cup of wine.”
He paused, enjoying the telling of his story. “I managed to get Peter to take a few swallows of the mixture. You see the result.”
It was indeed a remarkable transformation. Peter was still pale, but he was perfectly lucid and his hand barely shook as he lifted his cup.
“Thank Mithra,” breathed John.
Peter’s lips tightened. “Master, I would not call on that deity of yours,” he frowned, “and especially not on this night, not now. Not after what I witnessed.”
John sat down on a stool beside the servant. “What do you mean, Peter? And what exactly did you see? Was it a man on fire? There is doubtless a commonplace explanation for that unfortunate incident. We saw it ourselves.”
Peter set down his cup on the scarred table top and looked at John, absolute certainty in his eyes.
“There is no need to seek an explanation, master, no. For what else could it have been but an archangel in his fiery chariot, returning to judge this sinful world?”
Chapter Two
By the next morning there were almost as many explanations for the stylite’s fiery death as there were inhabitants of the city. Anatolius, secretary to Justinian, ached to be out in the forums soaking up the latest rumors. Only a hour before he’d learned from one of the house slaves, back from a market visit, that two other stylites had died in the same mystifying and terrifying manner.
Unfortunately, the young man had to answer a summons to his father’s study. Senator Flavius Aurelius, it seemed, was displeased with his son. Again.