Chapter 88
A blustery February wind drifted large wet flakes of snow on the black-cloaked shoulders of Stephen Hagiocharistopharites.
When summoned to the palace, he was never sure who his next victim would be. He played a guessing game with himself. Usually, he was right. Let it be Makrodoukas this time he hoped. The opinionated noble was as rich as they came.
The other courtiers shuddered as he strode through the halls. (Unseen after rounding a corner, they would make the sign of the cross or draw a symbol in the air to ward off the evil eye.)
Once ushered into the Imperial chambers, Stephen found the Emperor pacing.
“Ah, Stephen, there you are. It has happened again. There has been another one.”
“? Another what?”
“Murder.”
“Who has been killed?” Stephen asked.
“Pterygeonites. He is irreplaceable. Without him to blend my morning tonic, I am vulnerable. When he did not arrive this morning, he was sent for. A page found him in his villa with the doorkeeper also slain. Find out who has done this. It is not a coincidence. Conspirators are acting against me.”
A look of confusion crossed Stephen’s face, but he bowed and left. The figure snuggled under the blankets on the far side of the bed went unnoticed.
Find out who has done this?
The astrologer’s death a few months earlier had been concerning to Andronikos, but to the rest of the court, envious of his influence, it was not.
Stephen’s concern was for Andronikos. Shortly after the incident, the Emperor pulled him aside and asked if he had ordered the death of the sorcerer and forgotten about it.
“There have been so many, Stephen, and I have never liked the fellow. Are you sure?”
“Certain great . Splitting a man’s skull open on a rainy street is not my style. I dislike the rain.”
Was the old boy losing it?
As no street violence followed, the death of Skleros Seth seemed to be random, and the matter was dropped.
Seemed.
Now, Pterygeonites had met a similar fate. Stephen had been on neutral terms with the eunuch, but no one in Andronikos’ malevolent cadre trusted anyone else.
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Sweeping into the atrium of the villa, he told the priest and acolyte tending to the body to begone. Something sharp had shattered the top of the corpse’s skull. In another part of the domus, lay Iqbal. Constantly seeking coin, the Muhamadeen mercenary looked fierce, so Stephen had recommended him to the Bearer of the Chalice of Mithradatium. Two wounds bled on his body, one to the center of the chest, one to the head.
Back in the atrium, Stephen noticed the water in the pool had a pink tinge. The killer washed his blade here before he left.
Not a sword blade… an axe.
He left, lost in thought, and waved a hand to the clergy, indicating they should return to their duties.
“I prefer an axe.”
Nicea, early last summer. The Latin who mocked him for a welsher, the one Andronikos teased and told to raise his case before a judge. The one they didn’t impale outside the city walls. Could he be in the city? How to find him?
* * *
“Two fucking years!” Pons was incensed. “You are telling me that seven hundred days will pass, ‘Clearing prior cases,’ before my lawsuit against this cheat is called?”
“Yes,” Niketas of Chonia asserted, discomfited by the man’s rudeness. “You told me the debt has been outstanding for over a year. Why did you not bring the case earlier?”
Did he smirk? Did that smug lawyer have a twinkle in his eye? Pons gritted his teeth. “I thought he might pay it back, voluntarily.”
“Stephen Hagiocharistophrites? The party you are suing? Pay you back?”
Definitely smirking.
“I just want to get him in front of a magistrate.”
“Two years. If you think the bureaucracy is slow, try the courts.”
Pons stomped off, seething, scattering the stalls set up by scribes and attorneys in the plaza of the Augesteon forecourt. John Ducas had recommended the man. “If anyone can get your case advanced, it will be him. Of rural background, but quite the up-and-comer.”
This was John Ducas’ private little joke. He could have told him the suit would take years, but instead, he let me walk to the lawyer and find out for myself.
“Phagh! A pox on the law.” Andronikos would retain his catspaw, for now.
The prior evening, Pons shaved the at the baths. It was an information-swapping, favor-exchanging game. Pons needed a place to put the eunuch’s steward and his wife. They had accepted his bribe, deserted their master, and were secreted at the . (Unfortunately, due to language difficulties, a bribe had not worked with the Saracen majordomo.)
John Ducas furrowed his brow and pondered long and hard when Pons asked if he could ‘find’ space on one of his estates. A cook was useful from an army camp to an opulent estate. But a steward? No. A more menial spot could, perhaps, be found, pressing olives, in Thrace. Everything was a haggle, even the fate of the witness, Nicodemos.
As it was drawing on toward evening, few other bathers were present. Pons finished scraping the last of the stubble on the noble’s throat, wiped off his razor, and tapped John Ducas on the shoulder to indicate he should lower himself into the hot water of the pool to wash the last of the soap lather away.
“You asked me to keep my ear to the ground. If someone was heading west, who could bear a message? I may know just the fellow.” The bureaucrat dipped his face into the pool, scrubbed under his beard, and came up shaking his hair with a loud “Aaah.”
“Hugh de Champaign.”
“Never heard of him. A Frank?”
“He sailed to Constantinople a couple of years ago, when Princess Anna arrived. He was part of her retinue and stayed on as Frankish ambassador. He is a minor cousin and was the girl’s legal guardian.”
“Was?”
“Yes. Now that she is married, it is out of his hands. She is Andronikos’ property. Hugh has been protesting loud and long, to anyone who will listen, about the deplorable treatment of the poor Princess. Andronikos has said that if he petitions again, he will be ‘seen off between the races.’ As soon as the high roads clear, he will return to France and tell King Philippe of his sister’s fate.”
Perhaps Hugh de Champaign could be convinced to stop at Venice on his way. Pons hoped he would be of more use than the lawyer.
