Five for Silver: A John, the Lord Chamberlain Mystery by Mary Reed, Eric Mayer Page A

armed.”
    “Tell us why the empress is like Rome,” Theodora demanded.
    “Why, because Justinian will do anything to have her, even though she’s already been well plundered by strangers!”
    He scrambled nimbly up the bath stairs, scattering the ladies-in-waiting, and squatted toad-like, dripping water, on the tiles.
    Theodora followed and hunkered down next to him, careless of her nudity. “Tell me, fool, how did you get in here? There are guards everywhere outside.”
    “It was a miracle, highness.”
    “It will be an even greater miracle if you can get out…still attached to your head, that is.”
    “Of course, for I have seen too much.” The man leered. “Well, if the Lord wills it, so be it. But, first, allow me to entertain you.”
    He opened the soggy sack, tipped out an extremely agitated chicken, and then scooped two handfuls of wet grain from the depths of the sack.
    The bathers couldn’t stifle their gasps. From one of the cowering attendants came a nervous, uncontrolled titter.
    The fool turned his hooded, shadowed visage toward Theodora. “Ah. You’re smiling, I see, highness. You know how this works, then?”
    “Do you think I don’t know half the population of Constantinople claims to have watched chickens peck corn from my groin in the days when I was working in the theater?”
    “I’ve heard that on one occasion a certain high-ranking foreign official paid good silver to play the chicken,” the man informed her.
    “Now that’s a slander that hasn’t reached my ears before now!” Theodora leaned toward the fool until her face nearly touched his. His eyes glinted within his hood. His shabby cloak appeared encrusted with grease, but the only smell about him was that of desiccated papyrus. “Sitting here with you like this reminds me of my past. People are amazed that a bearkeeper’s daughter can command senators to prostrate themselves at her feet. But, you know, senators have been prostrating themselves at my feet since I was…well…a child…”
    The fool had taken hold of the chicken and was stroking its feathers idly. “The Lord will forgive your sins, if only you will ask.”
    “Sins? It is I who was sinned against, fool.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I remember the first occasion my sister brought a man to me. Some high official or other he was, he claimed. A fat, nasty man. When my sister explained what he wanted to do, I didn’t know whether to laugh at how silly it sounded or cry with disgust at what he required. I couldn’t imagine why he would desire such a thing, but I’d learned to add up coins before I could read, so I knew immediately why I would allow him to…well…”
    One of the attendants burst into noisy sobs, but was quelled by one look from Theodora.
    “When my sister left, the old fellow began to paw me,” Theodora went on. “I pretended to cry. ‘Oh, sir,’ I whimpered most convincingly. ‘I want to obey you, but I’m so frightened. Perhaps if you pretended to be a little purring kitten I would not be so terribly afraid.’ Yes, I’ve always been an excellent actress…”
    The fool grinned. “Indeed. And you have made a practice of humiliating rich and powerful men ever since those far off days. Isn’t that so, highness? Why, that’s a homily worthy of Chrysostom.”
    A wet strand of hair had snaked over Theodora’s shoulder, trickling water down between her breasts. “How do you intend to entertain me? Be quick, fool, before I call the guards.”
    Keeping the restless chicken grasped firmly in one hand, the man set the wet grain into two small piles. “I shall answer your questions. Or rather, my oracle here will. When I place this sagacious fowl between the piles of food, highness, ask it something, and then see toward which pile it heads to eat. The grain at my right hand means Yes, that to my left indicates No.”
    ***
    Felix put his shoulder to the door of the imperial carriage standing in a small clearing, turned its