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

latch, and heard it click into place.
    From inside the conveyance came a thunderous growl, then the noise of claws rattling and scrabbling. The carriage rocked slightly. A few in the bedraggled group of excubitors surrounding it cursed bears in general, and this one in particular. Although it was now safely contained, there was more than a little blood to give evidence of their struggle to get it into the carriage.
    “Lucky for us our big friend here didn’t escape from the grounds,” Felix rumbled, sounding decidedly ursine himself. “Someone, and I suspect it would have been me, would have had to pay for the mistake then.”
    “It wasn’t my fault,” protested a young guard armed with a broken lance. “I didn’t make that cursed weak net…”
    “You’re right. Still—”
    “Captain, what are we, animal keepers?” protested another. “I didn’t join the excubitors to haul the empress’ pets around. It’s not supposed to be part of our duties, pulling imperial carriages occupied by bears!”
    “Now you know very well that the empress has such a kind heart she ordered three of you harnessed to the carriage so that none of the imperial horses would be terrified by the smell of its occupant. Need I remind you that your job is to do whatever she orders, and do it fast and without complaint?” Felix retorted.
    The excubitors immediately began to detail orders they’d prefer to take from the empress.
    “Those are wishes not likely to be granted,” Felix grunted with a grin.
    “Perhaps, but sometimes Fortuna surprises us.” The speaker was staring open-mouthed down the path leading into the clearing.
    Hardly had he spoken when two naked women raced past them.
    “Murder…at the baths,” shrieked one.
    ***
    The hallway in the women’s wing of the imperial baths swarmed with aristocratic ladies in various states of panic and undress, the more panicked among them the least clothed.
    “Mithra!” said the young man with the broken lance. “And I thought having to stand guard at banquets and smell all that food was hard duty.”
    A decently dressed woman, an attendant no doubt, trotted by, glancing back over her shoulder.
    Felix stopped her. “What’s going on?” he demanded.
    “It’s Satan, sir. Satan’s flying from one pool to another, shouting all manner of blasphemies and obscenities. Flying about like a horrible black bird. Everybody in the baths ran away, naked or not. The shame of it, sir, to be seen naked in public…but it was a question of garments or souls and not both, so it was.” She looked down at the blue silk tunic in her hands. “Now I must find my mistress and get her decently clothed, sir.”
    As she ran out of the building, a familiar figure raced down the hallway toward them.
    No, Felix realized, the figure wasn’t familiar. It was its clothing, which was instantly recognizable. Its elaborate embroidered panels depicting the temptation in the Garden of Eden identified it as a garment he had seen the empress wearing.
    It was not actually being worn, but rather was wrapped around the running figure. Whoever it was suddenly flung the robe off, straight into Felix’ face, and bolted outside.
    Felix knocked the garment aside. He saw the back of the black-cloaked figure that had worn it and set out in hasty pursuit.
    His boots slid on wet tiles and he fell heavily, taking two excubitors with him. For a short space, the hallway was a confusion of sprawled, armored guards, bare flesh, swords, and silks.
    Felix found himself pinned beneath the not inconsiderable weight of a plump, pink-faced, matronly woman.
    He gently lifted her off and scrambled to his feet, trying not to look at her. “Priscilla, my apologies. Please give my regards to your husband the senator.”
    He contained his choice string of lurid curses until he was outside the baths.
    “This way!” an excubitor shouted, gesturing toward the clearing down the path as his colleagues poured outside, heads swiveling back and