Read Online Five for Silver: A John, the Lord Chamberlain Mystery by Mary Reed, Eric Mayer - Free Book Online

forth, gaping after fleeing women.
    “Look at me, men,” bellowed Felix. “Pretend I’m a pretty sight! Keep your eyes on your captain! Now, follow! He can’t outrun us!”
    He was right. The leading excubitors burst into the clearing only a few paces behind their quarry.
    Unfortunately, those few paces also marked the distance between the edge of the open space and the imperial carriage.
    Without saying a word, the strange intruder grasped the carriage door and flung it open.
    The furious bear erupted from its prison. In an instant it was on the excubitors like a storm howling in off the sea.
    By the time they’d saved themselves their quarry was long gone.
    Felix had just sent a number of his men with the tattered net after the bear when the empress made her appearance, properly dressed, albeit in someone else’s fine silks, and accompanied by her ladies-in-waiting.
    “Captain Felix! You and the rest of your men escort us to our residence immediately! I must tell the emperor what the chicken had to say.”

Chapter Seven
    Nereus’ house looked deserted.
    John stood at the foot of a wide street leading off the Strategion. The steeply roofed dwelling on the opposite corner showed no signs of life. Its shuttered windows gave the impression that the entire household was dead, fast asleep, or had sensibly decamped to less dangerous surroundings.
    He glanced up the sloping thoroughfare. Not even a stray beggar was visible for its entire length. Yet behind him, one or two of the vegetable sellers who had long been fixtures of the Strategion market hoarsely cried their wares at the foraging seagulls.
    On his way through the square, John had noticed goods were sparse. Here a pale man with a racking cough displayed bundles of limp leeks and shriveled radishes allegedly fresh from the country, while there a plump woman shouted praise for her fine chickens. John had a notion Peter would have sniffed in disdain over both the scrawny fowls offered and the outrageous price demanded. The customary noise and the smell of loam and leafage, recalling a country morning, rising above a chattering, colorful crowd, had gone.
    Lack of business was not unexpected. Work and food were both increasingly hard to obtain, and many of the desperate broke into deserted homes seeking edibles or the means to buy them, a thought that directed his attention back to the household he had come to visit.
    Stepping quickly across the street, he briskly rapped on Nereus’ door. Muted echoes died away in the atrium. Given the futility of his investigations so far, John half expected no answer, but as he began to turn away there came a shouted reply from within informing him he would be attended upon shortly.
    Soon the stout door swung open to reveal a stocky, red-faced man dressed in a short, grass-stained tunic and grasping a large pitchfork. He looked like a farmer just in from the fields, an impression reinforced by stray straws caught in his hair.
    “May I be of assistance, sir?” the man inquired civilly, his politeness at odds with the implied threat of the sharp implement he carried.
    John introduced himself and the other stepped back with a low bow, holding the door wide open.
    “Please to enter the house. I fear that I, Sylvanus, am the only person here. All the other servants have gone to the late master’s estate. He is to be buried there.”
    “I regret the death of your master, Sylvanus. However, it may be that you can provide—”
    A loud bellow from the inner garden interrupted John’s words.
    Sylvanus glanced hastily over his shoulder. “Could I answer your questions in the garden, sir? Apis is agitated. The master would not have liked that.”
    “Nereus kept a bull in his town house?” John followed the bucolic servant across the atrium, noting the man had tracked dirt across the lively sea scene depicted by the floor tiles.
    “Indeed he did. Apis was his most prized oracle!”
    As they emerged into sunlight, John’s first