Free Seven for a Secret by Mary Reed, Eric Mayer Page A

and fill my lungs with the same air as the simple folk.”
    He gesticulated so wildly his toga flapped and billowed like a sail. “Yes, those of us who make our living by our wits have yet much to learn from those humble souls who have nothing more than their stained and work-worn hands between themselves and an empty stomach.”
    He skirted the filthy, bare feet of a man sitting in a doorway, ignoring an outstretched, skeletal hand.
    “Uncharitable bastards!” The croaking cry of the beggar followed them down the street. “May you rot!”
    John swiveled on his boot heel and glared back. One look at the Lord Chamberlain’s expression and the beggar found an urgent reason to leap up and scuttle away.
    Anatolius gave John an inquiring glance.
    “Perhaps I’m not in a charitable mood,” John told him. “Besides, you’re always telling me I shouldn’t be filling every palm I see on the street.”
    Crinagoras looked pained. “I’m not so sure that I can find inspiration in a beggar. Certainly not from such a foul and insulting beggar. A ragged child, perhaps. For even the homeliest subject can become poetic in the hands of a master. Consider if you will Virgil’s encomium to his salad. I intend to recite it at Francio’s banquet since plain fare is the menu.”
    He paused and picked his way around dung lying in their path. “I have improved Virgil’s work just a little,” he went on, “in order that his archaic verse may fall more sweetly on today’s ears. After that I shall recite one or two of my latest creations about life in the city, as it was before the plague arrived. These are darker times.”
    “And this is the dark alley down which we go, according to the boy at the reading.” Anatolius plunged between two buildings leaning confidentially toward each other.
    Crinagoras stopped and moaned. “Oh, but really, Anatolius, it will ruin my poor boots!”
    The morning’s rains had turned the passage into a swamp. Straw and half-decayed vegetable leaves littered the black surface of water broken by scattered islands of even less appealing ordure.
    “Never mind your boots,” Anatolius told him. “You can write a verse or two acclaiming their heroism.”
    “What an excellent idea! My friend, though entombed in the cold sepulcher of the law, your poetic soul still blazes like an eternal flame.”
    Crinagoras hitched up his long toga and tiptoed forward. He uttered a faint squeal as the water rose to his ankles. He took another cautious step and then flailed one hand at a swarm of huge green flies that had suddenly decided his face was more appetizing than an unidentifiable lump next to a wall.
    The hem of the toga flopped into the mire. He grabbed at it. Slipped. Started to fall forward.
    John’s hand shot out, grasped Crinagoras’ arm, and pulled him upright.
    The grim smile he gave the poet was more appalling than the glare he’d directed at the beggar. “If I’m distracted any further by your eloquence, Crinagoras, I might not be able to catch you next time.”
    ***
    The wood-framed tenement where Menander lived sagged toward the stolid brick back of the Church of the Mother of God as if in search of support. The entrance hall beyond the open doorway was unlit and its close air smelled of boiled onions.
    In the dimness, the trio passed a woman seated at the bottom of the steep stairs. As they stepped around her, she raised her hand as if to beg, but instead drew a line on the plaster wall with a stub of charcoal.
    The boy who claimed to have helped Menander home had given precise and accurate directions. At John’s insistent knock, Menander threw open the splintered door of his third floor room.
    He was, as Francio had described, an impressive figure, a stern looking man, broad shouldered, with bristling brows and white clouds of hair gathered around a craggy face. Though he was gaunt and bent, his flinty eyes were still level with John’s.
    Menander filled the narrow doorway. “If you are here