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table by the door. He asked if his master wished his evening meal brought to the study.
    John nodded and resumed pacing up and down the room as Peter escaped down the corridor to the steamy kitchen.
    ***
    “Some may laugh at the very idea,” pronounced Peter, “but I have heard that the village by Zeno’s estate is a hot bed of magick and superstition. In fact, the area’s famous, or perhaps I should say notorious, for the fortune-telling goats living on a local island.”
    The young woman across the table from him, his assistant Hypatia, looked down at her dinner plate and tried without much success to stifle a laugh. “Oh, Peter, I’m sorry, really,” she giggled, “but fortune-telling goats! Really!”
    “You may find it amusing, young lady, but the fact is that no matter what guise it’s presented under, it’s not wise to have commerce with such unholy things.” Peter’s spoon rattled rather too hard against his bowl. “I know Anatolius is a good friend to our master but I can’t help worrying about his uncle Zeno dabbling in all manner of strange knowledge. That’s not even to mention building automatons and other such strange devices for the entertainment of his guests.”
    Hypatia looked thoughtful. “They sound fascinating. If they’re just for entertainment, surely there’s no harm in that?”
    Peter’s eyes unexpectedly brimmed with tears. “Zeno’s infernal whale was built for entertaining his guests and it killed a little boy, leaving his sister alone. Don’t forget, Hypatia, that the master has a daughter of his own. No wonder he looked so distracted just now.”
    The elderly servant mournfully wiped his eyes on his sleeve before mopping his bowl clean with a scrap of bread.
    “At least the master’s back home now, Peter, and safely away from all the things you’ve been fretting about.” Hypatia was always kind.
    “But for how long?” Peter stood and began to clear their dishes from the table. “As soon as anyone connected with the court dies, our master is immediately sent somewhere a Lord Chamberlain should never have to go. What dangerous quarter of Constantinople will he end up in this time?”

Chapter Five
    John gazed down over the sea wall. The docks below swarmed with gangs of sinewy men loading and unloading the ships that rose and fell on water so befouled with floating debris that it would have been impossible from a distance to tell where land gave way to sea except for the gentle undulation of the swells.
    At night flaring torches lent a lurid glow to the proceedings and prudent merchants sent deputies to count crates and bales and amphorae. Away from the harbor, the widely spaced torches kept burning overnight in front of business premises seemed only to accentuate the darkness and sense of danger, especially if the wind, or human hands, dowsed their guttering flames.
    Not that the latter might necessarily mean criminal intent, John thought, as he padded down the stone steps leading to the dock. He had to shade his eyes against the sudden blow of sunlight as he emerged from the dark tunnel of the stairway. Though it was true that a man could be waylaid and dragged into the stygian depths of an alley, never to see daylight again, other sorts of commerce were transacted along those dark and narrow ways, including a variety of fleshly trades. With the number of wayfarers arriving daily in Constantinople by road or sea, there was certainly plenty of money to be made by fair means or foul.
    All in all, the harbors were easy places to move around unobserved. Having already visited the larger Theodosian Harbor, John had walked east to Harbor Sophia. He had to admit that even with imperial spies everywhere and armies of informers reporting to more than one palace official, it was all but impossible to discover where anyone who had left the city in haste would have gone. Yet he must leave no stone unturned in his search for Barnabas.
    The mime, he reasoned, must have realized