Three for a Letter by Mary Reed, Eric Mayer Page B

one of his business expeditions. He’s almost as careless in his own way as Uncle Zeno although at least he’s had the sense to surround his estate with a good high wall.”
    John’s fatigue was suddenly suffused with anger. “Zeno didn’t mention Castor was away! If the place is as deserted as it sounds, Barnabas could easily be hidden somewhere over there without the estate manager’s knowledge.”
    “Zeno and Castor have been friends as well as neighbors for a couple of decades, John. I saw a lot of him during my visits here when I was a boy because he was always dropping in to hear about Zeno’s latest enthusiasms. But even so, I do think that with everything that’s been happening, Zeno wouldn’t have realized he’d gone off on one of his trips.”
    John agreed tiredly that Anatolius was probably correct. The young man turned to go into the villa but John hesitated at its entrance, staring into the darkness in the direction of the neighboring estate.
    “There’s no point searching in the dark, John, and especially not after all the time that’s passed,” Anatolius pointed out. “We can pay the place a visit tomorrow morning.”
    John agreed reluctantly, realizing that raising a fresh commotion would only serve to warn the mime—if indeed he was hiding on Castor’s estate—while giving him the opportunity to escape under cover of darkness.
    He wearily followed Anatolius into the treacherous vestibule in which he had been trapped that morning. As he stepped through its small space he thought he heard the grinding of gears and paused as Anatolius entered the atrium.
    Anatolius looked back over his shoulder in puzzlement. “What is it? Is something wrong?”
    “No,” the other replied. The odd sound must have existed only in his imagination. “Nothing’s wrong, Anatolius. We’ll visit Castor’s estate tomorrow. If it holds any secrets, they will doubtless wait until then.”

Chapter Eleven
    “A banquet for the mind.”
    According to Anatolius, that was how Zeno had described his neighbor’s library. Briarus, the manager of Castor’s estate, threw open the room’s plain wooden doors with a flourish as if he were indeed ushering John and Anatolius in to sample a feast of rare delights.
    The room itself was attractive enough although not impressive, at least to those accustomed to the palace. The library’s furnishings were simple. Chairs surrounded a long polished table in the center of the room and a single richly upholstered couch sat beside the wall where tall, latticed windows looked out over a garden smaller but more orderly than Zeno’s overgrown grounds. Bright morning sunlight streamed in across an equally tidy array of flowers and foliage depicted on the tiled floor and along the lower portion of painted walls which were otherwise a subdued blue and punctuated by niches at waist height.
    It was what filled the wall niches and lay scattered on the table that might have brought a word of admiration to the lips of Justinian himself.
    Codices and scrolls, the largest private collection John had ever seen.
    The library might have belonged to Briarus, to judge from his expression of pride as he led his visitors inside. He was a thin, dark haired man with a brisk air and, until now, what John suspected was a perpetual scowl.
    “As you can see,” Briarus told them, “the Greek texts are kept on one side of the room and the Latin on the other.” Although his sharp features softened somewhat as he proudly described the contents of his master’s library, his disapproval of their unannounced visit remained obvious in his tone.
    Anatolius, careless of the estate manager’s feelings, plucked a scroll from the table and pulled it open just far enough to glimpse its contents. “This is certainly very old, John, and extremely valuable. You see the lettering is all capitalized, like a chiseled inscription? It’s just as well we no longer write in this fashion. If we did, it would take me all day