Azémar lowered his arms from around his head, where he’d put them like a young boy anticipating a blow from his father. ‘You’ve killed them all.’ His tone was flat, as if he was commenting his comrade looked well that day.
Mauger dropped the dead robber and stood up, offering no reply.
‘Four is an impressive tally.’ Azémar moved forward to the first body to inspect it. He felt for a pulse but there was none.
‘They were not warlike men and they were surprised to meet resistance. Any of Duke Richard’s warriors could have done it,’ said Mauger.
‘They looked warlike enough from where I was standing.’ The young man moved on to the next corpse, checking that too.
‘It’s easy to look warlike,’ said Mauger, ‘but to be it is harder work. A sword is put into the true warrior’s hand on the day he is born. Such men as we are not to be bested by vagabonds.’
Already curious people watched them, the adults too wary to come near, children running to examine the bodies at their feet.
‘You didn’t use a sword.’ Azémar checked the remaining robbers for signs of life. None. He crouched and muttered a prayer over the dead men.
Mauger shrugged. Then he crouched beside Azémar and spoke quietly to him, wary of being overheard. ‘Better to be thought a hardy monk than a warrior, if word of this spreads. These Greeks who call themselves Romans are famous for their spies, and the fewer men who know our purpose the safer we will be.’ He picked up his roll of bedding from the ground and hoisted it to his shoulder. ‘We’ll save the sword for times of greater need.’
‘What might constitute greater need than being attacked by four armed men?’
The warrior, for he was a warrior, leaned down to the monk’s ear and whispered, ‘The need to cut off the head of the scholar Loys. Now let’s move.’
Azémar got to his feet. ‘He stabbed you. I thought you were dead.’
Mauger patted his side, which chinked like a purse full of coins. ‘A wise man wears his hauberk in new company,’ he said. ‘So my father told me.’
The young scholar looked down at the bodies. The man the warrior had punched first was unrecognisable. His nose and mouth were almost as one, a bloody crater.
‘Did you know that was going to happen?’
‘In these places it’s always a possibility.’
‘You seem to relish hurting people. Is it the same with everyone from the old country?’
‘My country is your country now. I am a Norman. I left my old life behind me when I took my new name and learned your language.’
‘You got off the boat from the north six months ago. You are a Viking to your bones. They love to kill and plunder.’
‘My feelings about what I do don’t matter. I have a duty to oppose my enemies and those of my lord.’
‘Does Loys deserve his fate?’
‘The end is the same if he deserves it or not. Duke Richard has commanded he will have his daughter back and the scholar will die.’
‘If we find him.’
‘We will find him. Or rather, you will, Master Azémar. If you want your family to prosper.’
The young man shrugged deeply and put out his hands.
‘You could do this alone.’
‘No. You will identify the scholar. I want no possibility of a mistake.’
‘It is an evil thing you make me do.’
‘Not so. The scholar is a rebel against his lord and so against God. You are doing Christ’s work.’
‘Or Judas’s. Loys was my friend.’
‘I will shed no tears for him. Is friendship a higher calling than your duty to your lord? Or to your family, whose safety and health depend on our success here? Come on.’ He headed off down the alley.
Azémar recalled the furore at the monastery when it was realised Beatrice and Loys had gone, recalled the duke’s men sweeping through the cloisters, Richard’s boiling rage as he told the abbot he was lucky not to see his abbey burned to the ground.
Luckily for the monks Beatrice had confided to her sister they were sailing for Constantinople. After a few days of pressure the girl told what she knew. The hope of recapturing his daughter took the edge off Richard’s anger as he threw himself into plans to get her back. They’d sought a monk who could identify without question the disobedient scholar. Azémar saw no way to protect Loys but to volunteer for the journey. If he was charged with identifying Loys to Mauger then at least he could warn his friend and give him time to get away.
He’d expected to travel with a company of men and had asked Mauger why Duke Richard had not sent more. ‘It’s an assassination, not an invasion,’ said Mauger. ‘A mighty king rules in Constantinople and he has eyes like God’s. The less notice we draw the better.’
Azémar had toyed with the idea of killing Mauger in his sleep and going on alone. He was not a killer, though. He was a Christian man who couldn’t commit such a sin. Even escape was impossible. Mauger held all their money and kept it close. Azémar wouldn’t get far without silver to speed his journey and the knight would soon be on his trail.
Of course, he’d tried reasoning with Mauger. On the ship he’d put many plans to him.
‘Can you not just say you killed him, say his daughter killed herself with grief when you did? That should satisfy him.’
‘He wants the scholar’s head. I have sworn to deliver it. There is nothing more to say.’
Azémar had directed his future arguments to the gulls and the waves. He knew he had a better chance of success with them. His father had been just such a man – still a Viking and a pagan at heart, despite his new religion and his even newer fancy Frankish manners.
When Azémar knew Mauger would not be moved by argument he decided his best plan was to wait until he actually found Loys. Then he would desert Mauger and warn him.
Azémar looked to the sky. It bore a haze of grey over the blue. He crossed himself, praying they weren’t ready for another soaking like they’d had on the way down. The ship’s pilot had stretched the sail across as shelter and they’d spent nearly two days under driving, windless rain.
He would not betray his friend, he knew that. If he and Mauger didn’t return at all then perhaps Richard would spare Azémar’s family. Mauger was loyal as a dog and would never betray his lord. Only disaster would prevent him from completing his task. So Azémar would have to engineer a disaster.
‘If it must be so, it must. First let’s find somewhere to sleep. I’ve had my fill of being tossed out of my bed by storms and I’m tired enough to drop.’
‘Agreed,’ said Mauger. ‘Let’s go back to the port. Thieves are lazy; only honest men will be left by now. We’ll bed down for the night and then start looking for your friend in the morning.’
He pulled his robe about him and headed out of the dark alley towards brighter, wider streets.
5 The Chamberlain
Loys set off on his long walk to the Magnaura. Like many immigrants to the city, he and Beatrice had settled very near to where they’d first entered – the lighthouse gate just north of the aqueduct on the Golden Horn. Scores of people offering lodgings greeted the incoming boats and it was impossible to choose between them. The couple had allowed themselves to be led away by the first man who’d approached them and been lucky he wasn’t a thief or too much of a fraud.
The thicket of backstreets wasn’t too dangerous at that time of day but he was glad to turn into the main street, wide, broad and bright with its splendid granite porches supported by elegant columns, some faded to white, some still in the colours the city’s founders had painted them. No ramshackle and stinking wooden buildings here, nothing crammed or cramped. Loys had been raised in a well-to-do family in Rouen, a cathedral town. But on this road more than any other he was as wide-eyed as a farm boy with straw in his hair – a barbarian, as the Roman natives of the town called him. He liked the feeling, really. All his life he had been the cleverest person he knew, the best read, the most worldly. Here he felt unsophistic
ated, daunted and naive. It would be a challenge to leave his mark on this city.
He passed soap makers, their stalls smelling of violets and roses, candle makers, linen sellers with their wares laid out in scarlet, blue and white, silk men – their fabrics in vibrant colours too, a flash of gorgeous purple poking from a chest to indicate they served royalty, not that the common people could buy silk of that colour even if they could afford it. Leather workers offered fine belts and boots; swords were arranged on one stall with two small shields above them, looking to Loys like a terrible beast of staring eyes and giant teeth. Wine was on sale, beer and olives, oil and pottery, some in practical fired white earth, some decorated in vivid greens, reds and blues.
Fishmongers declared the quality of their wares, their catch laid out like treasure, iridescent in the cold light. Saddlers and grocers challenged the crowds to find a better price anywhere on Middle Way. Jewellers sat flanked by scowling eunuchs, a bullion dealer stood by his scales, six fully mailed Norman mercenaries around him. They made Loys shiver, though they were not Beatrice’s father’s men, he would have recognised them. Next to the bullion dealer was a row of coin changers, less impressively protected by native Greeks and hard-eyed easterners. Loys longed to take Beatrice here, to buy her jewels to make up for the ones she’d lost to robbers in Montpellier before they’d boarded the ship for Constantinople.
The streets were busy, and he fought against a tide of people heading towards the Golden Gate – the city’s main ceremonial entrance. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked a boy who passed him.
‘The emperor’s back! He’s leading a triumph. He’s got the Varangians with him! Northern giants! They have a savage who attacked him in his tent with them!’
Loys had no time for that, he had to be at his studies.
He pushed on, past the emperor Marcian’s granite column and into the squabble of the Bull Market – where bulls and virtually everything else were on sale. It was less busy than usual but still busier than any other market he had ever attended in his life. He shoved his way through, thinking it the one blessing of poverty that you lacked a rich purse to steal.
From there he went under Theodosian’s Arch, decorated with images of victorious Roman soldiers – still gaudy in yellow, red and pink after all these years - and on down the Middle Way to the Forum of Constantine, where, thank God, the market was closed. He strode past the statue of the Roman emperor who had founded the city, only glancing at the other marvellous bronzes that decorated the wide square. At the exit of the forum were two keystones in the wall in the shape of huge blank-eyed heads, both taller than he was. Their brutal, heavy features stared out with expressions of ancient animosity. They made him shiver. Pagan gods or heroes, he thought, their names now forgotten. Loys saw eternity in their stares and his own life seemed fragile and fleeting.
Once through the forum, the magnificent hippodrome appeared – a massive building in pink cement supported by marble columns that stretched like a parade of trees out to the south-west. He had seen a chariot race there but it had all been too rough for him – the rival factions of Blues and Greens brawling on the terraces. He’d winkled his way out of the crush when a brute of a man behind him had pissed up the back of his trousers.
Past the hippodrome to the north-east shone the bright white walls of the palace and, beyond that, the most marvellous thing he had ever seen, the great dome of the mother church of Eastern Christendom, Hagia Sophia. He’d known God in that place among the ribbons of incense smoke that climbed from the gold of the altar through the sunbeams beneath the huge vault of the ceiling. The building was beyond mortal dreams, it was infused with God’s glory, its architects divinely inspired.
He walked on, following the Middle Way past the Numera. He never liked this part of the trip. The Numera was the city’s prison – built over one of Constantinople’s ancient cisterns. The most disturbing thing about it was its silence in the midst of such a busy city. Every other building in that area burst with noise, from the beggars and traders on the steps of Hagia Sophia to the clucking officials coming and going from the palace and the young men of the Magnaura laughing and fooling their way to their studies. Not so the Numera. Even the relatives of the prisoners, straining at the bars of its gates to offer food for the inmates and bribes to the guards, were cowed and subdued. The building itself was utterly quiet, its walls thick and the labyrinth of cells and tunnels, man-made or natural, that sprawled beneath it so deep that no sound of torment ever escaped.
The Numera was the plainest building on the road, a square block of unfaced brick in dirty yellow, like a stubby bad tooth in the mouth of a beautiful woman, thought Loys. At dawn it sat directly in the shadow of the great church, squatting silent in darkness as if the sun feared it. He guessed it would be getting a few more inmates with the emperor’s return.
He arrived at the steps of the Magnaura, its vast columned porch looming above him. He went up, nodding to the guard at the scholars’ gate, and passed through into the cloistered garden that led to the Senate House – which is what the school was still called, though the senators had long gone.
The scent of olive trees hit him. In the streets no tree would survive a moment – firewood and building materials being precious commodities. Here they stood in smart lines, their branches heavy with the green and purple fruit. He picked one and sucked off its flesh. ‘Agh!’ Bitter. He smiled to himself, wondering if they always tasted that way straight off the tree. He imagined Beatrice by his side, laughing and saying, ‘Well, there’s something you didn’t know, you with all your learning.’
Birdsong filled the air but it came from no natural birds. At the bottom of the line of olive trees was one of the wonders of the city – another olive tree, life-size and cast in bronze, with splendid birds in its branches, their glass feathers catching the light in spangles of colour. Their song piped high and sweet, backed by a sound like rain from the water that powered the machine. He would never get used to this, he thought. In some ways he considered it unholy and recalled the passage from the Bible: ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.’
God forbade such things. But could God begrudge man such beauty? Loys would have loved to have shown the singing tree to Beatrice, though that was impossible. No woman was allowed in the precincts of the university. He moved on.
The Senate House had an exterior of light yellow cement with three big arches of windows sitting beneath a dome. He still felt a thrill entering the exalted halls of the Magnaura. Today he had just a couple of teaching jobs – rhetoric and philosophy to the dense sons of some nobles. They weren’t inclined to learn much so he wasn’t inclined to teach much, and beyond giving them a few philosophers’ names to drop when questioned by their families, he spent his time with them talking of the many curiosities of the earth – the dragons of the east and the sand seas of Arabia.
Then he would take a class on law himself and – the highlight of his day – join the formal debate in the afternoon. That day he was speaking on the energies of God as separate from the essence of God – how we can know what God does but never what he is. Loys had also prepared a speech on the practice of hesychasm – a hermitage of the soul, withdrawing and stripping away all sensory perception until the eye of the soul awakens and an intuitive knowledge of God is developed. Loys was a theoretical rather than a practical student of this discipline.
He reached the door of the building and stepped inside to be met by the doorkeeper. He waved and went to walk through into the teaching cells but the man put up a hand to stop him.
‘Visitor for you.’
The doorkeeper’s face was pale.
‘Who?’
‘Go to the master’s rooms. He’s there.’
‘Who?’
The man said nothing, just scuttled into the little office behind his table. Loys went across the wide atrium, glancin
g down at the mosaic beneath his feet. Perseus slaying the Medusa, the snake-haired monster whose gaze turned men to stone. The way the doorman had acted you’d think there was one waiting for him in the master’s study.
He walked to the back of the building, passed the turn into the debating arena and went along a corridor to a single door on the left. He had been here only once before – when he gained admission by interview to the school. Well, actually an appearance before the faculty, at which he had to win through in a debate. It had not been easy – Rouen didn’t have that sort of competition – but he had done it. One debate on a subject of his choosing, one on theirs. Thank God they hadn’t picked the law.
He knocked on the door and a voice he didn’t recognise said, ‘Come.’ He thought it was a woman, but when he opened the door the master was on one of the guest chairs in his own room and behind the study table, in the master’s normal place, sat an exceptionally finely dressed and – no other word would do – beautiful man of around thirty. He shimmered in white silk and gold and, most tellingly, a bright purple sash worn left to right over his scarlet and brocade tunic. Only the emperor, his family and their very nearest associates had the right to wear that colour.
Behind him stood two enormous men, one clearly Greek by his short hair and beard, the other an African, his skin a deep black. Both had golden whips at their belts, along with a club and a sword. The whips, Loys knew, were for clearing a way through crowds for their master.
Loys instantly prostrated himself. He had no idea who this man was, but that sash, combined with the fact he’d turned the university’s master out of his own most comfortable seat, meant it was better to overdo the formalities rather than risk any appearance of arrogance.
‘Stand up, scholar, stand up.’ The sing-song voice was of an unusual timbre. The man had smooth skin like a woman’s, beardless; his limbs were long and his hands thin and graceful. His fingers bore three gold rings, one of which looked heavy enough to be an official seal. Certainly a eunuch, thought Loys.
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