‘If you’re going to make me go into that White Christ house,’ Floki said to Sigurd, pointing a finger at the jarl accusingly, ‘you are going to have to buy me more wine.’ And I seconded that.
* * *
If I had not already felt green and bilious from the wine the night before, the church of the Holy Wisdom would have done it to me anyway. Try as I might I just could not reckon how men could have built the place and neither could the others, including Egfrith. With its round, golden roof it had looked enormous from the hill to the west the day before, but now it filled my world, pulling my eyes up and up so that the gristle pulled taut in my throat and my mouth hung open. It was huge beyond imagining, a great soaring mass of stones piled one upon the other up into the sky.
‘Are you sure this house belongs to the same god that you worship, monk?’ Black Floki asked, looking askance at the monk as though he was not looking forward to the reply.
‘Of course!’ Egfrith said, those words smearing a full-on grimace within Floki’s crow-black beard. I knew what the Norseman was thinking. He was thinking that the White god must be much more powerful in these parts than he was back in the north for men to have built him such a place. For surely there was magic involved in the massive carved stones of Hagia Sophia. How else could they have risen to the sky like that?
It was past midday now and hot enough to hardboil your bollocks. From dawn we had waited in the shadow of a stand of trees whose leaves had fluttered green and silver and rattled in the morning breeze. We were by the god-house’s south-eastern entrance, making a show of trying to sell Theo’s ant churches to the constant stream of White Christ followers who entered the place. Egfrith was prattling, using what Greek his tongue could navigate to hawk the useless objects to folk who, for the most part, couldn’t give a gnat’s fart. Black Floki and I were grinning like fools, brandishing the clay baubles as though they were silver jarl torcs and anyone who did not want one at the price we were selling at must be either blind, moon mad or both.
Meanwhile, Theo and Sigurd stood a little way off by the south-eastern door because that, so said Theo, was the entrance used by Miklagard’s emperors. They leant against the wall of a fountain, pretending to play a game on a board inscribed with squares, which Theo had bought from a street stall. I think it was like tafl except that the pieces were miniature horses and other figures skilfully carved from bone, though whether the two of them were actually playing or not I could not tell. I suspected they were, but what they were also doing was watching for the arrival of Staurakios and Arsaber’s men.
They came in the late afternoon when the sun had rolled into the west, mercifully taking some of its ferocity with it. There was no mistaking Staurakios. The ten red-cloaked soldiers with their long shields surrounding him gave him away, but once I got a look at him I knew without a doubt that he was Nikephoros’s son. He was taller perhaps and younger of course, but he had the same thin face and intelligent eyes as his father. His beard was short, neat and oiled in the Greek way and his dark hair was arrow-straight to the chin where it then curled out, glistening like wet otter. He looked as much an emperor as his father, too, which of course he was, and despite being clothed in a simple long tunic and brown cloak he walked with the pride-stiff back of a man who has no other way to defy his circumstances.
Sigurd had given his bird’s call to alert us and with that we stashed the sack of baubles beneath a thorny bush and joined the spate of chattering folk converging on the massive, stone entrance to the church, with its carved lintel. It seemed to take an age to pass the threshold, for there were soldiers there checking everyone who entered for weapons, but we got in without any trouble, having stashed our knives too.
If the outside had stretched my mind’s fathom rope to the point of snapping, the inside finished the job. There were no beams or columns supporting the enormous, glittering, golden billow of the roof, yet somehow all that gold hung there above us when it should have crashed down on our heads. Whereas we were used to leaving true light behind when we entered a place, relying on flame to light the dark, this place was a blaze of light, both from the sun’s rays lancing in through countless windholes high up, and from the gold mosaics, glittering purple bricks, glistening pillars and huge bronze doors. Pictures of the Christ and of his saints and angels were everywhere you looked, so that I felt the hairs stiffen all over my body and could only imagine what Black Floki was feeling. I half expected to see his skin blistering, for no one hated the tortured god more than he. Except maybe Asgot. But here were pictures of men and women too, some of which looked like Nikephoros, and these I thought must be past emperors long in their cold graves.
Men and women were lighting candles, the whisper of hundreds of prayers fluttering in the cool of the place like moths. Somewhere high above, in one of the many passageways that ran around the inner wall, monks were singing their dreadful songs, the languid miserable dirge of it tainting the air like damp. Somewhere else someone was burning a spice that filled the place with a sweet, musky smell. But I did not have the time to marvel at painted faces looking down from the walls or at the gold and glittering black of the stonework. I was searching through the meek, prayer-muttering Christ folk for the red-cloaked soldiers. For when we found them we would find Staurakios.
It was Egfrith who found them. The monk caught my eye and nodded to the eastern end of the place where, in a separate chamber, Staurakios was on his knees, head bowed before an altar of green stone. He looked asleep to me, or dead from boredom, and I whispered as much to Egfrith, who tutted because he thought I was being deliberately impious. Which of course I was. The guards stood around talking, though every once in a while one of them would eyeball the worshippers to make sure all was as it should be.
‘I know that face, lad. What are you thinking?’ Sigurd breathed, dropping a coin into a silver dish and taking a beeswax candle from a pile. ‘I can hear ideas squirming in that skull of yours.’
I had paid nothing for the candle I now held against another’s flame and I felt strangely guilty about it. It’s the Christ seidr gnawing at you, Raven, I thought with a shudder, placing the candle in its holder without looking at Sigurd.
‘I’m thinking there are a lot of soldiers,’ I murmured, at which the jarl nodded suspiciously. What I was really thinking about was Freyja, called Gefn – the giver – and Mardöll, sea-brightener, who is more beautiful than any sun-glistened fjord. She is the goddess of love, all Norse know that. But men say she is a warrior goddess, too, a spear-wielding valkyrie who claims half the battle-slain alongside Óðin; a strange thought surely, but not as strange as my mind filling with thoughts of Freyja, like a god house glutting with kneelers. Odd given that I stood in that powerful Christ place with dead saints’ eyes boring into me like ship rivets. I was thinking of the goddess’s tears, for she is said to weep tears of red gold. Freyja who is also by-named Thrungva – throng.
‘We should leave now before someone gets suspicious,’ Egfrith hissed. I nodded. So did Black Floki, and from the look on Theo’s face he was coming up short in the way of ideas, too.
‘It is hard to think of schemes with that monk song curdling the air,’ Sigurd gnarred through a grimace. ‘We will come back tomorrow when we have thought of a way.’ The others nodded and Egfrith made the sign of the cross over his chest and turned to leave.
And then it came to me: tears of red gold.
I was moving. I could hear my boots scuffing against the flagstone floor and was vaguely aware of Floki hissing at me to come back. Candles flickered and burnished stone glittered. The musky air thrummed with whispered prayers and the mournful voices of monks swam around my ears and made my blood prickle.
Red gold.
I was close enough to Staurakios now to see that, in contrast to the drab tunic and cloak, his shoes were lavish affairs of red cloth, pearls and glossy jewels. I saw a gold ring gleam on his laced fingers and heard his prayer mumble bouncing off the stone around him. Then, just as two of the Red
-Cloaks turned, spears coming up, I skewed left and into an adjoining chamber where a white statue of a woman stood on a plinth, illuminated by candles. I fell to my knees before it, feeling the cool stone seep through my breeks and hoping that what I was doing was something that a Christ follower might do. Though who this stone person was I did not know. It was not Freyja, not in this god house. I knew that much. Still, she was beautiful whoever she was. Her face had a kindness to it and a calm that I have rarely seen in a real woman other than when she has been asleep or is cradling a newborn. She looked sad, too, and I wished Bjarni could see the craft that had gone into the carving of stone so that it looked like flesh and almost had life.
She was a forgotten woman this one, alone in a chamber whose walls were cracked and whose paint was old and faded. Platforms raised on wooden frames hugged the walls so that men could climb up and fill the cracks, as we pack daub into wall crevices or thumb tarred hair between ship strakes. Yet there were no men here. Just me. And thoughts of the goddess. And so I pinched out most of the candles and I climbed, the acrid smoke following me and filling my nostrils. Up I went, the trestle creaking like a ship at sea until I reached the highest board, which was just over three men’s height from the ground and to my mind not a good place to be. My heart was thumping against my ribs like a smith’s hammer on an anvil and I was sweat-soaked despite the coolness of the place. The platform was about the size of a normal door and I peered over the edge, cursing my own foolishness. To my relief the chamber was empty.
Then it was not. Father Egfrith was there, peering around the darkened room, his fingers clawing at the back of his head as though it had woodworm.
‘Here!’ I hissed and he looked up, his eyes bulging, then he dropped to his knees before the stone woman just as I had done, which at least told me I had got that part right.
‘Come down, you fool!’ he rasped through tight lips. ‘You’ll get us killed, you brainless ox!’ His neck twisted as he glanced behind him. ‘Come down!’
‘I’ll kill you myself if you don’t shut your mouth, Egfrith!’ I seethed.
Tears of red gold. All I had was my small eating knife but it was more than enough. I sliced into my hand, pulling the blade along the full flesh between thumb and wrist. Blood brimmed at the slit and I made a fist, edging out until my hand was directly above the stone woman. Then the first fat drops fell.
Egfrith’s mouth fell open. Crimson spattered on white stone and the monk closed his eyes for two heartbeats. Then, still kneeling, he threw up his arms and yelled in Latin or Greek – I was not sure which but I heard the word miraculum amongst it. The man shrieked, his voice cutting through the Christ-thick air, and my heart stopped beating. Folk were coming, feet slapping the stone as they ran. I took one last look down and saw that most of the drips had missed, landing in dark stars on the stone floor. Three or four though had streaked down the woman’s breast. Not tears perhaps, but strange enough coming from a statue. Then I shifted back against the wall, making myself tight as a sleeping mouse and hoping that I could not be seen from below.
Voices filled the chamber as folk realized what Egfrith was yelling about and then others were bellowing too and women were howling and crying. That dark forgotten place was suddenly all madness and still more were coming, their yells adding to the din. I had made a rat’s nest of the god house. It was chaos.
Which was just what Sigurd and Floki and Theo needed.
But then my platform began to shake, the timbers chattering like loose teeth, and I flattened myself even more for there was nothing to grip on to without showing my hands to those below.
‘Raven!’ Why is the damned fool calling me? I thought, cursing Egfrith. Then I realized why, just as the frame shook like thunder and I began to bounce on the platform and the clamour turned from wonder to fury. They knew!
‘Raven, get down!’ Egfrith’s reedy English cut through the squall and I gripped the uprights, fearing a broken back more than the rage of Christ kneelers. I looked over the edge into hundreds of shocked, hate-filled and maddened faces just as the whole frame struck the wall once, twice, then began to tip beyond the balance point. Folk screamed and I clenched my teeth and clung on, not knowing what else to do, and I thought I saw the flash of red cloaks amongst the throng. Freyja Thrungva – throng, I thought. As the whole frame fell and me with it.
I landed on three women, which was bad for them but good for me, as the frame snapped and splintered with a great crash. Then Egfrith was there, hauling me up with one arm and brandishing a broken timber at the crowds, screaming at them. I’d had the wind knocked out of me and could not get a breath, but that didn’t stop the little monk dragging me to my feet. He lashed about him wildly, spit flying from his mouth, and pulled me bent double through the seething madness. A man grabbed at me and Egfrith cracked the stick against his face, dropping him, then snarled at another man, which was enough. Soldiers were fighting amongst the crowd and I saw one of them on the floor and recognized Floki’s eating knife sticking from his neck, then we broke through the tight press and I gasped, filling my sore lungs, and ran.
Into the dying heat of the day.
‘Where now?’ I heaved, turning to look back up at the Hagia Sophia to see if we were being followed. We had taken a shady path off the south-side courtyard, following others who were running to escape the violence, but had seen nothing of Sigurd and the others. We would have to recover our stashed gear later.
‘Somewhere quiet,’ Egfrith wheezed, putting a hand to his face to see if he was bleeding. He was, but only from a scratch where someone had made a grab for him in the snarl. I ached all over after that bone-rattling, but nothing inside me was broken so far as I could tell.
I shook my head. ‘No, monk. Crowds. We want crowds,’ I said, knowing that losing ourselves amongst Miklagard’s hordes would be the best thing we could do. Egfrith thought about this for a moment then agreed with a curt nod and so we loped off east, the sun at our backs, heading for the Mese, which Egfrith had said was Greek for middle and which was, at twenty-five paces wide, the main thoroughfare of the Great City.
The street was not swarming as it had been earlier in the day, but there were still enough folk on it for us to become inconspicuous, the thinnest grey thread amongst a great colourful weave of merchants, pilgrims, traders and Greeks. We did not walk in the middle, instead sticking to the darker, shaded, column-lined porticoes that ran along both sides of the street and which housed permanent stalls selling every type of goods imaginable.
‘There can be no other city like Constantinople on God’s earth,’ Egfrith said as much to himself as to me as we stood for a few moments catching our breath and glancing around for signs of danger. It seemed we were safe enough for now and I said as much as we went on, following the road past the Hippodrome – the sword-blade shaped arena used for horse races – and two palaces either one of which any Asgard-dweller would be proud to own. After about six hundred paces we came to the Forum of Constantine that was to me as impressive in its way as the grandest buildings we had already seen. An ocean of smooth stone with huge monumental gates to the east and west, it was dominated by a gleaming red column that must have been taller than any of Thór’s enemies in Jötunheim and upon whose top stood a naked spear-armed warrior of bronze. Islands of men and women stood here and there talking and laughing. Christ priests traded words, beggars rattled dishes at passers-by and all clung to the cool shadows of countless other statues and monuments, like clusters of mussels in tide pools.
This is where the jarls would hold great tings, where warriors would talk of raiding and ships and plunder to be had, I thought to myself, if Norsemen lived in Miklagard.
Here was yet another of the Great City’s wonders: a statue of a hulking beast with massive ears and a long snaking nose. One monstrous foot was raised, as though the beast was about to stamp down and crush its enemy, and I asked Egfrith what story ever mentioned such a creature.
‘The Greeks used to invent monsters to
make their tales more exciting,’ he said, shaking his head disapprovingly. But I smiled because at last I had found something we shared with the Greeks, though even then there were no people better than the Norse at weaving colour into a story to make it the brighter.
We decided to go south, agreeing that the harbour was where we would find the others if they had not been caught or worse. And find them we eventually did, Sigurd and Black Floki sitting on the edge of the bustling quayside each gripping a wooden cup as they looked out across the glittering, ship-strewn harbour. A saggy wineskin sat between them and they looked as if they had not a trouble in the world.
‘I can see you are worrying yourselves sick about us,’ I said, at which they both twisted their necks, grins splitting their beards. ‘But we are safe, so do not concern yourselves about it.’ I raised a hand to allay their absent fears.
‘We were just saying what a black thing it was for you to meet your life-thread’s end in a White Christ house like that,’ Sigurd said, shaking his head. They both wore felt hats with wide brims of the sort that many in the Great City wore and the jarl seemed rather taken with his, though I thought they looked ridiculous. ‘It is no lie that Black Floki was just about to sail to Asgard,’ he said, pointing at a tiny skiff bobbing at its mooring, ‘to burn the Norns’ loom for their being such cruel bitches. But here you are!’
‘You’ve saved me some hard rowing,’ Black Floki said through the twist of a smile.
‘Anything for you, brother,’ I said with a smirk and bow. ‘The truth of it is I might have been dead if not for Egfrith,’ I added, as surprised to hear it as I was to say it. ‘He can be fearsome with two foot of Greek wood.’ The Norsemen looked at the monk dubiously from under their hat rims. Egfrith wafted the praise away.
Raven Page 31
