The Sarantine Mosaic

by Guy Gavriel Kay

  He had red hair and was the only figure there shown with a beard, other than Zakarios, but this was not a holy man.

  He was turned inward, looking towards the centre like the scribe, staring at the Emperor or Empress (difficult to tell which). Indeed, it could be observed, upon study of the elements here, that the line of this man’s gaze was a balancing one, against that of the lean, thin-faced one on the other side of the panel, and that—perhaps—this was why he was where he was.

  This red-haired figure, too, wore an ornament about his throat. (Only he and the tall, fair woman did.) A medallion of gold, with the letter C inscribed within it twice, interlocking. Whatever that might mean.

  AND THIS SECOND WORK, too, was finished save for one small patch near the bottom, below the Emperor, where the smooth, grey-white mixture of the setting bed had received its tesserae just now, drying into place.

  Crispin stood, suspended a little above the ground, and he looked at his work for a long time, suspended also, in a different way, in a moment difficult to sort through: the sense that he would be entirely done with this, finished forever, as soon as he stepped down from this ladder. He felt as if he were hovering in a timelessness before that happened and this labour and its achievement moved into the past, or the future, but would never again be now.

  His heart was full. He thought of centuries of mosaic workers … here in Varena, in Sarantium, in Rhodias, or far to the south in lands across the sea, cities on coasts beyond Candaria, or eastward in ancient Trakesia, or in Sauradia (holy men with their gifts, bringing Jad into a chapel there, their names lost to silence) … all the makers unknown, gone, shrouded in vanished time, dead.

  Their works (whatever works survived) a glory of the god’s earth and his gift of light, the makers dimmer than shadows.

  He looked at that place near the bottom where the tesserae were newly laid, still fixing themselves, and he saw the doubled C of his initials, matching the medallion he wore on the panel. Thinking of them, of all of them, lost or living or yet to come, he had signed his work upon the wall.

  HE HEARD A SOUND as the door opened quietly behind him. End of day, end of last day. Martinian, knowing how near he was to finishing, come to see. He hadn’t told his friend, his teacher, about the signing of his name, the initials. It was a kind of gift, perhaps an overwhelming one for an emotional man who would know— better than anyone alive—the thoughts behind those two letters intertwined.

  Crispin took a deep breath. It was time to come down again.

  He stopped, however, and did not move. For with that taken breath he realized that it wasn’t Martinian who had entered to stand behind him on the stone floor. He closed his eyes. Felt a tremor in the hand and arm holding him to the ladder.

  A scent. Not ever to be mistaken. Two women in Sarantium had worn it once. No one else allowed. One as her own, the other as a gift, for her art, which was the same as the first’s had been, ephemeral as dream, as life. What was the dancer when the dance was done?

  Dead. Gone as the artisans’ names were gone. Perhaps enduring, for others, after, in the image made here. But not moving and alive on Jad’s earth. This was the world of mortal men and women, where certain things did not happen, even with zubirs, alchemist’s birdsouls, the half-world hovering, love.

  And Crispin knew that he would live in this world again, after all, that he could even embrace it in the years left to him before he, too, was called away. There were gifts, graces, compensations, deep and very real. One could even smile, in gratitude.

  Without turning, still on the ladder, he said, ‘Hello, Shirin, my dear. Did Martinian tell you when to come in?’

  And from behind him, then, as the world changes, changes utterly, he hears Alixana say, ‘Oh, dear. I am not wanted, after all.’

  Not wanted.

  One can forget to breathe, can weep, for unworthiness.

  And turn, too quickly, almost falling, a cry escaping from the heart’s core, and look upon her face again, in life, a thing dreamt of in the long dark, not thought to be possible again.

  She is looking up at him, and he sees that she (being what she is) has already read what is in his eyes, his wordless cry, if she hadn’t already known it from her image on the opposite wall.

  There is a silence as he looks at her and sees her gazing back at him, and then past and across, at what he has made of her above the doors to the north, and then back to where he stands upon the ladder above the ground, and she is alive and here, and he has been wrong, again, about what can happen in the world.

  He says, ‘I thought you were dead.’

  ‘I know.’

  She looks at the wall again where he has placed her at the centre of all eyes, at the heart of light. Looks back at him, says, an unexpected trembling in her voice, ‘You made me … taller than I am.’

  He is looking into her eyes as she says it. Hears, beneath the simple words, what else she is telling him, a year and half a world away from her life.

  ‘No I didn’t,’ he says. It is difficult to speak. He is still shaking.

  She is changed, could never be taken for an Empress now. A way to survive, of course, to cross land or sea. To come here. To where he is. And stand, looking up. Her dark hair is shorter, growing back in. She wears a traveller’s robe of good make, dark brown, belted, a wide hood, thrown back. She has not attended (that he can see) to her lips or eyes or cheeks, wears no jewellery at all.

  He can only just begin to imagine what this year has been for her.

  He swallows hard. ‘My lady …’

  ‘No,’ she says quickly. Lifts a hand. ‘I am not that. Here.’ She smiles faintly. ‘They believe I’m some disgraceful creature, out there.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ he manages to say.

  ‘Come to lure you with eastern decadence.’

  He says nothing this time. Looks at her.

  A year since she laid down her robe on a stony beach, lost a love more swiftly than to plague, laid down a life. There is an uncertainty now, a fragility, as she scans his face. He thinks of the rose in her room.

  She murmurs, ‘I said on the island … that I trusted you.’

  He nods his head. ‘I remember. I didn’t know why.’

  ‘I know you didn’t. It was the second time I’d come for you.’

  ‘I know. When I first came. Why? Back then?’

  She shakes her head. ‘I couldn’t say. No clear reason. I expected you would finish your work and leave us.’

  He makes a wry face. He can do this. Enough time has passed. ‘Instead, I finished half my work and left you.’

  Her expression is grave. ‘It was taken from you. Sometimes half is all we are allowed. Everything we have can be taken away. I always knew that. But sometimes … people can be followed. Brought back down again?’

  He is still trembling. ‘Three times? I am unworthy.’

  She shakes her head. ‘Who is ever worthy?’

  ‘You?’

  She smiles a little. Shakes her head again. Says, ‘I asked you how you went on living. After.’

  On the island, on the beach. In his dreams. ‘I couldn’t even answer. I didn’t know. I still don’t. I was only half alive, though. Too bitter. It started to change in Sarantium. But even then I was … trying to stay away, by myself. Up there.’

  She nods this time. ‘Lured down by a decadent woman.’

  He looks at her. At Alixana. Standing here.

  Can see her thinking, teasing out nuances. ‘Will I … make trouble for you?’ she asks. Still that hesitance.

  ‘I have no doubt of it.’ He tries to smile.

  She is shaking her head again. A worried look. Gestures at the far wall. ‘No, I mean, people may know me, from this.’

  He takes a breath and lets it out. Understands, finally, that this hesitance is his to take away.

  ‘Then we will go where they will not,’ he hears himself say.

  She bites her lip. ‘You would do that?’

  And he says,
swept back into the rush and flow of time and the world, ‘You will be hard-pressed to think of what I will not do for you.’ He grips the ladder tightly. ‘Will it … be enough?’

  Her expression changes. He watches it happen. She bites her lip again, but it means something else now. He knows, has seen that look before.

  ‘Well,’ she says, in the voice he has never stopped hearing, ‘I still want dolphins.’

  He nods his head, as if judiciously. His heart is full of light.

  She pauses. ‘And a child?’

  He draws a breath and steps down off the scaffolding. She smiles.

  Aut lux hic nata est, aut capta hic libera regnat.

  Light was either born here or, held captive, here reigns free.

  —Inscription in Ravenna, among the mosaics

  I think that if I could be given a month of Antiquity and leave to spend it where I chose, I would spend it in Byzantium a little before Justinian opened St. Sophia and closed the Academy of Plato. I think I could find in some little wine-shop some philosophical worker in mosaic who could answer all my questions, the supernatural descending nearer to him …

  —W.B. Yeats, A Vision