by Tom Harper
Too late, I realised the futility of my ambition. I would not find the monk down here. Even with a score of men and fires there would have been endless columns for him to duck behind; alone, and in the dark, it was hopeless. Now my only thought was to escape, to be out of these depths and back in the light. I spun around, feeling the water swirling about my legs, and searched desperately for that beacon of daylight where I had entered.
‘Deliverance is of the Lord,’ I mumbled through shivering teeth. ‘Deliverance is of the Lord. Out of the depths have I called thee, Lord; hear my prayer.’
I thought I could see a smear of pale light somewhere to my left, surprisingly closer than I had expected. Had I stumbled around in a circle?
‘Christ have mercy. Christ have mercy. Christ have mercy.’
I repeated my prayers with a ferocity I had not felt since my days as a novice, and with each ‘Christ’ I forced another step forward. Soon the saviour’s name was little more than a whisper, a puff of air hissed through frozen teeth, but still it drove me on. The light was near now, cold and silent and beautiful, and I stumbled towards it with new hope. I could see the rungs of the ladder, shining like steel where the daylight met them; I could see the small circle in the roof where the world awaited. And there, far beneath it, I could see a dark figure hauling himself out of the water. His wet robe clung close about him so that he took the form of an eel or a serpent, the wet fabric gleaming like scales; the limbs which he stretched upwards seemed to be webbed into his body. I gave a faint, gurgling cry, and plunged forward, splashing and flailing to reach him before he escaped.
Even with the bewildering echo he must have heard me come, for I saw his head swivel round, and then his arms jerk up in frantic motion. I flung out a hand and felt it close around his foot; it pulled free of the rung as I fell back, but I did not let go. With a shriek and a howl the monk lost his grip, and there was nothing I could do to move as he came crashing down on me. His falling weight pressed me under and I sank, convulsing as my lungs drew in great gulps of icy water. I tried to stab him with my knife but my hand was empty: in the confusion I must have dropped it and never noticed.
And that was my last hope gone, for my enemy had found his footing now and was holding me under, waiting for the water to drown the life out of me. I did not have the strength to resist, and a few feeble kicks did nothing to dislodge him. I had been a thoughtless fool to think I could trap him in this cavern, and now I would pay the price of pride.
Calm descended. I ceased my struggle, and he must have been almost as drained as I, for he seemed content to hold me there and let nature take its course, without advancing the moment by further violence. I was suspended in the void; the waters closed in over me and the deep surrounded me; I could imagine that the fingers on my throat were nothing more than drifting weed. There are men I have spoken with, often after a battle, who claimed that in the moment of certain death they were transported to some earlier time in their lives, but I felt none of that: only a dull warmth creeping through my veins, a serenity in the knowledge that my struggle was gone, and soon I would be with angels. And Maria, my wife.
But not yet. Suddenly the hands which held me down drifted away. I was rising through the water, and could feel a stinging on the crown of my head where it was exposed to the biting air above. Then it was on my shoulders, my back. My body drifted and my foot touched ground; I pushed up, and gasped as my head broke free. No-one pressed it back. I gagged and choked, coughing gallons of liquid out of my lungs and trying to overcome the wracking pain which had exploded in my head. Somewhere, I thought, I heard someone call my name.
‘Demetrios. Demetrios.’
I opened my stinging eyes. It was not Maria, still less the angels. It was – against all hope and reason – Sigurd.
He lifted me out of that cave and slung me over his shoulder, pumping ever more water out of me as his armour rose and fell against my stomach. Dazed and bedraggled, I saw the snow-bound city turned on its head. He carried me tirelessly, never stopping, up stairs and twisting passages, across great roads, down narrow lanes and through stout gates, until I was brought within a room and laid in a bed. I shut my eyes, and the soft voices over me did nothing to spur my consciousness. Instead, I fell into a profound sleep.
I might have slept forever, but it was still light when I woke. My first awareness was that I was warm. Beautifully warm, beatifically warm, warm like a saint in God’s eternal gaze. A warm mattress was underneath me, warm blankets wrapped around me, and from somewhere behind the walls a bell was ringing.
I rolled over, opening my eyes further. I recognised this room, with its whitewashed walls and small windows: it was the hospital at the monastery of Saint Andrew, and by a chest a little distance away stood Anna.
She was not warm, not even remotely; she was entirely naked. She was brushing her hair, and the motion of the arm behind her head lifted her bare breasts like some antique statue. Her small nipples were puckered tight and hard, while by her hips the olive skin of her stomach rose gently as she breathed. Such was her lack of modesty that she did not even try to hide the dark shadow between her thighs.
For a moment I stared like some virgin on his wedding night; then, overcome with guilt, I belatedly pressed my blushing face into the pillow.
Anna laughed; a soft, forgiving laugh.
‘Come, Demetrios,’ she mocked me. ‘You were married, and raised two daughters to womanhood. Surely you must have uncovered these mysteries before. Am I so shameful?’
‘Shameless, I think.’ My humour returned a little, and I risked looking back. I was just in time to see her arms wriggling through the sleeves of a woollen camisia, which tumbled down over her body to mask its temptations. I felt an ache of regret that I had not looked longer, but dismissed the thought at once.
‘Do you always undress before strange men in the middle of the day?’ I watched her pull on her green dress and fasten the silken cord around it.
‘Only when they appear at my door half-frozen and close to death. I had to force some heat into you, so I lay beside you in the bed until you stopped shivering. You served in the legions – surely when you campaigned in the mountains you huddled together with your comrades at night?’
‘If we did, we kept our clothes on.’ I had endured much that day; it seemed almost too much to believe that I had risked mortal sin lying with Anna and not felt a moment of it.
Again I drove back my thoughts from the places they strayed. ‘And how did I come to be here?’
‘Sigurd brought you. He said he found you almost drowned in a cistern.’
‘Is he here now?’ Had he watched while Anna undressed and shared my bed?
‘He had important things to do. He said he would return, and try to bring some fresh clothes.’
Only now did I realise that under the blankets, I too was wholly naked. I pulled the covers closer.
Anna tied the scarf over her head and crossed to the door. ‘I must go. I have other patients to see. I will send an apprentice with some soup, and try to visit soon.’
‘Will you share beds with all your wards?’ I raised myself on one elbow.
The door closed without answer.
Not long afterwards, Sigurd came. His face was flushed despite the cold, but he waited while I dressed with the tunic, leggings, boots and cloak he had brought. He must have gone to my house, or sent someone there, for they were my own. Which was as well, for his tunic would have reached almost to my feet.
‘That’s the second time I’ve saved you from a battle you were foolish to enter,’ he said pointedly. ‘There may not be a third.’
‘I know.’ I was honest in my gratitude. ‘But how did you find me? And what of the monk?’
‘Your elder daughter found me with Aelric. I met him in the street; he had left his station to go and buy food.’ I did not envy Aelric explaining that to his captain. ‘We followed your tracks through the snow as far as the Adrianople road, where there were plenty of witnesses
who could remember a bare-headed monk and a half-dressed madman chasing him. From there we searched the side-streets until we found you.’
‘And the monk?’
‘We saw him trying to drown you at the bottom of that hole, but as I came down the ladder he fled. I let him go; only a fool would follow a man into that abyss. My men are guarding the entrance. If he comes out, we’ll catch him.’ He looked theatrically at the sky, though the sun was veiled in cloud. ‘If he’s still down there, he’ll already be dead.’
‘We should go and see.’ I stood, feeling the trembling in my legs as they took my weight. I was weak, but the food which Anna had sent gave me strength, and the hunger to see the monk who had almost killed me was all consuming.
‘Will the doctor let you go?’ Sigurd asked with a smile. ‘She protects her patients like a tiger, you know.’
That was only half true. Some she protected like a tiger; me she waved away with a dismissive snort.
‘If you choose to risk your health and your strength running around the city, trying to do the monk’s work for him, then do so,’ she said briskly. ‘I need your bed for the more deserving anyway.’
Sigurd and I walked out of the monastery. It was late afternoon, and the road was almost solid with the humanity herded onto it. The snow, so pristine that morning, was now ground to a grey slush and mixed with grit and mud. It was well that the ground stayed frozen, or many might have sunk into an inescapable mire.
‘I must go to the walls first,’ said Sigurd. He had seemed cheerful at my bedside, but now his mood was grim. ‘I need to check on the garrison. The monk will wait an extra half hour – whether he’s under, on or in the ground.’
I did not argue, but pushed my way after him through the tide of men and beasts which flowed against us. It was straining work, and if I had not had Sigurd’s commanding bulk to follow I doubt I would have progressed a step. There was an intensity in the crowd now which I had not noticed previously: a hunch to their shoulders and a desperation in their gaunt faces. Perhaps it was the burden of snow and cold added to their already straitened condition, or perhaps they knew that the city was ill able to provide for them after the many others who had preceded them.
Sigurd had anticipated an extra half an hour, but it was almost an hour later, near dusk, when we at last reached the walls. Along them the Watch had kept a corridor free for messengers and heralds to gallop through, and I was glad of the space to breathe as we came into it.
‘My men are up that tower,’ Sigurd told me. ‘Will you wait?’
A squadron of cavalry thundered past, drowning my reply and spraying me with mud. Above me, a ballista was being winched up a tower on a scaffold, straining at the thick ropes which held it.
‘I’ll come up.’ I did not want to end that day crushed under a horse or a falling siege weapon.
As ever, Sigurd was recognised, and we were waved up by the guard at the foot of the stairs. It was not an arduous climb, but my head ached again and my legs begged for rest. About me, I could see sentries scurrying about, shouting and calling, though I could not hear what they said.
We came onto the broad rampart and my interest rose. A hush had fallen, and the guards were still, their faces pressed against the embrasures as if watching for a miracle. Sigurd ignored them and continued up the steps to the turret, but – drawn to the spectacle – I crossed to the battlements and stared.
Out across the snow-swept fields the sun had sunk beneath the rim of the clouds, facing us like a glowing eye. The sky and land alike were caught in its crimson glare, shimmering red, but that was not what had silenced the watchmen. On the ridge across the plain, some two miles distant, an army had appeared. They rode towards us with the sun behind them, their spears like pricks of flame and their banners dark above them. They were moving forward, but as one row passed into the shadows below the ridge another came up on their heels and took its place. It was a host of thousands – tens of thousands – and the snow turned black underfoot as they marched towards our gate.
The barbarians had come.
ι ε
‘This changes everything.’ I had waited three days for an audience with Krysaphios, and now that I had it I was giving full vent to my feelings. ‘Can you believe it is merely chance that not three weeks after the Emperor was almost murdered, an army of barbarians arrives at our walls?’
Krysaphios stroked his beardless chin. ‘This changes nothing,’ he said calmly. ‘Except to raise the penalties should you fail.’
‘The man who directed the assassin was a monk who prayed according to the western rites, and used a barbarian weapon unknown to our people. Now ten thousand of his kinsmen, armed for war, are camped just across the Golden Horn. Can it be happenstance?’
‘You disappoint me, Demetrios. You had a reputation for insight, for seeing the hidden truths which other men did not. Not for pouncing on chance.’
‘I may see deeper than other men, but if I find a man standing over a corpse, with a knife dripping blood and a stolen purse in his hand, I do not presume that there must be a more subtle explanation and let him go.’
‘This time you should.’ Krysaphios clapped his hands together. ‘The barbarian army had barely crossed our frontier three weeks ago. Even if the attempt on the Emperor’s life had succeeded, they would have profited nothing from it. And besides, they are come to aid us, to drive the Turks and Saracens from our lands in Asia and restore them to their rightful owners. For all the mob may fear them, they are our allies, our allies, our welcome guests.’ He did not try to hide the scepticism which underpinned his words. ‘It is on that understanding that the Emperor tolerates them, that he gives them food for their bellies and straw for their horses.’
‘Nonetheless,’ I pressed, ‘I would like to see these men. Even if it is a foolish fancy, you know that I prefer to be thorough.’
‘As thorough as you were in the cistern?’
Krysaphios mocked me. Aelric and his companions had spent a day and a night standing watch over the cistern’s entrance, but no-one had emerged. They had concluded that the monk must be dead, but I had insisted on finding a body, and had led many men down there with nets and torches to scour it. We found nothing except fish: the monk, it seemed, had dissolved into the water like powder. Or more likely, as the hydrarch suggested, crawled out through one of the pipes which fed it.
‘As thorough as I was in the cistern.’ I had not been deterred by the complaining doubts of the Varangians, and I would not defer to the eunuch’s scorn. ‘My instincts are sound, Krysaphios, if not always true. I need a pass into the barbarian camp, and perhaps an introduction to their captains.’
Krysaphios’ eyes dipped in thought.
‘After all,’ I added, ‘even if – as you presume – the man who would kill the Emperor rests within our city, it cannot have escaped his notice that a foreign army will give him great scope for mischief.’
Krysaphios looked up. ‘I fear you are too easily tempted by digressions, Demetrios, and succumb to fancy.’
‘My fancies have served well enough.’
‘That is why I will give you the opportunity you seek. The Emperor will send an envoy to the barbarian captains tomorrow, and you may accompany him. If, of course, you can stand their stink. Report to me in the new palace by the walls when you return.’
The path out of that courtyard had grown familiar in the past weeks, and my face was now known well enough that the sentries did not challenge me. Winter had at last entered the palace; the gaiety and laughter which I remembered from my first visit were replaced with grim intent, and the gilded walls seemed dulled.
‘Demetrios.’
One man at least could muster some warmth: Sigurd, striding toward me along the arcade. The hollows of his eyes were dark, all the more so against the pale skin, but his greeting was hearty enough.
‘I thought you were at the walls.’
‘I was. But the Franks are keeping quiet enough in their camp, and without siege engin
es or boats there’s little they can do to trouble us.’
‘Surely there should be nothing they would do to trouble us in any event. Krysaphios tells me they are here as our allies.’
Sigurd eyed me as a teacher with a peculiarly obtuse student. ‘When ten thousand foreign mercenaries are camped before the city walls, you do not trust to kind words and noble intentions. Particularly if they are as duplicitous and greedy as the Franks. The Emperor will not believe they are his allies until they have defeated his enemies and returned to their own kingdoms. Until then, he will treat them like a tame leopard – with good will, and great caution. Otherwise, he may find one day that they have bitten off his hand and more besides.’ He scratched his beard. ‘But I cannot waste time educating your credulous ignorance, Demetrios, for I must get my company ready to call on the Franks tomorrow. We will be escorting the Emperor’s ambassador, the estimable Count of Vermandois.’
‘The Count of where?’
‘Vermandois.’
‘I know that the Emperor’s lands stretch far across the world, but that does not sound like a Roman place.’
‘No.’ Sigurd grinned. ‘It’s in the kingdom of the Franks, not so far from my own country. The Count is the brother of their king, apparently.’
‘And he’s the man the Emperor chooses as his emissary to the barbarians?’
‘He has been here some weeks as the Emperor’s honoured guest. An unfortunate shipwreck deprived him of a grander entrance. His time here has convinced him to swear loyalty to the Emperor, for here at last he has found a man who respects his position with all the riches and women he deserves.’
‘He’s been bought.’
Sigurd fixed me with a warning stare. ‘He has, Demetrios, he has. As have you.’
