The Mosaic of Shadows

by Tom Harper

  ‘No!’ Krysaphios almost screeched the denial. ‘How can you call me a traitor, when you yourself would have given half the empire to those demons?’ He crouched down, as if to perform homage or kiss the hem of the Emperor’s robe, but instead he lifted his own garments high over his waist. There was a gasp of disgust from the crowd, and many hid their eyes, but many more stared in ghoulish fascination at the eunuch’s exposed loins. His organs were entirely absent, as a carzimasian, but the horror of his unnatural flesh was magnified still further by the brutal mesh of scars which covered it.

  ‘Do you see this?’ he screamed, pointing crudely. ‘This disfigurement? This is what the barbarians do to their enemies – for sport! Give them a captive and their evil minds turn only to cruelty and torture.’ Mercifully, he let his robes drop back to the floor. ‘I would give my last breath of life to save the empire from their violence – and yours also, if you would not heed my warnings.’

  ‘You tried to kill me.’ Alexios’ voice faltered with pain. ‘You would have unleashed civil war, and opened the empire to the worst depredations of all our enemies.’

  ‘If I conspired with the barbarians, it was only to lure them into revealing the black truth of their hearts, so you could witness their evil. But you would not see it. Your love of conquest blinded you, for you would rather rule a despoiled empire than protect your people. And now, because I guarded the people you would have forgotten, I will be sacrificed.’

  ‘As you never tired of telling me, I am merciful – too merciful – to my defeated enemies.’

  ‘You lie.’ All this time Krysaphios had been edging back through the crowd, retreating from the Emperor’s gaze; now he found himself at the brink of the room under the windows. ‘You will cast me into the dungeon for your torturers to unleash their craft upon.’ He snapped his head up and met the Emperor’s eyes. ‘But I have been a prisoner before, and I will not submit to that mercy again. Let the barbarians come, and let them tear the flesh from your empire: I will not see it.’

  With a final, sobbing sneer, he bowed his head and stepped off the parapet. Alexios started forward, one arm half raised, but Krysaphios would have hit the ground before he had covered half the distance and he went no further. A great sadness shrouded his face.

  I ran to the window and looked down. The walls were high here, and sheer, dropping unbroken to the rocks below. The ground was blurred in the fading light, its details indistinct, but amid the muted stones I could still see the eunuch’s body. It lay stretched out like a fallen angel, a fragment of gold against the darkness.

  κ θ

  A web of incense hung under the great dome of Ayia Sophia, its curling tendrils caught in the sunlight which fell through the windows. One shaft struck just behind the Emperor’s head, shining off the back of his throne and illuminating the hazy air like a nimbus. On his right sat the patriarch Nikolas, on his left his brother Isaak, a triumvirate of unyielding glory. Elsewhere in the city they would be ringing bells and singing songs for the great feast of Easter, but here the vast crowd was silent, watching the ceremony unfold.

  At the front of the hall, the barbarian captains sat in a line on chairs inlaid with silver. Duke Godfrey was there with his brother Baldwin, and the three ambassadors I recognised from the day of Aelric’s treachery; others whom I had not seen before were there also, and, at the far end of the row, Count Hugh. He was apparently reconciled now with the kinsmen who had mocked and despised him, though he seemed uncomfortable in their company. His companions looked no happier, every one of them sour-faced with suspicion.

  Trumpets sounded, and as the heralds recited Duke Godfrey’s name and titles, he rose and approached the throne. From my position in the western aisle I could not see his face, but the silence of the congregation left his words perfectly audible in that cavernous hall. Prompted by the interpreter, he spoke the words of the oath that had been agreed the night before: he swore to respect the ancient boundaries of the Romans, to serve the Emperor faithfully in battle and to restore to him all lands which his ancestors rightfully held. Seven scribes sat at a table recording every word, and when the oath was taken the Emperor’s son-in-law, Bryennios, stepped forward to present a golden garland. There would be much more gold to follow, I knew, for the Emperor was ever generous to his defeated enemies.

  Duke Godfrey retook his seat gracelessly, wearing the garland like a crown of throns. Then the heralds called his brother and I tensed, while across the hall seven pens sat poised in the air to see what he would say. For a second I thought he had stepped too close to the throne, that he would bring the Varangians rushing down on him, but now he was on one knee mumbling indistinct allegiance. He did not wait for Bryennios when he was done, but marched back to his seat stiff with shame. A rash of pink scarred his cheeks like plague-spots.

  The oaths took almost an hour, followed by anthems of acclamation and the liturgy of Easter. When the patriarch put the cup of Christ to Baldwin’s lips I feared he would spit it back, but he managed to choke it down under the stern eyes of his brother. Then there were more hymns of praise and unity – the message doubtless lost on the barbarians – and at last the long procession into the cheering crowds of the Augusteion. A double line of Varangians had parted the mob, forming a human corridor between church and palace, and as I emerged into the sunlight I saw the last of the Emperor’s retinue disappearing within. The Emperor might be generous to his enemies, I reflected, but not kind: three hours in church followed by the rigours of an imperial banquet would reduce the Franks to the utmost misery. Doubtless they would find compensations.

  ‘Weren’t you summoned to feast at the Emperor’s table?’

  I looked up. Sigurd was standing by a pillar beside me, surveying his men with quiet pride. ‘I’ve spoken enough with barbarians,’ I told him. ‘And not nearly enough with my daughters.’

  Sigurd nodded. ‘There’ll be more barbarians soon enough. The logothete reports that the Normans will be here in a week.’

  ‘They won’t cause trouble.’ Weariness spurred my hope, but reason agreed. ‘Word of the Franks’ humiliation will spread to them; they will think again before defying the Emperor openly.’

  ‘And this time there’ll be no mad eunuch urging them on. Though if there is,’ Sigurd added, ‘he’ll know better than to draw Demetrios Askiates into his schemes.’

  I smiled at the compliment, though I did not deserve it. ‘I served Krysaphios’ purposes all too well – he could have no complaint of me. He wished me to discover that the monk was in league with the barbarians, that they plotted to usurp the Emperor, so that he might have a pretext for insisting on their destruction. He judged me perfectly – it was the Emperor’s stubbornness he underestimated.’

  Sigurd bridled with mock temper. ‘It was the Varangians he underestimated,’ he told me, waving an arm at the burnished cohorts before him. ‘If not for my sword in that throne-room, Demetrios, your head would now be raised on a Frankish spear. And the Emperor’s beside it.’

  I laughed. ‘You are restored to favour now. And the eunuch is gone.’ In my heart I could still find pity for Krysaphios, for the terrible wounds he had suffered and the treachery they had driven him to, but I could not forgive him for balancing the empire on a sword edge.

  ‘Krysaphios had not learned the lesson of the past,’ I mused aloud. ‘He was of a generation who believed that the imperial office was their tool, to be filled, used or discarded as they saw fit. A generation who turned all-conquering glory to invasion and rebellion in fifty meagre years. They never saw that the throne is too much like a serpent’s egg – most dangerous when it is empty.’

  To my chagrin, the Varangian laughed at my melancholy reflections. ‘Will you use the Emperor’s reward to retire and write epigrams? And can this be the same Demetrios Askiates who four months ago was so reluctant to tie his fortunes to those of the Emperor?’

  ‘Now I have no choice. I am marked as the Emperor’s man, with all the advantage and prejudice that bring
s.’ When you save a man’s life, I thought, you buy it with a small piece of your own.

  In the sky above, a breeze pushed away the scrap of cloud which had covered the sun and I smiled. ‘And you, Sigurd? Are you invited to the Emperor’s banquet, or will you join me for the Easter meal?’

  Sigurd swelled. ‘Do you believe that the Emperor would allow himself into a roomful of his enemies without due precaution? I will be in the Hall of Nineteen Couches, watching for any Frank who waves so much as a quail-bone at him.’

  I left Sigurd shouting orders at his company, and pushed my way gradually out of the Augusteion towards the Mesi. It felt strange to be watching the Emperor from a distance again, the untouchable statue I had always known; those few days when I had fought and argued and battled with the greatest men in the empire already seemed far removed. Now the crisis was past and his orbit would draw apart from mine, into the rarefied circles where even the most magnificent moved with caution. He would be locked behind a hundred doors, every one watched jealously by an army of functionaries, and his words would come from the mouths of others. Through every tribulation he would maintain a perfect stillness, for he was the keystone of the empire, locking in the vaulting ambition of his nobles and keeping it off the shoulders of the people below. Though a single gem from his robes would have supplied a year of my needs, I did not envy him it.

  I turned off the Mesi and followed the road towards my house. The streets were filled with families and children and roasting lambs fresh from the market. The smell made me hungry after long hours standing in the church, and I was glad to see my own family already had the coals dutifully glowing under the meat.

  ‘Did the barbarians behave?’ Anna stepped away from the spit, leaving Zoe to turn it. ‘Or am I called to the palace to bandage the Emperor again?’

  ‘Sigurd should see to it that you aren’t needed. Except perhaps to sew up some barbarian skulls. I fear your career at the palace may be finished.’

  Anna lifted her eyebrows. ‘For a man who claims to be a master of unveiling mysteries, you can be unduly ignorant, Demetrios. My career at the palace is barely begun, for the empress herself has sent word that she requires a physician to attend her. I think the Emperor will be keen to keep me near, now that he has found me.’

  ‘I thought you found him.’ The smoke of lemon and rosemary played in my nose, stirring new hunger in my stomach. ‘Bleeding and dying in the corridors of the palace, while his attendants fluttered helplessly.’

  Anna poked a knife into the lamb, and watched the oily juices dribble down its side. They spat and popped in the fire. ‘I think this is cooked. Helena is just fetching some bread from the house.’

  I rasped my knife over a stone, and began slicing meat off the bones. It was troublesome work, for heat rose off the coals and fat splashed my hands, so I did not hear the footsteps behind me, nor even look when the shadow fell over me.

  The sound of a plate crashing against my doorstep drew my attention though. Helena was standing there amid shards of pottery, staring at something past my shoulder like Mary in the garden. I turned, and almost dropped my knife in the fire in astonishment. It was Thomas, seeming taller and broader than ever as he stood over me, yet with a nervous hesitancy in his face.

  ‘I come back to you,’ he said simply.

  I could see he did not speak to me, and I was about to launch a hail of questions when I felt Anna’s hand against my arm.

  ‘You’ll need another plate,’ she said, nodding to Helena’s feet. ‘At least.’

  ‘I will bring two.’

  Thomas had suffered the murder of his parents, the abuse of the monk and now, I guessed from the scabbed blood on his cheek, the betrayal of his race. He had also saved my life. Sharing my table was the least he was due. How much else he desired I could guess from the silent, awkward looks which he and Helena exchanged, but I would address that later. Now I served him the thickest cut of the meat, filled his cup to overflowing and did not say a word when I saw his hand entwined with Helena’s, nor even when they mumbled an excuse and walked down the street to where the cypress tree grew. It was not a day for argument.

  Much later, after the sun had set, I climbed to the roof with a flagon of wine. The streets below were dark, save a few patches of glimmering embers, but the sky was laden with stars. I squinted at them, picking out the ancient constellations which governed our lives. There was Lyra, and Krios the ram and Argo, and a hundred others I had forgotten or could not piece together. When I had named all I could I gave up, relaxed my eyes, and watched the fragmented lights swirl together in patterns of my own imagining. Sometimes beasts and heroes would emerge, sometimes the shapes of leaves or fruits, but most often they were simply the formless weavings of fancy.

  Drawing my eyes down, I looked out over the roofs and domes which surrounded me, and let my thoughts descend from the stars to the lands beyond the empire. From the west, I knew, the Normans were coming, and behind them the Kelts, while to the east and south lay a wilderness of Turks, Fatimids, Ishmaelites and Saracens. No wonder the Emperor had more than once nearly died holding their dangers in balance. Doubtless while his empire provoked the lust and envy of the world he would do so again. But tonight his power endured, and under the heavens the queen of cities slept.

  Tελoς

  Read on for an extract from the thrilling new

  Tom Harper novel, Knights of the Cross,

  now available in Century

  Having sworn allegiance to Byzantium, the army of the First Crusade crossed into Asia Minor in May 1097. At Nicaea and Dorylaeum they won two resounding victories against the Turks, capturing their capital and opening the road south towards Jerusalem. Through July and August, in the face of burning heat and hunger, the crusaders swept aside all resistance as they marched almost a thousand miles across the steppes of Anatolia. Outside the ancient city of Antioch, however, their progress halted: the Turkish garrison was all but impregnable, and as winter drew on the army was devastated by rain, disease, starvation and battle. By February 1098 they had suffered five months of attrition to no discernible gain. Rivalries festered between the different nations of the crusade – Provençals from southern France, Germans from Lorraine, Normans from Sicily and Normandy, and Byzantine Greeks. Fractious princes grew jealous of each others’ ambitions, while the miserable mass of foot-soldiers and camp-followers seethed at the failure of their leaders to deliver them. And in the east, the Turks began to assemble an army that would crush the crusade once and for all against the walls of Antioch.

  I

  Besiegers

  7 March – 3 June 1098

  α

  It was a restless day for the dead. I stood in a grave before Antioch and watched the Army of God dig the corpses of their enemies from the fresh tombs where they had been buried. Men half-naked and smeared with grime worked with passionate intensity to dispossess the dead, plundering the goods with which they had been buried: unstrung bows curled up like snails, short knives, round shields caked with clay – all were dug out and hurled onto the spoil pile. A little further away a company of Normans counted and arranged more gruesome trophies: the severed heads of the corpses we had recalled from death. The day before, an army of Turks had sallied forth from the city and ambushed our foraging expedition; we had driven them back, but only with a great effort that we could ill afford. Now we opened their graves, not from wanton greed or cruelty – though there was that also – but to build a tower, to watch the gate and to keep them penned within their walls. We made a quarry of their cemetery and the foundations of our fortress from their tombs.

  The giant who stood with me in the grave shook his head. ‘This is no way to wage a war.’

  I looked up from the tombstone that I was trying to dislodge and stared at my companion, trying not to see the desecration behind him. An unrelenting season of cold and rain had returned his stout features to the sallow colour of his ancestors, while his unkempt hair and beard were almost of a colour with t
he rusting links of his armour. Like all who had survived the winter horrors, his skin hung loose from his bones, his shoulders seemed too narrow for his mail coat, and the tail of his belt flapped from being drawn so tight. Yet still there was strength in the arms which had once seemed like the columns of a church, and a gleaming edge on the axe which leaned against the wall of the trench.

  ‘You’ve served twenty years in the Emperor’s army, Sigurd,’ I reminded him. ‘Would you have me believe that you never plundered your enemies, nor took booty from the battlefield?’

  ‘This is different. Worse.’ He wormed his fingers into the earth and began tugging on the stone, rocking it back and forth to loose it from the mud that held it. ‘Looting the fallen is a warrior’s right. Looting the buried . . .’

  His arm tensed and the flat stone toppled out, splashing into the puddles on the floor of the pit. We crouched, and lifted it like a bier between us.

  ‘The Turks should have buried their dead within their walls,’ I argued, as though that could forgive such savagery. Why they had buried their losses from the previous day’s battle here, beyond the city and near our camp, I could not guess: perhaps, even after five months of siege, there were yet some barbarities they thought beyond us.

  We slid the stone over the lip of the hole and hauled ourselves out, scrambling for purchase on the clammy earth. Standing, I tried to brush the dirt from my tunic – unlike Sigurd, I could not wear armour for such work – and looked at the labour going on around us.

  They styled themselves the Army of God, but even He in His omniscience might not have recognised them. This was not the Divine Saint John’s vision of St Michael and all the angels, clothed in white linen and with eyes like flames of fire: these men were the wasted survivors of untold ordeals, little more than a rabble, their eyes filled only with suffering. Their skins were as stained and torn as their clothes; they staggered rather than marched – yet fearsome purpose still consumed their souls as they dug and tore at the bones, stones and plunder of the Ishmaelite cemetery. Only the crosses betold their holy allegiance: crosses of wood and iron strung from their necks; wool and sackcloth crosses sewn into smocks; crosses in blood and brutalised flesh painted or burned or carved into their shoulders. They seemed not the army of the Lord but rather His herd, branded with His mark and loosed on the Earth.