Byzantium - A Novel

by Michael Ennis

  ‘No.’ Maria looked down and stroked her fiat, velvet-soft belly. ‘Do you know what they are going to do with those Tauro-Scythians they are calling pirates?’ Maria understood the efficiency with which information passed among the city’s highly placed eunuchs; it was as if they had all joined in some secret pact to punish the society that had deprived them of their manhood by exposing its secrets.

  ‘They are still arguing. The military are quite set on simply massacring the entire lot now that their ships are unloaded. They say there is still a threat of invasion.’

  Maria snorted. ‘The military are the stooges of the Dhynatoi. The Dhynatoi have never forgotten how Basil the Bulgar-Slayer used the Varangians against them.’ Almost half a century earlier, Basil the Bulgar-Slayer had recruited a large force of Norse mercenaries to put down a revolt of the Dhynatoi. The Varangians had been so effective in crushing internal opposition that Basil had created the Varangian Guard to institutionalize permanently their role as the sentinels of Imperial power; over the succeeding decades the Varangians had come to be seen as the champions of the middle and lower classes, who relied on the protection of a strong Emperor, and the sworn enemies of the selfishly ambitious landed aristocracy.

  ‘Somehow the rumour has been started that there is a Tauro-Scythian Prince among the traders,’ Isaac said. ‘The Grand Domestic’ - the Grand Domestic was the Empire’s highest-ranking military commander - ‘has elaborated this gossip into a theory that this prince intends to enter the city with his Varangians, then summon a huge invasion force lurking somewhere in the Rus Sea, and open the gates for them when they arrive. The Grand Domestic is determined to find this man, even if it means resorting to the kind of crude measures with which Herod hoped to indemnify himself against the Christ child. He has already had the Rus traders interrogated.’

  ‘How fascinating!’ Maria’s eyes sparkled like a child’s. ‘I wonder if the fair-hairs will eat our flesh and drink our blood, as the prophets have foretold.’ For centuries the ‘fair-haired nations’ had been cast as the agents of doom in so many Byzantine tales of the apocalypse that their role was as well known as that of the Antichrist.

  ‘I think it is all nonsense,’ said Isaac. ‘Of course, there is no such prince, and all the talk of action on the part of the Grand Domestic is bluster. It always is. What everyone will probably end up agreeing to do is to execute this bandit who killed the Manglavite, though they should rightly give him a palace near the Forum Bovis - send the rest of the Tauro-Scythians off to garrison Ancyra, and be done with it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Maria distractedly. She put her hand on Isaac’s thigh. ‘I suppose that compromise would make everyone except the Tauro-Scythian bandit happy.’

  The bronze breastplates and the brilliant white horses flickered in the sun. The same mounted contingent that had greeted Haraldr three days ago at the docks rode stiffly into the courtyard. The tough-looking Topoteretes dismounted and looked around. Haraldr discerned that the Byzantine officer was more than a bit impressed by the sight of almost five hundred armoured Norse giants slashing, shoving and grunting in martial cacophony.

  A black-frocked civilian mounted on a mule rode in among the horses: John, the interpreter with the squinched, hairless face. Interesting, Haraldr thought, that the same interpreter was assigned to the navy and now this group of horsemen. Perhaps there were fewer Norse interpreters than it seemed at first. That meant they might run into Gregory again. And then they might be able to get some information about the bewilderingly formal, circuitous Griks.

  John the interpreter looked about, spotted Haraldr, and nudged his mule towards the barbaroi chieftain. ‘Haraldr Nordbrikt, come with us,’ he said as if he were a gaoler addressing a prisoner.

  ‘Where?’ shot back Haraldr. His blood was spiced from three days of hard martial drills, and he decided to get some answers from these Griks for a change.

  The interpreter stared sullenly. Haraldr noticed that his head and face were freshly shaven; with his smooth skin John looked like a pink frog.

  ‘Where?’ Haraldr repeated.

  ‘City,’ said John, as if answering an insistent, squealing child.

  Inside the walls! Haraldr’s breast drummed. He snapped for one of the Byzantine servants - or were they spies - who were always loitering around. With hand motions he indicated he wanted a washbasin and clean tunic.

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ snapped John.

  Haraldr’s stomach plunged like cold lead. In his sweaty, torn tunic the only place he would be fit to be received would be in a slave-gang. Or a dungeon. Well, he would not let this black-frocked frog march him off, He continued to motion to the servants and sent them twittering on their errands. John stared angrily but said nothing. The Topoteretes walked over and spoke to the interpreter, who rattled on irritably and pointed at Haraldr. Many barbarois peppered the recitation.

  The Topoteretes shrugged and went back to studying the drilling Norsemen.

  Halldor walked up. ‘I’m going into the city,’ Haraldr told him. ‘You’ve got command until I return; Ulfr is your marshal and counsellor. You know the drill schedule, so keep to it. I’ll be back.’ The servants brought up the washbasin and one of Hakon’s silk tunics, and Haraldr splashed water on his face and towelled dry. When he looked up, Halldor was still observing him earnestly. ‘Yes. If I don’t come back,’ Haraldr concluded, ‘you have the command permanently.’

  The mounted escort wound through the narrow streets of St Mama’s Quarter, looping around the back of a domed church, huge by Norse standards but relatively small in relation to the surrounding buildings. As the stone-paved avenue straightened out, Haraldr could see an expanse of mowed grass ahead. He looked up and gasped.

  The great land wall, which traversed the width of the peninsula on which Constantinople had been built, had been only partially visible as they had sailed into St Mama’s Quarter. Now, from an unobstructed head-on view, it seemed like a vast, tiered, many-towered city unto itself. The first line of defence, a moat as broad as a small river - it was partitioned by a series of dikes that enabled it to climb up and down the gently rolling hills - would alone have been the engineering miracle of the north. Just beyond the moat was a brick parapet about as high as the walls of a Rus city; then a broad, graded path; and finally a second wall of unimaginable dimensions; the alternating courses of stone and brick rose a good twenty ells and were studded with massive stone turrets at regular intervals. Beyond this colossal defence was the main wall.

  This third wall was at least as tall as a Norse dragon-ship stood on end and yet the towering rectangular fortresses set against the sheer brick-and-stone surface at intervals of sixty ells (they looked like the teeth of some world-devouring beast as they ran off into the distance as far as one could see) were twice as tall again; each of these Titan-made towers was a soaring castle capable of defending an entire city the size of Kiev. Perhaps the gods had built these defences, but not even the gods would dare come against them.

  A small, open gate framed by carved stone beams punctured the great wall. Several officials in long silk tunics - one of the silk-clads seemed to be a eunuch - examined the documents presented by the Topoteretes, then began to question him insistently. The eunuch looked at Haraldr and shook his head. The Topoteretes pointed to something in the document and began a heated discourse. Haraldr observed that Basileus and Joannes and Manglavite figured in this argument. The eunuch protested again but the documents were returned to the Topoteretes, and he signalled his men to ride on. The escort tunnelled through the wall and emerged on a brilliant white landscape.

  A stone-paved avenue more than a hundred ells wide extended beyond the wall towards the distant heart of the city. On either side of the street the three- and four-storey buildings rose like sheer cliffs, though these palaces often had marble-columned arcades at street level and elaborate balconies and rows of arched windows on the upper floors. Pack mules, wagons, slave-borne canopied litters and ordinary pedestrians j
ammed the street; they passed one four-wheeled carriage with an elaborately gilded, curtained, boxlike enclosure for its invisible occupants. Haraldr struggled to capture details as his escort led him down the avenue at a brisk canter: an arcade rollicking with roughly dressed men who hoisted wineskins as they disputed over board games and tossed dice; a statue of an unclothed man set into a niche above a brass-fitted oak door, so astonishingly lifelike that one could see the veins beneath his pale marble skin; a shorn black-frock, like John the interpreter, offering bread to three ragged beggars who sat on a scrolled stone bench. There were far fewer women than men about, and most of them had wrapped bright cloth veils about their faces and moved in protective clusters. But one young woman with a brightly painted face strutted alluringly alone.

  The escort paused at a major intersection less than a dozen blocks into the city. Looking south, down the paved street perpendicular to the main avenue, Haraldr saw enormous, featureless, russet-brick edifices, looming some six, even seven, storeys high. People milled about on the street and stuck their heads out of the innumerable windows. For the first time Haraldr noticed that the sky over the Great City was strangely dingy. He quickly established the source of the pollution; maybe another dozen blocks due east from these buildings was a huge, gritty pillar of smoke, fouling the entire horizon. Not far away, another shaft of soot rose above visible tongues of flame; glowing cinders shot up into the roiling black column. Was the Great City on fire?

  Neither the Topoteretes nor his men took notice of this catastrophe; they had been distracted by the approach of another contingent of a dozen mounted men quite similar in arms and attire to their own. The leader of these horsemen had a sweat-beaded, squarish face and red, irritated eyes, as if he had just ridden right through the smoke. The Topoteretes tipped his head deferentially, and the red-eyed man spoke with animated gestures. Then the red-rimmed eyes turned to Haraldr, widened in surprise, and he immediately gave the Topoteretes what seemed to be a brusque order. The Topoteretes produced the magical documents again and the red-eyed horseman looked at them, handed them back, and thought for a moment. He snapped to one of his men, there was some probing of saddle packs, and a length of dark cloth was finally handed to the Topoteretes. The Topoteretes then spoke to John the interpreter.

  ‘You have to be blindfolded.’

  Haraldr iced with terror. There was no reason, unless they intended to put a blade to his neck. Two horsemen were already at his side. He reflexively pushed them away. His horse reared, and more horsemen closed around him. He threw one right out of the saddle, but a blow cracked his head. Sparks showered as he sent another Byzantine flying off his horse. Hands clutched all over him, he heard a sound like glacier fracturing and smashing into his head, and a brilliant light exploded into darkness.

  Ice. He was in a huge ice cave. His head throbbed and his neck ached. How had he got back to Norway? Had he ever left? Yes. The pounding in his head had a pattern; he could think between the metallic throbs. Yes. He had left. River. City. Haraldr jerked erect. His eyes focused. Ice. Somehow the Griks had carved a room from ice. The pure white light, more diffuse than day but almost as bright, momentarily defeated Haraldr’s quest for reason. Then he shaded his eyes and concentrated on bringing his mind back. The ice was stone. Incredible stone. A dazzling white marble with sinuous blue veins. His head lolled and he strained to study the complex pattern on the floor, knowing that if he understood it, his mind would come back. The floor was paved with polished marble, a woven pattern of bands and circles of emerald and ruby-coloured marble. The light that glazed the marble seemed to come from high above. He looked up. Light flooded in from a ring of windows set at an impossible height.

  ‘You shouldn’t have fought.’ The frog face of John the interpreter leered at him, but he was speaking the words of the Topoteretes, who crouched over Haraldr with apparent concern. The blindfold was just a precaution.’

  Against what? thought Haraldr, painfully reorienting. To keep me from seeing what? So I won’t know my way to . . . what? Where exactly am I? Haraldr rubbed his head and looked around the vast hall. Dozens of finely dressed eunuchs circulated, buzzing in discussion with one another as well as some soldiers, four or five dark-skinned Saracens, and several big, shaven-headed men in poor brown wool tunics little better than those worn by Norse slaves.

  Just a few paces from Haraldr an excruciatingly thin eunuch with a curiously flabby, pale face abruptly terminated his conversation and minced delicately, on slippered feet, towards Haraldr’s group. With one sweep of his narrowly spaced hazel eyes the eunuch managed to look right through the Topoteretes, give the merest hint of contempt at the sight of the black-frocked interpreter, and completely ignore Haraldr. One hand propped on his bony hip, the eunuch extended the spidery fingers of the other. The Topoteretes placed the documents in the eunuch’s outstretched hand. The eunuch unfolded the packet with the very tips of his fingers, as if the pages had been dipped in fresh dung. He was clearly less impressed than the previous inspectors; he brusquely flipped through even the purple-tinted document. But the eunuch did pause over a plain-coloured sheet, and something he read caused one of his thin, seemingly painted-on eyebrows to quiver slightly. That was the only reaction he betrayed. Without a word he folded the packet, turned, and walked off.

  ‘You follow him,’ commanded John the interpreter in his sourest tone. ‘And don’t try any more stupid barbaroi tricks.’

  The eunuch never once looked back to see if Haraldr was following. He left the great hall and, after a long, winding transit over marble-paved corridors, stopped in front of heavy wooden double doors laced with gilt trim. He pulled a yellow silken cord that dangled near the door frame; to Haraldr’s astonishment the doors slid silently open, as if they ran on greased tracks. Without even looking at Haraldr, the eunuch rolled his eyes towards the aperture.

  The room was bright and strangely warm and humid; marble benches and compartments lined the walls. Two young boys dressed in short white tunics waited by the doors. ‘Clothes,’ said one of the boys in a heavily accented attempt at Norse. With motions he indicated that Haraldr should take his clothes off. They don’t bathe a man before they toss him in a dungeon, thought Haraldr with constrained relief. Still, he could not escape the sensation that death, however perfumed and silk-frocked, stalked this place. He remembered what Gleb had said. The Griks were never straightforward about anything.

  Haraldr stripped and was shown through a door at the end of the room. He was greeted by a blast of hot, steamy air. His eyes watered and for an instant he thought he would be attacked. Then the wonder of the place hit him. The large domed chamber was almost completely filled with a brilliantly blue pool; at the bottom of the pool was a shimmering illusion, a twining green garden depicted with multicoloured bits of tile.

  Haraldr luxuriated in the cleansing heat and the cold water; how long had it been since he had enjoyed a steam bath? The pain at the back of his head subsided to a dull ache and he began to reassemble his scattered wits. Put aside your fear, he told himself. Presume that you come as the leader of five hundred Varangians, not a condemned criminal; they had you at their mercy on the street, and yet look where you are now. You have the instrument to serve the Griks, and they clearly have the wealth to serve your ends. But why with every question that is answered are there two new ones? Who is Nicephorus Argyrus? And what was it the Griks didn’t want you to see?

  When he had finished bathing, Haraldr was towelled and combed and rubbed with scented oil, then dressed in a long tunic of very fine white silk; the high collar was crusted with heavy embroidery. Back in the marble hall, two eunuchs, both of them surprisingly stout, waited for him along with the birch-thin eunuch who had led him here originally. His head cocked in annoyance, the spindly eunuch cast his eyes over Haraldr as if he had been forced to look at a mutilated corpse. He turned to the other two and compressed his thin lips in an attitude of bored, barest approval; then his wretchedly bony shoulders shuddered slightly and he
minced off.

  The two big eunuchs flanked Haraldr and each firmly but decorously took an elbow. The hallway eventually turned into a large, sun-flooded arcade. Haraldr squinted out over a blazing expanse of white marble. He could see patches of peacock-blue sea framing a massive temple-like structure several hundred ells away. Then he turned to his left. He gasped and knew for certain where he was.

  Spread out over a gentle slope was a glittering jewel box that was an entire city. Fantastic, multicoloured buildings stood on verdant terraces laced with neat rows of flowering trees, shimmering azure ponds and pools, and beds of vermilion blossoms. Scores of domes, held aloft by columns of brilliant jade-green marble or deep plum-coloured porphyry, forming swirling patterns so deft and intricate that they seemed to have been painted against the backdrop of the sea and sky. Here in a magical city within the Great City was the home of the Emperor.

  The eunuchs tightened their grip and led Haraldr towards the prodigious building straight ahead; six white columns, so huge in girth that were they hollow a man could build a comfortable cottage within them, thrust up to a marble roof at a dizzying height. Beneath the portico, two-storey silver double doors, embossed with fierce-visaged, armoured eagles, were surrounded by a perfect, motionless semicircle of powerful, dark-eyed men in burnished steel breastplates and steel helms. Haraldr observed the guards’ dusky, foreign features with a sharpness in his breast; these men were Khazars, from Serah’s homeland. The armoured arc split momentarily to allow Haraldr and his escort to pass. The enormous doors slid open as silently as those in the bath.

  Paradise. It was not simply the vastness of the hall; a bowman could not have shot the length of the jewelled cavern and the ceiling, coffered with elaborate gold beams flecked with silver medallions, soaring like a fantastic sky. It was the supernatural sumptuousness: pearl-white marble columns topped with plum-coloured capitals wreathed with carved vines and flower buds, candelabra that looked like lacy silver clouds dotted with glinting ice crystals, curtains of braided ivy, garlands of pink roses, hanging tapestries stitched with lustrous flowers.