The white-haired eunuch reached out and fingered the heavy blue fabric of Haraldr’s new tunic of the finest Hellas silk. He nodded and the eunuch with the scarred jaw spoke in Norse.
‘Haraldr Nordbrikt, I am the Grand Interpreter of the Varangians. The honoured dignitary assisting me in preparing you for your audience is the Imperial High Chamberlain. Listen carefully to your instructions. You will enter and prostrate yourself three times. At the command Keleusate, you will be invited to stand. Your Father may wish to examine you. Should you be questioned, the High Chamberlain will nod if you are permitted to answer. You may look upon the face of the Autocrator, but be certain that your expression is one of reverence, humility and gratefulness. When the interview is concluded, your Father will bless you with the sign of the cross. You will immediately withdraw, arms crossed over your breast, from the presence of the Pantocrator’s Hand on Earth.’
Haraldr’s blood, drained by fear, almost audibly roared back into his veins. He had expected he might be displayed to the Emperor again, and perhaps receive yet another warning from this curiously godlike puppet of a Norseman and a monk. Yet to speak with him! Haraldr could look this man in the eyes, weigh the timbre of his voice, and in every way discern if he was a man to command all men or a mere illusion. Perhaps Haraldr had seen nothing in the inscrutable face of Mar Hunrodarson, but now the veils of Roman power would be stripped aside. He would see into the heart of the Roman dragon.
The two eunuchs preceded Haraldr through an antechamber with a gold-coffered roof; Mar, his axe upon his chest, followed at Haraldr’s back. Four Varangians stepped aside while two white-robed eunuchs parted the silver doors.
After the ritual prostrations were completed, Haraldr stood and steadied himself. Above him soared a vast, celestial blue dome speckled with golden stars, but the area in which he stood was a small one, cordoned off with heavy scarlet brocade curtains. The Emperor, seated in a jewelled gold throne, was flanked by several standing, white-robed eunuchs. He was aflame in scarlet silk medallioned with gold eagles, but he wore no crown upon his head. Haraldr noticed out of the corner of his eye a man in monk’s garb; for some reason this figure was the only person of the eight or so in the room who was seated in the presence of the Emperor.
Haraldr reminded himself that he was of royal lineage and that this Emperor was not. He breathed deeply and forced his eyes to search the face of the man who sat no more than three ells from him. His hands trembled, but he locked his gaze upon the sable-hued irises. Within seconds he knew that everything he had assumed about this Emperor was wrong.
He was no god, certainly, but a handsome man of perhaps two score years with a bold, sharp nose; noble, high forehead; and long, grey-flecked dark curls. But he was also just as clearly a man above all men. His entire carriage as he sat bespoke stature and confidence, his red-booted feet flat upon the floor, his shoulders square and chest erect, his hands set in his lap with the fingertips lightly touching. Haraldr had grown up in royal courts, and he knew the importance of a king’s sheer physical presence in maintaining the respect and fealty of his subjects. But he knew just as well that this mysterious aura of command was not as simple as donning silk robes or projecting a fine masculine swagger. It was something in the eyes, an intangible yet undeniable quality that left no question of a man’s mastery of both himself and those around him. Haraldr had seen this look before, and he had learned to discern men who pretended to have it and did not. And what he saw in this Emperor’s black, chasm-deep eyes was all he needed to know; they were somehow infinitely sorrowful yet terrifyingly obdurate, the shafts to some unshakeable resolve. This Emperor was no puppet; even a man like Mar would be but a toy to him.
The Emperor spoke several sentences in an even, deep, yet natural voice that did not turgidly solicit respect, as did the exhortations of so many weak leaders, but simply projected keenness and innate authority. The Grand Interpreter translated, maintaining much of the Emperor’s original inflection.
‘Your father greets you, Haraldr Nordbrikt, and applauds your resourcefulness in dealing with the plague of Saracen pirates who have disrupted our maritime commerce. There were some who did not welcome you when you first came to our environs, but his Imperial Majesty has seen to it that your enemies now respect you as a true soldier of Christ. Your Father asks if you are now willing to perform a task that will more directly serve his Holy Person.’
Haraldr was almost euphoric in his desire to serve this magnificent man, and yet another region of his mind screamed with confusion. He had burned the body of Asbjorn Ingvarson only yesterday. Had these enemies been chained in hours? And even so, the young Swede’s soul pleaded for revenge. He again saw the monk at the corner of his vision and thought of Mar at his back; it was likely that Asbjorn’s murderer was no more than two steps away.
Haraldr noticed that the High Chamberlain was nodding at him. He broomed his mind by drawing in his breath, then gave his tongue to Odin. ‘Your Imperial Majesty and chosen hand of Kristr, though it is my most passionate desire to serve you in any way I can, your invitation assumes more honour than I am now worthy of. Two nights ago one of the men pledged to my keeping and guidance was slain in a cowardly and villainous manner. Until I avenge this murder I am soiled by a disgrace that renders me unfit to serve a sovereign so glorious as the Emperor of the Romans.’
After the translation the Emperor stared intently at Haraldr; it was everything Haraldr could do to keep from flinching before that lancing gaze. Then the Emperor looked up at the eunuch nearest to him - Haraldr recognized this man as the aged, sad-eyed eunuch who had spoken to him at his first audience - who bent to the Emperor’s ear and began a whispered discussion that lasted perhaps a minute.
The elderly eunuch disappeared through the red curtains behind him while the Emperor studied Haraldr in almost total silence; the seated monk seemed to have difficulty breathing and wheezed slightly. Haraldr also noticed that the seated monk’s robe was rough brown burlap; hadn’t Joannes worn fine black wool?
The eunuch re-emerged and whispered to the Emperor, who nodded and immediately addressed Haraldr.
‘His Imperial Majesty is pleased to tell you that even now the assassin is being interrogated. He has confessed to everything.
You will be able to see the perpetrator when you leave His Majesty’s presence. Will this satisfy the admirable requisites of your honour?’
Haraldr could scarcely believe his ears. He cast his eyes quickly in the direction of the monk. Kristr! He was almost certain that the seated monk was not the Joannes he had seen; this monk was much smaller, with a crown of short hair. Could Joannes possibly be this ‘perpetrator’ now in custody? That was too unlikely, given the monk’s evident power; not even this Emperor’s justice would be so implacable. But clearly Haraldr’s enemy had been identified and dealt with, and he would soon know him.
The Imperial Chamberlain nodded again, and Haraldr gushed praise. ‘Your Imperial Majesty’s pursuit of justice, as swift as the flight of an arrow, makes me all the more eager in my desire to dedicate to you my arm, my allegiance and my life, and the lives and allegiances of the five hundred men I have pledged to lead to glory in the service of the Emperor of the Romans.’ Haraldr’s skin tingled with conviction; he meant these words with all his suddenly unburdened heart.
Haraldr raptly watched the Emperor reply. He thrilled at the eloquence of His Majesty’s speech and imagined himself walking beside him in stately procession. And yet some tiny parcel of Haraldr’s intellect saw something else, even as the rest of his consciousness floated on this dream. What was it? Something about the Emperor, the shape of his cheeks, his lips; where had he seen these features before? But the memory was too fleeting.
‘His Majesty delights to command an arm so strong and yet so obedient. His faith in you is boundless, so he offers you a task that might have exhausted Heracles, and yet he is assured you can perform it.’ The Grand Interpreter went on to describe the pilgrimage to Jerusalem; an entire regi
ment of the Imperial Army would accompany the Empress and her ladies, but Haraldr and his men would comprise the Empress’s personal bodyguard. It was an honour second only to guarding the person of the Emperor himself.
Haraldr quickly and ardently accepted, and the Emperor rewarded him with an intoxicating, perfect smile. The Emperor began another address, and Haraldr was again transported with devotion. But the Emperor blinked in mid-sentence, stopped, and tipped his head slightly towards the seated monk.
The commotion was immediate. The High Chamberlain glared at Haraldr and made an entirely indecorous whisking motion. Haraldr sensed Mar, still at his back, spring forward. The crushing grip stung his arm, and then Haraldr spun; his heart, now cold lead, slammed against his ribs. No! The ultimate ruse!
Mar’s grip vanished and Haraldr stood outside drawn curtains that seemed to shrink around the Emperor and his party like a crimson silk cocoon. The Grand Interpreter was beside him; he yanked Haraldr’s arm and frantically urged him into the guardhouse. Behind him, Haraldr heard a rustle of brocade, calm whispers, and painful gagging, as if someone had got a bone lodged in his throat. Haraldr’s mind raced. Had someone become ill? Had someone, perhaps even Joannes, sent an assassin to avenge himself on the Emperor? Just when he had thought he knew the heart of the Roman dragon, this. What was happening?
Mar, still inside the curtains, watched with disgust the twitching figure on the floor before him; he reflected that this spectacle was becoming enticingly common. But the Emperor’s disclosure had caught Mar by surprise. Had they really caught the Norseman’s assassin, he wondered, or was this ‘perpetrator’ merely the usual scapegoat to be sacrificed to the absurd notion of Roman justice?
Haraldr scarcely noticed the clicking feet around him. The Topoteretes, one of the eunuchs who had attended the Emperor, and the black-frock interpreter had taken him completely across the palace grounds, past even the huge silver-domed cathedral. Now he looked up at the sheer, round tower that brooded over the entrance to the harbour, a doleful stone shadow against the shimmering harbour beyond. His mind was a tempest of suspicions and fears.
The entrance to the sinister turret was a steel door set into grim, cinereous granite. The Topoteretes spoke to Haraldr; for once John the frog-faced interpreter seemed eager to translate.
‘Do you know this place?’
Haraldr shook his head. The tower was a giant crypt; it even smelled of death.
‘It is called Neorion Tower. Pray to your god that you are never invited to stay the night here.’
Unseen machinery seemed to crank the steel door open. Gloom, wet and decay seeped into the sunlight. As the shadows engulfed him Haraldr felt that he was entering the dark world of spirits.
Two dozen Khazar guards armed with swords stood watch in a perfectly barren room that seemed even darker because of the flickering lamps that could only establish dirty brown penumbrae in the foul pall. A Roman officer approached and inspected passes. Machinery clanked again. Stairs fell from the ceiling.
The Topoteretes led Haraldr and John up the wooden steps and into a narrow, sooty shaft encasing stone stairs that spiralled endlessly up. Oil-lamps in the form of wolves sputtered greasily. At intervals dark steel doors waited next to narrow stone landings. Haraldr could only observe all of this with nightmare acuity; like a man in a dream, his fate was no longer subject to reason or even speculation. It was as if the ascent were actually a journey deep into the Underworld. What demons awaited?
The Topoteretes rapped on steel, and an almost obscured grate slid aside. The entire door wrenched open. At once Haraldr smelled the carrion the ravens would take from this place, and his weary stomach heaved. He coughed to disguise his retching.
They followed a guard down a long corridor; the dingy walls seemed to radiate cold, as if they were not blocks of stone but dirty ice. The darkness and the smell of death and spoil and new blood were suffocating. The walls closed like black jaws.
A grimy steel door groaned like the dead and took them in. Lights flickered. Enormous steel double doors faced Haraldr across what seemed to be the ante-chamber to a fair-sized hall. A man was seated at a small table to Haraldr’s right, his massive, dark shoulders hunched over as he studied papers by the light of a table lamp.
Haraldr knew the man, and his own fate, as soon as the monk’s huge head lifted to confront him. Joannes.
Joannes’s eyes were hot charcoal bits with a faint nimbus of red. What seemed a flat statement rumbled from the tomb of his breast.
‘You know him,’ said the interpreter.
Haraldr looked directly at Joannes and nodded. The monk’s voice pounded again.
‘Do you know this seal?’
Haraldr was startled. The monk’s curiously flattened fingertip pushed a small folded document, addressed with a few lines of Greek, across the tabletop; the attached lead seal was intact. Haraldr leaned forward, feeling as if he were coming too close to a dangerous wild beast. He recognized the tiny sword arm at once; it was identical to the wax fragment he had studied a thousand times. The complete figure was a man armoured like the typical Roman military officer. ‘Yes,’ Haraldr answered grimly. ‘I think it belongs to the murderer.’ And then he asked Joannes silently: Are you the murderer? If you are, before I die - and take you with me to the spirit world – I must barter for the lives of my pledge-men.
Joannes glanced once at a paper before him; the document was covered with dozens of lengthy Roman numbers and haphazard lines of Greek writing. He settled back in his chair and looked at Haraldr carefully. Haraldr was aware of a faint sound, almost like a spirit moaning from the depths. His nerves were shards. The monk spoke.
‘You were the victim of a plot. The late Manglavite had a criminal associate, a middle-ranking Roman military officer, in the palace. This associate, deprived of his nefarious income by the death of the Manglavite, sought revenge against you and carried out his plot with professional stealth.’
Haraldr nodded, and relief began to fill him like a warm draught. This was more than plausible. He and Halldor and Ulfr had perhaps been overly impressed with their importance among these Romans; they had not considered that Hakon would have had friends, co-conspirators at court, lesser men who might have acted entirely without the knowledge of Mar or Joannes. But the monk now telling him this had a face no man could trust.
‘The murderer has already reaped the whirlwind of your Father’s implacable justice. Do you wish to see the vengeance God grants the Emperor of the Romans?’
The huge steel doors at the back of the ante-chamber slid open, and two men brought out a canvas-shrouded parcel on a pallet. The intestinal stench engulfed Haraldr like the breath of a howling carnivore. The pallet was set down and the shroud pulled away.
The lump of gristle, bowels, glistening organs and stacked appendages was surmounted by a helmet of flayed, featureless viscera; incredibly, the teeth still chattered.
‘Yes. This lives, for a moment still. You may finish him, or leave him to contemplate further the immutable virtue and implacable will of Roman justice.’
Haraldr turned away from the horrifying bundle. If this was the murderer, then the soul of Asbjorn Ingvarson had been avenged in kind.
Joannes spoke at length, then watched Haraldr keenly during the translation.
‘I understand that you saw our Father this very hour. Let me explain to you what occurred, to put your mind at ease. His Imperial Majesty enjoys the company of holy men like myself, some of whom are given, unlike myself, to convulsive visions that yield extraordinary prophecies. It was discerned by His Imperial Majesty that the monk you saw during your interview was about to experience one of these transports, and he did not want to trouble you with the monk’s outburst, for many things are said that would summon demons if they were heard by ears innocent of the knowledge to resist them.’
The interpreter paused and conversed with Joannes, apparently to straighten out something the monk had said, and then continued the translation. ‘Nordbrikt,
I am aware that you have recently been exposed to the fantasies of naked chorus-girls and sotted actors, and perhaps you have mistaken these shameless libels as some accurate representation of my humble role in the vast scheme of Roman power. You must understand now that you and I merely serve the same master. I am friend of all who truly love the Emperor, unrelenting foe of those who would try to deceive or harm him.’
After this translation Joannes began again, and Haraldr focused on the face of the giant monk. True, the monk seemed to be the living face of evil. And yet when Joannes spoke of the Emperor, the passion in his countenance had transformed it; the love that had radiated from that monstrous visage was too fierce - as fierce, in its way, as the Rage - to have been feigned. Haraldr could trust nothing about this monk, except that Joannes truly loved the Emperor whom he served. And perhaps that was a common turf on which they could meet.
The translation began again. ‘You have been successful here, Nordbrikt, and yet you have held your arms out to death more times than is prudent even for a man who apparently sits in fortune’s lap. You are of no use to anyone if you continue to use your life as the vane to detect the direction of the winds of Roman power. You are a seafaring man, of some renown now, and you would not go into strange waters without a pilot. Just so, you need a guide to plot your course through the shoals of our Roman system. You need a patron who can see that opportunities, not deadly obstacles, are placed in your path.’
Again the interpreter paused for clarification, then quickly resumed the translation. ‘I would like to sponsor you. Not formally; certainly neither of us will have occasion to recall this conversation to others. But when your course needs proper steering, I will be there.’
Byzantium - A Novel Page 23
