Byzantium - A Novel

by Michael Ennis

  ‘The one who was killed?’ Constantine worried that his throbbing heart might burst; he was short of breath.

  ‘No, the man who was killed was his successor. Father Katalakon. The name of the man who wrote all this was Father Abbot Giorgios. Strange, isn’t it, him and me with the same name? Him having led a life of denial, and myself, well, my virtue would not heal the sick, Eminence. Yet here I am to dispose of his riches.’ Maleinus laughed and began to cough.

  ‘The man who murdered this Father Katalakon, you say he has fled to Cappadocia?’

  ‘The Chartophylax? Oh, the old book-buzzard’s bound to be dead, no matter where he went. I don’t believe much of the tale, anyway. An old man like that. No, you might say that rumour’s breast was produced so that the truth would stop wailing, so to speak, Eminence. Like I say, the sin of Sodom was probably on the place. You know the vice is common among these cenobites, don’t you, Eminence?’ Maleinus winked at Constantine. Out in the library, Irene tittered.

  Indeed, thought Constantine as he surveyed Father Abbot Giorgios’s letters. I do not believe the tale, either, and while this place reeks of sin, it is not that of Sodom. But if there was a great secret among these papers, why wouldn’t Joannes have burned the lot? Or was Joannes merely interested in concealing something else? Only one thing was certain: the arms of the Pantocrator verily embraced this opportunity.

  Constantine closed the door completely and again looked round the dazzling library. Maleinus gave him a few moments to calculate before nudging him along. ‘Act quickly, Eminence. There are parties at court who are bidding to double my price on this. But I’d like to count the brother of our Holy Autocrator and blessed Orphanotrophus among the clients Giorgios Maleinus has enriched. . . .’

  Constantine raised his hand to silence this astute prince of pedlars. ‘You will have your price - minus, I trust, a suitable discount for a single payment in gold - as soon as we return to the Empress City, good sir.’

  Haraldr set the canvas bag on the rough wooden table; the parcel was so heavy that the table creaked and canted a bit. The Blue Star folded her arms round her stout bosom and watched quizzically; she wore the same sleeveless lined tunic she had the first time they had met. Her white-eyed husband sat beside her. Haraldr opened the bag to show the Blue Star the hundreds of gold solidi. ‘I have a dozen of these bags for you,’ he said. ‘I reason that they are safer in my strongbox at my town palace. But they have been set aside for you and the people of the Studion. I’ll bring them as you need them. I hope you will buy food with them.’

  For a mere instant the Blue Star’s eyes seemed as innocent as a girl’s, perhaps as she had looked when she first dreamed of crowds cheering for her in the Hippodrome. She pulled Haraldr’s head down from high above her and gave him a grandmotherly kiss on his cheek; Haraldr thought of his mother, Asta, and how long it had been since a woman had kissed him like that.

  ‘The Theotokos just said a prayer for you, boy, right at the feet of God. And if I get there, and that is no certain thing, I will say a prayer every day for you, until you join us.’ The tough look came over the Blue Star’s face again. ‘But this isn’t what the people of the Studion need, boy. Yes, this will feed them. For a while - not as long a while as you think, and not as many as you think. Do you know how many eat out there?’ Her question was rhetorical, but to himself Haraldr guessed as many as lived in all of Norway and Sweden combined. ‘When it gets bad enough, they’ll tax the poor peasants in Hellas and Anatolia, take the food from their mouths, and give it to us, to take a bite out of our anger. So you might say that their tax collectors can bring us these bags of coins, too, boy, though not with the goodwill that is in your heart.’

  The Blue Star took Haraldr’s hands in both of hers; he could still feel the gymnastic power in her fleshy grip. ‘What these people need is food for the soul. They need to believe that someone cares about them, and not just when they are so desperate with hunger that they might crawl out of the sewers and prey on the Dhynatoi. They need to believe that someone is looking over them, so that if they clear the lot next door and plant vegetables, the soldiers won’t come and trample them. They need to feel that they can fix the holes in their roofs without being burned out when a cursore is murdered five blocks away. They need to believe that if their child gets a pox, someone up there on those hills cares whether that child lives or dies. The Bulgar-Slayer did that for the people of the Studion. He didn’t do as much as you would think, boy, but he did enough to give these people hope. They did the rest. The Studion isn’t dying because people have no food, boy. It is dying because people have no hope.’

  Haraldr tried to imagine what it would be like to awaken each morning in the hell of the Studion and look up at the great palaces on the hills. ‘Hope,’ he said at length. ‘Well, I will continue to bring you this gold, because I do not think a full belly will deprive anyone of hope. But I also believe I can send you the kind of hope you are talking about. The messenger of this hope will be an immense black bird.’

  The Blue Star looked at him as if he were mad.

  ‘Hetairarch Haraldr Nordbrikt.’ Joannes stood in greeting and Haraldr reflected that nothing was more hideous than Joannes’s smile; he looked like a horse baring its teeth. Joannes waved Haraldr to the simple canvas chair; Haraldr had to concede that the Orphanotrophus’s office evidenced only industry, competence and self-denial.

  Joannes’s face settled into its usual glower after the ordeal of the smile. ‘Hetairarch, I will not mince words with you. I have been wrong about you and have wronged you grievously; I will not pretend that an apology or a snivelling ingratiation would have meaning to a man who has overcome myriad obstacles, some of my own design, to rise more quickly than any . . . outsider before him. Now that the former Hetairarch, Hunrodarson, is out of the way, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain by making you my ally.’ Joannes placed his fingertips together and brought his huge face forward until his brutish, smooth chin hovered above the deformed digits. His voice, though restrained, seemed to pound the walls. ‘I want to deal with you. I want to make a gesture of good faith.’

  ‘And what would that be, Orphanotrophus? Would the serpent permit me to inspect its fangs as a gesture of its good faith? We Norsemen are naturally curious, but we are not by nature fools.’

  Joannes tilted his cathedral of ringers forward. ‘I want the gesture to be of your choosing.’

  ‘Then I shall arrange for a delegation from the Studion to talk to you, Orphanotrophus. Their request will be your gesture.’

  Joannes nodded soberly. ‘I am willing to address the grievances of the Studion.’ Joannes dipped his head for a moment, his eyes fading into deep shadows. ‘May I show you something, Hetairarch?’

  ‘I have seen as much of Neorion as I care to see, sir.’

  Joannes sneered, apparently at himself. ‘I should have known a man of your intrepidness would not be persuaded by such displays. No, what I have in mind is a display that I feel will coerce your intellect, since your passions are clearly beyond my influence. Did you not say you Norsemen are curious? What I have to show you may explain the Roman Empire, and perhaps my own actions, more completely and convincingly than anything else you have seen in your time among us.’

  Joannes collected two resined tapers and a small bronze oil lamp in the ante-chamber of his office. He led Haraldr down the long hall of the Magnara basement; the Orphanotrophus walked in enormous lunging steps that flung his black frock out behind like the billowing sail of some death-ship. He turned left at a small corridor, unlocked a small, very dirty bronze door at the end of the little hall, and led Haraldr through the usual maze of the Imperial Palace’s subterranean passageways. They emerged at a heavy, steel-banded door with two locks. Joannes lit the tapers from the oil lamp before they entered.

  The light flickered up into a vault perhaps three storeys high but no wider than a man’s arm span. Without a word Joannes led Haraldr along what seemed a fairly steep decline. The vau
lt curved noticeably as it descended, and soon Haraldr understood that this was some sort of enormous spiralling gallery, not unlike the chambers of a conch shell, that descended into the earth. On they went, to the accompaniment of dancing shadows and Joannes’s scraping boots. For a moment Haraldr fancied that they would find the Bulgar-Slayer down at the end of this gallery, sending up Imperial Chrysobulls to his still devoted people. Or perhaps the embalmed corpse of Constantine the Great, attended by ancient eunuchs. Haraldr’s imagination yielded to a sobering chill. What would he see? Was there a place more horrible than Neorion?

  The ceiling lowered and the curves became tighter, until it seemed that the gallery could no longer turn in its own width. Finally the descent stopped at a wall. A bare, flat stone wall beneath a ceiling that now almost grazed Haraldr’s head. Joannes turned suddenly, his face a surface of deep, shadowed craters and smooth, jutting boulders. This is the secret of Rome, Hetairarch.’ His voice echoed like a demonic oracle. ‘Tell me what you see.’

  Haraldr’s flesh crawled. Surely Joannes had not arranged for his confederates to follow them down; the Orphanotrophus would be the shield behind which he would fight his way up. ‘I did not come here to play at riddles.’

  Joannes passed Haraldr silently and ascended until the roof of the spiral gallery became sufficiently elevated that he could thrust his taper up over his head. He turned again to Haraldr. This is the treasury built by the Autocrator Basil, called the Bulgar-Slayer. There was a time when what you see here was a glittering warehouse of the wealth the Bulgar-Slayer’s armies brought back from the ends of the earth. Chests stacked to the ceiling, full of gems, tableware, silken garments, Oriental carpets, heathen idols . . . Hetairarch, I do not have words to describe the wealth that was amassed here.’ Joannes shook his head. ‘Gone. Gone before my brother even lowered his head beneath the Imperial Diadem. What the Bulgar-Slayer’s brother Constantine did not gamble away, his successor Romanus squandered.’

  Haraldr could not contain his wonder. ’But how? This . . .’ He gestured at the huge expanse they had explored. ‘How, even in a century of spendthrift--’

  ‘When an Emperor sends a fleet of dhromons to the pillars of Heracles because he desires a certain type of large fish to feast on, as Romanus did, when instead of exacting tribute from the Pechenegs, an Emperor pays them a ransom, when an Emperor supports whole establishments of monks in a fashion that a Magister of Rome would find profligate, then even a mountain of gold is not enough. You want to see where it went, Hetairarch? Look inside the churches and monasteries, look at the silver ciboria and gold icons revetted with gems, and the larders of the monks stuffed with pickled fish and black caviar from Rus; look inside the palaces of the Dhynatoi with their golden thrones and mosaic ceilings, look at the estates that the prostitutes of the Phanarion have purchased in Asia Minor because the powerful men of Rome are as generous with their favours as the harlot is with hers. But do not look here, Hetairarch; do not look about these empty vaults for the treasure of Rome. Because the people of Rome have stripped Rome bare.’

  ‘Your Dhynatoi accomplices and their attendant parasites have stripped her bare. I do not see the Bulgar-Slayer’s missing gold on the streets of the Studion.’

  Joannes dropped his head wearily. ‘What would you have me do for the people of the Studion, Hetairarch? Do you think I can levy the Dhynatoi to provide a palace for every wretch in the Studion? You would be surprised how much of the Dhynatoi’s wealth is owed to merchants like your friend Nicephorus Argyrus, and how much of the wealth of merchants like Argyrus is owed to the Venetians and the Genoese. Rome used to seek her wealth throughout the entire world, from the pillars of Heracles in the west to the gates of Dionysus in the east. Now the rest of the world comes to Rome to leech our wealth. Rome has forgotten that her destiny is at the ends of the earth.’ Joannes waved his wing-like arms expansively, and the movement of the torch in his hand sent shadows racing through the empty galleries. ‘Hetairarch, do you think the walls of Constantinople can produce wealth, or can even protect that wealth without the attendant Empire? To conquer is to produce wealth. To rule is to produce wealth. To win the right to tax is to produce wealth. And that right, that power, is not won in the great houses along the Mese, or among the gardens of the Imperial Palace, or even beneath the golden dome of the Hagia Sophia. It is won at the ends of the world!’

  Haraldr was taken aback by Joannes’s passion. In spite of his overweening authority, his virtual omniscience, Joannes had always seemed fundamentally limited, a glorified, fantastically efficient servant. To see that he had a vision of Rome was disturbing, like learning that a huge beast was capable of human reason. ‘Yes,’ Haraldr admitted. ‘A Norseman would agree with you. Wealth and power are won at the ends of the earth. If we Norsemen did not believe that, I would probably be some ignorant farmer dreaming of the land beyond the next hill, praying that men do not come in fast ships to burn my crop and steal my wife. If we were not willing to go to the ends of the earth in our open ships, our lands would scarcely give us even that much. But a Norseman does not go a-viking and think nothing of the family and people he has left behind. It would shame a Norseman to win gold in some distant land and come home to a village where even one man lived as the tens of thousands do in the Studion.’

  Joannes studied Haraldr’s pensive face. ‘I need you, Hetairarch Haraldr. I have already confessed that. I do not ask you to trust me; I ask you not to condemn me until you know more of my policies. Let me offer this as a gesture of good faith, to you and to those wretches, to whose plaints I am not entirely immune. There is nothing here for me to give them.’ Joannes fanned his torch through the empty vault. ’However, I have resources of my own - acquired, I might add, by dint of unceasing labour compounded by unremitting frugality. From my own resources I will build a charity hospital in the Studion, the largest and the finest the world has yet seen. I ask that you do nothing in return save wait for me to make this gesture, and to render judgement on me when you know more of Rome and my policies. If then we are still enemies, I will consider you a worthy adversary.’

  ‘And I would consider you worthy of destroying as well, Orphanotrophus. The next time we speak, I will expect to hear of your remarkable progress in the construction of this hospital.’

  Joannes nodded, the great hollows of his face suddenly seeming more like wells of weariness then pits of evil.

  ‘Monastery! Uncle, you know that the word alone is anathema to me! Look, my hands are trembling!’

  Michael placed his palsied hands straight out and the beautiful dappled Arabian he had been examining whinnied as if verifying his master’s claim. ‘Oh, damn me, I have disturbed Phaethon.’ Michael turned and stroked the horse’s probing nose. ‘And I have shouted at you, my precious uncle!’ Michael clasped Constantine’s shoulders warmly. ‘I am certain your decision was judicious, Uncle. It is simply that with each week that passes, I feel my time in the world of ... of pleasure running out. I hate to think I will never see a horse run again unless it is some mangy mule sent to fetch one of my eremite brothers.’

  ‘Nephew, trust in me. Remember, I have managed the second city of the world and the affairs of a vast and prosperous theme. I can certainly manage to make a profit on the sale of this monastery’s property. In any event, I will not require a contribution from your purse. I have scraped together the requisite solidi and already settled with the former owner.’

  ‘Do you think your purchase will quite enrage Joannes?’

  ‘It may discomfit him more than that, Nephew. Constantine went on to describe the letters of Father Abbot Giorgios. Michael listened so raptly that he even batted Phaethon’s nose when the horse nudged him. When Constantine had finished, Michael embraced him. ‘Oh, Uncle, for the first time since our Emperor returned from the dead I have hope. When can we see the seraphim-sent correspondences of this Father Abbot Giorgios?’

  ‘I have already dispatched a ship and porters to pack and deliver the items. I warn yo
u that many tedious weeks of sifting through these documents await us.’

  ‘Uncle, you must remember that I am also not without certain qualities of industry when the rewards are sufficient. Until we find the treasure we are seeking amid this abbot’s dross, I will display a dedication to the task that would make the stylite upon a column question the vehemence of his own commitment.’ Michael took Constantine’s arm and escorted him away from Phaethon’s stall without even a farewell to the neighing horse.

  ‘This is the oldest part of this garden,’ said Maria. She stepped through a bed of metallic-orange marigolds and entered a dark sycamore bower. The evaporation from the trees sprayed the baked, late-afternoon air with a sweet, cooling mist. ‘We can sit there.’ She pointed to an almost sarcophagus-like bench; the thick marble base was decorated with marble carvings partially visible through clutching tendrils of ivy. A statue of a woman, her body stiff and geometric but with a soft graceful face and long braids gently falling over her shoulders, faced the bench from the middle of a small pool rimmed with crumbling granite bricks.

  The cold touch of the stone bench was refreshing. ‘It is not Greek,’ said Haraldr, meeting the eternal gaze of the statue. ‘But it is not in the fashion of Egypt, either.’

  ‘I think it is Greek, at a time when the sculptors of Athens borrowed from the ancients of Egypt. Before they learned to surpass them. I am not certain. Anna would know.’

  ‘Is Anna well?’

  ‘I think she will soon be betrothed. To an officer of the Scholae. He is a good man, both courageous and intelligent enough not to grovel before her father.’ Maria turned her head suddenly, as if just noticing something. ‘You are not sorry, are you?’