Byzantium - A Novel

by Michael Ennis

  ‘No, I am happy that she has found someone worthy of her.’ Haraldr frowned at the stone face. ‘But I feel that she has taken a part of me.’

  ‘And you have taken a part of her.’

  ‘Yes. That seems to be the way of life, endless partings where something is always taken and something is always left behind. I wonder if at the end of that long road anything remains of ourselves.’

  ‘Perhaps the soul we began with is not the soul we are destined to end with. The destiny of the soul is immutable, but the soul itself is constantly transformed.’

  ‘Or perhaps the same soul is destined to wear many disguises. That is the way Odin more than once tricked fate.’

  ‘Then it is important to know when the soul has been transformed, or when it merely masquerades.’

  Haraldr fell silent and watched a mayfly skim over the surface of the pool. A shout floated distantly from the polo field. Had his soul merely deceived him, and her soul fooled her? That was the question that stood between them as they struggled to reach each other again.

  At length Maria whispered into the rustling silence. ‘Perhaps that is the cruelty of fate, that until the end we do not know if our own soul was true, or merely lied to us from behind its mask.’

  ‘Might it not also be the cruelty of death that we will never know?’

  Maria pulled her arms around her silken waist, as against a chill. ‘I pray to the Holy Mother that at death we will at least have the comfort of that revelation.’

  ‘I pray that when fate takes me, I will leave enough of my soul in another breast to know that I will live on until the day all souls are taken.’

  ‘You know that will be true. Look at the souls who already live in your breast.’

  ‘Yes. My father. My brother. Jarl Rognvald.’ He could not say the other name.

  ‘You are fortunate. One of the souls who lives in my breast only stabs at my heart.’ Haraldr sensed that he would be a fool to presume that he was the cause of her pain. He waited. Maria moved her white silk slipper gently over the tops of the tall, slightly wilted grass. A sulphur-yellow butterfly drifted erratically through the bower and out into the bright sunlight. The small crowd at the nearby polo field acclaimed some feat of horsemanship with a muffled applause.

  ‘Will you let me tell you about the first man who loved me?’ Maria’s question seemed directed to the statue. Haraldr touched her hand for a moment and let it go, then allowed her the silence to continue. ‘I was very young. Not even a woman. It was a time of great turmoil in the palace. The Emperor Constantine, who had been a very old man when he had inherited the Autocrator’s diadem from Basil the Bulgar-Slayer, acutely sensed his mortality. If he was to perpetuate the Macedonian dynasty, he knew he had to find a son-in-law for one of his purple-born daughters. Romanus was Prefect of the City, apparently of some ability at that level of government, although he was utterly incompetent as an Emperor. But he had the majestic speech and stature expected of an Emperor, and for a man - may the Theotokos forgive me - for a man as shallow as Constantine, that was enough. He became fixed on this man as his successor, even though Romanus was already married to a decent lady. That was no matter; the wife was forced to retire into a convent, the divorce granted, and Romanus was offered up to Theodora. She had the courage to refuse her father and has been punished for her denial ever since. Zoe could never resist her father, and ever since has paid the wages of her acceptance. But that is another tale. The object of this prelude is to say that the two women I had always relied upon for love and guidance were suddenly undone by this fate, their lives swept away for ever. And so I, who had always feared abandonment, was at last alone.’ Maria paused and worked at her lip with her pearl-white teeth. ‘A man came to me during this time, a man old enough to be my father, and at first he was my father. He was the father I had always dreamed of, a man of military accomplishments who had risen to high civil authority in the Senate, his hair still dark with youth, his hard blue eyes gleaming with knowledge.’

  Haraldr looked at Maria’s elegant profile and realized that she still loved this man.

  ‘He bought me books of romances with the most beautiful illuminations, talked to me of Iberia or Alexandria or anywhere I dreamed of going, told me wonderful secrets about the lofty dignitaries who surrounded me.’ Maria’s lashes fluttered, as if she were viewing some beauty too dazzling for vision. ‘Shortly after Constantine died and circumstances made both Zoe and Theodora even more distant from me, I began to become a woman. My menses had begun to flow, my innocent breasts were now tender and swollen. Drunk with the wine of that first womanhood, I began to seek the love between men and women. And of course I fixed upon the most immediate object of desire. I embarrassed us both at first, and yet I almost immediately sensed a power I had of course never known I possessed, even though I had always been thought a beautiful child. It was gradual, as delicate as the rain that slowly wells out of a mist, but our relationship became no longer that of father and daughter but of. . .’ Maria stroked her silk-sheathed knees. ‘We became like husband and wife.’

  Maria stood, her arms folded under her breasts, and studied the grass as she trampled it in short, somewhat pawing steps. ‘I honestly do not remember much of what that love was like. It seems so long ago. I only remember a kind of silver nimbus around it, an innocence that seems incredible to me now. But we held each other and made love like husband and wife, so I thought, and I believed that we had indeed pledged a troth. I begged him to marry me before this sin profaned my soul. He kept deferring, disclaiming about my age.’ The blue flames of Maria’s irises began to glow. ‘Apparently I was old enough for his arms to wrap my naked loins but not old enough for a wedding belt to girdle my waist. But in my innocence I waited. And then one day I learned the reason for my waiting. I remember that like yesterday. A slut who hovered about the court, waiting for whatever dignity might fancy to dip into her, came skipping to my apartments where I was learning Homer, as a girl my age is bound to do. She announced as gaily as her own betrothal the engagement of my lover to Anna Ducas, an arrogant Dhynatoi bitch who had already inflamed my jealousy with little intrigues that had seemed great at the time, and apparently were. I did not wait. I raced to confront him at his apartments and caught him in a position with the bitch that even the most skilful of lies could not extricate him from. She had the effrontery to seize a knife and threaten me with it. I kicked and punched the sin out of her and sent her fleeing, and the knife clattered to the floor. I saw it, and I saw him, too speechless with shame even to lie. I would have accepted anything except his beaten-dog shame!’ Maria’s teeth flashed between brilliant, grimacing lips. It was as if the knife had been set there by some greater hand than mine.’

  Even now Maria was rigid, coiled, as if responding to the grip of that great hand. ‘I seized the knife and, in my fury, plunged it into his astonished breast. I still see his eyes. . . . And the feeling ... the feeling of entering him with that knife was as it had been when he had first entered me and stabbed me with love.’ Her eyes glowed but her cadence faltered. ‘Ever . . . ever since then . . . love and hate have been . . . inseparable in my . . . soul.’

  Haraldr stared at the statue for a moment; its whimsical stone features seemed for a moment sad, as if stone, like flesh, were also a prison. He looked at Maria, still standing, her arms clutched as if her stomach ached, her eyes feverish with pain. He reached out and extricated one of her hands and pulled her down beside him. ‘I understand your pain,’ he told her as he clutched her cold, stiff hand. ‘I tried to become a man too soon, as I think you tried to become a woman too soon. I cannot be as honest as you and tell you everything that happened. But there was a battle, and everything I knew and loved was taken from me that day. Even my pride and honour. It was as if fate stripped me and broke me and ground me into the offal of my own fear. I remained screaming, unable to move, awake in that nightmare for many years. Because of the love of an old man who is dead now, and the help of the gods, I no longe
r live in that nightmare. But my soul still sears with the shame and agony of that day. I am marked by it for ever.’

  Maria’s grip was fierce, astonishingly powerful. ‘I am not ashamed of what I did. But I am still angry. It is the anger that reduces me, because I have let loose its misguided arrows all my life.’

  Haraldr could say nothing. She had bared her breast to him and indeed had no reason for shame; there was nothing in her tale that did not make him think more of her. He felt shame because the lie born at Stiklestad was still with him, and the anger he should proclaim to the world was still hidden. But he could not answer her truth with one of his own. He thought again of the ambivalent fate that had whispered to him high above the Hippodrome, and heard again its caution. Was this new truth of hers merely another mask for her soul? Or was her soul merely a mask for some devious fate? He did not know. And so all he could do was hold her desperate hand and listen to the hot wind rise and rattle among the sycamore leaves.

  ‘The Magister and Strategus of Armenikoi, Constantine Tztezes, paid a common prostitute to costume herself as the whore of Babylon, go about her business with a young man while he watched, and then . . .’ Michael Kalaphates let the letter drop onto the stack, a look of profound disgust added to the weariness that creased his handsome young face. ‘You don’t want to hear the rest, Uncle. Suffice to say that when the young man had finished with this ersatz Whore of Revelations, Tztezes proceeded to enact the rulers of biblical notoriety who had “drunk deep of her fornication”.’ Michael narrowed his eyes. ‘And this, Uncle, is the kind of narrow-minded prig who calls a sportsman like myself an apostate to Satan.’

  ‘It is remarkable that Father Abbot Giorgios did not despair of human nature,’ said Constantine wryly.

  ‘Yes, the Father Abbot seems to have been remarkably magnanimous as long as human nature brought him marble revetments for his cenobite’s cells and gold-and-ruby icons for his personal treasury. I tell you Uncle, if I ever ... I would make these pompous dignitaries think that the trumpet of judgement has sounded.’ Michael picked up the stack of documents and set it down on the table with a muted thud. ‘Well, enough of that. Let me review what we have.’

  Constantine straightened his pile of parchments and watched Michael attentively. It was extraordinary what the young man was capable of when he fixed himself upon some goal. Michael had first discerned Father Abbot Giorgios’s filing system, then deciphered the Chartophylax’s own rather cryptic system, cross-referenced all the documents, and within two weeks knew the identity and predicament of each of the Father Abbot’s numerous highly placed correspondents. (The vast amount of purely scholarly and religious correspondence, of course, he had quickly identified and discarded.)

  Michael placed his hands on two stacks. These are living holders of Imperial dignities who would be subject to immense . . . embarrassment if the contents of these letters became known.’ Michael lifted the hand that rested on the other, taller stack. ‘These documents pertain to deceased individuals whose families still hold positions of responsibility.’ Michael strutted for a moment, enjoying his moment of latent power. ‘We will use this only as a last resort, or to protect ourselves if circumstances should prove to our benefit. I quite think extortion a rather limited sport. One always begins with an outcome, which becomes quite tedious to the true speculator.’

  Michael moved with new assurance to a small stack of perhaps a dozen letters and placed both hands upon it. ‘This, Uncle, has all the indications of a superlative wager.’ Michael riffled the dry parchments. ‘The account is graphic, is it not? The purple-born Eudocia, the late sister of our present Empress Zoe and the Augusta Theodora, becomes enamoured of a young courtier - by the way, Uncle, they say Eudocia was a fright, her face blemished by some pox. She becomes enamoured of this young swain, lets him have his way with her, his seed bears fruit, she confesses to her father, and her young man mysteriously takes the tonsure of a monk and disappears to a lavra in Syria. She goes off to the convent at Prote and brings her bastard into the world, and the child’s rather deeply blue blood - in fact, one could almost make the case for it being purple - is known only to Father Abbot Giorgios. Eudocia gives up the child and lives out the rest of her woefully brief years in an even more remote cloister, the Emperor Constantine dies, we even have the death of the child’s father recorded. It is all here, the account of an artfully buried secret.’

  Michael sorted through the stack and picked up two letters. ‘Except for this. Here we have a letter in which Eudocia thanks the Father Abbot for seeing to the confidential delivery of her child and promises her confessor a new gold altar table.’ Michael waved the other letter. ‘Here we have the unfortunate woman’s profuse gratitude for seeing to her own placement in another convent, and of course the promise of one hundred solidi to purchase bound manuscripts for the library. Both letters are marked in both the Father Abbot’s and the Chartophylax’s filing notations, and both sets of notations indicate that one letter is missing, the letter written between these two. The letter, I am willing to wager, Uncle, that describes the disposition of the child.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Constantine; he also rose and began to pace with excitement. ‘And the fact that the Chartophylax’s notation indicates the missing letter proves that he was in possession of this rather propitious secret.’

  ‘Is it possible that the Chartophylax did kill this Father Katalakon in order to preserve the secret?’

  ‘Possible. But remember that the scent - or perhaps one should say reek - of Joannes is on all of this.’

  ‘Yes, that is the key, Uncle.’ Michael pulled an ear thoughtfully. ‘Let us consider three possibilities. One, that Joannes found the letter and knows the secret. Two, that Joannes looked for the letter and did not find it. Three, that Joannes knows nothing of the letter and merely suspended the typicon for some other reason; you know how meticulous his management is and how extensive his piques are.’ Constantine nodded agreement. ‘Two chances out of three, Uncle, is considered very attractive odds to an experienced sportsman. I say we should send someone to Cappadocia to locate this Chartophylax - or his remaindered effects in the event of his death, which seems likely - and bring us back that letter.’

  ‘There is no one we can trust with such a ... treasure.’

  Michael’s face collapsed into his usual boyish irresolution. ‘I had not thought of that. Poor Ergodotes, the only casualty of my plot against Joannes.’

  Constantine approached Michael and slapped his shoulders. ‘Of course there is someone we can both trust. By the goodness of the Pantocrator you have an uncle who knows the area passably well. The former Strategus of a neighbouring theme.’

  Michael’s lips were slack with shock. ‘Uncle, you cannot mean to ... Uncle, the heat alone . . .No. Nothing is worth the prospect of having you away for those months, not to mention ... I will not allow it.’

  ‘Nephew, you yourself have traversed most of the route. The caves of these eremites are only three days from Caesarea Mazaca. A most propitious destination, is it not, my Caesar? I should be able to join a caravan within the next two weeks, and be in Cappadocia by early September. I will be back before December.’

  Michael’s eyes were wet with gratitude. ‘Uncle, bless you. I only hope that upon the occasion of your return I will still be here to welcome you.’

  Maria awakened to the brilliant early September light streaming into her bedchamber. The curtains rustled b with the already tepid morning breeze. Her arcade was a wall of gold. She had dreamed again, of thunderbolts fracturing a glassy sky, a flaming sea, her own death. The dreams are what I fear, not what will be, she told herself. I have proof of that. What will be is today. I will see him, I will have hours to be with him. Enough time to break through this wall that still keeps us apart, as close as we have come these past months. Today he will share with me the secret that burdens his soul.

  Maria sat up at the knock on the door. Her chamberlain entered and ushered in Maria Diaconus, daughter of th
e Patrician and Senator Alexius Diaconus, and Maria’s new lady-in-waiting; because of their shared name, Maria referred to her as Little Maria. Little Maria was fourteen, blonde, as slender as a reed, and entirely too young to be gambolling about court, but clearly her parents were eager to auction her innocence in the interests of their ambitions. Maria had resolved to keep a keen eye on her.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ said Little Maria in her flute-like girl’s voice. ‘I have been up before the sun. I cannot believe this day is actually here.’ Little Maria walked to the open arcade and looked out over the domes of the palace and across the Bosporus. They say there will be dancers and a drama in mime and an illusionist and acrobats and animals and that women will have their own hunt,’ she rattled off without pausing for breath. ‘Do you think we will be able to dance?’

  ‘If the Empress decides we can dance, we will dance.’

  ‘With men?’

  ‘Perhaps. If you are extremely good, you might be permitted to dance with men.’

  ‘So will you dance with the Hetairarch?’ Little Maria smirked surreptitiously.

  ‘How did you know he was coming?’

  ‘I have been asking. Do you know who else is coming? That Saracen prince who wants to be Caliph of Egypt.’ Little Maria lowered her voice to a ridiculous hiss and steered her blue-green eyes about the room. ‘They say the Emperor may even appear.’

  I doubt that, Maria thought to herself, not wanting to spoil the girl’s anticipation. It was enough that Zoe had been freed to entertain at her villa on the Bosporus, and that Her Majesty was conducting the event with the zeal of old. Maria only hoped that Zoe herself would not presume that the Emperor might attend her ball.

  ‘Mistress, do you think I might be seduced this evening?’ said Little Maria blithely.

  Maria reached over and gave Little Maria’s long blond braid a sharp pull. ‘Not tonight, little flower. When you are ready to be plucked, I will find someone appropriate to seduce you.’