Byzantium - A Novel

by Michael Ennis

  Alexius’s thin lips compressed with a virtual smirk of self-satisfaction, as if he not only approved of Theodora’s impudence but credited himself for it. His rich tenor also betrayed his good spirits. ‘It will be quite an unusual ceremony. I wish you could be there to see it, my child. But I believe it will hasten the day when you will see the same ceremony from the ambo of the Mother Church. Tomorrow Joannes will leash an Emperor in front of all Rome, but I do not believe that his creation will suffer that collar blithely. The master and his pet will soon be at each other’s throats. The master will of course prevail, but his wounds may render him quite vulnerable to an attack from another quarter.’

  Theodora’s eyes were as hard as sapphires. ‘And what then, Father? It occurs to me that the beast we had hoped to set upon Joannes is now sojourning in Italia, and it is not likely he will return to Rome for some time.’

  Alexius smiled amiably. ‘Mar Hunrodarson is gone from Rome, my child, but he has not left our heart. I still say a prayer each day for his heathen soul.’

  The transition of power was completed three days later in the Hagia Sophia. The day was so dark that the bronze lamps and rings of candelabra suspended from the dome had to be lit; the lights hovered in the vast space like clusters of stars. After Michael Kalaphates received the Imperial Diadem from the Patriarch Alexius and was acclaimed as Emperor, Autocrator and Basileus of Rome, he was escorted from the silver-sheathed ambo to a throne set on a porphyry platform at the far end of the church. The new Emperor seemed numbed, distant, like a victim walking away from some great catastrophe. When he reached the throne, he motioned to the Parakoimomenos, who seemed to have aged ten years since the burial of the previous Emperor. The Parakoimomenos nodded at his own staff of eunuchs. The great church echoed with a murmur of astonishment as the eunuchs brought forth two portable thrones and set them on either side of the Emperor’s broad, canopied throne. The Emperor gestured, and Zoe, dressed in her widow’s veiled black, seated herself on the left-hand throne. ‘I am your servant,’ said Michael very clearly, and then he took his seat beside the purple-born Empress. One dignitary far back among the vestitores muttered aloud when Joannes, dressed in his monk’s habit, then appeared and sat on the throne to the right of the Emperor, but the protest was lost amid the rising surge of more carefully whispered asides. ‘My master,’ said Michael in acknowledgement of Joannes, his homage spoken clearly enough to be heard over the speculation of his subjects.

  After this curious beginning the ceremony of adoration proceeded in the prescribed fashion. One by one the dignitaries of the Roman Empire prostrated themselves before the new Lord of the Entire World and then crawled forward to embrace his knees. Haraldr’s place in the adoration, as prescribed by protocol, was after the Disputers. ‘Keleusate,’ intoned the Grand Eunuch after Haraldr had completed his prostrations. Haraldr embraced Michael’s knees and felt nothing more than the cool, smooth texture of silk and gold thread; nothing to evoke the strange marriage of fates that had joined them in that moment during Michael’s coronation as Caesar. ‘Autocrator, may you live long,’ said Haraldr, the same prescribed salutation Michael would receive from each dignitary present. ‘May you be happy,’ replied Michael in a mechanical, insensate drone. Haraldr stood and withdrew with his hands over his breast, and the next dignitary fell on his face in front of the porphyry platform; the ceremony continued until late in the day.

  And thus was the power and glory of Imperial Rome passed on, as it had been for more than a thousand years.

  VIII

  The Protostator completed his inspection, navigated the underground galleries that led from the Hippodrome stables to the spiral staircase, and ascended to the Emperor’s box. He blinked away the bright spring sunlight and listened for a moment to the anticipatory fervour of the crowd. To his right and left, the Magisters and Proconsular Patricians, along with the ambassadorial delegation from Genoa, had already taken their seats in the loggias on either side of the Imperial Box. On the flat, roof-like terrace behind the Imperial Box, the Emperor waited, surrounded by Varangians of the Grand Hetairia. Michael Kalaphates wore the Imperial Diadem on his head; the train of his jewelled pallium was drawn up over his left arm, and he gripped the sapphire-and ruby-studded sceptre of his office in his right hand. The eagles embroidered on his pallium phosphoresced in the sunlight; it seemed as if the wings of gold thread were actually fluttering with motion.

  The Protostator pressed his leathery face to the carpet upon which his sovereign stood. ‘Majesty,’ he said when he rose up, ‘we await Your light.’ With a slight motion of his hand Michael beckoned the Protostator to come close. The Protostator leaned forward until his lips almost touched the pearl-and-diamond lappets that covered the Emperor’s ears and streamed down his cheeks like jewelled tears. ‘Epaphroditis has drawn the first race,’ whispered the Protostator. ‘He will start in the second position.’ Michael nodded and the Protostator backed away respectfully. Michael nodded again and the Grand Eunuch, the same sad-eyed man who had served the previous Michael, came forward and bowed.

  ‘Approach the Genoese Ambassador,’ Michael told the Grand Eunuch. ‘Tell him that the Autocrator of Rome offers him a wager. I claim Epaphroditis, representing the blue colours, as winner in the first race. Offer him the team and driver of his choice, his choice to be made after fifteen circuits of the race are complete. I will put my galley full of Syrian silk, still under seals in the Bucoleon Harbour, against those six Genoese merchant craft that await unloading at the Neorion Harbour.’ The Grand Eunuch bowed and shuffled off and Michael winked at his Protostator. ‘He will be quite unable to refuse the opportunity to select a winner after the race is three-quarters complete, when I have committed myself from the outset.’

  The Parakoimomenos nodded to the Emperor. Michael moved quickly into the arcaded box, his gold-armoured Varangians fanning out beside him as he ascended the porphyry steps to his throne. The crowd hushed reverently. Michael made the sign of the cross to the crowd beneath and opposite him, then turned to his right and left and repeated the blessing. Organ music flourished and the crowd erupted into the prescribed chants of greeting. The Emperor seemed impatient with the adulation, and he shifted his weight from one purple boot to the other. Finally the chants were completed and the music stopped and the vast arena became entirely silent except for the crisp snapping of the ceremonial banners. Michael handed his sceptre to a waiting eunuch and took the ceremonial mappa offered by the Parakoimomenos. He gravely lifted this swatch of white silk and watched it flutter against the glorious blue sky. Then he released it.

  Four bronze gates clanked open at the north end of the stadium, initiating a rising fury from the crowd. In an explosion of gleaming horseflesh, gilded fittings and multicoloured caparisons, the four teams of four appeared, the anxious horses’ hoofs chewing up the neatly raked sand of the track. The drivers, dressed in leather skirts with leather corsets strapped over tunics in the colours of their teams, leaned over the open backs of their light, two-wheeled chariots, the reins taut in their hands. They brought their head-flinging teams slowly forward to the triangular bronze start-and-finish pylon at the north end of the spina. As soon as all four teams were even with the finishing line, the riders slackened their reins, brought their long-handled leather whips snapping over the necks of their horses, and the teams charged off, tossing clouds of sand behind them.

  The crowd went into immediate hysterics; virtually every man seemed to rise from his seat and wave a towel with the colours of his team on it over his head; even the Emperor whirled his right arm above his head, as if this motion could somehow propel the teams more quickly round the track. On the spina, an elegantly robed attendant stood by a table on which twenty gilded ostrich eggs had been set in neat rows, and as the teams thundered past the finish pylon, he removed the first of the eggs.

  As the race progressed, the spectators seemed to equal the fury of the foaming horses; here and there brief fist-fights erupted in the stands. On the sevent
h circuit the red team clipped the south end of the spina and flipped out of control, and Michael grimaced and balled his fists as Epaphroditis and his blue team - which was actually three black horses and one dapple on the outside - swerved wildly to miss the careening red chariot. The red driver somehow survived the tumble and scrambled to the railing on the outside of the track. On the tenth circuit a brawl broke out among three dozen people seated high in the southern end of the stadium, and baton-wielding cursores scrambled through the seats to keep the peace.

  By the fifteenth lap the green team led the white by a length, and the blue of Epaphroditis was almost the entire length of the spina behind. Michael looked down at the Geneose Ambassador seated in the loggia to his right. The Ambassador, a noble-looking man with a high forehead, bowed to the Emperor, then held up his arm and plucked at the loose sleeve of his ceremonial white robe. ‘White! White, you say!’ shrieked Michael against both the noise of the crowd and the restraints of protocol. The Ambassador nodded.

  On lap seventeen the white team overtook the green. The green fell back rapidly; the second horse seemed to have a troubled gait. The blues of Epaphroditis flew past into second position. Still, the white led by half the length of the spina.

  On the eighteenth lap Epaphroditis made his move, bringing his whip savagely over the necks of his horses. A cyclone of dust trailed behind as the blues steadily gained on the whites. At the end of the eighteenth lap Epaphroditis came alongside the whites but could not pass before the turn. He dropped back slightly and then came alongside again on the next straight. But the whites held him off, and by the end of the nineteenth lap the blues had dropped off a length. One egg remained on the table, and the Genoese Ambassador looked up and waved at the Emperor. Michael glanced at him and again fixed his sharp, dark eyes on the track.

  Epaphroditis’s blues made another thundering advance on the penultimate straight. The whip struck again and again, and the white supporters in the crowd jeered; Epaphroditis was leaving everything on the next to last stretch. White would win easily. But with a look over his shoulder, the white driver saw the blue horses literally snorting at his back, and he went to the whip as he rounded the last turn. His sudden acceleration forced the white chariot wide, and the wheels slid sideways, losing traction. Epaphroditis’s team hugged the spina, as if attached by rails, and suddenly squeezed through the opening provided by the centrifugal motion of the white team. Epaphroditis summoned the last resources from his team and lashed them on. The blues won by half a length.

  ‘Six Genoese merchantmen!’ shrieked Michael. He leapt from his throne and descended among the mere mortals to embrace his Uncle Constantine, who now exceeded all other dignitaries in the newly created rank of Nobilissimus. ‘Uncle! Epaphroditis has won me six Genoese merchantmen!’ The Emperor gasped with excitement. ‘You would have to send out a fleet of dhromons for an entire summer to do as well as I have with a team of four in a single morning! Six Genoese merchantmen! Epaphroditis will receive one, and you two, Uncle!’

  Epaphroditis received his laurel crown from the Prefect of the City; somehow the scarcely animate old Prefect had survived another winter. Then three races ensued in like fashion. After the fourth race the crowd quieted, expecting the usual interval diversions - acrobats, trained animals, mock combats. Instead, Michael signed to the Grand Eunuch. The various starting and service gates clanked open, disgorging hundreds of eunuchs who carried enormous baskets of fruits, vegetables and cooked meats. Soon the base of the spina was almost entirely concealed by the food-laden baskets. The crowd cheered wildly. At another signal from the Emperor the cursores stood away from the marble parapet that separated the audience from the track. The spectators clambered over the wall, traversed the dry moat, and poured out onto the track. The stands were soon half emptied, and the spina was swarmed by a well-ordered mob; this was a heavily middle-class crowd of tradesmen and lesser merchants, and even the labourers in the audience were far from desperate for a meal - most had brought their own lunch - but were simply enthusiastic over the Emperor’s gesture. Their chant rose and quickly spread: ‘Michael! Michael!’

  Michael nodded at the Grand Eunuch to signal the Hetairach. Haraldr leaned over the Emperor’s shoulder. ‘I want to go down there, Hetairarch!’ yelled the Emperor. ‘I want only you and a centurion to accompany me!’

  Haraldr looked over at Ulfr in silent desperation. Madness.

  Michael was overestimating his newly won popularity. It was hardly due to oversight that the Emperor who had long ago built this box had not provided any access between it and the crowd below; even the later underground passages were secret, circuitous and well guarded. Out of the many, there were certain to be malcontents - the Bogomils, who had no reverence whatsoever for the Imperial offices, were sure to have some adherents in the crowd. With only two guards among that mob, even a lone assassin could get close enough. ‘Majesty--’ began Haraldr.

  ‘Nonsense, Hetairach. My children adore me. And I feel Fortune smiling upon me today.’ Perhaps so, thought Haraldr as he listened to the chants. He shrugged at Ulfr, and together they guided the Emperor down the staircase and through the passageways.

  The marshalling area beneath the stands was antic with acrobats, jugglers and buffoons waiting to begin the interval entertainment. The Emperor paused to poke his hands into the cage of two performing bears while the astonished performers and stadium officials watched. He growled at the beasts for a moment, then darted over and swiped at a juggler’s brightly painted wooden balls. He smiled down at an adolescent acrobat in a short tunic and chucked her under the chin.

  ‘Follow me out, Hetairarch.’ The bronze door opened and the Emperor strode out into the mob. As soon as he was recognized, the men around him fell to their faces in the sand. Michael navigated the prostrate bodies to the spina, found a half-empty basket of fruit, and began throwing oranges and citrons to the people as they rose to their feet. The chant resumed: ‘Michael! Michael!’ A starting gate opened, and Epaphroditis and his blue team wheeled out among the crowd as if by some prearrangement. Michael waved to the driver, and Epaphroditis guided his team to the Emperor’s side. The Emperor removed his heavily jewelled Imperial Pallium and handed it to Haraldr. Then he pulled his scaramangium over his head, to reveal a chariot driver’s tunic and leather skirt beneath his robes. He swung onto the back of Epaphroditis’s chariot, took the reins, waved Haraldr and Ulfr away, and began a slow procession round the track. The Imperial Diadem was still on his head. The din of approval exceeded that moment when the Bulgar Khan had kissed the boots of that other, now thoroughly forgotten, Michael.

  ‘Has he gone mad?’ asked Ulfr as he watched Michael steer the team around the spina.

  Haraldr shook his head and shouted his reply in Ulfr’s ear as the acclaim crescendoed to a numbing roar. To this moment, he has obviously been anything but that! But what he is hearing now may indeed make him mad!’

  ‘Who is that man?’ Joannes held the door to his office antechamber open and pointed down the hall to a portly eunuch swathed in the robe of a Secretikoi in the offices of the Sacellarius.

  ‘Lebunes,’ said Joannes’s own eunuch secretary. ‘You asked for his assignment. He is studying the thematic tax ledgers of the Emperor Leo.’

  ‘Just so I know who is here,’ growled Joannes. Why hadn’t he remembered that?

  ‘Orphanotrophus, the man you sent for is waiting for you.’ The secretary paused, waiting for a response that came only in the form of a dark, distracted nod. ‘The man from Amastris.’

  Joannes seemed almost jolted by his sudden recollection of the appointment. ‘Yes. Yes.’ He walked with heavy steps to his office, entered, and shut the door behind him.

  The young man jerked to his feet when Joannes entered. He was about twenty, with a beard of sparsely woven fine, dark hairs, and wore the coarse woollen robe of a provincial tradesman. His large, dark, innocent eyes registered alarm and then surprise when Joannes stepped forward and clapped his bony shoulders. Hi
s forehead had a curious bulbous projection, almost as if there were a fist inside of his skull pushing out. A vein in his temple wriggled with anxiety.

  ‘Cousin,’ said Joannes in a rumbling effort at amiability, ‘please sit down.’ Joannes took his own simple chair behind his writing table and studied the entirely unprepossessing young man as if he were laying eyes on the incarnation of the Bulgar-Slayer. ‘So you are the grandson of my father’s brother, Nicetas. I’m sorry we haven’t been acquainted before. Do you know that the preoccupations of our Empire have prevented me from visiting Amastris since before you were born? It is a pity to lose touch with one’s family. So you are a wool carder in Amastris. And a member in good standing of your local guild.’ Joannes paused to allow the young man an opportunity to speak.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The young man’s voice was fluty and tremulous. Joannes was satisfied with the silence that followed; apparently, he observed, this rube scarcely had the wits or initiative for other than monosyllabic replies.

  ‘Wool carding,’ said Joannes wondrously, as if he were describing some important office of state instead of the business of combing raw wool to prepare it for spinning, ‘an honest profession that affords a man a lifetime of steady earning and rewarding activity. Unless, of course, he runs afoul of his local Prefect.’ The young man’s eyes popped open like a sheep’s in the shearing pen. Joannes drummed the table for a moment, his crusty fingernails making a staccato sound like a marching tattoo. ‘I should like to free you from that anxiety,’ said Joannes at length. ‘That is why I asked that you undertake this long journey for me. I should like you to be my guest here in the Empress City. Forget the worries of your profession for a while. I will put my head to it and arrive at a more suitable employment for a young man of your abilities.’