Byzantium - A Novel

by Michael Ennis

  The next hour was excruciating. The Taghmatic units surrounded the Gynaeceum while Joannes’s flotilla moved steadily south. The Senators’ galleys steered into the Golden Horn to make their anchorage at Platea Harbour, while the Imperial Trireme bearing Joannes sailed conspicuously alone around the tip of Byzantium, heading well past the city so that the populace would have time to watch as the imposing, sea-going fortress turned back to the north and came head in to the Bucoleon Harbour. Somehow Michael was able to watch it all without another breakdown, and Haraldr was touched by his composure. It was no easy thing for a man to march with his head up into battle after he had already soiled his breeches in front of his comrades.

  The Imperial Trireme trailed white wake and the three rows of oars dipped and rose inexorably; from a distance the armoured marines looked like granulated silver spilled on the deck. Haraldr watched as the swift-moving craft plunged like an elaborate spearhead directly towards the Bucoleon quays just below them to the south. Then something at the periphery of his vision distracted him. Another wake streaked the finely silvered water; a ship had emerged from the Harbour of Contoscali, a very small U-shaped bay about five bowshots west of the Bucoleon.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Ulfr.

  ‘A khelandia of the pamphyloi class. Imperial Fleet,’ said Haraldr. The pamphyloi were half the size of dhromons but still lethally armed and faster and more manoeuvrable. The single tier of oars fluttered in rapid cadence and the narrow-beamed vessel moved quickly on an intercept course with the Imperial Trireme; as Haraldr judged it, the two craft would make contact just a bowshot beyond the Bucoleon breakwater.

  ‘A curious rendezvous for an escort vessel,’ said Ulfr, pointing to where the wakes would converge. Haraldr looked at Ulfr and shook his head. It was obviously a desperate rendezvous for a Nobilissimus intent on begging for his life.

  Michael pointed at the racing khelandia with a limp finger and quaking arm. ‘Uncle is on that ship, isn’t he?’ he said in a voice so low that had there been wind, his words would have been lost.

  ‘Signal him to return to his anchorage!’ shouted the Droungarios of the Imperial Fleet. He stood at the stern of the Imperial Trireme, high above the hissing sea, atop a cottage-size stern-castle that resembled a small palace in its ornate gold fittings. The Droungarios was a slight man; no doubt he had been tough and wiry in his youth, but now that he was well past seventy, shrivelled and stooped, his authority was in his rough, wine-pickled voice and insignia of rank rather than his physical presence. His command soon produced a sequence of flags along the yard-arm of the trireme’s central mast.

  ‘He’s not responding!’ shouted one of the Droungarios’s attendant komes, shortly after the flags had been raised.

  The Orphanotrophus Joannes appeared at the Droungarios’s side and leaned against the gilded railing. ‘Let him come on,’ Joannes said, his face struggling with a grin. The Droungarios looked at him in surprise. ‘See that man,’ he said, pointing to a purple-clad figure at the bow of the khelandia, now only two stades distant. ‘Those are the robes of the Nobilissimus. My brother has come to negotiate the terms of his nephew’s abdication.’

  The ships slowed as they reached hailing distance, and the komes at the bow of the khelandia asked permission to come alongside. ‘Ship port oars!’ commanded the Droungarios. The two craft swung around, and crews threw rope bumpers over the sides. The khelandia thudded alongside the trireme and crewmen on the deck scrambled to secure mooring ropes. The Droungarios looked down at the komes in command of the khelandia; the komes was a short man with a chest so massively powerful that his silver breastplate looked like an enormous kettle. He had a short dark beard, a sun-blackened face and flint-hard grey eyes. ‘What is that man’s name?’ the Droungarios whispered to his aide. The Droungarios had more than two hundred komes, each in command of anywhere from one to four vessels, beneath him; he vaguely recalled having given this man a reward for some role he had played in a battle off Italia.

  ‘Moschus, Droungarios. John Moschus. The hero of Taranto.’

  ‘Find out what he is about.’ The Droungarios shook his head. Hero . . . Taranto . . .

  Moschus walked to the stern of his vessel and shouted up at the Droungarios. ‘I would like to come aboard, sir, and negotiate for the safe transfer of the Nobilissimus to your flagship. I believe it is in the interest of the Imperial Navy . . .’

  ‘You presume what is in the interest of the Imperial Navy, Komes!’ shouted the Droungarios angrily. This so-called hero would soon be pulling an oar on an ousiai.

  ‘Let us play this out,’ countermanded Joannes. It amused him to think that Constantine was already concerned about his immediate safety. In Neorion he would wish that he had met with a quick death out here.

  The Droungarios, followed by his aides, scuttled down the stairs to the deck to avoid having to deal with a potentially insubordinate officer in front of the all-conquering Orphanotrophus Joannes. It wouldn’t do to have a man like that perceive weakness in his commanders. ‘Komes Moschus!’ the Droungarios shouted, his face livid, ‘come aboard and explain your treason!’

  Moschus scrambled up the rope ladder and climbed over the heavy, gilt-and-red railing of the Imperial Trireme’s main deck. He strode right up to the Droungarios and in a lightning-quick movement was behind him; one powerful arm pinned the old man’s neck, and the other pressed a knife to his nose. ‘One movement and this blade will be in his brain!’ shouted Moschus to the four stunned aides. ‘Order your marines to hold their places!’ At the same time two dozen marines clambered out of hatches on the deck of the khelandia; some of them brandished liquid-fire grenades.

  ‘What did he offer you?’ the bulging-eyed Droungarios asked raspily.

  ‘I am to be the Droungarios of the Imperial Fleet,’ said Moschus.

  ‘I will give you my estates near Ancyra. Fifty villages,’ croaked the Droungarios.

  ‘I am a sailor,’ growled Moschus; suddenly he seemed truly enraged. ‘You might remember that. I saved your fleet and your command at Taranto. You gave me five pieces of gold. I am still waiting for the command of dhromons you promised me that day.’ Moschus jerked the old man off his feet. ‘We are finished negotiating. My men will burn this ship if you do not deliver the Orphanotrophus to me.’

  Joannes’s voice exploded from the lofty stern-castle. ‘Droungarios, order your marines to kill him!’

  The Droungarios’s throat gurgled as he quickly decided that the Orphanotrophus was not a man he was willing to die for; he had enlisted in this cause to aggrandise his land holdings, not sacrifice himself to some transient tyrant. ‘Will the Nobilissimus grant me a pardon?’ he said raspily, rolling his ancient eyes back at Moschus.

  ‘Nobilissimus!’ shouted Moschus. ‘Will you pardon the Droungarios if he yields up his passenger?’

  ‘Yes!’ shouted Constantine from the deck of the khelandia. He was surrounded by Moschus’s marines.

  ‘Order your marines!’ screamed Joannes. He came down the ladder with his arms akimbo, like a huge vulture descending to earth. His face was so dark with anger that it seemed like something viewed in the shadows at night. He waved his black wings at the marines. ‘I order you!’

  ‘The Droungarios of the Imperial Fleet commands these men, not the Orphanotrophus!’ shouted Moschus. The marines remained motionless.

  ‘I will destroy every man on this deck.’ Joannes stood near the main mast, and his voice carried without any apparent effort at projection, as if it were a pocket of cold, foul air that slowly seeped over the deck. The mysterious power of the black-frocked Orphanotrophus to bring fear among men brought silence like a sudden night. The hulls thumped together twice. Constantine’s chest burned and his breath strangled in his throat. ‘Kill him or you will all die in Neorion.’ The signal flags lifted in a faint breeze, and the ranks of the marines seemed to waver, their armour shimmering like a mirage. The gulls wheeled and cawed overhead.

  ‘Neorion.’ Constantine’s voice was
a steady, calm tenor. ‘The Orphanotrophus will kill us all in the Neorion.’ With remarkable agility Constantine scrambled up the rope ladder to the deck of the Imperial Trireme. His voice rang out from the higher platform. ‘The Orphanotrophus says he has the power to kill us all!’ Constantine walked over to Joannes and set himself a fathom away from his brother. They were the same man viewed in a strange, distorting mirror: the one eunuch black-frocked, his face carved by some demon into grotesque hollows, his immense limbs and swollen joints projecting at angles like the legs of a monstrous insect; the other purple-robed, his beardless features haggard from a night of desperate solicitations and arrangements, his still fleshy chin set hard with purpose, his heavy chest heaving gently.

  Joannes’s eyes fired from deep within their recessed sockets. ‘You are prolonging your death, Brother.’

  ‘He will kill us all in the Neorion!’ repeated Constantine. ‘So then, mighty Orphanotrophus, kill me now!’ Constantine’s robes swished, and he stepped forward with his right foot and raised his thick, fleshy hands in a pugilist’s stance. ‘Take me now, all-powerful Orphanotrophus! I have no weapon, Brother!’ Constantine’s face burned with anger and he gritted his teeth against the pain in his chest.

  Joannes seemed to rise up off his feet, his entire form swelling like a preening bird of prey. He lurched forward and Constantine cringed reflexively. And almost in the same instant, Constantine’s arm shot out. His balled fist smacked into Joannes’s brutish nose with a crack and a deep thud.

  Joannes slowly brought a huge paw to his gushing nose and dabbed incredulously. He studied the rich, red slick on his spatulate fingertips. The man who had drained the blood of thousands in Neorion seemed astonished to find that the same mortal stuff flowed in his veins. He leaned over and numbly watched the spurting blood dribble onto the white enamel deck. Then he crouched, slowly, almost as if he were trying to capture a butterfly. He knelt, dipped a forefinger in his spattered blood, and began to draw perfect concentric circles on the deck, pausing only to dip his finger again and again, as if it were the quill of a pen.

  The wind came up and gusted. Joannes’s black frock flapped round his jutting limbs; it was as if only a wooden armature remained, where moments before there had been a man’s body. He continued to make perfect circles with his own blood. ‘None of them could ever see how long it would have lasted.’ His voice was a rasping, strangled whisper. ‘Except Michael. Michael would have made me complete. They took him. Now they are going to take me, my friends, and you will have no one left.’ Joannes smeared his circles with an angry motion of his vast, square palm and turned to Constantine. His sockets were alive with that strange silvery movement, the dance of thousands of tiny wraiths. He crawled on his knees and put his arms around Constantine’s legs and embraced them like a desperate child. He nuzzled his monstrous head against Constantine’s thigh. ‘I am so tired. Someone help me. I am so tired.’

  Constantine reached into his cloak. ‘I have here an Imperial Chrysobull charging this man with treason,’ he said quietly, as if afraid to wake the child at his feet. ‘Arrest the Orphanotrophus.’ He held up the gold-sealed purple document, and marines moved forward to execute his command. Joannes did not resist when the marines peeled his arms from his brother’s legs and shackled him. His eyes were completely alive now, seemingly separate organisms.

  Constantine turned to Moschus. ‘Droungarios Moschus, in the name of Michael, Emperor, Autocrator and Basileus of Rome, I order you to transport your prisoner to his place of permanent exile at the Monastery of Monobate.’

  Moschus nodded. ‘You are certain?’ he asked matter-of-factly. ‘We could with no difficulty drop him overboard on the way.’

  Constantine’s eyes were dark, wicked, as if the evil that had fled Joannes’s defeated soul had found this new home. ‘No. This is the one punishment he fears more than death. He went mad in the monastery when he was a boy. They had to send him home for a time. He was only fourteen years old.’

  The entire drama had been clearly visible from the roof of the Gynaeceum. Michael had said nothing and registered no emotion, even when it had appeared that Constantine had clearly defected to Joannes. Now, as the two ships moved apart and dipped their oars back into the water, Michael only breathed steadily and shallowly, almost like a man in a brief doze. His dark eyes watched as Moschus’s khelandia moved away quickly to the south. The still, black figure of Joannes stood like a charred statue at the stern.

  The purple robes of the Nobilissimus coruscated in the sun as he stood in the bow of the Imperial Trireme. The huge ship almost immediately veered left and prepared to dock. Constantine looked up at the palace and waved, though it wasn’t certain he knew where his nephew actually was. Michael waved back. Then the Emperor lifted his head to the sun and quickly brought his hand up to shield his dazzled eyes.

  IX

  ‘You are impressed with this?’ The Droungarios of the Capatanate of Italia Mar Hunrodarson gestured in passing at the mosaics. He governed the province from a Basilica in Bari, an ancient structure from the time of the Emperor Justinian, with heavy arches and a flat, coffered roof. Mar signed his eunuchs to bring his guest wine and seated him on a couch at the east end of the hall, where a large blue carpet had been spread over the marble floor. ‘The wealth you see here in Italia,’ said Mar as he sat in his chair, ‘is the shit of the Imperial Eagle. You will see well enough the truth of that when you get to Grikia.’

  Mar beckoned to the prostitute as she came forward in a rustling of rose-coloured silk. Her tough blue eyes registered shock when she saw the face of the man she had been paid to entertain. But she quickly sat next to him and placed her slender arm on his huge, sloping shoulder. The guest placed his brutish hand round her waist; the sun-baked skin was crisscrossed with dozens of scars, and most of his forefinger was missing. ‘The reason I summoned you is this,’ continued Mar. ‘The Great King of Grikia has died, and I have just learned that the brother who was his marshal has been defeated.’ Mar used terms he knew his guest would understand. ‘The Great King who has been named the successor once promised the high seat to me. I am certain that when I remind him of his promise, he will gladly yield to me. If he will not, the Chief Kristr Wizard of the Griks will help me evict him.’

  ‘Then why do you need me and mine?’ The voice from the bearish chest was incongruously gentle.

  ‘I told you that I knew where you could find the prince who did not die at Stiklestad.’

  ‘Yes. Haraldr Sigurdarson. That is why I have come. He is in Grikia?’

  ‘Yes. He is an accomplice of this Great King who has cheated me. I expected him to be my ally in my worthy cause. But he is also a serpent-tongue and I am certain now that he will oppose me.’

  ‘How many men will you need?’

  ‘A great many. I believe the army of Grikia will oppose me. They do not want to be ruled by a fair-hair. However, I also know that a son of the Great Prince of Rus now has a grudge against the Griks. One of his comrades was slain in a brawl in the Great City. This Rus prince is ambitious as it is, and this gives him an excuse to attack. But of course you know the Rus. Without Norsemen to lead them, they are women.’

  ‘King Sven will allow me ten times three hundred men. Will that be enough to lead these Rus?’

  Mar thought for a moment. ‘Men like you?’

  ‘You know there are not many like us. But these are well-tested men. Many fought for Sven’s father Knut at Stiklestad.’

  ‘Yes. That will be enough. I am going to send my marshal Thorvald with you. He will arrange your counsel with the Rus prince. I will instruct Thorvald as to the time for you to strike. You must be very careful to follow what he says, so that you will arrive at a time when the patrols cannot detect you until you are on the threshold of Miklagardr. And then everything you see here in Italia you shall have for yourself a thousand times.’

  ‘If I can kill Haraldr Sigurdarson, I will already have more than this. King Sven has added to King Knut’s bount
y. Will I be allowed to kill Haraldr Sigurdarson?’

  Mar looked into the fiery, dark, insane eyes of his guest. ‘Yes. You have already killed the King of Norway once, have you not? You will not find his little brother nearly as formidable a warrior. But then I forget. You already know that.’

  The yacht’s deck swayed in a scarcely perceptible motion. The lights of the city blazed off the starboard railing. A eunuch walked forward from the stern-castle, his white silk like some phosphorescent sea creature. ‘You will miss it,’ said Haraldr.

  Maria’s hands gripped the railing tightly. ‘Of course I will. It will probably make me melancholy. You will find me unendurable.’

  ‘I will find you seductive,’ said Haraldr, recalling an earlier conversation.

  Maria put her hand to his face, but her melancholy seemed genuine. She turned to him suddenly. ‘No. I could not leave quickly enough. I am serious, my darling. I have a foreboding.’

  ‘You have not dreamed again?’

  ‘No. This is . . . I do not like the Emperor.’

  ‘I don’t understand. He has proved himself just and capable beyond my imagining. Consider. He has not executed a single man for the treason against him and has imprisoned but a few. His reforms have so encouraged the people that he cannot enter the city on even a secret visit without them spontaneously flocking to throw flowers and carpets on the streets before him. Believe me, I have seen this, and it is not a case of the cursores rousting people out of their homes. He is truly loved. And most importantly, he is deeply devoted to the Empress. Anyone can see his love for her.’ Haraldr shrugged. ‘I believe he is somewhat deficient in the area of military preparation, but his first challenge will bring out the warrior in him. You, yourself, saw him fight once.’