Michael smiled as he listened to the echoes in the chamber of death. When he could no longer hear them, he tapped on the door to signal the interrogators. The steel doors opened and the two Pechenegs entered. Michael nodded at them and they removed the appropriate instruments from the table, walked to the rack, and ripped Stephan’s robe from the hem to the chest, leaving his spasming legs and pulsing, flaccid abdomen fully exposed. ‘I am going to see mother,’ Michael said. ‘I am going to tell her that you will never foul her again.’ Michael turned and left the interrogation chamber before the Pecheneg eunuchs began the incision around his father’s scrotum.
‘Keleusate.’ Haraldr rose and faced the throne beneath the golden vault of the Chrysotriklinos. The Grand Eunuch indicated that he could approach the Emperor and speak. The Nobilissimus Constantine sat impassively in a simple chair just to the right of the dais. Also in attendance were the usual white-robed secretaries, interpreters and the Emperor’s new astrologers.
‘Majesty.’
‘Hetairarch.’
‘Majesty, may I preface my request by remarking that Rome now enjoys a stability and unity that I have not seen before in my time here. I say without resort to flattery that no sovereign in my experience has ever enjoyed the love of his people to the extent that you do. I say with all honesty, as one who has been privileged to know you in times of both adverse and beneficent fortune, that I feel that the entire city has supplanted me in my office as Hetairarch, in that as I walk the streets behind you I know that any one of Rome’s citizens would lay down his life to protect your own as readily as could myself. Seeing that there is so little danger to your person, and that no foreign powers currently menace us, I believe that the time is now appropriate for me to take my leave of Rome. It is not without regret that I ask for leave, but I am bound by loyalties to my own family and people in Thule, and now I believe that they are in greater need of me than is Your Majesty. I humbly beg your permission to resign my office, and those offices held by the men of the Grand Hetairia, and be granted my leave as a devoted friend of the Roman Empire.’
Michael’s eyes were red-rimmed, no doubt from his always lengthy sessions in the Chrysotriklinos, and Haraldr worried that his speech had been too long. But he had learned that the Emperor was quite susceptible to well-intended cajolery and had reasoned that a show of respect would hasten him along.
Michael’s chest sagged somewhat, and Haraldr was now certain that the Emperor would implore him with desperate words to counter some new threat. ‘Well, Hetairarch, no sovereign, no matter how well loved, can afford to lose a servant and comrade in arms as dedicated as yourself. But then, no sovereign worthy of that love could deny one who has dedicated so much to him. You have my leave, my blessing, my gratitude. Rome will mourn your departure, of course. If I do not presume, can you tell me if you plan to take our beloved Empress’s Mistress of the Robes with you?’
‘Yes. Maria will become my wife in Thule.’
A strange flicker crossed Michael’s face, a brief, passing shadow. He does not like her, thought Haraldr. Or perhaps he is secretly smitten with her. ‘Does our Empress know this, Hetairarch?’
‘Majesty, I beg you to allow the Lady Maria and myself to plead our case to her directly. We do not intend to leave without her permission, either.’
‘Very well,’ said Michael. ‘My only reservations concerned her Majesty’s wishes in this matter. When that is settled between you, I will do everything I can to facilitate a prompt and safe return to your people.’ Michael was about to make the sign of the cross when he remembered something. ‘Counsel with me for a moment longer, Hetairarch. Indeed, as you say, I can confidently bask in the light of my people’s love, but who knows what external agents might wish to send clouds my way? I will need to replace your Varangians, and I am loath to summon your predecessor, Mar Hunrodarson, back from Italia. He is doing a far better job there than he did in protecting my late uncle, may the Pantocrator keep his soul. I have, however, recently purchased a contingent of Pecheneg eunuchs already educated in the Greek language, trained at arms, and even now performing well at various odd tasks for me. What is your estimate of their value as a temporary guard until I can obtain the services of loyal Varangians?’
‘Majesty, I believe that your perceptions of Mar Hunrodarson are characteristically acute.’ Haraldr did not add that he would be returning to Norway via Italia, and that Mar Hunrodarson would soon be unavailable for any sort of service. ‘As for the worth of Pechenegs, I have fought against them and have always felt that were they instructed in bathing, reading and military discipline, they would be the scourge of the earth. They are certainly fearless of death. These men should serve you well.’
Michael nodded and made the sign of the cross. As Haraldr departed with his hands over his breast, Michael and Constantine immediately found each other’s eyes.
‘Call me husband.’
Zoe laughed and rubbed the slick, sweet-smelling emollient over her bare white leg. Her scarlet silk robe was slit to the waist; she had spread the fabric out behind her like a peacock’s tail, and thus sat bare-bottomed on her silk sheets. ‘That is not the game I want to play tonight, precious one.’ She leaned forward and hissed through her gleaming white teeth. ‘I want to play bitch and hound.’
Michael blinked earnestly. ‘I really mean you must call me husband.’
‘Husband!’ Zoe leaned her head back and snorted regally. ‘My first husband was impotent, my second could only make love to me when we were adulterers upon my first, and you wish me to call you that.’ Zoe puffed her lips into a crimson pout. ‘I want you to stay my little boy.’
Michael thrust his hand between Zoe’s bare, succulent thighs. ‘It is quite important that you call me husband.’ His eyes glimmered brightly in the oil light.
Zoe removed his hand. ‘You have not asked me for that, precious.’
‘A husband does not ask.’
‘The wife of a fishmonger does not expect to be asked. I am the purple-born and you are my child. You will ask me.’
‘I am the Emperor and the beloved of my city.’
‘And you are my darling as well. But you must ask before you can open your mother’s pink-fleshed reliquary.’
‘My people would bid me have you whenever I wish.’
‘Your people give you only what your mother is willing to give you. You must not delude yourself that your people love you simply for yourself. You are loved because I have made you my child.’
Michael could not speak for some time, and there was a moment when his face hardened, until it seemed as if his skin was a porcelain that might shatter from the force of his grinding jawbones. ‘I am not asking for your troth again, as I did after your husband’s death,’ he finally said in a curious, quavering tone that caused Zoe’s blue eyes to widen. ‘I simply want you to pretend that I am your husband from now on. In your bed.’ He thrust his hand between her thighs again and moved it to her crotch. ‘In here.’
Zoe gripped his hand but he would not move it. ‘You are becoming quite your mother’s little man,’ she said slowly.
‘I am not a little man!’ Michael screamed, his face almost instantly livid. He stared at Zoe with murder in his eyes before he collapsed into sobs. She held him for a long while and let him smear his running nose over her silk-sheathed breasts.
‘Husband,’ said Zoe at length, her voice firm and inviting. ‘I am sorry that I did not recognize your dominion. I want you to rip my robe away and savage me with your manhood.’ She spread her bare legs wide, and Michael lifted his head to show her his burning eyes.
The people danced, twisting and swaying and whirling in mad circles. Inside their frantic ring, the two kings cast the lots of fate. One was tall and golden, the other black-bearded and cringing. The people began to chant as they danced, and the song they sang was Death. Over and over and over again they called down Death until their faces darkened with the wings overhead, and then they became the birds, fat, obsidian bellie
s glistening as they whirred in a cawing cyclone around the two kings. The raven appeared in the hand of the golden king, and the black king looked up at it, his eyes filled with unspeakable terror. The eyes of the raven glowed orange like burning embers, and the golden king brought the raven down into the face of the black king.
‘Haraldr!’ Maria bolted upright, her breasts heaving and her eyes burning into the dawn.
‘What did you dream?’ His arms were already around her. ‘I was awake. I watched your eyes.’
Maria shook her head numbly. ‘I dreamed . . .’ She paused and recalled the vision to herself. ‘I dreamed . . . that you killed the Emperor.’
‘I have no intention of doing that.’ He kissed her forehead. Maria described the entire vision, however, and he listened intently. When she had finished, he said, ‘I know that many of the details of your dreams are accurate, but the prophecies of life and death are not. My experience against the Bulgars proved that. Your dreams are warnings, not the decisions of fate. It seems more likely that they have the power to reverse fates.’
‘Perhaps. But perhaps the Emperor means to provoke you somehow into striking him. As they did with Joannes. I don’t want you to dine with him this evening.’
Haraldr’s gut knotted for a moment. He considered the matter. ‘I don’t think the circumstances will be as they were in your dream. You say there were many people present? An enormous crowd? But this will not be an official banquet. It is only the Emperor, the Nobilissimus and myself in the Imperial Apartments.’ Haraldr squeezed Maria tightly. ‘If the eunuchs start dancing in circles, I will leave.’
Maria did not see the humour. ‘No, this was outside ... a procession. You must not--’
‘I will no longer follow him in procession. I have resigned my office. My men are already lodged in St Mama’s Quarter, preparing our ships. The new Pecheneg guard led him through the city yesterday. There is no chance of that.’ Maria exhaled futilely, her fears exhausted. ‘You are apprehensive and I understand. And I think you and Zoe are going to miss each other more than you have imagined.’ Haraldr paused. ‘Has she said something to you since she gave us her permission to leave?’
Maria stared raptly ahead. ‘No,’ she said in an entranced voice. ‘She is happier than ever with Michael. She has hinted that she can think of him as a husband.’
‘And you wish to wait for their wedding?’
‘No. I believe she is only amusing herself.’ Maria dipped her head as if letting the vision go. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It is as if, as you say in your tongue, I can hear the Valkyrja singing.’
The Church of St Mary Chalkoprateia was located just outside the walls of the Imperial Palace complex, north of the huge bronze Chalke Gate and virtually within bowshot of the Hagia Sophia. It was one of the oldest churches in Constantinople, an austere Roman-style basilica with a flat, coffered roof and a single large apse. It might have looked like a large warehouse save for the brilliant frescoes and mosaics covering the interior walls, the result of an extensive restoration more than a hundred and fifty years previously. The visitors, six in all, seemed to have dressed in concert with the architecture; their rough woollen cloaks concealed the rich silk and gold vestments beneath. They entered the vaulted narthex at the front of the church, were greeted by four of the resident priests (who wore their vestments openly), and were quickly escorted to a door at the north end of the narthex. A colonnaded walkway led to the priests’ apartments, a cluster of brick buildings of much later construction. Shafts of sun lanced through the columns and illuminated the visitors’ jewelled silk slippers, just visible beneath the hems of their brown cloaks. The visitors entered a square, marble-framed portal and were shown down a short hallway. The room at the end of the hall was large and set into a curving apse at the end of the building. The walls were buff-tinted plaster, set with tall arched windows. The shutters remained closed. Two gold-framed icons glimmered on a small cupboard. The bed was covered in blue silk. The resident priests and four of the six visitors made the sign of the cross and left the room. The carved wooden door closed behind them.
The Augusta Theodora lowered her woollen hood and looked around the room. ‘I am certain that Pilate did not lodge Our Lord so well on the eve of His excruciation,’ she said; her blue eyes were girlish, mischievous.
‘You may be kept waiting longer than was our Lord,’ said the Patriarch Alexius; he continued to wear his hood. His beard looked like spun silver against the coarse wool. ‘But when I need you, it will be important for you to be close to the Mother Church. Though, of course, it would be far too dangerous for you to spend that length of time within the palace precincts. Someone would talk.’
‘How will you proceed, Father?’
‘I believe that if necessary, I can bring down our Emperor with the patent evidence of his heresies. But I believe that his madness will soon provide his own undoing. We will wait. At least until Mar Hunrodarson arrives.’ Theodora betrayed her surprise. ‘Oh, yes, my child, I informed him that my need for him was imminent shortly after our Orphanotrophus Joannes enrolled in one of the monastic establishments he had so energetically advanced against the interests of the One True Faith. If Mar Hunrodarson has kept to my schedule, he will have entered the Sea of Marmara already. He will wait for instructions off Arcadiopolis. And then, if necessary, he and the Tauro-Scythians will extirpate the unwanted growth from the Imperial Palace.’
‘You may find Mar Hunrodarson an even more luxuriant and far more resilient growth, Father.’
‘He is ambitious but not a fool. He knows that he cannot rule without your sanction. Let him be the man at your side. You will need neither to crown him nor to bed him. I believe his robust thinking will strengthen the secular arms of our empire while I carry forth the standards of spiritual Rome.’ Alexius tipped his head in a wry gesture. ‘And we could turn the people against him whenever we wished.’
‘It is a pity you cannot lead the secular arms of our Empire, Father. In your own fashion you are a very robust thinker.’
Alexius responded to the sarcasm with a fond smile. ‘You know, my child, my thinking on this matter could be considerably more vigorous if I knew the identity of your sister Eudocia’s child.’
No trace of amusement remained on Theodora’s face. ‘No. Father, I am willing to become your sacrifice, but I do not want that for ... the child. That is one matter on which my sister and I agree. Perhaps when she is older. But she is--’ Theodora broke off, unwilling to give up any more information.
‘Very well, my child. I was only considering the girl’s own safety. Assuming the Emperor knows.’
‘I do not think he does.’
Alexius nodded cryptically. ‘I must go, then. If matters develop as I expect, I must prepare the Mother Church to withstand a siege.’
‘Hetairarch Haraldr, this is where I find myself unable to accommodate myself to the risk of war.’ The Emperor nodded that he wished his goblet refilled, and the chamberlain inclined over him for a moment. ‘I can race a team in the Hippodrome and wager on them according to their fitness, the experience of their driver, the condition of the track. If I lose, I can train the team more vigorously, hire a better driver, or perhaps sell two of the horses and replace them with others. But in war, if my team loses, I have lost the capital I need to continue in the sport, so to speak. I can hire new generals, of course, but I cannot sell dead soldiers for live soldiers. And my people suffer the loss, not only those who die but also those who grieve for them. So I consider the odds in war to be generally unacceptable.’
‘But you have moved boldly in appointing Maniakes to command in Italia,’ said Haraldr. He was enjoying the wine, the unexpected informality of the dinner, and the chance to deal with the Emperor’s only critical shortcoming: his reluctance to assume field command of the Imperial Taghmata. ‘Maniakes’s success in Sicily have already rewarded your wager.’
‘Ah, Hetairarch,’ said Michael, raising his finger in the manner of a rhetorician, �
�in Sicily I bet the man. I knew that Maniakes could win for me and for my people. But had I been there to decide on each day’s movements of our forces, I would have been quite beside myself. Let me bet on my generals, yes. But do not ask me to wager on the actual battle.’ Michael took a deep drink and the red wine spilled onto his dark beard. ‘Now you, Hetairarch Haraldr, are also a man upon whom I would wager to bring me victory in the field. How do you do it?’
Haraldr paused and also took a deep draught. He looked over at Constantine, who was so drunk, it appeared he might collapse into his roast pig. ‘I allow only the best men at my back, and then make certain that I am always at the front to lead them. I do not command my men to do anything I am not prepared to do myself. I am certain that my men are drilled in every tactic that I might wish to employ, and I remember that in battle the memory grows weak, so I make certain that my tactics are simple and direct to begin with. But at the moment when fate hinges, I am not unlike yourself, Majesty. I trust in luck.’
‘Indeed!’ Michael spilled his goblet as he lurched forward in excitement. ‘Tell me what you mean. I had always considered you a kindred sportsman of sorts, but I thought you entirely grim in battle. What do you mean?’ Michael nodded for the chamberlain to refill Haraldr’s cup. ‘This is a different wine, Hetairarch,’ he offered as the eunuch poured from the silver ewer. ‘From Dyracchium. If you do not like it, pour it out.’
Haraldr drank deeply; he didn’t like the taste of Dyracchium vintage, but he was enjoying himself too much to complain. ‘Majesty,’ he said, conscious of a slight slurring of his words, ‘we Norsemen believe in a god called Odin. But you do not have to consider him a god if it offends your Christian piety. You could consider him a talisman, like a splinter of the True Cross, or even a personification, like Fortune, But we believe that Odin sends his favour to certain men in battle and withholds that favour from others. If he sends his Valkyrja, these being his angels of death, to pluck a man from the battle, then nothing that man can do can arrest his fate. We have a saying: “No man lives to evening whom the fates condemn at morning.” ‘
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