Byzantium - A Novel

by Michael Ennis

  ‘Every last man,’ said Halldor, ‘except the four from Hedeby who are staying to command a private guard. Haraldr released them from their pledges. Most of the rest are eager. A few are nursing aching breasts. I am still burning for the wife . . . well, that is all behind me. Norway. There probably isn’t a woman there who has even heard of me.’

  Ulfr laughed. ‘Have you forgotten that in the north, adultery is not so casually regarded as it is here? You don’t want to become known as a husband killer.’

  ‘I know. I will probably have to wed some precious, silky little virgin and make discreet calls on widows.’

  ‘I am certain you will find a bride lovely enough to keep you in your own hall for at least a month.’ Ulfr stamped his feet on the dock, as if expecting an icy north wind. ‘Haraldr should be here soon to tell us one way or another.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Halldor. ‘But I don’t think we will have to steal out of here in the night. Haraldr is confident that Maria will obtain the Empress’s leave. We will be able to sail leisurely out of the harbour in the morning. With a suitable escort as well.’

  Ulfr walked over to the nearest galley and kicked the hull with a resounding thump. ‘Good. Because I don’t agree with the two of you on your plan for getting past the harbour boom. These hulls aren’t as sturdy as you think.’

  Maria’s eyes were engorged with tears. She fell into Theodora’s arms and cried for a long while. Finally Theodora placed her long, slender fingers beneath Maria’s chin and gently tilted her head up. ‘She told you.’

  Maria nodded and sobbed. ‘Is it true?’

  ‘It is true,’ whispered Theodora.

  Maria lifted her head up to the light and her eyes seemed to be glazed with ice. ‘Why did you wait? And why did you tell me now?’

  ‘We loved you. We wanted it to be different for you. Both of us. You must believe that. And now ... we truly thought your Haraldr was just another plaything. We thought we were indulging another of your wild romances. I think until this very evening we did not believe that you really intended to marry him and leave Rome. That was our folly. But would it have been fair to you, or to him, to let you leave without knowing?’

  ‘Yes! You knew how much I loved him.’

  ‘There is a greater love we are bidden to. It is far less comforting and far more painful than the love of a man. But it is a greater love.’

  ‘No. I will not live your lives!’

  ‘Maria, we are not like other people. Our lives are given us by the Pantocrator. They are His to dispose of.’

  ‘My soul is mine to dispose of. And it is going to Norway!’

  Theodora cupped Maria’s chin. ‘Wait. Decide nothing for now. You have not had time to consider what all this means. If after reflection, in the light of what you now know, you still love this man in the way you think you do now, we will think of something. Customs can be changed. You might ... I don’t know. He could certainly stay as your lover.’

  Maria put her hands to her ears and screamed. ‘No! His dreams are in Norway. To keep him here would destroy the light that is my life! No! I am going with him! I am going now! He is my destiny!’

  Zoe appeared in the doorway of Theodora’s chamber, her face weary, the faded mother of the beautiful woman who had greeted Maria an hour earlier. ‘Maria,’ she snapped, ‘it is impossible. Your legacy is too great. Go to your Haraldr and tell him that he has my leave to depart our City and Empire tomorrow morning, with all the gold he and his band can carry. But you will never leave Rome.’

  Maria ran from the room, her face distorted and lantern-red. ‘I am going with him!’ she said, sobbing.

  Zoe turned and called after her, ‘Maria! I will not permit you to leave! And if he tries to assist in your flight, I will have him destroyed!’

  Haraldr listened to the water clock ring the third hour of the night; he was grateful that Norway did not have such sophisticated mechanical devices. The relentless timekeepers were the clarions of anxiety. Why had she not returned? He never should have let her go. Zoe, like every person condemned to that diabolic purple cloth, had gone mad. Haraldr paced a moment and then decided to make one last sweep through the house to ensure that he had left nothing of value. Value? Everything that could possibly matter would soon be on three ships. The future of Norway. And nothing Zoe could do could stop it.

  To the flickering light of his taper, Haraldr descended the marble staircase for the last time. If he felt any nostalgia on leaving this oversize, empty shell, it was only because of the nights he and Maria had held each other there. He stopped in the large entrance hall and thought of the first time he would make love to Maria as his wife and queen. Odin, your skalds will spend the next ten centuries singing of her beauty--. He was startled by the noise. You are welcome to the water clock, he wanted to tell the thief. He poked the taper in the direction of the rustling.

  ‘Darling!’ he cried out, his joy visceral. ‘I thought you were some . . .’ His voice fell off as the light revealed her agony. He rushed to her and held her. She sobbed for a painfully long while. The unforgiving clock racheted in accompaniment. ‘I am so sorry,’ he finally told her. ‘Oh, I did not want this. Darling, darling,’ he said, trying to lift her stubborn, leaden chin, ‘I will have my men return to the Numera and we will wait for another day. We will both go and talk to her. I won’t let you leave your home like this.’

  Maria looked up. The colour of her eyes was a shimmering blue fjord in the darkness of a shadowed gorge. ‘I have made my farewells,’ she said fiercely. ‘I want nothing more in this life than to sail with you to Norway tonight.’

  ‘Who is at the Blachernae Gate?’ asked Halldor.

  ‘Erling,’ said Ulfr.

  ‘I think I will ride up there and wait for another hour. Then I’m afraid our “inspection” of the walls will have to be concluded. I’ll ride into the city after that and find out what happened to Haraldr. Hopefully he has been detained because he and Maria are celebrating a successful petition to the Empress. I’m worried about leaving too late in the evening. Even the Monomach is going to be suspicious if he finds that his entire guard has been gone half the night.’

  Halldor had saddled his horse when he heard horseshoes clatter on the pavement near the dock. He reached for his purse; he intended to pay off the cursore. Then he noticed that the horse was transport for both a man and a woman. ‘Ulfr!’ he shouted. ‘Haraldr!’

  Haraldr dismounted, swept Maria into his arms, and carried her onto the dock. She was pale and hollow-eyed. Halldor looked at her with concern. ‘It appears that Zoe did not give her consent,’ he said to Haraldr. He looked off towards the distant mouth of the Golden Horn, a vague aperture between the hills of light. ‘Haraldr,’ he said firmly, ‘I propose that we return to our barracks. I am certain that suspicion has already been aroused by our absence. And now Maria looks ill. Let us wait. We can go tomorrow. Or in a week.’

  ‘Put me down,’ said Maria to Haraldr, as annoyed as if she had been abducted. ‘I am not sick. I am . . .’ She breathed deeply and arranged her robe nervously, then looked searchingly at the three men, her head held high. ‘There is something I must tell all of you before you take me on your ship.’ She turned to Haraldr and put her hand on his arm. ‘I was going to wait to tell you until we had seen the last lights of the city disappear. But on the ride through the city I thought about what I, myself, have said about selfish love, and now I realize that I am guilty of that.’ She looked again between Halldor and Ulfr and her lips quivered. ‘You are all in grave danger if you take me with you tonight.’ Maria clutched Haraldr’s arm tightly. She faltered and blinked away new tears. ‘I have just learned that my ... mother . . . was the purple-born Eudocia, daughter of the Emperor Constantine, niece of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer, and sister of their Majesties Zoe and Theodora. I ... I am the last Macedonian heir to the throne of Imperial Rome.’

  The night was infinite in its vast hush. The whispered conversations of the Varangians on the docks created a cathe
dral-like murmur. A hull groaned slightly. Finally Haraldr very slowly took Maria’s face in his hands. ‘Oh, my love.’ The pain in his voice was for both of them. ‘Oh, my love,’ he repeated numbly. He stared at the city for a long moment and then returned to her with tears in his eyes. ‘I ... I will understand if you must . . . remain with your people. I ... of all here I should understand what you feel now. Your obligation. But if you still ... If your fate and mine can still be joined . . .’ He trailed off hopelessly and shook his head in shock and bewilderment, a man confronted by a catastrophe for which he had no solution. Finally he could only take her in his arms. ‘I ... it doesn’t matter. I cannot ask these men to take that risk. I will stay here with you.’

  ‘No, that is not what I want,’ she said, her voice soft and high and her eyes like starlight. ‘I want to go with you more than ever. To forge a new fate with your people. We could never have a life here now. An Augusta could never marry a’ - she looked down at her feet and then into the eyes of the Norseman - ‘barbaros’. She inhaled deeply. ‘Zoe will do everything she can to keep me here. She has returned in her emptiness to her oldest passion, the House of Macedon. She has already warned me that she will kill you to preserve that legacy. It is as if her dead uncle the Bulgar-Slayer has ruled her heart all these years, and she only now realizes the terrible implications of that overweening love.’ Maria sobbed quickly and regained control. ‘All of you may be destroyed because of me.’

  ‘That is a risk I am willing to undertake,’ said Halldor.

  ‘For once I have no words to add to Halldor’s.’ Ulfr nodded.

  ‘May I put the question before your pledge-men?’ Halldor asked.

  Haraldr looked at Maria before nodding assent. Halldor hurried down to the end of the dock and stopped at each ship in turn. He left the crew of the first ship to a low, fevered buzz of activity. The second and third vessels followed Halldor’s hurried inquiries with their own murmured choruses. Men leapt into motion, pulling oars up from the hold and scrambling to loosen mooring lines. Halldor came running back. He looked directly at Maria. ‘They are all willing to risk whatever Norway’s queen is willing to risk.’ Tears streamed down Maria’s cheeks. Halldor turned to Haraldr. ‘But we must leave immediately.’

  The ships were pushed slowly past the dock, and then oars dipped and turned the prows east. The first full surge of all sixty oars buckled Haraldr’s knees momentarily, then seemed to free the enormous weight on his chest. He could not conceivably assimilate the full import of what Maria had told him, but his heart thrummed with the stunning testament of her love. He paced the catwalk between the rowing benches, making certain that the chests and gear bags were arranged as he had intended. The first of many obstacles lay directly ahead in the night. But now there was only a single destination in his mind and in his heart.

  The wind rustled in his ears as the brilliant city floated past in the night. He looked at Maria, seated at the stern, wrapped in her fur cape, gazing at the brilliant lights of Blachernae, the ancillary palace at the northwest corner of the city, where the Great Land Wall and seawall met. He would never miss these lights as long as he had her blue fires to dazzle him. He had given much to Rome, but now Rome had given him her greatest treasure.

  The wharves blazed with the tapers of the porters, who customarily worked long into the night. Haraldr took the tiller from Ulfr and talked to Maria; together they recited the names of the towering, broad gates in the seawall as they glided past:

  Basilica, Phanarii, Petrion, St Theodosia, Ispigas and Platea, with its huge complex of wharves, warehouses and endless rows of merchant and pleasure craft. The high, round hulls of Venetian merchantmen were dark silhouettes at Droungariou Viglae Gate. On the north shore of the Golden Horn, the city of Galatea glimmered with a brilliance that would have made it the wonder of the world, were it not for the great city little more than two bowshots across the water.

  The splendid spine of the city was strung with necklaces of light; already the great palaces of the Dhynatoi had been rebuilt and filled with new riches. The lights of the Imperial Palace and the ring of glowing golden windows round the dome of Hagia Sophia winked into view from the hills to the south-east. At the Perama Gate, Haraldr gave the tiller back to Ulfr and told him to steer to left centre of the channel. Haraldr joined Halldor in the prow of the galley.

  ‘Not good at all!’ shouted Halldor. He pointed at Neorion Harbour, a lattice of lights cradled in the slightly hooked end of the peninsula. Most of the small patrol craft were still on lifts, but Haraldr could distinctly see the hundreds of tapers milling around the dhromons like luminous ants. ‘Our passage has been reported! I presume they know what they are after!’

  ‘They haven’t left anchorage yet!’ shouted Haraldr. ‘We’ll outrun them easily!’

  ‘If we make it over the boom.’ Halldor looked out on the black water. The Bosporus, glazed by the luminous backdrop of Chrysopolis on the Asian shore, opened up ahead. They were almost directly opposite the Neorion docks. One of the dhromons blew its air horn; the frightening bellow almost certainly signalled the departure of the huge fire-ship. ‘There!’ shouted Halldor. He pointed to the northeast, near the point where the Galatea coastline veered north. ‘I can see it already!’ The boom was an ebony sketch on the water. Haraldr called out to Ulfr to come larboard a quarter to meet the angled chain head-on. The other ships made the same turn and came abreast.

  The massive log floats of the harbour boom became distinct three-dimensional forms. Each float was several ells high and thirty ells long; the sections were joined by iron links as thick as a man’s arm. Haraldr walked back to the stern and took the tiller from Ulfr. The log barrier was three bowshots away. He picked his spot. On the periphery of his vision he could see the lights of a dhromon as it left the docks. Another horn bellowed across the water. ‘Begin the drill!’ he shouted. The rowing cadence immediately increased and the ship lunged forward. Varangians deep in the hold began sliding the heaviest chests towards the stern, along greased planks set especially for the purpose. The bow began to plane up, and the railing at the stern dipped towards the waves. As they closed on the boom, the cadence went higher, more chests were moved, and the angle of the bow increased.

  The log barrier suddenly looked like a wall. ‘Fifty ells!’ shouted Haraldr. The rowers took fast, deep strokes and the men in the hold braced themselves. Haraldr and Ulfr steadied the tiller with both arms. Maria ducked her head. Water whooshed along the hull.

  Wood screeched against wood. The planing bow slid over the log float as if cresting a wave, then decelerated with a tremendous shudder. The stern began to settle, and the entire hull teetered on the fulcrum of the log float, the bow ten ells clear of the water. Men leapt onto the floats and began to secure heavy ropes between the mast and the boom. Oarsmen joined the frantic bailing at the stern. Haraldr was already up to his calves in water. He realized they were losing their first battle of the long journey back. He shouted for the men in the hold to go ahead with the drill. The chests were now pushed frantically forward along the greased planks. As the weight of the cargo was shifted, the hull protested with a deep, almost animate keen. The stern began to lift.

  The ship slowly levelled, until for an instant it was perfectly balanced on top of the log fulcrum. Timbers screeched and the ropes that kept the hull from yawing over hummed with the strain as the ship tilted first to one side and then the other. And then the descent began; after a moment the bow slapped reassuringly into the water on the other side of the boom. The bow oars dipped and wood shrieked as the ship began to slip off the boom. They were free in the Bosporus.

  ‘You are luckier than Odin!’ crowed Ulfr. ‘We . . .’ Ulfr’s joy vanished in the thunderclap that came from the left. Every head turned. Only fifty ells away, the second ship was poised at the critical balance point atop the log. Within a heartbeat the ship fractured in two, as if it had been dropped against the log barrier from some great height.

  ‘Cut the lines and
make ready to pick them up!’ shouted Haraldr. His ship scraped free from the boom, and he looked to his right to see how the third galley had fared. It, too, had dipped its bow and was sliding off the boom. Still farther to the right, the lights of the dhromons moved on the water.

  The rescue was orderly; Haraldr praised the gods that Norsemen did not panic when plunged into a dark sea. Most of the Varangians had evacuated their gear bags and clung calmly to the shattered hull of their galley. The surviving galleys divided the crew of the wreck; the extra men were quickly distributed on the benches. The next time there will be fire on the water, thought Haraldr. And none of us will be so calm.

  Haraldr looked south. Apparently the harbour boom had been partially towed away at the Constantinople end, and the dhromons were coming through along the coastline. He turned to Ulfr. ‘This was my fault. I should have known that at least one of the keels would fail and fitted an extra ship. Now our two ousiai are so heavily loaded that we no longer have the advantage of speed.’ He paused and counted the dhromons as they passed the boom and began to turn to the north. Eight. ‘Before we lost that galley, this pursuit was not a contest for us. But we are in a race now.’

  ‘It is strange how an entire life must suddenly become a memory.’ Maria looked off the stern and wrapped her fur cape up to her chin. A night wind had come up from the north and the galley pitched rhythmically through the rising seas. The lights of the city were now a golden haze on the southern horizon. The lanterns on the masts of the dhromons were distinct stars against this luminous band, gently lifting and falling with the motion of the waves.

  Haraldr snugged Maria’s cape around her shoulders and held her; he was unable to banish entirely the great city to his own memories. ‘If I had known the choice I was forcing on you ... it is still hard to believe.’ He paused for a long while. ‘I will go back with you. I would not be some helpless consort. Perhaps I could never be crowned, but then Joannes did not need a crown. I would rule.’