The Bloody Crown

by James Wilde

  Far away across the city, the stillness of the night was broken by a dim pounding. That steady beat grew louder by the moment, as others took it up, until it rolled like thunder.

  Alexios’ features hardened. ‘The watch-drums.’

  Hereward dashed out of the house with the other two close behind. In the chill, they ran through the dark streets as men and women began to emerge from their homes, faces creased with fear. Warriors were already milling along the eastern walls when the trio clambered up the stone steps where the drums boomed their warning beat.

  Doom-doom-doom.

  Hereward saw what had driven the night-watch to alarm. The sky was ablaze. Across the narrow stretch of water, beyond the city’s eastern borders, fires too numerous to count had turned the lowering clouds a bright orange. Thick smoke drifted across the narrow sea.

  His nostrils wrinkled at the acrid stench, and his thoughts rolled back across the years to another night when he had stood there, watching flames rise up into the night. Then the foe was the army of the Norman adventurer Roussel de Bailleul. But this was much worse. It seemed at that moment that the whole world was burning.

  ‘You took the Blood Eagle too late,’ Anna breathed.

  Alexios drew himself up. ‘The Turks are almost at the walls. They are setting our villages alight. This is a sign. They mean to attack, and soon.’

  ‘Emperor Michael should never have given up any lands we owned to the Seljuks.’ Anna fixed her gaze on those rolling waves of amber light on the underside of the clouds. ‘Not even to keep the peace. It only brought the Turks closer. And now . . . now . . .’

  ‘It is not too late,’ Hereward said before she could give voice to her fading hope.

  ‘No. But it is close.’ The low voice rolled out like the groaning of a long-closed door.

  Anna and Alexios jerked round. Two figures had ghosted close to them. The man who had spoken was swathed in black from head to foot, a scarf he had wrapped around his head, long robes that swept the stones. His shaped beard was black too, as were his eyes. At his belt a silver dagger gleamed. Hereward nodded to Salih ibn Ziyad. It had been long years since this man had saved the Mercian’s life in the hot lands of Afrique, and in that time Hereward had learned that Salih was as deadly as he was wise.

  Beside him was a girl, as skittish as a pony, though just as lethal as the man with whom she walked, the Mercian knew. She was Ariadne Verina, the niece of the bastard Karas, but she was nothing like her uncle. Hereward watched her darting eyes, and the tics that flickered across her features. There was a hint of madness there, born of the terrible treatment she had endured at the hands of her father Victor.

  Salih greeted Anna and Alexios, then said, ‘The Turks will never rest until they have taken Constantinople, any man could see that. The Romans have brought this fate upon themselves.’

  ‘There is still time to fight,’ Hereward replied.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘We will fight, all of us, and we will win. I, al-Kahina, slayer of devils, vow this.’ Ariadne’s voice was low and throaty, the voice of a much older woman. She believed herself possessed by the spirit of Meghigda, the queen of the Imazighen of Afrique, whom Salih once served. Perhaps she was. Or perhaps this was the way she dealt with the miseries life had meted out to her. But Hereward saw both Anna and Alexios flinch, unnerved by that sound coming out of the mouth of a young girl.

  ‘You must not underestimate the Seljuks,’ Salih said. ‘Long before I reached the homeland of the Imazighen, I walked this earth far and wide, and I learned much of these Turks, of their ways, and their days long gone, and their dreams of days yet to come. They have the fire of God in them, and it burns brightly. That is where they gain the strength to fight on through all hardship.’

  ‘We all have the fire of God in us,’ Alexios insisted.

  Salih ibn Ziyad peered across the water, the flames dancing in his eyes. ‘They are born of a great race of warriors who roamed the lands of the far east long ago. Horsemen. Worshippers of the spirits of the wind and the trees and the plain. Conquest is in their blood. Then, in the time of their fathers, they chose another path, that of the prophet Muhammad. His teachings have given them strength, and purpose. This is a potent brew, Roman. Ignore it at your peril.’

  Alexios grunted, the words seemingly weighing on him.

  ‘Then help us fight,’ Hereward urged. ‘You have spent your days schooling this girl, I know. Guiding her as you did Meghigda. But there is work here for you . . .’ He eyed Ariadne. ‘For both of you. If you know these Turks as well as you say, you may have knowledge that could help us.’

  ‘You speak now for the emperor?’ Salih said with a sly smile.

  ‘We, all of us, face a terrible fate,’ the Mercian continued. ‘If not from the Turks, then from the Normans in the west. And if not from them, then from those within these walls who would drown us in a sea of blood to get their fingers upon the crown. Join us. There is a way ahead, I swear it.’

  Salih walked away along the wall towards the steps. The girl followed him silently. As the night swallowed them up, the wise man’s words floated back. ‘The way ahead is to flee Constantinople before it is too late. If you do not, you will burn here with the rest of these poor souls.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE TORCH OVER the door sizzled. Along the narrow street, the shadows swelled away from the wavering flame as a figure with a strange rolling gait hurried out of the dark. Ragener the Hawk ignored the pounding of the watch-drums. He rarely ventured out into the streets. He was sick of the cries of startled women, of men cowering away from him for fear that he was some devil who had come to drag their miserable souls down to hell. But the night cloaked him and gave him some thin peace.

  His face was ruined. His nose was missing, slit off during a fight in some filthy back alley. What remained of his hair clung to his scalp in patches, the rest burned off or torn away. Both ears too had been lost. His bottom lip had been carved in two so his speech often sounded as though he had a mouth filled with pebbles. One eye was milky. The rest of his features were a mass of scar tissue. His most recent loss, his greatest perhaps, was his left hand, lopped off by the man he thought of as that bastard Hereward.

  Aye, he was a monster to the eye, a half-man, whittled down by battle during his time as a sea wolf, preying on those too dim-witted to protect themselves when they were upon the whale road. He had not deserved any of the misery that fate had dealt out to him, he thought with bitterness.

  But he would gain his revenge.

  Yet this evening he had little choice but to leave his lonely chamber in the house of Karas Verinus. Wheezing, Ragener hammered his good fist upon the door. The sign of the brothel, the alabaster rose affixed to the wood, jumped at the impact.

  When the door swung open, an aged eunuch with rouged cheeks and lips glanced up and down the street, then beckoned him in. Ragener could smell the vinegar reek of the fear-sweat on him.

  ‘You made haste. That is good,’ the eunuch burbled, wringing his hands as he spoke.

  Ragener pushed past him into the perfumed hall. The grunts and rhythmic bangs of lovemaking echoed through the walls. ‘You have told no one?’

  ‘Not a soul. Only I know.’

  ‘Good.’ Ragener fingered his knife under his tunic. At least that was only one throat he would have to slit. ‘Lead on.’

  Grasping a fat candle in a brass holder, the eunuch lurched along a narrow corridor past numerous closed doors. The air was thick with musk. At the rear of the house, the brothel-keeper came to a halt before a door carved with swirls of intertwining ivy. In his shaking hand, the candle sent the shadows leaping around the walls. Ragener cocked his head. Only silence reached the holes where his ears had been.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded. When the eunuch made a low mewling noise, the Hawk shoved him back and growled, ‘Wait here. Do not dare leave. Do not let anyone enter.’

  Stepping into the room, Ragener closed the door firmly behind him. For a m
oment, anger contorted his ruined features. ‘You will be the end of me,’ he growled, as much to himself as anyone.

  On the bed sat Justin Verinus, cross-legged. When Ragener had first met him, near eight years gone, he had been a boy, but even as a man he had lost none of the innocence in his features. Beneath a thatch of russet hair, Justin’s face was pale and uncannily still, as if he were at sleep. His wide, dark eyes stared. Ragener had long since stopped looking into them. The unlined face told him this was a child, but those eyes promised an old man, twisted by the years.

  He shivered.

  Justin was sitting in a pool of blood that had seeped through the covers and was dripping on to the flagstones. That steady beat was the only sound in the chamber. The remains of one of the whores lay over the end of the bed, her auburn hair hanging down on to the cold floor. Another woman, or what had been one, sprawled at Ragener’s feet, one arm reaching out for the door. Their bodies had been opened up, at neck, and gut, and groin.

  The sea wolf paid the corpses no attention. He had seen too many of them in recent times. ‘Where are your wits?’ he sighed. ‘You are to be emperor soon . . . perhaps within days. Do you think the people will settle for a butcher to rule them? Why can you not contain your foul urges, if only for a little while? Once you sit upon the throne, you can do whatever you will, kill anyone, and none will be the wiser.’ He swept out an arm across the bloody chamber. ‘But if this were to reach the ears of the populace, all that has been planned for you would be gone. And you would be hanged in the forum of Theodosius, a feast for the ravens.’

  Justin only stared, that sickening, unblinking stare, as if Ragener were speaking in some foreign tongue. The blood dripped in that steady beat, marking the moments of his life’s passing.

  Unable to contain himself any longer, Ragener felt bitterness well up in him and fill his mouth with acid. ‘Why have I been so cursed?’ he cried, reaching out his good hand in a plea to God. How many times had he cleaned up the filth left by this monster? This was his life now. No brave warrior. No swordsman carving out his destiny. He had become a midwife for a moonchild.

  He clenched his fist, steeling himself. ‘My reward will come,’ he snarled. ‘I have not sacrificed so much to see my days ebb away in this manner. When you are emperor . . . when Karas is the power standing behind your shoulder, then I shall be raised up. All will bow to me. And all who have ever offended me will face my wrath.’ The sea wolf narrowed his eyes, looking at Justin, through him and the walls and across the miles and the seasons. He was back on the ship, drifting under a hot sun, reliving that moment when the axe swept down to take his hand. The memory of the pain only made his hunger stronger. ‘And Hereward will be the first to lose his head.’

  Blinking away the vision, he turned his attention to the ragged bodies. ‘Now help me. We must be done with this by dawn.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  A RAINBOW DAPPLED the whitewashed wall. Shimmering flecks of coloured light danced as the young man turned in the shaft of sunlight. His loros, the ceremonial garb that only the imperial families wore, was aglow with more riches than many in Constantinople saw in a lifetime. His shoulders strained against the weight. Rubies, emeralds, sapphires and pearls studded the silk, which had been embroidered with golden thread and decorated with enamel plaques.

  From the twisted branches of the old tree in the courtyard, Ariadne Verina peered through the arch into the house where Leo Nepos was trying on the fine garment. She stared, entranced, as she had been from the moment she first met him.

  The tree hid her well. There was nowhere in that sprawling city that was denied her. Crawling through drains barely wider than her shoulders, creeping across the amber-tiled roofs, clambering over walls, slipping into houses while the occupants slept. Her father had called her a rat, usually before he had laid the back of his hand across her face. But that was where she found her freedom.

  The white-haired tailor knelt at the young man’s feet, adjusting the loros so that it swept less than a finger’s width above the marble floor. He looked up, his face glowing at the magnificence of his handiwork. ‘Even the emperor himself would be proud to wear such a wonder.’

  Leo Nepos raised his head, no doubt wishing he was anywhere but there, Ariadne thought. He had been a strange child, quiet and introspective. And now, on the cusp of manhood, his implacable features had grown even more unreadable. He did cut a handsome figure, though. Ariadne smiled. Tall and strong and slender.

  ‘And what is the occasion for this fine garment?’

  ‘Keep at your work,’ Leo snapped. ‘I am not wasting all of my morning standing here while you sew.’

  Chastened, the tailor bowed his head back to his work.

  Ariadne leaned down so she could study Leo’s face through the archway. So sullen. She tried to recall the last time she had seen him smile. Clenching her tiny fists, she stifled her rising anger. This was his damned kin’s fault, the hated Nepotes. They saw value only in power, not in honour, or love, or tenderness. And with each day that passed they were shaping Leo more firmly in their own image.

  ‘Get away from me!’

  In the hall, the tailor sprawled across the floor, his arm flying across his face. Leo’s sword flashed towards the whimpering man’s neck.

  For a moment, Ariadne thought he was going to run his victim through there and then. But anguished cries drowned out Leo’s snarl of fury. His mother Simonis and his sister Juliana darted forward, grabbing his arms to drag him away.

  ‘Sheathe your sword now,’ the older woman demanded, her face like flint. Elegant in a scarlet silk dress, she had lost none of the beauty of her youth, though like Anna Dalassene’s her black hair was now streaked with silver.

  With a scowl, Leo lowered his blade.

  Juliana knelt beside the frightened man. Her slender fingers brushed his face and hair. Her smile shone as she whispered soothing words. Ariadne glowered. How easily men fell for her deceit.

  ‘My brother feels the weight of the demands of his coming celebration, tailor,’ Juliana was saying. ‘He does not normally growl like a cornered dog.’ Still smiling, she turned to Leo and urged, ‘Make your apologies to the man you have wronged, brother.’ When no reply was forthcoming, her eyes flashed above that smile and she said with a crack in her voice, ‘Speak now.’

  ‘I was wrong to treat you so badly,’ Leo muttered, and gave a curt bow. ‘We will finish our business another day.’

  As Juliana ushered the tailor out, Simonis loomed over her son. ‘Would you throw away all that we have planned?’

  ‘I am tired of that fawning old fool. I am tired of all this waiting. I am ready.’

  ‘Soon you will have all that you ever wanted. The crown, the power. You will be the pride of the Nepotes.’

  Leo softened. This was what he had always wanted, Ariadne knew, more even than the crown and the power. He had lived his life in the shadow of his elder brother, Maximos. But now that Maximos had left Constantinople, his family paid him heed. Aye, because he was useful, Ariadne thought with a grimace. Among all the Nepotes, Leo was now the only one who could carry the family’s ambition on to the throne. And from the sound of it they would be making their move soon. Why else would they be preparing such a grand loros?

  ‘Go, take off your finery,’ Simonis said, her voice gentle now. ‘Your father grows as restless as you. We must reassure him that we are almost ready.’

  Ariadne watched Leo follow his mother out of the hall. If she could spirit him away from there, she would. There was still hope. Now that she was more than Ariadne Verina, now that she was al-Kahina, slayer of devils, she would find that strength she had hitherto lacked. Meghigda had always protected the innocent, and she, Ariadne, would continue her work, for she was Meghigda, Meghigda the strong, not Ariadne the weak and broken and abused. And Leo was a true innocent, she firmly believed that.

  She could save him.

  Filled with determination, she began to claw her way up to the higher branch
es so that she could leap on to the roof. Salih would soon be missing her, and if he found she was here in the hall of the Nepotes, risking her neck, he would give her the edge of his tongue.

  Before she had gone too high, she heard urgent voices nearing and clambered back to her hiding place to spy some more.

  One of the voices was Juliana’s, the other belonged to a man. A moment later, Wulfrun of the Varangian Guard marched out into the courtyard, his helm under his arm. His expression was dark. When Juliana skipped to his side, Ariadne curled up as tight as she could, now terrified that she would be discovered.

  Under the tree’s shade, Juliana guided Wulfrun to a stone bench next to the trunk. With reluctance, he sat. Ariadne covered her mouth, choking her breath into her chest. If either of them looked up, they would see her in an instant.

  ‘Do not fret so,’ Juliana was saying. She was smiling, trying to manipulate this man she professed to love as she did every other man. Wulfrun’s head was bowed, his shoulders stiff, but Juliana pressed her side against his and leaned in so that her breath warmed his cheek. Feeling her blood boil, Ariadne realized how much she detested this deceitful woman.

  ‘You are in danger. I do not know how much longer I can protect you.’ Wulfrun’s face was drawn. He seemed to have the weight of the world upon him.

  ‘Constantinople will not fall,’ Juliana replied brightly.

  ‘You live in the dream that has afflicted this city, this empire, for too long. Once you Romans were strong, but no longer. Now your enemies are stronger, and they move against you by the day. And the emperor is pulled this way and that by the buzzing of the flies that surround him, but does nothing.’

  Juliana hesitated for a moment. ‘Soon the emperor will not be a problem.’