by Tom Harper
‘I cannot. I must know. .’
‘Out! Out!’
She would not be consoled, certainly not by me, and until then I would get no sense from her. I left her to her tears, and hurried back to the walls. It seemed the night had lasted an eternity, but Sigurd was still there, pacing the ramparts and scanning the dark horizon with vacant eyes. Neither of us offered a greeting.
‘Do you know a man named Asgard?’ I asked. ‘Maybe a Varangian, or someone from the palace.’
Sigurd’s scowl, if it were possible, deepened. ‘I know Asgard,’ he grunted. ‘He was a Varangian, until a few years ago. I expelled him myself for stealing from us, thieving in the barracks.’
‘Did he know Aelric?’
‘They escaped England at the same time, and arrived in the city together: Asgard and Aelric, their wives, a few others. Most are dead now.’
‘But not Asgard?’
Sigurd raised his hands in ignorance. ‘I could not care. I heard that he kept a stall in the fur market, selling mangy pelts and skins that the Rus traders could not persuade any others to take. Maybe he’s still there, maybe not. He was a worm, and we were well rid of him.’
‘He did not keep in contact with any of your men?’
‘They would have spurned him. Stealing from your messmates is like stealing from the church — except that we have no obligation to forgive. Why all this curiosity? Do you want a cheap shawl for your daughter?’
‘He visited Aelric several times in recent weeks. Freya blamed him for a change in Aelric’s mood, and I think he may have carried messages for the monk.’
Sigurd snorted. ‘The monk? The monk is a phantom, Demetrios, an apparition. The sort of man you blame when there are no other excuses.’ He paused, pondering this. ‘Asgard, on the other hand — he’s real enough. Seek him in the market.’
19
The furrier’s market was a dismal place next morning. A fine rain had been falling since dawn, and however hard the vendors tried to keep their wares under awnings the pelts still grew mottled and bedraggled. Only the richer merchants escaped, those whom the guild favoured with places under the eaves of the stoa: they sat shivering at their tables, rarely rousing themselves to tout for custom. The stink of treated hide drifted down from the far end of the market, where the tanners and leather workers kept their stalls, and with the mouldering air of animal carcasses as well it was no wonder there were few buyers.
Rain trickled down the back of my neck and soaked the shoulders of my tunic, while my boots grew ever more like sponges underfoot. The faces of dead animals stared plaintively from every rack and trestle: rabbits and hares hung by their ears, long-snouted wolves piled above each other, deer whose antlers had already been sold to the ivory-carvers, and — on one stall — an enormous bear mounted on a pole.
I stopped at several stalls to ask after Asgard, and received a predictable pattern of replies. He was on the west side of the market, one man claimed; no, the north insisted his neighbour. Perhaps he had given up his stall altogether and abandoned the trade, suggested another, for the quality of his wares was second-rate and he rarely saw his customers twice. Some had seen him but could not remember where, and others knew of him but had not seen him that day. It was a common pattern of response, but on that mournful day, with rain constantly dripping in my eyes, it seemed more than usually futile.
Nor were the merchants amiable company. They say in the provinces that a shepherd comes to resemble his flock, and here the same was true. All the men I encountered were lumbering and hairy, with wide, untrusting faces and thick beards, some smeared with fat to keep them dry. Many must have been the bastard sons of Norse traders, and they fragmented their language with peculiar sounds which seemed to owe more to the tongues of beasts than men.
At last, though, I found my quarry. He did not warrant a shop in the stoa, nor even a covered stall in the square. He huddled in a corner in a rat-eaten fur cloak, his grey hair splayed flat across his skull and his blue eyes squinting almost shut against the rain. A tray bearing the skins of small vermin was laid out before him.
‘How much for a stoat’s pelt?’ I asked, affecting to examine his merchandise.
‘Fourteen obols.’ The line of his eyes became rounder, watching me carefully.
‘Too expensive. Do you have anything else to sell me?’
He blinked. ‘Alas, nothing but what you see. The guild does not allow me any more.’
Wincing slightly at the dank feel, I lifted the dead stoat in my hand and weighed it thoughtfully. As I studied it, my right hand strayed to the pouch on my belt and pulled out a golden nomisma.
‘I do not need your rats,’ I told him, dangling the pelt by the scruff of its neck and discarding it. Asgard’s eyes ignored it, fixed on my right hand. ‘I need knowledge. Information. An observant man in a crowded market must witness many things.’
‘Some things. When I am not occupied with the needs of my trade.’
I picked out another fur and swung it in my hand. ‘Are these local furs?’
I could see that he did not like the meandering direction of my questions, that the doubt in his eyes was turning to suspicion, but he could not keep from reciting his sales chatter. ‘Local? Indeed not. They are brought by the mighty Rus, from the wild forests of the north, down great rivers and across the Euxine sea to grace your garments. You will not find pelts of a higher quality anywhere in a thousand miles.’
Though I guessed the words were seldom used, they still sounded tired and hollow.
‘You clearly know their provenance well. Are you one of these Rus?’
‘No,’ he admitted carefully. ‘But they are my kin. I am from the kingdom of England — Britannia, as some of you call it, an island just beyond the Russian shores.’
‘Where the holy Emperor, may he live a thousand years, recruits his bodyguard?’
‘The same place. In fact, I served the Emperor myself, once, as one of his Varangians, carrying my axe in his service. He chose me for my honesty.’
‘Truly?’ I wiped a lock of hair out of my eyes. ‘I am looking for a man who knows of Varangians. Or rather, a man who seeks to know more of them. A monk who travels the city bargaining with guardsmen past and present. Have you seen such a man?’
The gold coin I had been holding slipped from my fingers and landed noiselessly on a pile of fur. I did not pick it up. It agitated Asgard; he cast his eyes down, then to one side, and fidgeted with the clasp of his cloak. Always, though, his gaze leapt back to the glittering nomisma in his tray.
‘Why should I know that?’ he croaked. ‘There are many Varangians in this city, and many who have left after a lifetime of loyal and honourable service. Who would come to a distant corner of a stinking market, a space which even the whore-born guilds do not value enough to rent for more than an obol, to ask questions of a luckless merchant?’
‘A man who placed great value on what that merchant might tell him,’ I answered. ‘As I do.’
Two more gold coins dropped before him.
‘No,’ the old man whispered. ‘No. I have not seen your monk.’
‘Yes you have. You led him to your old comrade Aelric, and revealed some terrible secret which compelled Aelric to betray everything he valued. Do not deny it.’
Asgard was shuffling back now, glancing about for a path to escape. I followed him, tipping over his tray and scattering his pelts over the wet stone.
I pulled out my knife. ‘I will know what you have said and done, Asgard. You can take either gold for it, or steel. Do you know a Varangian captain named Siguard?’
Asgard’s thin jaw opened wider. ‘Sigurd? He is a berserker, a madman. He would kill his own mother if she stepped too near the Emperor for his liking. I served under him in the guard.’
‘And now, through the treachery you concocted with Aelric, you have ruined him. If you do not tell me what you have done, he will come with his axe to make you answer.’
All this time I had been advancing on
Asgard as he retreated; now, he found himself with his back to a broad column. I watched him squirm against it, and stood ready to strike if he tried to run.
But running was no more in Asgard’s character than fighting: there was no strength in his time-ravaged limbs and he knew it.
‘He will kill me,’ he pleaded. ‘The monk swore he would kill me if I told any other.’
‘If the monk has finished with you, he will probably kill you anyway. At least I will give you a chance to live.’
‘But I did no wrong. I did not betray Aelric — he did that himself. I never murdered my countrymen, or put innocent families to death, or burned homes and crops and poisoned wells so that the land would lie empty for a generation. Not I, no. Why do you point your blade at me, when it is Aelric’s neck which should feel its edge?’
‘Aelric’s neck has felt its last blow.’ My words were short, brusque — what were these horrors he ascribed to the genial Varangian? ‘Do not try to save yourself by blackening the names of the dead.’
‘If he is dead, then that is the least justice he was due. A man lives by his loyalties, and he had none.’
‘Then your head should join his, for if you conspired with the monk then you betrayed the Emperor just as much as Aelric.’
‘The Emperor?’ Asgard gave a horrible, cackling laugh. ‘What do I care for the Emperor? For some years he paid me to serve him, and then he did not. But Aelric did not betray some jumped-up Greek — he betrayed his own people. His real kin. The English.’ Somehow, through his obvious fear, Asgard managed to contort a vicious smile.
‘Aelric fought with your king against the invaders.’ I remembered his confusing tales of Normans and Norsemen. ‘Was that a lie?’
The fur-merchant shook his head. ‘It was true enough. But what he did not tell you was that three years after the invasion, when the Bastard conqueror came north to wreck the land, Aelric’s lord supported him, and Aelric with him. There were more than Normans up there — Englishmen turned on their neighbours too. Some say they were the worst, the fiercest. Aelric always held that he did it because his thane ordered him, but who is to tell the truth of that?’
‘Aelric spoke of this? To the Varangians?’
Again that awful sneer. ‘Not to the Varangians. If you so much as admired a Norman whore you’d be out of their ranks with your head cracked open. But he spoke of it to me, on the long nights during our flight from England. He used to wake up crying in the night remembering the things he had done, needing to confess. They were ugly stories, too, but I kept them secret. Then they threw me out of the barracks and he did not raise a word to protect me, after I’d kept him safe all those years. So when the monk came to my stall, asking if I knew any of the guards who were disloyal, or might be, it did not take much of his gold to draw out Aelric’s name.’
‘And then you took this monk to Aelric’s house? You forced him to betray the Emperor?’
‘I forced him to do nothing. I persuaded him to share a drink with me. When he came, I introduced him to the monk. The monk explained that if Aelric served him faithfully, he might die but his wife would live in comfort; otherwise, he would die in ignominy, his past treachery revealed, and his wife would have to whore herself to Normans simply to live. Once Aelric had agreed, and the monk had rewarded me for my work, I left them to their own business.’
‘Where was this meeting?’ So great was my anticipation that I moved closer, almost pricking Asgard with the point of my knife.
He whimpered, and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his cloak. ‘At a tavern near the harbour. He arrived after us, alone. I never saw him after that.’
‘So you do not know where he can be found? Did he not leave instructions in case you thought of another victim from whom he could extort disloyalty?’
Asgard shook his head so violently that I almost believed him.
‘I will take you to the imperial prisons,’ I told him. ‘Then I will find Sigurd and repeat your story. Perhaps he will remind you of things you have forgotten.’
Asgard cowered back in terror, pressing himself so close against the column he might have been carved on it. ‘Do not take me to Sigurd,’ he pleaded. ‘Not to Sigurd.’ A leering hope entered his eyes. ‘Perhaps there are other things I remember.’
‘What other things?’
Asgard raised his chin in rare defiance. ‘The monk did not leave instructions — but that does not mean I was fool enough not to make enquiries. Asgard always seeks new business.’
I stood very still. ‘What did your enquiries reveal?’
‘That a man who values knowledge will pay for it.’
‘You were involved in a plot to murder the Emperor,’ I reminded him, ‘and your life will be forfeit unless you ransom it with something of singular value. Is your knowledge enough to buy your soul?’
Asgard looked miserably unhappy, but with a knife at his throat and Sigurd’s vengeance to follow, he had little choice.
‘I paid a boy to follow the monk when he left the tavern. A clever lad, and sly. He knew how to find the shadows when the monk looked around. Which he did often, apparently — a suspicious man. But the boy tracked him like a deer, back to a tenement in Libos.’
‘Where in Libos? When was this?’ I raised my knife so that it hovered before Asgard’s eyes. It seemed to make the words come faster.
‘Two weeks ago, perhaps three. I do not know if he has been there since. But that you can find out yourself. It is west from the column of Marcian, near the north bank of the Lycus. A grocer named Vichos keeps his shop on the ground floor.’
I stared into his eyes, trying to judge the truth of his words, but fear had long stripped all honesty from his face and I could not tell.
‘If we find the monk, you will live.’ Though not in the least comfort. ‘For now, you will come with me to the palace, until I can judge the truth of your tale.’
Asgard’s eyes widened, and he sank to his knees. ‘No,’ he implored me. ‘Not to the palace. If I go there they will kill me. I have helped you all I can — have mercy on me now. Let me go — give me only an hour to escape, and that will be a fair bargain.’
‘I will decide what is a fair bargain,’ I told him, feeling no pity for this traitor. If he had hoped to win mercy by grovelling, he had misjudged me. ‘Get up.’
But Asgard’s serpent mind had a final draught of venom in it. I must have edged back a little as he rose, and those few inches were all the room he needed to spring forward, crashing into my legs and driving me away. My feet kicked and slipped on the wet stone beneath and I fell, landing heavily on my back. There was a terrible pain in my lungs and throat where the air had been forced out, and by the time I regained my feet Asgard was gone.
I cursed, though it was of little moment. I disbelieved at least half his story, and suspected there was another half as yet untold, but that could wait: doubtless the Watch would have him before nightfall, if the monk did not find him first. For now, the highest imperative was to reach the house in Libos, the house of Vichos the grocer. If the monk truly was there, then even Asgard’s escape would be a small price to have paid.
I climbed back up to the palace and summoned the guard. It was strange to meet Patzinaks, with their short swords and pointed helmets, in the places where Varangians should have been, and my unfamiliarity with them meant further delay until I could explain myself to their captain. He listened to my story with ever greater concern, and rattled off orders to his subordinates as soon as I was finished.
‘We will call out the Watch to find this Asgard, and take a company of men down to the house in Libos.’
I nodded my approval. ‘Good. I will go with you.’
For all that we needed haste it took some time to assemble his men, while I wandered the courtyard and fretted that the monk might even now be fleeing his house, again just a few paces beyond our grasp. I tried to goad the Patzinaks to swiftness, but they treated me with indifference and ignored my pleas. Only when the captain was satis
fied that all his men were correctly arrayed and equipped did we march out through the Augusteion.
The crowds in the streets were surging as thick as ever, despite the persistent rain, and a column of a hundred guardsmen in their midst brought constant friction. Feet were trampled, baskets spilled and clothing muddied as the Patzinaks rammed their path through. Sigurd had spoken of their single-minded devotion to the Emperor, but here they seemed like automata, like the lions in the palace whose apparent obedience was entirely free of will or reason. It felt strange, unsettling to be in their company; I would much rather have been with Sigurd and his men. Coarse and wild though the Varangians were, I could at least admire their passion, the unbridled currents which ruled them. There was nothing of that in the unmoving Patzinak faces which followed me.
Nor were they as physically arresting as the giants of Thule. If Sigurd was a bear, then his Patzinak counterpart was more a mule: shorter and stockier, but with a stride I suspected would never falter in a month of hard marches. His arms swung freely at his side, and his head jerked erratically as he walked. He had the face of a man who would prefer to knife his enemy in the back than meet him in a head-on duel, but in a fight, I guessed, he would have the guile and will to wear down mightier opponents. If once he was on the field of battle, I did not think he would leave it lightly.
We passed under the column of Constantine and through the arch of Theodosius, and further along the road to the small square where the Emperor Marcian had found a space for his own monument. No doubt walking in the shadows of the past should have inspired us to rival its legend, but with rain trickling in my ear and the carved figures in the sky almost invisible, it only depressed me. Even the prospect of finding the monk could not inspire me: I had seen too many broken men and women in the last hours for that. And it was hard to lift my mood on the strength of a traitor’s desperate lies.
Past the column of Marcian, as Asgard had said, we turned left. It was a narrow, unpaved street, turned to mire by the rain and with streaming water gouging a new course down its centre. The buildings were of unpainted wood, dark and rotten with all the moisture they had absorbed, tottering over us like drunken giants. We progressed slowly down the road. The Patzinaks had their swords out, alert for any danger, but there was little life to be seen around us, and the only sound was the constant rattle of raindrops on the puddles and tiles. Though marching soldiers were a common enough sight on the Mesi, a hundred of them prowling through a private neighbourhood would sweep every resident, honest or otherwise, out of their path. With nothing to obstruct us, the grocer’s shop was plain to see, and the faded paint on the lintel — just visible through the gloom — gave me the name: Vichos.
