The mosaic of shadows da-1

by Tom Harper

  A second man spurred forward. A few locks of fair hair crept from under his mail hood, while his face was grim. He spoke angrily to his companion, making no attempt to disguise his words from the interpreter.

  ‘Is this true, brother? Is this the man you claimed would. .’ He broke off, aware that his words were heard and understood, and whispered urgently in Baldwin’s ear.

  ‘Duke Godfrey,’ I began. ‘Since you came, the Emperor has desired only peace and alliance, for all Christians to unite against our common enemies. Many voices in the city condemned him for his generosity, but he withstood them against every provocation. Even as your army assaults his walls, he does not retaliate with the full force of his might.’

  ‘Because he is a coward,’ Baldwin spluttered. ‘Because he knows too well the strength of Frankish arms against his rabble of eunuchs and catamites.’

  ‘Silence!’ barked Godfrey. The wind snapped at the great white banner with its blood-red cross which the herald carried behind him. ‘I never sought this battle, even when the king sent his mercenaries to attack us in our camp. For two days I have submitted to your demands, Baldwin, and the gates have not opened as you promised they would.’

  ‘Nor will they open,’ I pressed. ‘The Emperor has survived your plots, and will destroy you from the comfort of his walls if you do not abandon the battle now.’

  Baldwin’s eyes were black with hate, deeper than the depths of Sheol, but his brother was unmoved.

  ‘I will call back my army,’ said Godfrey, ‘if the Emperor will allow me to pass on to the Holy Land, where I have ever sought to go. There have been enough. . delays.’

  ‘He will not let you pass without the oath,’ I reminded him. ‘But I am not the man to argue that with you. He will send an embassy to your camp tonight. You would be wise to let them approach unharmed.’

  Godfrey nodded, and without a word of farewell turned his horse back towards his captains on the hill. The company who had surrounded us fell in behind him, and I saw several galloping down the slope to take the news to their army.

  Baldwin, though, did not move away. ‘I do not know your name, Greekling,’ he hissed, ‘but I know there is no proof to a word you have said.’

  ‘Your brother’s response gives me proof enough.’ I sensed Sigurd raise his axe a little beside me, and hoped he would be quick enough if Baldwin succumbed to the desire so plain on his face. For the moment, though, the Frank saved his violence for his words.

  ‘My brother is a coward to match your king. Retreat and delay are his only strategies.’

  ‘Then he is a wiser man than you.’

  Baldwin’s spear twitched. ‘As wise as a Greek?’ He sneered. ‘Even if I had found this cruel little monk, and turned his murderous thoughts against his king, do you think that he alone could have opened your city? Do you think that I told him when the Emperor might walk within bowshot, or admitted him to the secret doors of the palace? Would he have assumed the throne when the Emperor was dead? Would I have even imagined turning my army against the city unless there were men inside — men of power and stature — who invited me?’ He gave a savage laugh at my stunned confusion, but before I could speak he had stabbed his spear into the monk’s broken corpse, so deep that it stuck in the mud beneath, and kicked his horse away.

  ‘Assume the throne?’ I repeated numbly. A terrible panic broke over me, choking my trembling limbs. ‘So there is an enemy. .’

  Sigurd’s words echoed my own. ‘. . in the palace.’

  The wind roared against us as we galloped across the plain, ducking our heads close against the horses’ manes and crouching in our stirrups to smooth our path. The barbarian army was in full retreat now, straggling back towards what remained of their camp. The weariness of failure was all about them, and none troubled us as we skirted their flank, racing towards the palace gate. I scarcely noticed them. One name alone was fixed in my mind, a looming horror of what he might purpose and the chaos which would ensue if he did. Several times my thoughts grew too terrible, and in frustration I kicked my unfortunate mount all the harder.

  ‘Look.’ They were Sigurd’s words, brought back to me on the wind, and I snatched my eyes from the ground before me to look further ahead. We were nearing the walls — I could see the black scorches where the barbarians had tried to burn the gate, the spent arrows and bodies littering the field. Some I recognised as cataphracts, great rents hacked into their armour, but most were Franks.

  ‘At the gates,’ Sigurd called, indicating with his fist. I looked, and for a second thought I would be pitched from my saddle, so slack did I slump. The gates had opened, and a great column of soldiers was marching forth: not stretcher bearers or gravediggers come for the fallen, but a full legion of Immortals arrayed for battle. Some of their out-riders broke ranks to spur towards us, but Sigurd waved his Varangian axe in the air and they slowed, hailing us with urgent shouts.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I demanded. ‘The Emperor gave orders that you should hold at the walls. The barbarians are broken, and you will only antagonise them by appearing in such force.’

  ‘We mean to do more than antagonise them,’ barked one, an officer. ‘The Emperor is dying, and we are commanded to rout the barbarians in their retreat. Against our cavalry, they will be like wheat in the harvest.’

  ‘Does the Sebastokrator command that?’ A great emptiness swelled within me: I had failed. The Emperor would die, and with him all hopes of peace with Franks, Turks, even among the Romans themselves.

  But the officer shook his head. ‘The Sebastokrator remains at the Regia gate, I think, waiting with the Varangians. He has given no orders that I have heard.’

  ‘Then who has. .?’

  ‘The chamberlain, or regent as he soon will be. The eunuch Krysaphios.’

  It was as well Sigurd could speak, for I was struck dumb. He pulled off his helmet and stared hard at the Immortal officer. ‘Do you recognise me, Diogenes Sgouros?’

  Though there was not an inch of his body not cased in steel armour, the Immortal still seemed to cringe. ‘You are Sigurd, captain of the Varangians.’

  ‘Do you doubt my loyalty to the Emperor?’

  ‘Never.’ Sgouros’s voice was fainter now. ‘But the Emperor is dying and. .’

  ‘Dying is not dead.’ Sigurd rested his axe on the pommel of his saddle. ‘Do you remember the legend of the Emperor who feigned death to test the loyalty of his men?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you remember what he did to those who failed him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then unless you wish a similar fate, Diogenes, draw up your company here and do not move one pace nearer the barbarians until I or the Emperor himself bring word that it pleases him you do so. Do you understand?’

  Sgouros’s helmet seemed fastened too tight under his chin: he struggled to breathe. ‘But. .’

  ‘If you fail, even witlessly, there will be a terrible vengeance,’ Sigurd warned. ‘And not the vengeance of the Komneni, too quick to forgive their enemies, but the vengeance of Sigurd, who has never yet forgotten a wrong. Will you risk that to prick at the heels of a few broken barbarians?’

  The throne in the great hall of the new palace was empty, the only clear space in the room. Every general and courtier must have had word of the Emperor’s wounds and rushed to stake their place in the succession — or to pray for his healing, as they doubtless later protested — for Sigurd and I could barely pry them far enough apart to push ourselves through. I searched desperately for Krysaphios, trying to pick out one sumptuous head among the golden throng, but it was Sigurd, with his height, who saw him first. He was standing near the throne in a circle of nobles, speaking pointedly and forcefully, though his words were lost in the din. His eyes darted over the surrounding faces, seeking out disagreement or disloyalty, and he did not see our approach until Sigurd pulled away a whimpering acolyte and loomed over him.

  ‘What did you do with the Immortals?’ Sigurd demanded. ‘Why, after th
e barbarians had surrendered did you order our cavalry to destroy them, when it was the Emperor’s dearest wish that they should be spared?’

  I saw Krysaphios glance to his side and tilt his head a little, as if beckoning someone. Guards, I guessed. ‘The Emperor is dying, and whoever succeeds him will rely greatly on his chamberlain as he accustoms himself to rule. If you disagree with my policy out of sentiment for a weak-willed fool, whose nerve failed in our darkest hour, you would do well to reconsider. I will have need of strong warriors when I serve the new Emperor, but only those who obey.’

  The circle surrounding him had eased a little, for many were clearly uncomfortable with our talk and uncertain where to display their loyalties. I tried to discomfort them further. ‘Did you ally yourselves with the barbarians from the beginning, Krysaphios? Did you really mean to give our empire over to their tyranny, until you saw just now that they were defeated?’

  Krysaphios’ cheeks swelled out like a serpent’s. ‘That is treason, Demetrios Askiates, and you will not escape its penalty this time. Nor will you have even the consolation of righteousness when your daughters are screaming in my dungeon, for none have worked against the barbarians more diligently than I. Would I give over the triumph of our civilisation to a snivelling race of animals, scarce fit to tup in the gutters of this city? I will be remembered as he who saved the empire, while the Emperor Alexios will be anathemised as a godless traitor, a lover of barbarians.’

  I heard a commotion in the crowd behind me: the eunuch’s guards, I presumed, coming to drag me away. Sigurd was lifting his axe, though he could hardly have wielded it in that room, but I was still. The jibe about my daughters had shattered my will, for they were still in the palace, and if I resisted the eunuch he would surely visit unthinkable horrors on them.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said brokenly. ‘Did the Emperor die of his wounds?’

  ‘He will.’ Krysaphios raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘We searched, but his physician could not be found to heal him.’

  The last words of his sentence seemed unnaturally loud, but it was only as he stopped that I realised it was because the rest of the room had fallen silent.

  ‘And who sent my physician away this morning?’ Though slowed with exhaustion, and more strained than before, the voice was undeniable. I forgot Krysaphios, and turned in wonder to the bronze doors. They were flung open, and between their mighty posts, leaning on a stick and with a bandage for a crown, there stood the Emperor Alexios.

  All in the room fell to their knees, then scrambled from his path as he advanced on the throne. He walked stiffly, and his eyes were clenched with pain, but his words rang clear as ever. ‘Who ordered the hipparch to send a hundred men when my brother ordered ten? Who ordered the Immortals to massacre the barbarians when they had surrendered the field? Who now stands beside my throne and schemes to fill it with his puppets?’ He reached us, and I saw a phalanx of Varangians drawn up beyond the doors behind.

  ‘You are recovered, Lord.’ Krysaphios alone had not bowed to the Emperor, and he did not do so now. ‘Thanks be to God. But your mind is clouded. The daze left by the assassin’s blow cannot be bound up with linen.’

  ‘Nor can his spear-thrust, if there is no physician to call on. If the chamberlain has ordered him to count herbs in the Bucoleon while the Emperor lies bleeding. Thank God indeed that I found another in my palace.’

  At last I understood how the Emperor had outlasted the innumerable reverses of his reign, why his armies’ loyalty had never wavered in defeats which would have ruined his predecessors. Even now, limping and gasping, there was a power in his face which was more than mere authority: perfect certainty, the unanswerable knowledge that he would prevail.

  Even so, Krysaphios resisted it, flicking his eyes over the room in a search for allies. None showed themselves. ‘Lord,’ he pleaded, ‘let us not quarrel in victory. If I have erred, it was in the service of the empire. Surely such sins can be forgiven.’

  ‘You conspired with the barbarians to murder me,’ said Alexios. ‘You of all my counsellors. What did they promise you? That when they had sacked our city, and ravaged our women, and carried off our treasure, you would be left as their regent? Or did you think you could. .’

  ‘No!’ Krysaphios almost screeched the denial. ‘How can you call me a traitor, when you yourself would have given half the empire to those demons?’ He crouched down, as if to perform homage or kiss the hem of the Emperor’s robe, but instead he lifted his own garments high over his waist. There was a gasp of disgust from the crowd, and many hid their eyes, but many more stared in ghoulish fascination at the eunuch’s exposed loins. His organs were entirely absent, as a carzimasian, but the horror of his unnatural flesh was magnified still further by the brutal mesh of scars which covered it.

  ‘Do you see this?’ he screamed, pointing crudely. ‘This disfigurement? This is what the barbarians do to their enemies — for sport! Give them a captive and their evil minds turn only to cruelty and torture.’ Mercifully, he let his robes drop back to the floor. ‘I would give my last breath of life to save the empire from their violence — and yours also, if you would not heed my warnings.’

  ‘You tried to kill me.’ Alexios’ voice faltered with pain. ‘You would have unleashed civil war, and opened the empire to the worst depredations of all our enemies.’

  ‘If I conspired with the barbarians, it was only to lure them into revealing the black truth of their hearts, so you could witness their evil. But you would not see it. Your love of conquest blinded you, for you would rather rule a despoiled empire than protect your people. And now, because I guarded the people you would have forgotten, I will be sacrificed.’

  ‘As you never tired of telling me, I am merciful — too merciful — to my defeated enemies.’

  ‘You lie.’ All this time Krysaphios had been edging back through the crowd, retreating from the Emperor’s gaze; now he found himself at the brink of the room under the windows. ‘You will cast me into the dungeon for your torturers to unleash their craft upon.’ He snapped his head up and met the Emperor’s eyes. ‘But I have been a prisoner before, and I will not submit to that mercy again. Let the barbarians come, and let them tear the flesh from your empire: I will not see it.’

  With a final, sobbing sneer, he bowed his head and stepped off the parapet. Alexios started forward, one arm half raised, but Krysaphios would have hit the ground before he had covered half the distance and he went no further. A great sadness shrouded his face.

  I ran to the window and looked down. The walls were high here, and sheer, dropping unbroken to the rocks below. The ground was blurred in the fading light, its details indistinct, but amid the muted stones I could still see the eunuch’s body. It lay stretched out like a fallen angel, a fragment of gold against the darkness.

  29

  A web of incense hung under the great dome of Ayia Sophia, its curling tendrils caught in the sunlight which fell through the windows. One shaft struck just behind the Emperor’s head, shining off the back of his throne and illuminating the hazy air like a nimbus. On his right sat the patriarch Nikolas, on his left his brother Isaak, a triumvirate of unyielding glory. Elsewhere in the city they would be ringing bells and singing songs for the great feast of Easter, but here the vast crowd was silent, watching the ceremony unfold.

  At the front of the hall, the barbarian captains sat in a line on chairs inlaid with silver. Duke Godfrey was there with his brother Baldwin, and the three ambassadors I recognised from the day of Aelric’s treachery; others whom I had not seen before were there also, and, at the far end of the row, Count Hugh. He was apparently reconciled now with the kinsmen who had mocked and despised him, though he seemed uncomfortable in their company. His companions looked no happier, every one of them sour-faced with suspicion.

  Trumpets sounded, and as the heralds recited Duke Godfrey’s name and titles, he rose and approached the throne. From my position in the western aisle I could not see his face, but the silence of the congreg
ation left his words perfectly audible in that cavernous hall. Prompted by the interpreter, he spoke the words of the oath that had been agreed the night before: he swore to respect the ancient boundaries of the Romans, to serve the Emperor faithfully in battle and to restore to him all lands which his ancestors rightfully held. Seven scribes sat at a table recording every word, and when the oath was taken the Emperor’s son-in-law, Bryennios, stepped forward to present a golden garland. There would be much more gold to follow, I knew, for the Emperor was ever generous to his defeated enemies.

  Duke Godfrey retook his seat gracelessly, wearing the garland like a crown of throns. Then the heralds called his brother and I tensed, while across the hall seven pens sat poised in the air to see what he would say. For a second I thought he had stepped too close to the throne, that he would bring the Varangians rushing down on him, but now he was on one knee mumbling indistinct allegiance. He did not wait for Bryennios when he was done, but marched back to his seat stiff with shame. A rash of pink scarred his cheeks like plague-spots.

  The oaths took almost an hour, followed by anthems of acclamation and the liturgy of Easter. When the patriarch put the cup of Christ to Baldwin’s lips I feared he would spit it back, but he managed to choke it down under the stern eyes of his brother. Then there were more hymns of praise and unity — the message doubtless lost on the barbarians — and at last the long procession into the cheering crowds of the Augusteion. A double line of Varangians had parted the mob, forming a human corridor between church and palace, and as I emerged into the sunlight I saw the last of the Emperor’s retinue disappearing within. The Emperor might be generous to his enemies, I reflected, but not kind: three hours in church followed by the rigours of an imperial banquet would reduce the Franks to the utmost misery. Doubtless they would find compensations.

  ‘Weren’t you summoned to feast at the Emperor’s table?’