The Varangian

by Bruce Macbain

  “And you, Psellus, how do you come to work here?”

  “Oh, my story is the usual one. My parents were ambitious for me and could afford to hire the best teachers. For a young gentleman to get ahead in the world, it’s either the army, the Church, or the palace. I wasn’t built to be a soldier, I’m afraid I haven’t faith enough for the Church. That leaves the palace. From childhood I excelled in rhetoric and every branch of leaning. Certain contacts were made. And here I am, doing exactly what my talents—my considerable talents, if I may say so without boasting—suit me for. I have high aspirations, you know, and my prospects are excellent. I’m not yet twenty and I’m already well advanced. I will be someone to reckon with one day.”

  The fellow’s smugness was almost too much to bear, and yet, in spite of it, I was starting to like him. I had still one more question. “Psellus, in God’s name, how does the throne fly?”

  “What, you’re still worrying yourself about that? Magic.” He grinned and waggled his fingers in my face.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “No? But, Churillo, you must allow us to have some secrets.”

  At last, the hour grew late; we were both tired. “Psellus, I feel like I’ve taken only the first step. Will you give me more of your knowledge another day?”

  “All right. In return for which you will improve my Slavonic—which, I confess, is not all it should be—and tell me more about your northern world. Gardariki, Finland. Witches!”

  We laughed together. It was a good moment. I felt, finally, that I was making a friend among the Greeks. He stifled a yawn. “Where do you go now?” I asked him.

  “Home. Or, I might just sleep here. To tell the truth, I don’t like walking the streets alone at this hour of the night.”

  I took his arm. His house was on a narrow lane off the Mese, about a mile from the palace, in the shadow of the Aqueduct of Valens. Like all the houses around it, it was a two-story brick structure that turned a blank face to the street. The door was of heavy oak, studded with bronze nails.

  “I’ll leave you here, then,” I said, “unless you’d like to offer me a bed for the night, it’s a long walk back to the hostel.

  He looked suddenly alarmed and drew back. “No, I’m sorry, it’s impossible.”

  “Because I’m a barbarian?”

  “Not that, Churillo. My home—gloomy place. My mother is—well, never mind. You’d be uncomfortable. I’m sorry.”

  “Quite all right,” I shrugged. “Good night, then.”

  Then I realized I’d entirely forgotten about Piotr. Cursing the boy, I made my way back to the palace and collected him from the kitchen where he had found a corner and gone to sleep after being fed on some very tasty scraps. We walked to the hostel, groping our way through the echoing streets.

  “Well,” he demanded grumpily, “have they said any more about the princess’s marriage? Will we be going home soon?”

  “You may be if you like,” I told him. “I may not.”

  10

  John’s Tale

  A village near Gangra, Paphlagonia A.D. 1004 - Aged seven

  “I’m a big boy, Mama, I can bathe myself.”

  The iron washtub sits in the middle of the kitchen. His mother takes another kettle off the hearth and pours in more water; steam rises in the cold air.

  “A special treat, then, for my big boy,” she says.

  But why doesn’t she smile? Why does she avoid his eyes? He puts a foot in the water. “Too hot, mama!”

  “Hush,” she says. “Not too hot. Get all the way in. In a minute it will be cold. Get in, I say.” She presses down on his shoulders, sinking him up to his neck while he squirms. But in a few moments it does feel lovely, not too hot, not too cold; he relaxes, leans back, how nice to be treated like a baby again. He closes his eyes, waiting for his mother to scrub him. He hears footsteps, heavy ones. He opens his eyes and sees his father standing over him. What is he doing home in the middle of the day? His father scowls. Well, nothing strange about that, his father always scowls.

  “Good afternoon, Papa,” he says in a small voice, suddenly—why?—frightened by this big man, who is rolling his sleeves up to the elbows, showing the black hairs on his thick forearms, flexing his fingers.

  “No!” cries his mother in a strangled voice, but he pushes her aside and plunges his arms into the water, forcing his hands between John’s legs. John thrashes, flails his arms, kicks, water goes everywhere. “Hold his arms, goddammit! It’s safer than cutting, you want blood everywhere?” He grasps his son’s scrotum in his left fist. With his other hand he pinches one little testicle between thumb and forefinger and crushes it like a grape, then the other, while John shrieks until he has no more breath left—piercing cries that can be heard all over the village. But no one is going to come and rescue him. This is simply what Paphlagonians do. They’re famous for it all over Anatolia. The child faints.

  When he wakes up, it’s dark outside. He’s in bed and a cloth is wrapped tightly around his waist and between his legs. The ache there! Waves of nausea sweep over him, his skin is icy. He’s afraid to move. He hears his mother crying in the next room, hears his father talking, his voice thick with wine. “He’ll make our fortune,” his father is saying. “Don’t say you didn’t agree to it. He’s a smart boy, the priest said so, already knows his letters. We’ll get him more schooling, in Heraclea maybe.”

  “On what, you foolish man? You, nothing but a village money-changer.”

  “You shut your mouth. There are ways.”

  His mother keeps crying until there is the sound of a palm hitting a face, and then silence. John faints again. It will be weeks before he can walk without pain.

  The Blachernae Palace, A. D. 1014 Aged Seventeen

  Constantine VIII, Co-Emperor of Rome, prefers this small palace tucked away in a far corner of the city for his more private affairs, away from his tiresome, scar-faced wife and his daughters, away from his fierce brother Basil, who lords it over him. Tonight he is entertaining Romanus Argyrus, an elderly senator who is angling for promotion to City Prefect. And what will Romanus give him in return? Something special has been promised. The senator is shown into the bedroom, where Constantine lies propped on cushions, his robe carelessly open, exposing his belly. And behind the senator another figure—a slender, beardless boy made up to look almost like a girl: powdered and perfumed, lips and cheeks rouged, hair dressed in oiled ringlets, earrings in both ears, wearing a lavender-colored cloak pinned at the shoulder and a pale blue silk tunic that reaches only to mid-thigh, showing bare, smooth legs.

  “Majesty, may I present John,” says Romanus Argyrus.

  Constantine is disappointed; he has eunuchs by the dozen who feed him, bathe him, tuck him in at night. What novelty is there here?

  “John is a young man of many talents,” Romanus goes on quickly, “writes a fine hand, brilliant with figures. But those are not his most interesting abilities, oh, far from it.” Romanus winks, one lecher to another, the men understand each other. “Skin like a baby’s ass. Lips and tongue educated, shall I say, beyond the ordinary. He comes from my home district. I plucked him out of a stinking village and trained him myself. I make you a present of him, Majesty, though I will be sorry to lose him. Perhaps you’d like to be alone with him, get acquainted?”

  John approaches, kneels at the Emperor’s bedside, licks his lips, smiles expectantly. He has no sexual feelings but he has studied how to arouse them in other men. And he has learned to master his horror of being touched. He will do anything, suffer anything, to advance himself and his brothers.

  The Great Palace, A. D. 1028 Aged Thirty-one

  Romanus III Argyrus has been Emperor of Rome for a little more than four hours. The coronation in the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom, unendurably tedious, is at last over. He has been escorted back to the palace through a mob of dutifully cheering courtiers. The Patriarch has gone back to his palace and Zoe has withdrawn, thank God, to her steaming pots of stink. Alre
ady the garlands are being taken down, the rose petals swept away. Dozens of high-ranking officials are waiting to speak to their new Emperor, but he has insisted on being taken straight to his bedchamber where he can rest his old bones. His neck and shoulders ache from the weight of the tiara, his legs are trembling. Still ahead of him is a night of celebration which he would do anything to escape from. He collapses into a deep chair. He orders everyone from the room, except for one man.

  “Christ knows I didn’t want this, John. Not at my age. Constantine threatened to blind me if I didn’t take the crown and marry his fucking daughter. Blind me! Seventy years old, married to a good woman for fifty years. I’m half in the grave already and the stupid man wants me to get an heir on her? And then he promptly dies—may he burn in Hell—and here we are.”

  John kneels down, unlaces the red Imperial shoes, eases them off the feet with their yellowed toenails, and massages the feet.

  “Oh, Christ, that feels good,” Romanus groans. What a treasure you are. Enough now. Draw up a chair, sit next to me, we have things to discuss. You’ve waited a long time for your reward, John. God knows, you’ve earned it a thousand times over.”

  “My reward is to serve you, Majesty.”

  “Balls! I’ve used you in ways I wasn’t always proud of, and you’ve never complained. Now I need you more than ever. All these others, the Grand Chamberlain, the Logothete, the generals, the eunuchs of the bedchamber—they were Basil’s and Constantine’s men. You are my man. I’m placing you in charge of the Orphanage of Saint Paul.”

  “Orphans? I care nothing for them.”

  “You think I do? John, a fortune in money flows into the orphanage from the Church coffers and from the treasury—you know how big the place is—and you will have the spending of it, accountable to no one. Keep what you like for yourself; I know your tastes are simple. And the rest you will spend on spies, young men that you mold yourself, as I molded you, who can be everywhere, overhear every conversation. Slit a throat, if need be. In rank, you’ll be a Protospatharios, equal to Eustathius the Logothete. In fact, you’ll have more real power than he ever dreamed of. Do this for me, John.”

  “Majesty.” John covers the old man’s hand with kisses.

  Romanus pats his head. “I knew you would. Now go away and let me rest for a bit.”

  John, the Guardian of Orphans, slips quietly out the door.

  John’s villa on the Golden Horn, Holy Thursday, A. D. 1034 Aged thirty-seven

  They have just returned from morning Mass in the small chapel on this, the day that celebrates Our Lord’s Last Supper. They arrange themselves on chairs in John’s dining room. It’s a chilly April, with a wind blowing from the north that whips up waves on the water and rattles the shutters. The servants have been sent away. The doors and windows are shut tight. The business they have to discuss on this holy day is quite definitely unholy. In fact, it is sacrilege: the assassination of God’s regent of Earth. The murder of Romanus III.

  Brother George, three years younger than John, twists his emerald ring round and round on his finger, stands up, paces, sits again. Brother Constantine, two years younger than George, holds his belly, grimaces, and suppresses a belch. He is a martyr to his digestion. Brother Michael, the baby of the family, half the age of the others, cocky and self-assured, is humming to himself. Like their brother John, Constantine and George are eunuchs; physically, the three of them, soft-skinned and hairless, resemble each other like peas in a pod. Their father had a monomania for castration, convinced it would make the family’s fortune and, so far, it seems, he was right, though he didn’t live to see it. He was stabbed to death in a brawl with a man he’d tried to cheat with clipped coins. This was soon after Michael was born and was, no doubt, the only thing that saved him from his older brothers’ fate.

  John, as always, is impassive, his plump hands resting on his black-clad thighs as motionless as two slabs of pork. His eyes are pouched, he always looks like he hasn’t slept. And, indeed, it is whispered that he never sleeps but prowls the city at night, looking for traitors. His upper lip is curled in a perpetual sneer. No one knows what he is thinking; no one is allowed to see the anger that seethes inside him, the anger of a wounded child. It is his habit to speak very slowly, forcing his listeners to hang on each word, and he growls in an unnaturally low register, not like the reedy piping of his eunuch brothers or Michael’s unpredictable, adolescent squawk.

  “If you ask me—” Constantine begins.

  “I’m not asking you.” John cuts him off. And Constantine shuts his mouth. “Everything has been arranged. Poison hasn’t worked, I suppose the old man takes a universal antidote. Anyway, I’m not prepared to wait any longer.” What John doesn’t say is that he is already worried about Michael’s health.

  “Zoe’s frantic to have him dead,” Michael smirks. “It’s practically all she talks about when we’re alone.” Michael has been sleeping with her for nearly a year now. “The stupid cow,” he adds.

  “Show some respect, little brother,” John warns. “You’re going to be living with her for a long time.”

  “Christ, I hope not. Old enough to be my grandmother. It’s like fucking an overstuffed cushion—and she wants it all the time. I tell you, I’ve had just about enough, I don’t know how long I can keep it up.”

  “You’d better ‘keep it up’,” George emphasizes the words while he raises his middle finger.

  “And just what do you know about satisfying a woman?” Michael shoots back. This is the one thing that he has over them, and he is never shy about throwing it in their faces. He knows they’re ashamed of being half-men, even John. Especially John. George is half out of his chair, his soft hand balled in a fist.

  “Stop it!” John orders and forces him down with his eyes. “Little brother has the prick, I have the brain. And you two will do as you’re told unless you want to find yourselves back in Paphlagonia selling meat on a skewer in the village square. Now attend to me. The old man will go to his bath at midday today as he always does. Four of my men will be waiting for him.”

  For six years John has trained a cadre of orphans to do his dirty work. It had been the Emperor’s own idea. The irony appeals to John. Not that John takes any particular pleasure in murdering his benefactor, he feels no rancor towards Romanus. This is simply a question of the family’s survival. Romanus is bound to die soon and if Zoe doesn’t marry Michael then the family will have no position, no influence with whoever takes his place. They have too many enemies. If John doesn’t act soon, it will be back to the gutter with all of them.

  “What about the Varangians?” Constantine asks.

  “There will be none on duty. I’ve arranged it with the Commandant.

  “How much is that costing us?”

  Idiot, John thinks, and ignores him. “By that time, we will be in our yacht standing off Boukoleon Harbor. If anything goes wrong Stephen’s ships will take us to safety.” Stephen is their brother-in-law, Maria’s husband, and, thanks to John, Admiral of the Fleet. A profoundly stupid man, but loyal. “I’ve arranged for a signal to be given from the window when Romanus is dead. Then Michael, you will go straight to Zoe, she’ll be in the Daphne, and stay with her. Kiss her, call her ‘wife’. Make it good. She cannot be permitted to back out now. Bring her to see the body. She should look distraught, and so should you. But don’t stay long, and don’t answer any questions. George will go to the old man’s office, take charge of his papers, and seal the place off.” George holds the post, also thanks to John, of Master of the Wardrobe, second in rank only to the Grand Chamberlain. No one will question him. “Constantine will issue a proclamation in Zoe’s name summoning the court to the palace on Friday. The wedding and coronation must take place immediately. We can’t give anyone time to think. Surprise is everything. I will deal with the Patriarch.”

  “Has he been told?” Constantine asks.

  “It would hardly do to tell him yet, would it? Christ on the cross, must I think for everyon
e?”

  “And what if he balks?” Michael says.

  “Fifty pounds of gold will change his mind.” John pours himself a goblet of wine and drains it at a gulp. He drinks constantly. People say he is more to be feared drunk than sober. He sets the goblet down carefully. “Time to go.”

  11

  I Am Found Out

  [Odd resumes his narrative]

  The night following the banquet found me once again in Apgar’s taverna, half-hoping I’d see ‘Andreas’, but the Armenian said he hadn’t seen the boy since that trouble with the sailor. I decided to wait around a while. As the hour grew late and I was just getting ready to give up and leave, in she walked, carrying her game board under her arm. She saw me and ducked her head with a quick smile. I nodded back. Apgar beamed and brought her a cup of wine, and there was a quick exchange of Greek between the two of them with a glance in my direction. Andreas opened the board and set out the black and white counters. She looked at me and cocked an eyebrow. I felt my heart beat faster. That face of hers that hovered disturbingly between male and female fascinated me.

  I brought my jug of wine over to the table and sat down. “My name is Churillo. What do you call this game of yours?”

  “We call it tavli, sir.” She used the Greek word that means ‘tables’.

  “Will you teach me to play? I hope you won’t separate me from all my silver.”

  “That is up to you, sir.” Her voice was husky—a maid trying to sound like a man. “We each throw two dice and the object is to move your fifteen men around the board and be the first to remove them all. It seems easy, but there are dangers and traps to be avoided. Land on the wrong triangle and you can be sent back to where you started. You almost always have several possible moves, but only one of them is best.”