The Varangian

by Bruce Macbain

  But my private concerns were suddenly overshadowed by greater events. One morning, just a week after my son was born, John the Guardian of Orphans collapsed in the bedroom of his mansion on the Horn, clutching his belly, sweating, vomiting, shitting, and screaming that he had been poisoned.

  17

  A Barbarian Once More

  The bedroom stank with the sour reek of vomit and shit, of sweat and fear. It was mid-afternoon, an hour after a messenger had arrived at the Varangian barracks with an order for Harald to go at once to John’s mansion on the Horn and to bring me along to translate. Now, as Harald and I were ushered inside, the family turned and stared at us.

  “What are these barbarians doing here?” John’s sister, Maria, crouched beside his couch. Her voice was shrill. She put a red-nailed hand to her red mouth. The tension in the room was like a live thing. You saw it at once in the strained faces, in the way one paced, another drank in nervous gulps, and yet another twisted a ring round and round. If John were to die … Never mind the Emperor, this man held them all in his hand.

  The guards who met us at the front door had given us menacing looks. Tough-looking men with swords in their belts—not regular soldiers, but orphans, I guessed, who had grown too old for the orphanage and showed a talent for thuggery.

  “Stupid woman!” answered her husband, Stephen, Admiral of the Fleet. “I sent for them, of course. Someone had to do something.” Stephen was a blunt-faced, broad-shouldered bullock of a man. He and Maria and her brothers, Constantine and George, were the only ones in the room besides John and one terrified servant girl.

  “They’re here, John, the Varangians,” Constantine murmured in his brother’s ear. The Guardian of Orphans groaned, struggled up on an elbow, opened his mouth, and spewed copiously on himself. He looked like he might die at any moment: his face bloodless, his eyes half closed, his nightshirt and pillow dark with sweat.

  “The basin, idiot,” Maria snarled at the girl, who was too late getting it under the master’s chin. “A towel!” With a groan, John rolled over on his belly and drew his knees up to his chest.

  “How long has he been like this?” I asked.

  “Since this morning,” said Constantine. “Almost at once after the doctor gave him his purgative.”

  “Could be an accident.”

  “He’s been poisoned!” Stephen was red faced and shouting. “And we know who did it.” The others nodded. No doubt of that in anyone’s mind.

  “Where’s this doctor, then?” said Harald.

  Stephen left and came back a minute later dragging the man by his shirt front; his hands were tied behind his back. “Zeno,” he said.

  The doctor was a sharp-nosed little man in his fifties with receding hair and a concave chest. Stephen let go of him and he sank to his knees, blubbering. “Take him to the Noumera prison,” Stephen instructed Harald, as I translated. “Do whatever you have to, get the whole story out of him, he didn’t act alone, we want them all. Arrest anyone he names. Here, Constantine’s written out a warrant for you. We want only your own men involved in this, you understand? And send some of them to Zoe’s quarters. No one is to go in or out. Tell her nothing. We’ve sent a courier to the Emperor in Thessaloniki. He’ll deal with her when he gets here.”

  “Why don’t I just torture him here?” Harald asked with a wolfish smile. This was work he liked.

  “Good God, not here. What d’you think, this is a prison? We can’t have screaming here, we have neighbors.”

  I felt sure somehow that the neighbors would plug their ears with wax and claim to have heard nothing at all.

  “Now get him out of here,” Stephen ordered.

  From the bed, John grunted what must have been a word of encouragement.

  The Baths of Zeuxippos, near the hippodrome, had been built centuries ago when every citizen of Constantinople felt it was his privilege to bathe daily in surroundings fit for a king. In time, the Greeks started taking fewer baths, caring more for the purity of their souls than for the cleanliness of their bodies, and the building was converted to other uses—a silk works; a prison, the Noumera. Traces of its old splendor remained in the mosaics, the great empty basins that had once held hot and cold water, and the high vaulted ceilings that had echoed with the happy shouts of bathers. The only shouts heard now were not happy ones. We descended with our prisoner into the dank substructure, to the furnace rooms that were now fitted out as cells and torture chambers. A prisoner could scream his head off down here and never be heard out in the street. Our men took over the place, pushing aside the warders who ordinarily ran it.

  Halldor and Bolli hung the little doctor up by his wrists from chains suspended from the ceiling, so that his toes barely scraped the floor. They ripped off his clothes, leaving him as naked as a plucked fowl: sickly white goose flesh, a patch of hair, a shriveled cock. Harald caressed a short whip of braided wire and circled the prisoner. Then he struck with the speed of a striking snake, cutting him across the buttocks, drawing a line of blood. “Why did you poison the Guardian of Orphans?” I translated, trying to make my voice as harsh as Harald’s. Tears streamed down Zeno’s cheeks. He hadn’t, he swore it by the Holy Virgin. Harald circled. He cut him across the face, laying his cheek open. “Who put you up to it? Who gave you the poison? Was it the Empress? What did she pay you?” It went on and on like this—Harald striking out and shouting his questions in Norse, me shouting them in Greek and trying to translate the man’s denials, which were nearly unintelligible, until finally there was no part of Zeno’s body that wasn’t cut and bleeding, and he fainted.

  I am no stranger to pain. I’ve seen friends tortured, I’ve been tortured. And, like any fighter, I’ve caused my share of pain. But this turned my stomach, I felt the bile come up in my throat. Yet I dared not flinch. I must be as hard and cruel as the others because I had the feeling that Harald and his men were watching me as much as the prisoner; that I was being tested.

  “You all right, Tangle-Hair?” Harald said to me at one point. “You look a little green.”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  Bolli threw a pail of water in the doctor’s face and Harald started in on him again—this time pulling off pieces of flesh with hot pincers. And, yes, finally Zeno broke and told us, between sobs and cries, what we wanted to know. A eunuch named Moucopeles, the majordomo of the Daphne palace, had mixed arsenic in a dose of buckthorn for the Guardian’s bowels; Zoe’s eunuch Sgouritzes had given Zeno the stuff and promised him twenty pounds of gold if John died.

  That night a dozen of us, with our swords drawn, burst into Zoe’s apartment in the Daphne. The Empress was just preparing for bed. Her eunuchs and women ran around shrieking and Zoe shrieked louder than any, cursing us like a fishwife. She threw a chamber pot at Harald’s head. He slapped her and ripped her nightgown half off. Her eye met mine for an instant; she must have recognized me. “Help me, young man, I beg you,” she cried. I couldn’t answer her.

  “Where is Sgouritzes?” Harald yelled. She spat at him.

  Then we ransacked her chambers, pulling down drapes, overturning chests, and on into the perfume factory, where the cauldrons bubbled. We turned them over too and smashed all the bottles, leaving a lake of the smelly stuff ankle-deep on the floor. Eventually, we found Sgouritzes under a bed—that parchment-skinned, dignified old man who had first brought me to Zoe’s chamber. He recognized me, too, and shot me a pleading look. I scowled at him.

  The old fellow was tough as a hunk of dried venison. He withstood the torture for three days and nights—everything Harald, who was beside himself with fury, could do to him. He died, admitting nothing. It was another day after that before we found Moucopeles. He was stopped as he tried to leave the palace disguised as a serving woman. A fat, soft man with oiled hair, he lasted only a few minutes before he told us everything—how Zoe had put them all up to it, promising them promotions and riches. When Harald was satisfied he’d gotten the full story, he cut the ears and noses off Moukoupel
es and Zeno and, on Stephen’s orders, had them tied to the tails of mules and driven out of the city—not such an uncommon sight; it attracted little attention.

  Five days passed in this way. Five days in which I lived in the Varangian barracks when I wasn’t in the torture cells. Five days during which I don’t think I washed or changed my clothes. Five nights that I drank myself into a stupor, trying to get the screams out of my head, the smell of burning flesh out of my nostrils. And listened to a drunken Harald boast and gloat.

  Meanwhile, Stephen and Constantine traveled back and forth between us and John, carrying reports and orders. By now the Emperor had arrived by ship from Thessaloniki. I didn’t see him, but people said he looked half-dead. Zoe was a prisoner in her apartment, more closely confined than ever. John had relieved the Varangians of the duty of guarding her and sent in women and eunuchs of his own household. A bulletin was issued by Constantine that the Guardian of Orphans was suffering from nothing worse than a slight fever and would soon be up and about again.

  And as for me? Two thoughts tormented me. How to get word to Selene, who had no idea where I was and how to contact Psellus and, through him, the Logothete, to warn him of the danger Zoe was in. Somewhere around the second or third day, I think, I sent Gorm with a note for Selene assuring her I was all right and that I’d be home soon. But there was nothing else I dared tell her. As for Psellus, I couldn’t keep our usual rendezvous because Harald wouldn’t let me out of his sight. I didn’t know what to do.

  And then overnight everything changed: Zoe was forgotten, John, who was still ailing, was pushed into the background. We heard the news from Stephen, who couldn’t decide whether he was more delighted by it or alarmed: the Emperor had decided that this was the moment to reconquer Sicily from the Saracens. Eustathius, the Logothete, had much to do with this, I suspect. As Psellus had explained to me, a war would place him at the center of affairs, it would distract Michael from palace intrigues, it would get two of John’s principal allies—Stephen the admiral and Harald the Varangian—out of the country on military service, possibly for years. It would buy time for Zoe’s faction. And—who knew?—it might even succeed in regaining the rich island of Sicily for the empire.

  “Go back and tell John,” said Harald, gripping Stephen by the shoulders and bellowing in his face, “that he must get the Emperor to appoint me commander of the Varangian contingent. Either he does that or we’re quits. You understand me? Tell him.”

  We waited an anxious day for Stephen to return. Harald paced, flung himself from one end of the barrack room to other, downed gallons of wine, and cursed. And at last, towards evening, Stephen returned.

  “Captain,” he hailed him. “You will take five hundred Varangians to Sicily, serving under your old commander George Maniakes. Sveinn, the Commandant, pleads his age and his gout and has requested to stay in the city with the remaining hundred to guard the Emperor.”

  John had done it! He didn’t like the idea of losing Harald but he was smart enough not to thwart him in this.

  Harald leapt onto a table and pranced from foot to foot in a fine frenzy, shouted his battle cry, and shook his fists in the air. And his voice was answered by all the men in the bandon, pounding each other on the back, shouting “Harald, Harald!” Within minutes word had spread all over the barracks and men of the other banda streamed in (except for the hundred who weren’t lucky enough to be going), all laughing and cheering and calling Harald’s name. “At last!” They slapped each other’s backs. “At last, out of this stinking city. Out of this tomb of a palace. To fight, to loot, to kill, to take women. At last!”

  “Tangle-Hair,” Harald threw an arm around me. “You’re coming too as my skald. You’ll praise my victories, give me your counsel. Like the old days when we fought the Pechenegs, eh? What a pair we were! And you’ll make your fortune, come back rich, join the Guard, be one of us…”

  “Odd?”

  Who spoke? A woman’s voice? Heads looked up. I turned to see—

  Selene, wrapped in a traveling cloak, stood in the doorway; her face was wet with tears; she held little Gunnar in her arms.

  “Selene, what are you—?”

  “Do you forget us so soon?”

  I took her elbow and steered her out into the corridor where we could hear ourselves talk.

  “Selene, you’re still lechona.” Among the Greeks, a woman who has borne a child, a lechona, must not leave her house for thirty days; it is a rule never broken.

  “I don’t care. Where have you been, Odd? You look terrible.”

  “I sent Gorm with a message for you.”

  “He told me nothing except that you were here. What have you been doing?”

  “I can’t talk about it, I’m sorry.”

  “What can’t you talk about? Is it something shameful? Have you been with a woman?”

  “Of course not.” I reached out to touch her arm but she pulled away. The baby squirmed in her arms and began to whimper. “Selene, don’t question me. Go home. I’ll come when I can.”

  “Don’t shout at me.” She began crying again, and the baby began wailing, too.

  I hadn’t meant to shout. It was only that all those bad feelings, the anger and revulsion that I’d been holding in, had to find a way out. I felt myself suddenly becoming my own father—angry, sullen, violent. I turned away to get myself under control.

  “Tangle-Hair, damn you,” came Harald’s voice, thick with drink, from the barrack room. “What are you doing out there in the hall? Come back, bring your woman.”

  “Look, we can’t talk here,” I said in a low voice, “it’s a madhouse. I’m taking you to Psellus’s. I’ll try to explain things there. I need to talk to him too. Come now, dry your eyes. Here, give me the baby… I’m taking Selene home,” I called through the door. “Be back soon.”

  Without a word, Selene followed me down the steps and out through the gate. There we found Chloris, our housekeeper, waiting in the pony cart. I took the reins and we drove in silence to Psellus’s. I took a roundabout route and looked behind me often to make sure we weren’t followed. It was dark by the time we got there. Psellus answered the door, still in his street shoes and his court costume. His smile died on his lips when he saw our scowling faces.

  “Can Selene spend the night here? It’s too late for her to go home.”

  “Of course, she can. What is it? What’s happened? Here, come in, sit down. Let me pour you some wine. Give me the baby, babies love me.” He laid Gunnar on his knee, who waved his little fists and burbled.

  Then, in a few words, I told them about John. “You want to know what I’ve been doing, Selene? I’ve been watching men tortured. No, not watching, helping. Because it’s my job.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. I could feel her shrink back in her chair, could read the loathing on her face.

  “Poisoned!” said Psellus. “We guessed as much. Poor Zoe, did she really? They confessed to it? Moucopeles was involved? The foolish man. I only wish they’d succeeded. Things will be very bad for her now. Odd, you must talk to Eustathius tonight. I’ll send my servant to bring him here, as we did before.” He turned to Selene. “My dear, don’t be angry with him. Sometimes we men have to do things we don’t like. You must try and understand.”

  “I haven’t told all,” I said. “The Varangians are being sent to fight in Sicily. I’m going with them.”

  “Then you really must talk to the Logothete,” said Psellus. He handed the baby to Chloris, who had taken a chair in the corner, and went off to look for his servant.

  “To Sicily? Leaving us?” cried Selene. “Just like that? How can you?”

  “Because it’s what I do, damn it. I am a warrior, a thegn, as we say in our language—I can’t translate it for you. I’ve done nothing but fight since I killed my first man at sixteen. I don’t know any other trade. An Icelandic woman would understand, would cheer me on, drink to my victories and, if I died in a distant land, bear it without a tear.”

  “
I thought you were no longer a barbarian.”

  “I thought so, too. We were both wrong. Listen to me, I love you Selene, and I love Gunnar, more than I have words to say, but you have to trust that I know what I’m doing. Harald rewards me for being his skald, the Greeks reward me for spying on him. None of this is what I came here to do, but here I am and how else are we to survive? Unless, of course, you go back to gambling in the tavernas or your father learns how to make gold.”

  “Don’t ridicule him.”

  “Selene!”

  She swung her fist at me—I grabbed her arm and bent it back.

  “You’re hurting me.”

  “Then act like a wife.”

  “I told you I wouldn’t be a good one.”

  “Look, come with me, other officers bring their women.”

  “And leave father behind? You see how he is. How will he live without me?”

  “I see. Then you’ve chosen.”

  We stared at each other in wordless anger.

  Psellus reappeared and behind him was his mother, as always gliding like a silent ghost in her own house. “I’ve sent a man for Eustathius,” he said. “I expect him soon. Selene, my dear, you must excuse us, this is men’s business, the less you know of it the better. Go with my mother, she’s made up beds for you and your servant. She’ll stay up with you until you sleep. Tomorrow I’ll take you home.”

  Selene allowed herself to be led away. And my heart was too sore, my feelings too raw, to find a word of goodbye.

  It was the last time I would see her for two years.

  Soon afterward, the Logothete limped in on his clubbed foot. “You’ve taken me away from my dinner guests. I hope you have a good reason.”

  I repeated to him everything I knew about John’s poisoning.