The Varangian

by Bruce Macbain

  The Normans, William and Drogo, would listen to him, though they only understood a little of our language. One constant visitor, however, picked up our speech with amazing quickness. This was Arduin the Lombard, the henchman of Duke Gaimar of Salerno. He was a man of about thirty-five with a long beard, after the fashion of his people, and shrewd, intelligent eyes. And, unique among his fellows, he had been educated in Greek and spoke it fluently. His manners were thoroughly Greek, too. No one would have guessed he was a barbarian. He knew something of poetry and appreciated my telling of Homeric tales, contributing details himself. But most of all he listened to Harald and would question him about laws and taxes and such things. Here is a man, I thought, who aims to be a king in his own country someday. We spoke Greek to each other, and I helped him with his Norse. We got on well, and I have always been sorry that we ended as enemies. I blame Maniakes for that, too.

  Like the other men, I acquired a woman. Her name was Demetra. Camp women had followed us all the way from Messina. They cooked our food, washed our clothes, guarded our belongings, polished our armor, collected herbs for the stewpot and leaves and roots for healing—all for a few coins and protection from rape and beatings. I wanted a woman to sleep with, but one who would remind me as little as possible of Selene, who was so lithe and quick. Demetra was typical Sicilian: olive-skinned, heavy-breasted and thick-ankled, short and sturdy with a round, smiling face and a deep laugh. She went barefoot in every weather—her feet were black, the toes splayed, the soles tough as shoe leather. She could march as well as a man, carried a donkey’s load of stuff on her back, and never complained. The fellow she was with when I met her was hitting her for some reason. I shoved him away and put my hand on the hilt of my sword. She turned a questioning eye on me. I gave her a silver coin, which she tested with her teeth, and then smiled.

  She was older than I and, in a certain way, more a mother than a mistress. She had had a husband who’d died of something or other, and children, too, though she never spoke of them. We spoke very little, in fact, as I could barely understand her dialect, but she knew how to cook rice and onions with a scrawny chicken or a hare or some other meat that I didn’t care to examine too closely. She would bathe my face and cradle me whenever my fever returned, and at night she would pick lice from my hair and then comb it and oil it. It was between her muscular thighs that I fathered a child, a baby girl, who was born that winter and lived only a few months. Demetra buried it and never said a word. Once another woman came and offered herself to me and Demetra broke her nose.

  I shared a tent with five other men and their women. Some evenings we would just lie by the embers of our fire, while rain drummed on the canvas, and brag about how we would spend our loot if we ever got the chance. At sunset and sunrise, the Infidels’ call to prayer carried to us from the city. Life went on there, too, though grimmer every day. The wind carried the smell of rotting flesh. It was plain that the inhabitants were starving to death faster than they could be buried.

  We entertained ourselves as best we could with lizard races and scorpion fights and such things. And sometimes musicians would gather in the nearby villages to celebrate some saint’s day or a wedding and afterwards come through our camp, hoping to make a few coins. They played the zambogna, the skin of a whole goat, tied at neck and feet, with pipes attached. It made a wild, shrieking sound and Demetra loved it, dancing and snapping her fingers. But Gorm grimaced at the sound and paid them just to go away.

  One evening a Greek cavalry trooper came around with a ‘tables’ board, hoping no doubt to win some money from us ignorant Northmen. I played him and cleaned him out. But the sudden flood of memory, of Selene touching the tip of her tongue to the space between her teeth when she studied a move, was almost unbearable. That night I dreamed of her. I was chasing her down endless streets in a vast city, she, always ahead of me, and just when I was about to touch her she would vanish and reappear streets away.

  Nothing could distract me from thoughts of her. I tried to imagine her life. What was she doing? Who was she with? How did she fill her days? And I longed to see my son. What did he look like at one, at one-and-a-half, at two? I tried to notice children around the camp who might be his age, children with black, curly hair, just to have something to fasten my imagination on. And where, where was this promised agent of the Logothete who would bring me her letters and take mine to her? If he was trapped in the city, why weren’t there others? The woman at Messina, the priest in Catania?

  Christmas came and then Epiphany of the year six thousand five hundred forty-eight from the Creation (one thousand and forty, as we would call it), though we celebrated with little joy. It was a cold and misty morning and Maniakes ordered the whole army and most of the ships’ crews out on parade while the priests went among them, hearing confessions and giving communion. I pleaded fever, which was not a lie, and stayed in my tent with Demetra, drinking wine with a pellet of opium in it, gnawing a pig’s knuckle, and thinking of home. Why was I forgotten so completely? Why had Psellus, my old friend, broken his promise?

  I drifted into a drugged sleep, thinking about him.

  22

  Psellus’s Tale

  The Throne of Solomon, borne on the breath of angels, descends slowly from the height of the ceiling and comes to rest upon its podium between the roaring golden lions. The blast of the organ, which masks the whirring of its mechanism, dies away.

  “Constantine Psellus, elevated to the rank of Protospatharios and Senator, approach the throne.” The Master of Ceremonies taps his gilded staff on the marble floor and at once another thundering chord from the water organ reverberates through the vast hall. January the sixth, the Day of Epiphany, the day on which bureaucratic promotions are announced.

  Psellus adjusts the new crimson cloak that hangs from his shoulder, touches the new ceremonial sword at his side, and advances through the throng of courtiers. They part to make way for him. Hundreds of curious faces watch him. Most of them don’t know him, but he knows them; he’s made it his business to. In a few of those faces he reads envy. He doesn’t mind. He expects, intends, to make them envious.

  He casts a quick glance up to the gallery where spectators hang over the railing. Somewhere up there are his mother and father in their black robes, released from their monastic cells for this special day. And dear Olympia—fifteen years old, four months now his adoring bride and already pregnant with their first child; and her well-to-do parents, delighted to have this ambitious young man for a son-in-law.

  Passing down the aisle, he catches the Logothete’s eye and his quick, encouraging smile. Only twenty-two years old, Psellus reflects with a rush of satisfaction, and I am now his Chief of Staff, First Secretary of the Office of Barbarians, with a fine new house, and a salary of seventy-two gold solidi a year, and much more than that under the guise of ‘gifts’ that a senior bureaucrat is entitled to collect. No one in memory has come so far so fast. And then he considers again, If only we lived in happier times.

  He kneels at the foot of the throne where Michael and Zoe sit side by side, swathed in their brocaded wraps like a pair of elegant corpses. Michael sick unto death; Zoe, a prisoner in her chambers, paraded only on these few occasions in the year.

  Then the Emperor leans forward stiffly—as he will do dozens more times throughout this long day—to kiss the honoree’s head, to fasten the collar of office around his neck, and hand him the ivory plaque inscribed with his name and title. It is all Psellus can do to suppress a shudder: those bloodless lips, those eyes swollen nearly shut with the dropsy, the breath—well, try not to breathe… He rises and steps backward from the throne, feeling the weight of the collar on his neck. Applause from the spectators. It is all just a piece of theater, in which they are simultaneously actors and audience. But where would the empire be without theater?

  “A toast?” The Logothete extends his wine glass and clinks rims with Psellus. “To your bright future.”

  “I owe it all to you, sir.”
/>
  “Nonsense, my boy, not at all. Your public speeches, the matter so learned, the expression so apt. The Emperor is charmed by your eloquence—especially in one so young.”

  Psellus lowers his eyes modestly, but it’s true. He has labored hard over them—models of explication on a dozen different subjects; they are, if he says so himself, brilliant.

  They are sitting together in Eustathius’s private dining room, the small one at the back of the house, to which only particular guests are invited. A beautifully appointed room, where part of the Logothete’s butterfly collection hangs on the walls. Psellus squeezes his eyes, under their heavy brows, and passes a hand over his head. It’s been a tiring day. The ceremony in the throne room, followed by the procession to the cathedral, where the Blues and Greens chanted their acclamations; then hours of standing through the liturgy as they venerated the right arm of John the Baptist in its jeweled sheath. Then the banquet. The last thing Psellus wants is more to eat, but this intimate late-night supper is a mark of favor and friendship not to be refused.

  Eustathius dips a prawn in cumin-laced sauce, places it between his teeth, crunches it and sucks the meat. “Delicious. Try them, my chef’s specialty.”

  Shellfish don’t agree with Psellus, but dutifully he selects one and tastes it.

  “Another toast,” says Eustathius, refilling Psellus’s glass. “Confusion to our enemies.”

  “Amen to that, sir.”

  The Logothete waves the servants away and lowers his voice. “The Guardian of Orphans, our ruler in all but name. That man, my God. The arrogance of a demi-god wedded to the soul of a bookkeeper. We’re at war with him, I don’t need to tell you that, and he is winning.”

  “Surely, your influence—”

  “—is shrinking by the day. I’m not listened to anymore. It’s the war of course. Sicily. Costing us a fortune and no end in sight. And John has used it as an excuse to invade my office, questioning my accounts, cutting my budget to the bone, doing everything he can to destroy the Department. ‘No more field agents,’ says John, ‘we can’t afford them, or the couriers. And who needs them anyway when my brother Stephen tells us everything we need to know?’” Eustathius drains his glass, pours himself another. He’s getting drunk. There is nothing here that they haven’t talked about many times before, but the old man can’t leave it alone.

  “And we learn nothing from Maniakes?” Psellus says.

  “You’ve seen his dispatches. They say less and less. The man’s in a funk, doesn’t know what to do and won’t admit it. All he does is ask for more troops, which we can’t spare him. I’ve no idea how things really stand there and now I have no other ears to the ground.”

  “Odd Tangle-Hair, sir?”

  “What? Oh, that young barbarian? Yes, I was sorry to lose touch with him. He did tell us one or two things that were useful. It’s been what? Nearly two years now? I wonder if he’s still alive. Probably not, there’ve been so many casualties.”

  “I liked him.”

  “I did too, but it never pays to become too attached to these mercenaries, you know. They live hard and die young.” A dismissive shrug.

  Psellus nods, yet he hopes that Odd is still alive. He invested a good deal of time in him. Odd was his project, the living proof of his theory that barbarians were educable. “Could we ask Maniakes about him?”

  “Not without revealing that we even know the fellow, which we have no plausible excuse for. You can’t enquire about your spy from the man you’re spying on. One question leads to another. No, too risky. Best to let it go.”

  “We’ve been paying his wife a small subsidy.”

  “Yes, well, that’s gone by the board. Frivolous expenses, you know. John again.”

  “I should look her up. I’ve neglected her. I invited her to my wedding but she didn’t come. Something gives me the idea there’s another man.”

  “Really? Well, not surprising.”

  They were silent for a while.

  “I’m getting too old for the battle,” the Logothete sighs. “I don’t relish it anymore. I have a villa on Rhodes. I long to retire to it, doze in the sun, listen to the birds…”

  He has aged lately. Thinner, frailer. Psellus was never close to his own father, but he feels a great love for this gentle man with his wry smile and kind eyes. He chose Psellus for advancement from an office-full of young aspirants, attracted by his passion for the work. Psellus isn’t from a rich family; he needs to succeed.

  “But you won’t, will you, sir—retire?”

  The Logothete reaches out a hand and touches him on the arm. “Don’t look so alarmed. No, not yet. That’s what John’s hoping for. Cheer up now, this is a happy occasion, we’ll weather the storm. And I expect great things from you. But you must be careful, make friends wherever you can, do favors—you can afford to now. You’re too young yet to have enemies at court, John sees no threat in you, but that won’t last. He will try to intimidate you, use you.”

  “He won’t succeed, sir.” Psellus dares not admit that the Guardian of Orphans scares him.

  “I know he won’t. Well—” Eustathius pushes the jug toward him. “More wine? Another prawn?”

  23

  The Last Man in the World

  [Odd resumes his narrative]

  Soon after Epiphany, whether moved by the prayers of the priests, or maybe by his horoscope (for he was addicted to astrology), Maniakes seemed to regain a measure of his old energy. Moses told me that the general was studying his Strategikon with new attention, poring over it day and night, underlining passages, talking to himself about this or that stratagem and chuckling. Finally, one rainy day around the end of January, he called a meeting of his war council—the first in many months. He had given up his tent for a comfortable country house a mile from the city. So, while the rest of us slept on army cots or on the ground, our general was enjoying a soft down bed and other comforts. This did not endear him.

  Besides Harald and me, there were Arduin the Lombard, William the Norman and his brother Drogo, Stephen of course, and several Greek officers of the Household Cavalry--in particular a very capable young man named Katakalon, who had risen to favor lately.

  It amused me to study how this group arranged itself. No one smiled. There was no conversation. We slouched in chairs turned at angles so that we could avoid each other’s eyes, avoid even accidentally touching one another. The room smelled of defeat and recrimination. Whatever our general had in mind, we sensed that this was his last throw of the dice. That if this failed we would soon have to give up the siege and sail away. The ships’ bottoms were already starting to rot; they’d been in the water too long, and the crews were in shockingly bad condition.

  “Tunnels!” shouted Maniakes. “Here, here, here, here and here.” He stabbed at points along a sketch of the city’s land wall.

  “Five?” murmured Katakalon. “Those walls must be forty feet of solid stone at the base The labor of it, we haven’t the men.”

  “No.” Maniakes grinned and chuckled, disturbingly like a madman. “Only one of them has to punch all the way through, but the enemy won’t know which one, d’you see?”

  “And who will dig them?” said Arduin.

  “Conscript the village men and boys. I’ll put you in charge of that. If they aren’t enough, your own men will dig. All they’re good for.”

  “My men,” Arduin answered curtly, did not come her to burrow like moles.”

  “You’re men came her to obey orders,” Maniakes snarled. “If you need more, take rowers from the ships.”

  “My rowers? Never.” Stephen was on his feet, the muscles bulging in his arms—the arms of a man who’d started life as a ship’s caulker, a common laborer.

  Hate flashed in Maniakes’s eyes. If he hits him, I thought, we’re all finished.

  “And who will fight their way through this tunnel?” This was Harald, in a low voice. Surprisingly, as everyone else got angrier, he got quieter. I translated.

  “Why,
the Emperor’s Wineskins, of course.” Maniakes turned on him with a smile that I didn’t quite like. “Surely, Prince, you wouldn’t allow anyone else to steal your glory? Your men didn’t like the heights”—referring to the ‘tortoises’—“maybe the depths suit you better?” It was a sneer and everyone knew it. “And your bandon will take the lead.”

  Well, what could Harald say to that?

  As we left, Moses gave me a wink and a nod.

  We’d been four days digging under the wall between the North and South bastions. First, the great, bronze-sheathed battering rams cracking the hard stone, then the pick and shovel men widening the openings and shoring them with timber. Arrows, rocks, boiling water poured down on us from above had taken a toll.

  “Sst! I hear something.”

  “What?” Harald was right behind me, bent nearly double in the low-roofed passage, fifteen feet beneath the wall. Behind him, Halldor, Gorm, the others.