The Varangian

by Bruce Macbain

  But the next morning brought bad news. Our men had spent the night stripping the dead and looking for survivors who might be worth enslaving. Stig went with them to search for his sons-in-law. One of the dead was Jafar, the younger of them, Stig’s favorite, I think, with the broken end of a cavalry lance in his back. This was a hard blow, but Stig took it like an Icelander. He carried the young man’s body in his arms to the tent and washed it, while he mouthed a silent prayer, whether to Allah or Odin, I still wonder. Then he and Moses dug a grave among the olive trees. He never shed a tear that I saw or mentioned Jafar’s name again.

  Worse news for us was that the Emir was nowhere to be found.

  They did find the Grand Vizier, however, under a heap of bodies. His enormous turban was gone. One damasked sleeve was ripped at the shoulder and his right arm hung limp at his side. He and the Emir and a few others had tried to escape disguised as women. The Emir had gotten away but the Vizier’s horse fell with him and he’d broken his shoulder.

  They brought him to Maniakes for questioning. It was only necessary for Moses to rap the Vizier’s foot with his riding whip and raise an eyebrow suggestively. His face turned the color of whey and he told us everything including that the Emir was headed back to Santo Stefano on the coast, where the transports were.

  “Excellent,” Maniakes crowed. “I left orders for Stephen to sail there with twenty dromons. He’ll trap them in the harbor. We need another day here to rest the horses. We’ll start after him tomorrow.”

  The Vizier was handed over to the Khazars to guard. The next morning he was found with his throat slit and his ears cut off. Moses never said he did it. He didn’t have to. Maniakes must have suspected, but he didn’t say anything either, at least not in my hearing. Some time later Moses presented me with two brown and shriveled scraps of hide, one with an earring in it; I kept them for a long time.

  At dawn we mounted our horses. Maniakes had offered to send me back to Syracuse in as much comfort as possible together with the Emir’s wives and the prisoners, but I refused. I wanted to see this through to the end. So I rode with my feet out of the stirrups and with Moses at my side to steady me.

  Two days’ ride brought us to the coast. There were no ships. Not the Emir’s and not Stephen’s. We had missed the Emir by a matter of hours, the townspeople told us. By now, he was on his way to Palermo. And where were our dromons?

  They arrived later that day. And now a thing happened that had long consequences, not foreseen by anyone—least of all by General George Maniakes, the victor of Troina.

  Stephen had hardly set foot on the dock before he began expostulating. The wind had been against him all the way, the waves too high in the strait. By Christ, he manned an oar himself. What more could he…? He never got to finish that sentence.

  Understand that Stephen was no weakling. He’d grown up rough, laboring as a caulker in a shipyard. But Maniakes towered over him the way Mount Aetna towers over lesser peaks. And his anger was just as volcanic. Not for the first time—and, unfortunately not the last—our general lost his mind. “Fucking moron!” he roared.

  One hammer blow in the face laid Stephen out. Blood streamed from his nose, he tried to stand, but Maniakes snatched up a length of ship’s rope that was lying nearby and began to beat him with it. One stroke, another, and another—Stephen cried out and put up his arms to shield his head, looked desperately around. Dozens of us stood there watching this, our mouths open in astonishment. Because this was no hapless cavalry officer. Stephen was an incompetent and no one respected him, but he was the Emperor’s brother-in-law. More important, he was John’s brother-in-law.

  He saw only one man in the crowd he could appeal to. Harald. Their ally. Stephen was the one who had recommended Harald for the Guard. This was no secret. Maniakes knew it, anyone who cared to know knew it. Stephen crawled to him while the blows continued to rain down on his back. He stretched out an arm, touched Harald’s knee. I wish I had the power to describe the play of emotion in Harald’s face at that moment, the swift calculation that flickered in his eyes.

  Harald winced, turned from him and stalked away. Maniakes watched him go, then tossed the rope aside. Two of Stephen’s petty officers helped him to his feet and up the gangway to his ship. The last we heard was a string of curses as he disappeared under the deck awning. The oars moved. The ship warped out.

  Where was he going? What would his revenge be?

  28

  Calaphates’s Tale

  He reaches a pudgy hand toward the plate and helps himself to another honey cake.

  “Put that back, you greedy thing.—And don’t give me that look.” His mother Maria slaps his hand. “Look how he stuffs himself.” She rolls her eyes, appeals to her brothers.

  “Oh, let the boy have another one,” Uncle Constantine smiles. “We want a happy boy today, we’re going to ask much of him.” He gives Calaphates a wink. The boy likes Uncle Constantine.

  They are in the dining room in Uncle John’s villa on the Horn. His mother has dragged him here this morning from their house in the city. And here is the whole family gathered together. And they are all looking at him. It makes him nervous. What has he done now? What is it all about? There’s some secret here—the way they exchange glances and have sent all the servants out of the room. Calaphates is getting bored again. His eyes wander, he squirms in his chair. He scratches at a pimple on his chin, draws a spot of blood.

  He doesn’t understand much but he understands how important his uncles are: Uncle Constantine, rich and generous with his money, always buying him things and taking him places, playing the role of indulgent father in Stephen’s absence; Uncle George, the Master of the Wardrobe, an important position with many duties; and Uncle John in his plain monk’s robe, who claims to be nothing more than a humble guardian of orphans. (Calaphates was taken to see the orphanage once by his uncle; it gave him nightmares for a week).

  All of them eunuchs. What would it feel like to be castrated? he wonders. He knows vaguely that their father did something to them when they were small to make them this way. He is fascinated by eunuchs. He has grown up among them, of course; the palace is filled with them, glossy skin, voices like flutes. Not like his skin, his honking voice. And all of them so very powerful. When he was a little boy he’d thought he might like to be one. Not any more, though. He has felt the stirrings of desire for a woman. He hasn’t had one yet, but soon he will.

  John seems to notice him for the first time. “Now, Calaphates, pay attention please.” There is a parchment on the table between them, he pushes it toward the boy—edged with gilt, covered with writing in purple ink. “Read it, if you like, and then put your signature on it. Take your time.”

  They know he can hardly read. He feels all their eyes on him as he traces the words with his finger and moves his lips. His tutor has given up on him. And the other palace boys, the sons of high officials and officers, make fun of him, of his walk, his laugh, how bad he is at games, how sometimes, when he’s nervous, he falls down in a faint. Though his given name is Michael, they call him Calaphates, Caulker, ridiculing his father’s low birth; and now even his own family calls him by the nickname. He hates it.

  “Adoption? The Empress Zoe?”

  “Just sign it,” says his mother. “You can do that much can’t you?”

  “It means,” says Constantine coming to his aid, “that the Empress will adopt you as her son.”

  He screws up his eyes with the effort of thinking what this means. Then takes the pen that Uncle John presses into his hand and scrawls a large M followed by a few squiggles. “Must I call her Mum now?”

  Maria pinches him hard on the cheek and hisses, “Just don’t ever forget who your real mother is.” Christ, he hates her, the witch. All red lips and nails, dead white skin and heavy jewelry so that she clanks when she walks. And never in his life a kind word for him.

  “You do understand what this means?” Uncle John frowns at him. “You will have the title of Caesar
and when Uncle Michael goes to heaven”—he crosses himself hastily and turns his eyes upward—“you will become our Emperor.”

  “But I don’t want to be the Emperor. It’s boring, you have to sit there for hours with nothing to do. People stare at you, I don’t like it when people stare at me.”

  “But,” Uncle Constantine cajoles, “you’d like to go up in the flying throne, wouldn’t you? Up and down, as often as you please?”

  “Is it really magic?”

  “Of course, it is.”

  “And I could go up and down whenever?”

  “As much as you like.”

  The boy is doubtful. “So what’s the magic word, then?”

  His uncle smiles. “Abramasax.”

  “I want to try it now.”

  But Constantine pushes him back in his chair. “I’m just teasing you, boy. You’ll learn the word when the time comes.”

  “Constantine, stop it.” John shoots his brother a pained look. “Stop filling the boy’s head with nonsense. He has little enough brain as it is.”

  Then Uncle George, who hasn’t seemed to be paying attention at all, says, “Will the Empress agree to this?”

  “She will,” John answers. “I will have her signature on this tonight.”

  “And does the Emperor consent?”

  “Naturally.”

  The Emperor. His other uncle—Michael the Fourth, the invisible presence in this room—who had been kind to him when he was little but now ignores him, too sick to care about anything except his own soul. They are already talking of their brother as though he were dead. And he, young Calaphates, will be Michael the Fifth? Why him? Why not Stephen, his father? Which reminds him … “When’s my father coming home?” It has been two years. He has trouble remembering the man now, except that he had broad shoulders and rough hands and would take him sailing sometimes and didn’t laugh at him.

  There is a long moment of silence in the room. He sees their eyes dart back and forth. Then Uncle John says, “I’ve had a letter from your father recently, he’s not with the fleet anymore, he’s in Italy, he says he likes it there very much.”

  “Why isn’t he with the fleet?”

  “Never mind about that. I expect we’ll be seeing him soon.”

  Calaphates sinks back in his chair and pouts. They’re always telling him to mind his own business, that things he overhears aren’t meant for his ears. But he isn’t as stupid as they think he is. And when he does become Emperor, that will change. Oh yes, he’ll show them who is master.

  29

  Zoe’s Tale

  She looks up, startled, and there he is, a black apparition in the trembling lamplight, in her bedroom! without a knock on the door, without the warning sound of a footstep.

  “Good evening, Zoe. They said you were in here. Do I find you ready for bed so soon? Well, I will only take a minute of your time.”

  John! For a moment she can’t breathe, the blood beats in her temples, she clutches her dressing gown to her throat. “How dare you come here without invitation? I am the Empress.”

  “Of course you are, Zoe. May I?” He draws a chair up to her bedside. “You’re looking very well.” He takes hold of her hand and draws his fingernail along the back of it. The soft flesh yields and springs back. It feels like a cockroach is walking on her. It takes all her strength not to pull away. “Remarkable skin for a woman of your age. You never seem to grow old.” His smile like curdled cream.

  But she knows she is old. She knows it in her aching knees when she kneels to pray; knows it in the heaviness in her chest when she lies in bed at night unable to sleep; knows it in the quaver in her voice, which she is struggling now to control. She is old, but, by The Virgin of Pharos, she will outlive this mincing capon, this devil, if it takes every atom of her being.

  “How have you been, Zoe? How do you spend your days?”

  “Talking to Christ,” she whispers.

  “Really. You surprise me. I thought only saints did that.”

  “Tell me what you want and then go away.”

  “All right. We need you to become Calaphates’s mother.”

  His mother! The child was pathetic, a half-wit, uneducated, undisciplined. He stole and lied. He’d had a succession of pets that all died mysteriously. Well, what could you expect from parents like Stephen and Maria? “He has a mother,” she says.

  John smiles again. “I believe Maria’s willing to part with him. I’ve brought the necessary document.”

  “So he can succeed to the throne through me and keep you Paphlagonian scum in power?”

  “Scum, is it? May I remind you, Zoe, that nobody forced you to marry our brother. You threw yourself at him—a mere boy. Disgusting, really. And your first husband? What should we say of him? Died opportunely? And now you regret it all? Too late, I’m afraid.

  I will sign nothing. Get out.”

  “Poor Zoe, I can make your life much more unpleasant than it is. Try me. On the other hand, if you cooperate perhaps we could permit the perfume business again? You’d like that wouldn’t you?”

  Her perfumery has been idle—ever since the ‘incident.’ The vats empty, the fires extinguished, her assistants dismissed. Only the smell lingers faintly on, in the draperies, the carpets, the furniture.

  “We could perhaps allow you a little more freedom?”

  She had tried to poison him two years ago. He knew it, she knew he knew it. But there had been no formal accusation, no admission. It was a fact that neither of them could afford to acknowledge. Her servants had been tortured in secret and forced to confess. Loyal Sgouritzes, that dear old man, burned with irons. All her people had been sent away and replaced by John’s picked guards. Her little dog had been found dead in the garden one morning—poisoned. Now, except on state occasions where she is led like a performing ape, to the audience hall, the hippodrome, the cathedral, she spends her days alone, without companions, without visitors. Her letters are opened, her every movement watched. She has thought of throwing herself on his mercy. But the man has no mercy.

  “I don’t believe my husband approves of this. I demand to see him.”

  “Your husband, Zoe, has recently returned to Thessaloniki to pray for a cure at the shrines. Didn’t you know?” It is a sneer. Of course, she doesn’t know. She knows nothing. “Now sign the fucking paper.” Suddenly his hand is gripping her wrist with a strength she wouldn’t have guessed. “Sign it and we can both go to bed.”

  She signs. What else can she do?

  And, as silently as he appeared, John is gone.

  After he has left, she goes to the little altar, where votive candles flicker in the dark. She lifts from it the little figurine wrapped in purple silk, lovingly unwraps it, holds it to her lips, kisses it, wets it with her tears. Her Christ. A luminous thing that is sometimes gold, and sometimes silver, and sometimes as red as blood. It speaks to her that way. And what it says to her now is “Be strong, Zoe. There will be another time. You won’t always be the weak one.”

  30

  An End At Last

  [Odd resumes his narrative]

  We returned to Syracuse, where the siege was drawing near the end of its second year. But things were different now—we could taste victory. Our one worry was Stephen. We had heard no more from him, but no one was fool enough to think that business was over. Maniakes tried to pass it off with a joke, but I saw worry in his eyes. He knew he had taken a step too far.

  I was hobbling about on one crutch now but I was still in pain and treating it with opium, which made my brain sluggish. Maniakes offered to send me back to Constantinople on the next ship with our other wounded. And I would have agreed—if it hadn’t been for Harald. “You’re my ears, Tangle-Hair,” he pleaded, gripping my hand, “my mouth. Whether you can walk or not doesn’t matter to me”—of course not, to him—“It won’t be long now, and the reward will be great. I’ll see you made a Varangian, one word from John is all it takes. Leave now and you lose everything.”

&n
bsp; Well, I reasoned (not thinking very clearly, you may say), the Logothete and Psellus have deserted me. Selene, too, for all I know. If I go back empty-handed now, I’m no better than a used-up cripple with no future. What can I do but stay with Harald? He’s all I’ve got. Maniakes shook his head in wonderment when I told him my decision.

  And, as Harald promised, it wasn’t much longer. Syracuse fell in less than a month after our victory at Troina. Even though the Emir had slipped through our fingers, we had his tent, his banners, his wives, his money chests, his prize stallions, and numbers of his high-ranking chieftains. All these we paraded under the walls of the city. The defenders made one last desperate sortie. Their commander, Ibn al-Thumnah, led them in a charge against the part of our lines where the Normans were posted. And here happened one of those remarkable opportunities in battle that give a man lasting fame among his countrymen. The Norman William de Hauteville—the horseshoe bender, the equal of Maniakes and Harald in stature—challenged al-Thumnah to single combat. They were both mounted on big chargers, armored head to knee in ringmail hauberks, and carried shields and lances. They came together with a crash of steel on steel. The Saracen’s horse was driven back on its haunches and threw its rider. With a shout of triumph, William leapt to the ground and swung at al-Thumnah’s head with his sword, cracking it like an eggshell. And that is how William came by the nickname Bras-de-Fer, or Iron Arm. He sawed through the neck and held the head up while the Normans cheered themselves hoarse. A fine deed, a brilliant deed—if only it hadn’t rankled in Maniakes, who felt that it should have been him holding up that head.

  The Saracen defenders threw down their arms and marched out. They were starved, hollow-cheeked, dirty, some leaning on the arms of comrades, and were greeted by jeers and catcalls from our side but they held their heads high although they knew that chains and a life of slavery awaited them. They were brave men who had done their duty and more.