The Varangian

by Bruce Macbain

  Intrigued, I followed, and stole silently behind them, keeping to the shadows along the wall of the side aisle.

  “Majesty, it is not a toy, not a plaything,” the Papias protested. “It is the outward sign of your divinity. If the vulgar mob, or the barbarians, understood it, it would lose the power to awe.”

  “Do as you’re told, man,” the boy answered him curtly. “I want to show her. We’ll go for a ride together, won’t we, dear?” If the girl made any reply, it was too faint to hear.

  The golden Throne of Solomon glowed dully on its podium in the light that sifted through the clerestory above. The two golden lions stood motionless on either side of it, their jaws open, their long tails upraised, and, in the tree, the jewel-eyed birds did not stir on their gilded branches. All was silence except for the echoing voices of the Emperor and the Papias. At the end of the hall a purple tapestry, embroidered with square-shouldered Roman eagles, hung from ceiling to floor and stretched across the whole width of the chamber, some forty paces. I had been here many times but had never been close enough to see that this curtain was, in fact, divided up the middle, just behind the throne. From even a few feet away you couldn’t see the separation. The Papias held a fold of it aside now and they passed through into the darkness, their voices growing fainter.

  What was back there? I’d gone too far to turn back now. It’s the sort of fellow I am and just as I had once followed old Vainamoinen down into the depths of the Louhi’s Copper Mountain, I waited a moment, drew a deep breath, and crept after them. Behind the curtain, I discovered a flight of a dozen stone steps leading downward. At the foot of them, the Papias lit a lamp, bringing the chamber and its contents to life. Two brass wheels, each as wide as my two arms outstretched, stood on stanchions with ropes around them as thick as ships’ cables that ran into apertures in the floor. Next to these was an array of bellows similar to those of a dromon’s fire siphon with handles for two men to work in tandem.

  “Tell her, Papias, show her how it works,” Calaphates commanded.

  “But Majesty,” the official protested again, “only a handful of people ever see this mystery. The men who operate it have their tongues removed...”

  “Well, we won’t remove her tongue, will we—her clever tongue that knows so many tricks,” Calaphates laughed. “Go on, now, just as you explained it to me.”

  The Papias sighed. “Water and air make it all work, just water and air, but the force of it is immense when exerted on a single spot. The ancient scientists of Alexandria called it ‘hydraulics’ and we are the inheritors of their wisdom.” In spite of the man’s reluctance to speak, there was no mistaking the note of pride in his voice—pride in the genius of the Greeks. “When this wheel is turned,” he tapped the nearer one, “it opens a sluice and water from the Reservoir of Aspar—you’ve seen it, Majesty, you know how vast it is—flows through pipes into a chamber far below us and the weight of it lifts the piston in its shaft. But great care is needed, the wheel must be turned only a little. Too much water and—well, there could be an accident.

  “Now this piston is made from a single enormous tree trunk thirty feet tall, hollowed out with the two halves glued together and banded with brass. You see the tip of it here and the steel rod that projects from it through the slit in the curtain to the back of the throne. The throne itself is only slats of wood, gilded and jeweled, and not as heavy as it looks. To the audience watching in front, from a certain distance, in dim light, the throne appears to float in the air as the piston rises. Meanwhile, other slaves pump these bellows to deliver air to the lions, the birds, and the organ. That is where the sound comes from, like this.” He puffed out his cheeks and whistled. “To lower the throne, you turn back the first wheel to close the sluice and turn the second one, again slowly, which allows the water to run out into the harbor. Now, the Caliph of Baghdad, it is said, has a similar …”

  From my hiding place, I listened with astonishment. From that first day when I saw the throne soar above my head I was convinced that some sort of machine worked it, that all their magic and mummery was only deception practiced by the Greeks upon us simpleminded barbarians. Still, I could never have imagined an apparatus like this. The labor of it! And all for mere show. On such fictions did this empire sustain itself. And it was a well-kept secret indeed. Even Psellus—my dear friend Psellus who taught me so much—had always evaded my questions about it.

  “Thank you for your learned explanation, Papias,” said Calaphates, cutting the man off. “Now we will ascend, my little friend and I.”

  “But Majesty…”

  “Obey me, damn you!” the young Emperor, dragging the girl by the hand, turned and came back up the stairs and through the curtain. I only just had time to dodge ahead of them and crouch behind a pillar.

  “Take us up now,” he shouted.

  Without the noise of the lions, the birds, and the organ to mask it, you could hear the mechanism groan. The throne rose, and rose. I peeped around the pillar and followed it with my eyes.

  “Ooh!” the girl squealed, “make it go down, please, my head’s spinning.”

  “You don’t like it up here?”

  “It scares me awful.”

  “And what if I did this?” Calaphates gripped her wrist, put a hand behind her back and shoved her to the edge of the seat. She shrieked and began to cry. He liked her fear, I could hear it in his voice. “You want down? Kiss me first.” He pressed the girl’s face to his while she squirmed and struggled.

  This went on for a minute or more. I’d seen enough and was wondering how I could make my escape when suddenly doors at the end of the hall banged open and in marched the Guardian of Orphans, looking angrier than I’d ever seen him. “Tracked you down at last, you scamp. Come down at once. Who permitted this? I’ll burn him alive.”

  “The Papias, Uncle—his idea, his fault…” Calaphates’s voice cracked and faltered.

  That functionary now appeared and sank to his knees before John. The throne began its descent. “I’ll deal with you later, Papias,” John snarled. “Calaphates, you had an appointment an hour ago with the Logothete and me to discuss the day’s business. And instead I find you here? You have papers to sign. God knows, I don’t ask you to read them. And then you’re having dinner with your mother, both of your mothers. Have you forgotten that too? the Empress—we still need to conciliate that woman, the people love her, Christ only knows why. We can’t keep her locked up all the time. Maria is trying to win her over, be her friend. You’re expected to join them. Try to smile for a change.”

  “But I hate Zoe,” Calaphates whined. “The way I have to call her ‘Mistress’ makes me feel like biting off my tongue and spitting it out. Why can’t we just kill her, Uncle?”

  “Because she is the only thing that keeps you on the throne. Will you ever understand this?”

  “I can do whatever I like, I’m the Emperor. Uncle Constantine says so.”

  “My brother is a fatuous ass.” The upper lip curled, the voice dripped with sarcasm. “Now come with me. The Papias will put the girl under arrest. Do you understand, Calaphates, that you’ve cost this child her life? Pity.”

  Calaphates, with his eyes downcast, slid from the throne and trotted behind his uncle, followed by the weeping girl, the wretched Papias, and the burly slave, who tongue-less, would never regale his friends with this escapade.

  I waited’til I could no longer hear their voices and slipped away. My brain buzzed with thought. I would keep my new knowledge to myself but I now had something to report to Psellus, for what it was worth. Calaphates was refusing to play his part as the Empress’s dutiful son. There were cracks in the regime.

  38

  Constantine Nobilissimus

  February, 1042

  Michael Calaphates and his favorite uncle, dressed in their hunting leathers, stretched their legs to the fire and drank hot spiced wine from golden cups. Calaphates was on his third or fourth, his young head beginning to spin. Constantine took small
sips and swallowed almost nothing. Wine hurt his stomach anyway, but more than that he needed all his wits this evening. There was a reason why he had spent the past three days in the company of this childish, coldblooded, possibly crazed young man. He had invited him to spend a few days at his Thracian hunting lodge, just the two of them, nephew and uncle, roughing it in the bracing air, coursing after small game in the hills, like friends, like comrades.

  Calaphates was a poor horseman and a worse shot but his uncle had carefully instructed the beaters and trackers. One of them dragged a halfdead fox from the jaws of the dogs, held it up by its ears, and offered it to Calaphates to dispatch. The boy giggled like a girl as he drove his javelin into its throat. Constantine applauded. “Well struck, Majesty! You’ve earned the brush.”

  Now Constantine refilled the boy’s cup. “Do you like your new stallion, Majesty?” He had made the boy a present of a white Arabian as well as a pack of prize wolfhounds.

  “’Course I do, Uncle. Thank you. And again, I ask you to call me ‘Michael’.”

  “But Majesty, you are our Emperor, I honor that. It pains me to say that there are some in the palace—in our own family—who do not.”

  “Uncle John.” Calaphates spat the words out.

  Constantine offered a sad, sympathetic smile and spread his hands. “Drink up, now, Majesty, and then I’ll have Cook bring in our dinner.”

  Calaphates drained his goblet, letting the wine run out his mouth and drip from the scant hairs on his chin. “I drink to you, Nobilissimus”—he slurred the esses—“to your new appointment.”

  “So kind, Majesty. I hope I shall be worthy. It’s a heavy burden you lay on me.”

  Calaphates had just created Constantine Grand Domestic, that is, Commander-in-Chief, with the rank of nobilissimus, a dignity second only to the Emperor himself. It was of no concern to him that his uncle had never drawn a sword, never seen a battlefield. Until now, Constantine had held no position in the state. Now he commanded the army and navy.

  Constantine refilled his nephew’s goblet. He leaned closer to the boy and spoke in a low voice, although there was no one to overhear them but a single servant who loitered near the wall. “Majesty, you won’t mind, I hope, if I give you a warning? Things are happening that disturb me. I feel I must speak. Your three cousins, the children of your father’s sister—you hardly know them, none of us do—but they are ambitious young men and they are in the city now. John has brought them here and, behind your back, he entertains them, gives them money, encourages them to hope for—I’m not sure what—your crown, I fear?”

  Calaphates swallowed hard, nearly choking. “Why?”

  “Because he knows he can’t control you anymore. You’re grown up now, a real Emperor, a mind of your own. You don’t need him now. But your uncle is used to being obeyed—by the sycophants who surround him, by those filthy orphans of his, and yes, even by us, his own flesh and blood.”

  As he spoke, the memory flashed through Constantine’s mind of his childhood home: the wretched poverty, the brutal father who had crushed his sons’ testicles in his hands, and John, who treated the younger children like his personal slaves, teaching them to steal pears from the neighbor’s garden, even little Maria, and bring them to him. He would choose the best for himself and leave the spoiled ones for them.

  “Those papers that he gives you to sign every day,” Constantine went on. “Well, of course, you don’t have time to read them all as carefully as you might. But one of them was nothing less than a grant of immunity for those young men if they should be discovered conspiring against Your Majesty. It’s true. I have my spies too, you know, just as John has his.”

  “Uncle, what should I do? I’ll have them killed, I don’t care what I signed. We’ll ride back to the city at once.” Calaphates was on his feet, staring around him as if he expected to see assassins leap from the dark corners of the room.

  “Now, now, now, Majesty, sit down, yes, take a breath, yes, that’s better. It will be all right, you have me on your side. John’s great mistake is that he gives no one else credit for brains. We can return to the city tomorrow if you like, although personally I’m enjoying myself here. But when we do, you will be careful to give nothing away to John, either by word or expression of your face. Can you do that Majesty? We must wait a while longer before we beard the lion in his den. We must sharpen our weapons.”

  “What d’you mean, Uncle?”

  “I’m new in my command. I need to make sure of the loyalty of my senior officers.”

  “Good God, Uncle, you think it will come to civil war?”

  “One must be prepared. You must trust me to know when the moment is right. Agreed? Excellent.” He touched his nephew’s knee and gave it a squeeze. “And now to dinner. I’ve worked up an appetite. How about you?”

  The Emperor of the Romans replied with an uneasy smile.

  March

  It was Constantine who had invited them to the little family dinner in his apartment. John had accepted with an ill grace and was angry about something, that much was clear. The two brothers made an odd pair: both beardless, both middle-aged, but where John was big and solidly built, with a spreading paunch, Constantine was thin, almost cadaverous. And then there was their costume: John’s, as always, a shabby monk’s robe, Constantine’s a gorgeous plumage of silks and furs.

  Waiters removed the remains of the fish course. The talk had been desultory so far.

  “I want a wife,” said Calaphates, apropos of nothing.

  “You’re too young,” John replied around a mouthful of food. He was drunk. He had become drunk at lunch, and now he was more drunk. “What d’you want with a wife anyway? Don’t you force yourself on every female in the palace under the age of forty? I swear the boy’s part goat.” He licked his lips and smiled at his own joke, glancing around the table.

  Calaphates threw his napkin down. “Do not call me ‘boy’, Uncle. I am the Emperor.”

  “Yes, and don’t ever forget who made you one.”

  “Now, John,” Constantine said mildly, “we could just put out feelers to the Bulgars, the Rus. Wasn’t there some ambassador here a few years ago trying to shop Yaroslav’s daughter?”

  Calaphates grinned. “Just what I want—a wild barbarian girl. What do you think of that, Mother?”

  But before Maria could answer, John thumped the table. “No wife. End of discussion.” He reached for the decanter. As usual, he was drinking more than anyone else. Maria, who sat next to him, laid a hand on his arm. He threw it off.

  Conversation flagged. Then George, who had said nothing so far, began a rambling monologue about the condition of the Imperial vestments and the price of silk. His voice trailed off when he realized no one was listening. The waiters carried in a steaming haunch of venison and began to carve.

  Then Constantine, dabbing at his lips, said, “By the way, I’ve issued a contract for refurbishing the fleet and adding ten new warships. I’ve consulted with my captains, they’re all for it. I’m sure you’ll agree, Majesty?” He exchanged a look with Calaphates. This was the moment they had planned, the moment Constantine had waited all his life for.

  “Absolutely, Uncle, quite so.”

  John’s lip curled. “Your captains, brother? And who are you to decide this? You call yourself ‘Grand Domestic’? It’s a joke. I didn’t approve this promotion of yours. Calaphates, you should have asked me first. My brother is wholly unqualified for the position. The fact is, the treasury cannot afford this expense. Out of the question. Next time, Constantine, ask me before you go consulting anyone.”

  Constantine carefully laid down his cutlery. “John, you’ve lorded it over us long enough. You are not our master. You are finished, Brother John.”

  Maria and George stopped chewing in mid-mouthful. Calaphates smiled at his plate.

  “Now, brothers,” Maria pleaded, “there is no cause for such talk. We’re a family. If we don’t stand united—why, well, we’re lost, aren’t we?” She gl
anced anxiously from one man to the other.

  John stabbed a chunk of meat with his knife as though he were burying it in his brother’s chest. The bloody juices spattered his hand. “A family, yes, and I am the head of it. I make the decisions, I do the thinking.” He sawed off a piece and chewed it savagely.

  “But Uncle John,” said Calaphates with a smile, “doesn’t that big, bulbous head of yours grow weary from so much thinking? What you need is a rest, Uncle—a long one. In a monastery, I think.”

  John’s face contorted in a look of astonishment. “Listen to the boy’s insolence. Constantine, I blame you for this. You think I don’t know how you toady to him, all the gifts, all the winking behind my back? It’s disgusting. Be careful, Brother, I fear we’ve raised a serpent in our bosom. This boy would gladly see us all destroyed, you as much as me.”

  “John, stop it.” Maria was looking desperate. “He isn’t a bad boy, not a serpent. If only Stephen were still alive to guide him.”

  “Maria, your husband couldn’t guide his right hand to his asshole. I accept the blame for putting him in charge of the fleet but I won’t make that mistake with little brother Constantine here.”

  She flared in anger. “You—you mind how you talk about Stephen. He had balls even if he hadn’t a brain.”

  In an instant, the carefully learned city manners were stripped away and all that was left was a family of Paphlagonian peasants snarling at each other. There was a long moment of shocked silence—broken by a loud horse laugh from Calaphates. “Good for you, Mother!”