The Varangian

by Bruce Macbain

“Calaphates, excuse yourself from the table,” John commanded. “This conversation has taken an ugly turn, not for your ears.”

  “Oh, no, Uncle. I’m enjoying myself. This is better than the pantomimes.”

  “Of course, His Majesty must stay,” Constantine said, laying his hand on his nephew’s shoulder. It is you who must leave, John. Leave now, leave at once!” Constantine’s voice cracked in a shrill falsetto.

  John struck out with his arm, sweeping everything off the table. Silver plates clattered to the floor, glassware smashed. He lurched to his feet, knocking over his bench. His cheeks—those immovable slabs of white fat—quivered with anger. They had never seen him like this. “I will leave. I will take myself away. And you’ll see how the senators, the heads of bureaus, will follow me, how every man of sense in this city will follow me. And in a week, when you discover that you know nothing about governing the Empire, you will all be begging me to come back.”

  Maria wrung her hands; helpless tears made tracks in her face powder. George looked as if he had been smacked with a board. Constantine and Calaphates shared a secret look of triumph.

  The waiters busied themselves cleaning up the mess on the floor. Except for one, who slipped out of the room unnoticed—one of the Logothete’s spies.

  And John was right. He boarded his yacht and sailed, not to his mansion on the Horn, but to Prusa, across the Propontis, far enough away to frighten them and bring them to their senses. And half the court did follow him, Maria and George among them. He reigned there like a king. A week passed. A week in which Constantine and his ships’ captains and regimental commanders laid their plans, in which nobles and officials who hated John were sounded out, one of them being the Logothete. Then a letter was sent, stamped with the Imperial signet, begging John’s pardon, asking him to return, assuring him that he would find everything just as he would wish.

  So John came back. Constantine Nobilissimus and the Emperor stood together on the palace roof, a cold wind whipping their cloaks around them, looking down at the Great Harbor as the yacht sailed in.

  “Give the signal, Majesty,” Constantine murmured.

  The yacht was almost at its mooring post. Calaphates raised his right arm. A warship darted out, came alongside and threw out grappling lines. Marines swarmed over the side. If you listened hard, you could hear the shouting. If you squinted into the morning sun, you could see John looking up to the palace, shaking his fist. You couldn’t see the expression on his face. But you could imagine it.

  The warship departed, taking the Guardian of Orphans to the monastery of Monobatae, on a small island in the sea, where, in due course, he was blinded.

  Now Constantine ruled the family and the empire.

  39

  Tempted

  Gone? Just like that?

  The city was stunned. And, if the Guardian of Orphans could fall, then who was safe? Constantine’s people ransacked John’s offices in his home and in the palace, seizing his private papers—great stacks of them. It would be the labor of weeks to study them all for evidence incriminating his cronies, making note of his enemies, tracing embezzled funds, building a case against him. Meanwhile, there was tight-lipped fear. No one knew what would happen next. Certain people made haste to leave the city for long vacations. One of those was Eustathius, the Logothete.

  The orphans did not fare well. Those who were old enough to have served John as thugs or spies were interrogated and then tossed out in the street to fend for themselves—no more free room and board at the State’s expense. The younger ones were simply neglected. It wasn’t long before they ran away or stayed to roam the orphanage like packs of feral dogs. Eventually a battalion of monks and nuns was sent in to restore order; but that was only weeks later.

  Meanwhile, Calaphates moved swiftly against his cousins, the ones whom his uncle John was supposedly raising up against him. Two of the young men were barely in their twenties, the other just fourteen. Since John’s banishment, they had been hiding in a house he had provided for them. Calaphates located them, with Constantine’s help, and invited them to dinner, showing them every mark of courtesy and affability and sending them off with expensive presents.

  The next morning he ordered them to be castrated.

  And this odious task was assigned to the Varangians. Harald ordered me—as some kind of punishment or just to dirty my hands—to see it done. I refused. So did many others—even Halldor, to his credit. Finally, a group of the younger Guards was dispatched to do the deed. They were supposed to arrest the youths quietly and take them to Noumera prison. But the boys cried bloody murder and ran out of the house. Our men chased them down the street, ripped off their clothing and cut their balls off in broad daylight while they shrieked and appealed to passersby for help. It caused a panic in the neighborhood and it couldn’t be kept quiet. The older two died at once; the boy lingered for a few days.

  For us, this was a humiliating fiasco. The men were very angry when they heard about it. “We are the Emperor’s Wineskins,” they protested, “an honorable regiment, not common assassins.” Harald, defending himself, made the mistake of openly blaming the Emperor. This was just what Calaphates had been waiting for.

  He and his uncle distrusted us—they knew that Harald owed his promotion to John and had carried out his orders. But, while Constantine was canny enough to try and win Harald over, Calaphates simply detested us. And so he formed a new bodyguard for himself made up of young eunuchs whom he had purchased in the slave market some time previously. They were mostly Slavs, I think, but he called them his ‘Scythians’ after the name of some ancient tribe. He dressed them in outlandish costumes of checked jackets and boots and tall pointed hats, and equipped them with hatchets and bows.

  One morning at dawn, heralds accompanied by these Scythians arrived at our barracks in Saint Mamas and at the Brazen Gate to announce that we were all relieved or our duties and confined to quarters until further notice. The charge was disloyalty. I happened to be at the barracks. So was Harald, sleeping off a night of drinking. It was a startling way to be awakened.

  And it got worse.

  Our men crowded into the dining hall, as many as could fit, others jammed the corridors and stairways. All of them shouting threats and curses—at the Greeks, at Harald. They didn’t know who to be angry at, they just knew they were angry. Quite a few threatened to resign their commissions and go home—to Sweden, to Gardariki, or to Iceland (these included Halldor, Bolli, and Ulf, among others). Harald jumped up on a table and shouted back, but he was drowned out. He tried turning his back on them, he tried stamping and throwing things, and finally, when he could make himself heard above the din, he was reduced to begging them to just be patient awhile.

  Later that morning, Harald called me to a private meeting. He was all conciliation.

  “Tangle-Hair, we’ve had our differences, dammit, but that’s all over now, isn’t it? You’re a clever fellow. I mean, you are my skald, it’s your job to advise me. Halldor’s loyal and all that, but not a quick thinker like you. It’s all gone wrong. Not my fault. These fucking Greeks with no balls...”

  I knew exactly what he was thinking. The Paphlagonians—the people he had invested his career in—were turning against each other, and against him. His position was crumbling, events had slipped out of his control, he suddenly felt himself isolated and he didn’t know what to do. It showed in his face, in the way he paced furiously up and down the room, tugging at his long moustaches.

  “Then why not pack it in, Harald?” I said. “Go to Kiev, collect Yelisaveta, go home to Norway, kick your half-brother off the throne, and claim your kingdom. Surely you’re rich enough now? It’s what you’ve been threatening to do for years—why wait any longer?”

  “Oh, yes?” He stopped pacing, took a deep breath through his nostrils, and stared at me hard. “Maybe that’s what you’d like me to do, heh? Make room for you? Is that it?”

  “Harald, you asked—”

  “Well, I won’t. I’l
l leave when I’m ready. I won’t be driven out.” His fist was an inch from my face. It was hard not to flinch.

  “All right, look, calm yourself. If you aren’t going to run, then you have to fight. Calaphates is a fool, but Constantine is shrewd enough to know when he’s gone too far and needs to pull back. We will guard our Greek masters whether they like it or not, and pay ourselves out of the treasury if we have to.”

  I never knew a man change moods as many times in a minute as Harald could. Now his face broke into a wolfish grin and he clapped me on the shoulder. “Yes, Tangle-Hair, right you are. We fight!”

  Within the hour, Harald and I led three banda of Varangians into the palace. We took up our stations at the gates, in the throne room, at the door to the treasury, all the places we were accustomed to guard. The Scythians took one look at us, flung down their useless weapons, and fled. Calaphates fled, too, to his private apartment, and wasn’t seen again for three days. Constantine approached us and tried to pretend that the whole thing was a mistake. He looked unwell and several times clutched his stomach and groaned. He’s frightened, I thought. He knows the mad dog has slipped its leash.

  Calaphates, having failed to rid himself of us, then struck out in a different direction. He declared war on the aristocracy. Dozens of arrest warrants were signed and Harald, who was determined to get back in favor, ordered us to carry them out. He and Constantine had a meeting.

  I don’t know exactly what was said; Halldor translated for him. But we found ourselves day after day dragging these men from their homes or stopping them at the harbor or the city gates as they tried to flee. We hunted for them in cellars and in closets. We pulled them from the arms of their wives. We found one crouched in a grain bin with a bushel basket over his head. Some of them fought us, most came meekly.

  And then, to take their places in the Senate, Calaphates appointed anyone willing to pay handsomely for that cheapened honor. One of those, I learned, was my wife’s seducer, Alypius.

  Monday, April 12

  Around midday, Psellus sent his carriage to our house with an urgent invitation to call upon him. Selene and I left the children with their nurse and came at once. He and Olympia met us at the door. He had deep circles under his eyes, and Olympia’s pleasant face was pinched with fatigue. Plainly, neither of them was sleeping. Our wives embraced and kissed cheeks while Psellus drew me inside. This was the first time the four of us had been together since the Zoe escapade. The shadow of that sad night still hung over us, but it had made us closer comrades than ever.

  We sat at the table in his large handsome dining room and ate from a platter of lamb and ham, leftovers from the family’s Easter dinner of the night before.

  “We live in terror, Odd. In the palace. No one speaks. We avoid each other’s eyes. No one knows who’ll be taken next. It might be me. I’m no aristocrat but, with Eustathius in poor health, I am the acting Logothete now. I’ve tried my best not to make enemies but I’m no partisan of Constantine’s either. And it’s you Varangians doing it—taking people away in the middle of the night. I know, I know, not your wish, but still…”

  He jumped up from the table, went over to a chest by the wall, and returned holding a ringmail shirt that drooped from his hands to his knees. It would have been a good fit for someone twice his size. “I shall wear this from now on under my tunic. But it’s heavy. I never imagined. How do you bear the weight of such a thing?”

  “A tight belt helps,” I said, trying not to laugh. “But this is nonsense. If someone comes at you with a spear, I suggest running away. A strong thrust will punch a hole in that thing anyway.”

  He looked sheepish. “It will? Well … well, I will carry a dagger on me.” He let the shirt drop in a heap on the floor and sank wearily back in his chair. Olympia touched his hand and made a brave smile.

  “It’s all about Harald,” I said. “He’s made up his mind to win Constantine’s favor just as he had John’s. Whatever it takes. And in the end, he’ll fail. They’ll never trust him. They just haven’t figured out how to get rid of him.”

  “But what about the Guard?” Psellus said. “Where is their loyalty? Everything may depend on that in case—” He didn’t finish the thought. In case of revolution.

  “There are six hundred of us, I can’t vouch for all. Many of the new men don’t care one way or another, but the older ones, the ones who go back to Basil’s day, are for Zoe and against Calaphates. Some of them have come to me privately to say they are ashamed to be acting like police thugs. It hurts their pride and they’re angry about it. Angry at Harald.”

  Psellus turned thoughtful eyes on me. “And you, Odd? If the men deserted Harald? The Logothete still wants to make you Commandant of the Guard, if he has it in his power. What would you say to that?”

  “This comes from him?”

  “It does. He’d tell you himself but he’s keeping close to home. Surely you’re tempted?”

  I didn’t answer for a minute. I tried to catch Selene’s eye but she frowned and looked away. She hadn’t spoken at all so far which was unusual for her. “In the end it may not matter much who heads the Guard,” I said. “If we tried to remove Calaphates—that’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?—I don’t know. In two-hundred years the Varangians have never overthrown an Emperor. It’s a step that once taken can never be taken back. Besides we aren’t the only troops in the city. There’s the Household Cavalry, the mercenaries, the navy. And Constantine commands them all.”

  “But the officers, at any rate, come from aristocratic families, some of them—the very ones being persecuted.”

  “Yes, by us. Constantine is a clever man. Cleverer even than John was. And then there’s the city populace to think of. Haven’t you told me about riots years ago that almost reduced this place to ashes? Would we have to fight them?”

  “No,” Olympia said suddenly. “No, I don’t think so.” Psellus looked up in surprise. In fact, we all did. She was not a person who spoke much, though when she did, you knew there was a brain there. “Yesterday at Easter services in the cathedral, up in the women’s gallery, while the priest and the chanters were droning on below—all our eyes were on Zoe. And the gallery was abuzz with murmurs about how ill she looks and how harshly she is being treated by that despicable Calaphates. There’s great sympathy for her and anger at the Emperor and his uncle. And I think in any church you went to you would have heard the same.”

  “Well, yes, women—” Psellus began with a shrug.

  “No, she’s right,” Selene jumped in. Don’t underestimate us women.”

  In the end, we departed without me giving Psellus an answer to his question. While he went outside to summon his man to bring the carriage around, Selene and Olympia embraced for what seemed like a long time. I wondered if they were whispering something.

  Late that afternoon, Selene and I rode our horses out to her village to visit Melampus’s grave. It was the second anniversary of his death. The marker was just a simple stone but it was set in a pleasant grove of cypresses with a brook running by. We poured wine on the ground, sent up a prayer to Hermes-Odin, and then sat for a while on the grass enjoying the warm spring air.

  “When I come here I feel his spirit nearby,” Selene said. “It’s a good feeling.”

  “That used to happen to me sometimes—my father. It seems a long time ago.”

  Selene took my face between her hands and looked into my eyes. “You do want it, don’t you, command of the Guard?”

  “It’s too soon to think of that. Harald isn’t—”

  “Don’t lie to me, dear heart, I know you do. And it frightens me.”

  “Why should it?”

  “I don’t know,” she sighed. “To rise high is to fall far. Daggers will be drawn against you.”

  “That’s been true all my life. I’m not afraid.”

  “Then be afraid for me. Odd, I’m the daughter of an alchemist and a fortune-teller. I was raised among magicians and astrologers and demonologists. W
e’ve always lived on the margin. Always made use of when needed, but still disreputable, mistrusted. Suddenly I’m to be thrust into the center? The wife of the Commandant? A lady of the court? I won’t know what to do. I’ve never been ambitious for wealth, Odd. We have more money now than I ever dreamed of, more than you ever dreamed of. Maybe we’ve risen high enough. And what if someone strikes at you through me? What if you have to fight just to keep me from being hanged as a witch?”

  “Hush now, Selene,” I took her hands in mine. “That isn’t going to happen. Look, Psellus doesn’t think the worse of us for not being Christians. He admired your father.”

  “Psellus is a rare man, Odd. There aren’t many like him. And even he is careful to live like a Christian, whatever he believes.” She gazed moodily at the sky, where the setting sun reddened the clouds. “Sometimes as a girl, you know, I wished I had my mother’s gift. I wish it now more than anything—to know what our future will be.”

  As she said these words I suddenly had the strangest feeling. I was seventeen years old again, lying half-dead of exhaustion and soul-sickness on the floor of a stinking hut in a Lapp village, where we had drifted in the fog. And the noaidi, their ancient seer, in some mysterious way, had traveled to the land of the dead to plead with the ghosts of my murdered family to leave off haunting me. And the little man, Nunna, who translated for him, was crouching beside me and saying, “…he has sent his spirit into the gray wolf, and into the albatross, and into the seal. Everywhere he has searched for the end of your fate, but it lies a great way from here and even he cannot see all the threads of it. He says that you will travel far and, for a time, will forget your home. But one day, he says, the time of your returning will come and when it does you will know it...”

  “Odd?” Selene was shaking my shoulder.

  “I’m sorry—what?”

  “Where were you just now?”

  “Nothing, it’s nothing. A stray memory.”