The Varangian

by Bruce Macbain

“Tell me.”

  But how could I tell her? And what did that old man really see? I pushed the thought away.

  She leaned in and kissed me on the lips. “I’m sorry to lay my fears on you. You must do as you think best. I trust you. Tell me you love me.”

  I put my arms around her and we rolled together in the grass over and over, pulling our clothes loose, making love until our hearts were pounding.

  Afterwards, we lay on our backs and watched the treetops bend in the evening breeze until it grew too dark to see. As we rode back to the city, a light rain fell.

  40

  Revolt

  Sunday, April 18, AD 1042. Morning

  On the Sunday after Easter, Calaphates appeared in a public procession along the Mese to the Church of the Holy Apostles. His path was strewn with carpets, purple hangings were draped from the windows, and the whole city turned out to cheer him. This show of enthusiasm was hardly spontaneous. The Emperor and his uncle knew they were in bad odor, what with the castrations and arrests, and this outpouring of love was carefully stage-managed by the circus factions. Nevertheless, Calaphates believed that he had the popular support now to take a drastic step—ridding himself of Zoe forever.

  Later that day, I happened to be walking on the parapet overlooking Boukoleon harbor when there was a sudden commotion below: a gang of soldiers dragging a woman in nun’s habit out the postern gate and down to the water’s edge, where a launch was tied up—the woman raising her arms skyward, shrieking, “Great Basil, look down from heaven! Can you see what they’re doing to me, your own blood?”—the sailors bundling her aboard and casting off—her screams drifting over the water until they faded away.

  I couldn’t see Calaphates, but Constantine was there with his personal bodyguard of sailors.

  I ran down to see what it was. One of the sailors was a man I knew from Sicily.

  “The Empress,” he said. “The Emperor put her on trial in his private chambers only an hour ago, charged her with trying to poison him, banished her to the convent on Prinkipo.” (This, I knew, was a tiny rock of an island not far off the coast.) “Hacked her hair off,” he went on, “stripped her naked, dressed her in gray. She’ll die there.” He had tears in his eyes.

  Then a moment later, here came Harald, Halldor, Bolli and Ulf, pounding up from the direction of the Brazen Gate. I told them what had happened. Harald shouldered his way through the crowd to where Constantine stood and began to protest, with Halldor stumbling over the Greek: Why were the Varangians left out of this? Eager to help—earned your trust—always ready to serve…

  Constantine backed away from him, looking either annoyed or alarmed, I couldn’t tell which. “Quite so, Commandant,” he stammered, “no aspersion on your loyalty, no, no, gratified to hear it, didn’t need your men for this, less display the better, you understand...” With a swish of his robe, he turned and hurried back through the gate, leaving Harald speechless.

  That night I told Selene what I’d seen, but she already knew all about it, and she was furious. She’d had a note from Olympia that day. Olympia had gone to church and it was all that the women there were talking about. Selene, too, had gone out in the street to visit the shops, and heard angry talk everywhere. The city was abuzz with the news. If Calaphates thought he was going to get rid of Zoe without an uproar, he was a bigger fool than anyone thought.

  “What will they do to her, Odd?” Selene demanded. “People disappear into those places and never come out again. They could strangle her there and no one would know. We risked our lives for her, and now this!”

  I had to confess I didn’t know what would happen. As long as Harald commanded the Varangians we would do nothing to rescue her. “We will see what tomorrow brings.”

  What tomorrow brought was beyond anyone’s imagining.

  Monday, April 19

  The following morning, Harald marshalled the entire Guard at the Forum of Constantine to provide protection for the City Prefect, who was going to read out a message from the Emperor. Determined to make himself look indispensable, Harald had volunteered us for this, although the Prefect had guards of his own.

  The Forum is a spacious oval in whose center is a towering column topped by a statue of Constantine the Great. Here vendors of clothing and food ply their trade. At this hour of the day it was jammed with people. A platform of planks had been set up at one end and our men formed a ring of shields around it. The Prefect, a corpulent man named Anastasius, a flunky of the regime, mounted and began to read from a scroll. He denounced not only the Empress for attempted poisoning (and maybe she had—who knows?) but named the Patriarch Alexius, too, as her accomplice. This traitorous cleric was being arrested at that very moment and would be dealt with—

  A rock arced through the air and struck the Prefect on the forehead. He staggered and dropped his scroll.

  “Let Calaphates’s bones be broken!” came a voice from the crowd. “Give us back Zoe, our Mother!” came another, a woman’s voice.

  There must have been near a thousand people there. In an instant they had broken up the vendors’ stalls and charged at us, swinging pieces of wood, brandishing hatchets, spades, knives—whatever came to hand. And we were jammed so close together we couldn’t have used our weapons if we had wanted to. The mob drove us out of the Forum and back along the Mese toward the palace, a distance of a few hundred yards. From the rooftops that lined the avenue, people hurled furniture, emptied chamber pots and braziers of coals on our heads. The rattle of rocks bouncing off our shields made a noise like rolling thunder. A hot coal lodged between my neck and shoulder and burned me. We stumbled, we trampled each other’s feet. The fat Prefect clutched his bleeding scalp and gasped for breath. From somewhere I heard Harald yelling, “Charge, charge them, you dogs!” But we could only crouch under our shields as missiles rained down on us, and retreat step by step.

  Then, off to our right, above all the other din, we heard the reverberating boom of the great gong coming from the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom. The patriarch’s people had chased away the men sent to arrest him and he was sounding the alarm. Within minutes, the gongs of every church in the city rang out in reply. People poured out of their houses and streamed toward the cathedral and the palace—a moving, churning sea of humanity—artisans, shopkeepers, beggars, loungers, householders, rich and poor, young and old, men and women and even children all mixed together.

  Carrying the Prefect and our injured comrades with us, we squeezed backwards through the triple portals of the Brazen Gate, thrusting with our swords to keep the mob at bay until we were all inside and could force the great doors shut. In the forecourt just within the gate, I caught sight of Psellus in a knot of officials. Dismay was written all over his face. There were women in this mob—and not just market women or prostitutes, but housewives decently clothed and coifed, and all of them shouting the name of Zoe and beating their breasts. To a Greek of Psellus’s class, this was a deeply shocking sight. We looked at each other and the same thought occurred to both of us: where are our wives?

  But we had no more time to think of that.

  By now, rioting had broken out all across the city. Mobs were breaking into prisons and freeing the prisoners. Others attacked the houses of the Emperor’s cronies and relatives, looting them and setting them afire. Soon we could see columns of smoke rising everywhere. One of these houses was Constantine’s splendid new mansion just off the Mese. Constantine was a brave man for a eunuch, a fighter despite his poor physique and weak stomach. When the uprising started, he was at home with George and Maria and a gang of armed sailors. Somehow, they hacked their way through the crowd and got to the palace. Constantine looked grim, but his sister Maria’s face—I got a glimpse of her as they passed us in the forecourt—was a mask of pure terror.

  The question in all our minds now was the army and fleet. Constantine commanded them all and if he unleashed them on the city, there would be carnage. And yet it didn’t happen. At every moment we expected the troops to st
ep in and defend their Emperor, but they never did. Were their officers keeping them in barracks until they saw which way the wind was blowing? Had they ever really accepted the Emperor’s uncle as their commander-in-chief?

  As for Calaphates, he was cowering in his apartment. His uncle went straight there. We grounded our arms in the courtyard and waited. When Constantine returned, he saw me and motioned me to come with him and translate for Harald, who was standing nearby.

  “Your men are a disgrace, you’re a disgrace.” his thin eunuch’s voice trembled with anger. “Attack that rabble at once, Commandant. Give the order or I will do it myself.”

  Harald visibly flinched. He’d never been spoken to like this before. “Tangle-Hair,” he turned to me. “Get your men ready, your bandon will lead the attack.”

  I wasn’t Harald’s favorite fighting captain; I just happened to be closest. It could have been any of us.

  But it was me.

  And at that moment I had to decide.

  “No, Harald Sigurdsson,” I said. “You’ve picked the wrong side. For Zoe!” I yelled at the top of my voice.

  “Zoe!” my bandon roared back and clashed their axes on their shields. And then others picked it up. “Zoe, Zoe!” the cry echoed from a hundred throats: Varangians who despised these wretched Paphlagonians and who no longer trusted Harald.

  “We’re marching out. Swords sheathed,” I ordered, “spears and axes reversed.”

  We pushed open the gates and, crying the name of ‘Zoe’, we streamed out into the roiling crowd. There was fear on their faces until they understood that we weren’t attacking them. And then they swallowed us up, embracing us, reaching out their hands to touch us. If they’d had flowers in their hands instead of bricks and clubs, they would have pelted us with them.

  What I tell now I only learned later from Psellus and others who were left inside the palace. Harald, who was in a snarling fury, demanded to be put in charge of the defense of the palace with the handful of Varangians who had stayed with him. Constantine agreed. He was willing to make a fight of it. Then, unexpectedly, Calaphates himself arrived in their midst, clutching his mother’s hand.

  “Damn you, Uncle, for sending Zoe away,” he whined.

  “Me! You gave the order, Majesty.”

  “Fools, both of you,” said Maria. “Get the wretched woman back.”

  So they sent another launch to Prinkipo Island to chase the first one. Hours went by while the mob milled outside the gates, chanting Zoe’s name. It was past midday when the launch returned with the Empress. She stepped ashore inside a cordon of marines. People who saw her say she looked exhausted, confused, frightened. Constantine threw a jeweled robe over her grey cassock and shoved a diadem on her head, hoping to cover the few tufts of chopped hair that were all that remained of her golden curls.

  There is a circular staircase that connects the Daphne wing to the Imperial viewing stand in the hippodrome. Constantine, Calaphates, and Harald rushed her up this way, and at the same time, they ordered the stadium doors to be opened, and the crowd flowed in—a hundred thousand of them, me and my Varangians among them. Calaphates pushed Zoe forward to the railing and he and his uncle made a great show of bowing before her and kissing her hands. But there were no smiles on the sea of upturned faces below them. As long as the Paphlagonians were with her, the people knew that Zoe was not a free woman. Constantine tried to make himself heard above the jeers and catcalls, while rocks and arrows flew dangerously close. At last, they gave up and retreated back down the stairway to the palace.

  Then an unexpected thing happened. From some voice in the crowd—no one ever knew whose—rose the cry, “Theodora!” And soon everyone was chanting it. “Theodora, Theodora, fetch Theodora!”

  Who?

  It seems that Zoe had a younger sister. They had hated each other since childhood, and Zoe had forced Theodora to take the veil and retire to a convent on the Bosporus (this was back in the reign of Romanus, when Zoe had the power to do such things.) The unfortunate woman had never been seen since. Neither Calaphates nor his uncle knew of her existence. But, nun or not, Theodora was of the blood. She was technically an Empress.

  Within the hour she was fetched—literally dragged against her will—from the Petrion Convent. Draped in a purple robe, she was carried bodily through the streets to the cathedral. I and my men marched in behind her. If the Varangians’ duty is to defend the Throne, I decided, then our place was with her, at least for the time being. Alexius the Patriarch stood before the great golden altar to receive her. In a ringing voice he proclaimed Michael Calaphates deposed and Theodora joint Empress, together with her sister Zoe. The furious old lady received the crown while a vast concourse of people cheered her.

  I approached and knelt before her. She was a tall, angular woman with a scrawny neck, an unusually small head, and a beak like a bird. Her expression was severe; she was plainly frightened, but doing her best not to show it.

  “We are your Guards, Majesty. Command us.”

  “Where, then, is Harald the Commandant?” Alexius asked.

  “In the palace defending Calaphates.”

  “Then he is no longer Commandant. You are. What is your name?”

  I told him.

  He turned to Theodora. “Empress, order it so. You will need these men.”

  My men hurrahed—a sound that echoed around the vast chamber—and some of them lifted me on their shoulders. At that moment, I heard Selene call my name from the back of the nave. The crowd parted to let her and Olympia through. Her face was dirty, her clothing disarrayed, but her face was shining, exultant. The women of Constantinople had just helped topple a government.

  She threw her arms around me and kissed me while my men cheered and laughed.

  It was a grand moment. But the battle was not over yet. Calaphates still held the palace. And Zoe had no idea that she was condemned to share her throne with the woman she had wronged.

  41

  A Pitiful Ending

  This was a delicate moment: we now had no legitimate Emperor but two Empresses. To grasp the strangeness of the situation, you must understand that the cathedral, the palace, and the hippodrome, are part of one whole—side by side and linked together by passageways. Theodora and Zoe were only a few hundred yards apart but, for the moment, they inhabited different worlds, each in ignorance of the other. Add this to the fact that Harald still commanded some Varangians in the palace and had no idea that I had been named Commandant in his place by Theodora. My next step should have been to march with my men, escorting Theodora from the cathedral to the palace and take charge there.

  Two things got in the way.

  First, Theodora steadfastly refused to leave the cathedral while the battle was still in doubt. Second and more serious, we were unexpectedly attacked by a force of Greek soldiers under an excellent officer named Katakalon, who had just returned from Sicily, sailing into the harbor under cover of darkness. Katakalon sized up the situation and decided it was his duty to defend his Emperor. He led his men into the palace and they took up positions on the walls and roofs. Meanwhile, on our side, the good people of Constantinople were dancing in the streets and drinking themselves senseless, thinking they had won the day. Now, all at once, the balance of power had shifted in Calaphates’s favor.

  Selene shot me a frightened look. If we lost now, I was a dead man. Calaphates and his uncle—not to mention Harald—would make my last few minutes on earth very unpleasant.

  I ordered the gong to be sounded again and readied my men for battle. From the forecourt of the cathedral we could look up and see torches moving along the battlements and hear the shouts of the soldiers.

  Leaving Selene behind, I led my bandon back to the Forum of Constantine. I had to bring some order to the mob out there and organize an attack on the palace to begin at dawn. Half a dozen men came up to me and announced themselves leaders of the revolt and willing to take my orders. None of them looked very soldierly but they would have to do.
r />   Tuesday, April 20

  During the night, more citizens streamed in to join us. As dawn broke over the city we started our attack, a three-pronged assault through the hippodrome, the polo field, and the Brazen Gate. I led this force because I expected to find Harald there.

  That day was one of the bloodiest in the city’s blood-soaked history. Katakalon’s men fired volleys of arrows from the towers and windows. Our side brought ladders up to the walls and fought them hand to hand. The battle swayed back and forth all day and late into the night with citizens without armor or proper weapons flinging themselves against well-drilled spearmen. And yet, these shopkeepers and tailors and bakers and stable boys fought desperately and didn’t give way. It was later said that we lost three thousand dead or wounded.

  At the Brazen Gate, I commandeered a heavy wagon, we loaded it with bricks and cobblestones, and crashed it against the center portal four or five times until the hinges cracked and it fell in. Then I and my bandon poured into the domed hall that lies between the gates and the guardhouse.

  We found only a few Varangians, but no Harald. “They’re in the throne room,” cried one of them when I applied the edge of my sword to this throat. “Harald, the Emperor, his uncle, some sailors, a few of our men, Halldor, some others—don’t kill me.”

  I shoved him aside and raced out into the courtyard, with Gorm beside me, carrying my standard, and the rest at my heels. We burst through the Magnaura’s silvered doors and found the Emperor and his retinue all huddled at the far end of that huge hall, at the foot of the throne. Calaphates and Constantine cringed behind a knot of their sailor guards. But Harald, flanked by Halldor and Bolli, came toward me with his ax in his fist.

  “You little traitor,” he snarled, “I should have killed you five years ago. First you were Ingigerd’s dog and now you’re Zoe’s? What is it about you and old women, Tangle-Hair? Well, come and let me carve you meat from bone, little dog. Either that or slink away.”