by Tom Harper
‘Unchanged. The fever seems a little less.’
‘Has Anna seen him?’
Aelfric fixed me with his uncompromising blue eyes. ‘She isn’t here.’
My tumbling soul knocked against a looming cliff, careered off it and continued its descent. ‘Where is she?’
Aelfric turned his eyes away, looking over my shoulder and into the darkening east.
‘In the cloisters behind the cathedral.’
I stared at him.
‘In Antioch.’
I ran.
Whatever excesses I had expected from the plague city – baying mobs hunting through the streets, doomed men and women tupping like dogs in doorways, corpses burning on open fires or lying unburied at the roadside – the reality was different. Moonlight washed over empty streets, and most of the houses were dark – though the city was not empty. Unseen creatures scuffled in shadowy corners. Shutters creaked, doors slammed, clay vessels shattered and steel rang on steel. And, more than anything else, there was a constant tapestry of mourning that hung in the background: soft moans of despair, shrieks of anguish, plaintive sobbing and quiet prayer. A profound and angry melancholy gripped the city – it was like walking through the sinews of a broken heart.
At several points along my way, carts and boxes and rubble had been tipped across the street to form makeshift barricades. Some were abandoned, others guarded, but Antioch was not a city made for containment and I always found my way around them, until at last I reached the cathedral and a small door in the wall behind it. A frightened voice behind the door answered my knock.
‘I want to see the doctor – Anna. Is she here?’
‘She’s asleep.’
‘Wake her. Tell her Demetrios is here.’
He did not answer, but beyond the door I heard receding footsteps. I waited in the dark for what seemed an age, each second lengthened tenfold by uncertainty. Eventually I even started to probe the tip of Aelfric’s knife into the door jamb, wondering if I could force it.
I heard the footsteps returning and pulled the knife away. A bolt slid back on the other side of the door, though it did not open.
‘Wait here for a hundred-count, then come through. She will be in the cloisters.’
Once more, the footsteps retreated. I doubted the delay was necessary, but I honoured the doorkeeper’s request and counted to a hundred as quickly as I could. Then I pushed the door open, padded down a short passage and emerged into the broad colonnades of the cloisters. Moonlight shone onto the columns’ faces so that they appeared like steel bars around the square, while behind them all was darkness. On the far side, directly opposite me, stood Anna.
She was thinner than I remembered, though we had been apart less than two weeks. In the hot summer air her white shift clung to her body, divulging every rise and shadow beneath: her dark hair was tousled wild by her pillow. She appeared like an icon of everything I loved and craved; I pulled off the cloth that covered my face and ran towards her.
‘Stop.’
A large figure stepped out of the darkness behind her, levelling a silver-tipped spear towards me. Desperation almost overpowered my instinct for survival, but at the last I reined myself in and halted just short of the spear’s point.
‘Stay there,’ the figure ordered.
I stared at Anna, bewildered. Why did she not come forward? ‘What is this?’
She closed her eyes. ‘My guard.’
‘Against what? Me?’
‘No – he is protecting you.’
‘Against what?’
‘Against me.’
I stumbled back, though the guard’s spear had not moved. There were hot tears on my face.
‘What could you possibly do to me?’ Even as I spoke the question, I began to guess its answer, and dread it.
Anna folded her hands penitently before her. She was crying too: the moon caught her tears and scarred her cheeks silver.
‘I have become a plague doctor.’
The last spark of hope died in my soul. A voice that was hardly my own asked, ‘Have you . . . ?’
‘Have I caught the plague?’ Anna shook her head. ‘God willing, not yet.’
I gestured to the guard. ‘Then why is he here?’
‘They insisted on it.’
‘Who?’
‘The Franks. They would not let me tend the sick without a guard to make sure I didn’t touch the healthy.’
‘You volunteered for this?’
She gave a joyless laugh. ‘Do you really think I’m such a saint? I had no choice. The woman I went to see the day you left, the one whose baby was overdue – she was infected. She was almost dead when I found her – the baby, too. The Franks barred the doors and would not let anyone leave the house. They only allowed me out when I agreed to tend the other victims. Then I came here.’
Anna’s guard had moved around to my left, standing between us and a little way apart with his spear outstretched, while she and I faced each other across the cloistered square. I needed an iron grip over every muscle in my body not to run to her and embrace her, heedless of consequence.
In a firmer voice, she asked, ‘Did you find your relic?’
‘There was no relic. Ravendan was a trap. The monk attacked us and took us prisoner.’ With the guard watching, I did not mention Duke Godfrey’s part. At that moment, it hardly seemed to matter. ‘We only just escaped.’
‘Is Sigurd all right?’
‘Barely.’ I saw Anna gasp. ‘He suffered a blow to the head, and has not risen since. He has a fever. You must see him.’
‘What can I do?’ She opened her empty hands. ‘I cannot leave this cloister, much less the city.’
‘You have to,’ I repeated stubbornly.
‘I can’t.’
‘I could bring him here.’
She stamped her foot in anger. ‘Is that a joke? If Sigurd is so weak, the plague would kill him the minute he looked at Antioch. He must manage without me.’
We stared at each other across the square. The moonlight filled the space between us like glass.
‘If I could, of course I would be with Sigurd this instant,’ she said softly. ‘But I do not have that choice. I chose to come to Antioch and I came freely, because of you. Because I loved you.’ She flicked her hand to shush my embarrassed protest. ‘Now that choice is made, we are each as helpless as the other. We are slaves to powers we cannot defy.’
More tears were tumbling down her cheeks and her eyes were dark with sadness. I longed to run across the courtyard, to hug her to me and crush away the distance between us. But the guard’s spear was steady, hovering like a wasp at the edge of my gaze.
‘The emperor’s new envoy has come,’ I said at last.
Anna brushed away a tear, rubbing her cheek with a loose lock of hair. ‘Then you’re free to go.’
‘He has ordered me to Egypt.’
With all the passion wrung from it, my soul had become dry and calloused. I related Nikephoros’ orders without emotion. Anna listened quietly until I was finished.
‘Will you go?’
I hesitated. I had come there that night with wild plans of escape burning in my heart: I would take Anna out of Antioch, she could heal Sigurd in a secret place until he was well, and then the three of us would make our way back to Constantinople. It was a pleasant dream – but impossible. It was as Anna had said: we had made our choices, or had them forced upon us, and now we would suffer the outcomes.
‘I will go to Egypt,’ I said. ‘Nikephoros has given me little alternative.’ And you have made sure of it, I did not say. To stay in Antioch, waiting to see whether Sigurd’s wounds killed him before the plague killed Anna – it would be like being milled between boulders. Against that, Egypt was almost an enticing prospect.
Anna nodded, as if she had known my decision before I said it.
‘Travel safely,’ she said simply. Her tears had dried up, and her face was calm again.
I could not bring myself to turn away, but stared at Anna as
though – by the force and duration of my gaze alone – I could communicate all I felt. She matched my gaze, unyielding. Pity, kindness and desperate sorrow mingled in her face; I thought she might collapse into tears again, and I would have followed suit if she had, but she did not.
Without a word of farewell, she half-raised a hand in mock salute and turned away. The guard followed her as she disappeared between the pillars into the dark cloisters.
θ
We sailed for Egypt the next day. I had never been on a ship before, except to cross the few hundred yards of the Bosphorus, but I had always assumed I would hate it. For some reason, I did not. Perhaps I felt so wretched that the turbulent deep beneath our keel lost its terror, or perhaps the suspension of all cares and duties, forced by the confines of the ship, calmed me. It was as if I had been plucked out of my life, cut free of the ties and obligations that held me there, and set adrift upon the blank canvas of the sea. For the first time in months, or even years, I had nothing to do. I sat in the shade of the turret that commanded the centre of the ship and watched the crew, as idle and superfluous as the cat who ate the galley scraps.
Apart from the crew, we were nineteen passengers: Nikephoros and his attendants; a priest; an honour guard of ten Patzinaks who spent most of their time being seasick; one Varangian and myself. The Varangian was Aelfric, the man who had led us out of the burning monastery. The rest of his company had remained with Nikephoros’ colleague, the eunuch, who had the unenviable task of trying to persuade the Frankish princes to resume their march once the plague subsided.
As for Nikephoros, he did not find the same solace I did in the ship. He had commandeered the captain’s quarters at the ship’s stern, and though it must have been a dark and humid room he rarely ventured out. When he did, he had his servants erect a white silk canopy on the foredeck; he would sit there in regal isolation and watch the waves, or sometimes compose long documents, many pages in length, on his ivory writing desk. Though I was nominally his secretary, he never asked me to write them out or confided their contents to me.
One afternoon, two days out of Saint Simeon, I gained some insight into his foul humour. I was sitting in the turret’s shadow, playing with a rope-end and fretting about Anna, when Aelfric came and sat beside me. That in itself was unusual, for he was a quiet man who mostly kept to himself, but I welcomed him. He was small for a Varangian, though large by any other standard. His lean face bespoke a watchful intelligence, and you could see him weighing each word thrice over before he spoke it.
‘I’ve found out why Nikephoros is so grumpy,’ he announced.
I looked up from the frayed fibres I had teased apart. ‘Why’s that?’
‘The emperor’s not pleased with him.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I heard it from one of his slaves. He made the wrong friends at court. He was an ally of the dead chamberlain, Krysaphios.’ Aelfric squinted at me. ‘You knew him.’
‘I did.’ I had witnessed his death – indeed, I had contributed to it. ‘I’m surprised the emperor would trust this mission to someone associated with that faction.’
‘Are you? Why not? If he’s honest, he’ll have to try twice as hard to prove it, and if he’s not honest he’ll be well out of the emperor’s way.’
Another more unpleasant aspect struck me. ‘And if the embassy goes wrong, or if our ship is lost at sea, Nikephoros will be conveniently removed from the court.’
‘No wonder he scowls so much.’
‘The Franks sent ambassadors to the Fatimids once,’ I remembered. ‘Five months ago. I was at the council where the princes discussed it.’
‘What became of them?’
I shrugged. ‘They never returned.’
We put in at Cyprus to take on supplies. The harbour was choked with commerce: it felt as if half the imperial grain fleet must be there, together with transports and galleys so thick you could almost have walked across the bay on their decks. Every deck, wharf, jetty and gangway was piled high with the material of war: barrels of fish, bales of hay, live pigs to feed armies and iron pigs to feed the blacksmiths’ forges. In one corner of the port, makeshift fences had been erected to pen in the vast herd of horses and mules who waited to be embarked for Antioch. The greater part of the goods, though, were inbound, destined to sit in stores and warehouses until the Army of God moved south. It was a vast operation, the fruits of the empire all gathered together to feed the campaign, and I began to realise how far afield the tremors of our war had reached.
From Cyprus we sailed south and then south-east, running before the wind. Now it was the sailors who worked while the rowers rested, and a new urgency gripped the ship. Even with a good breeze behind us, the air seemed to be thickening day by day. Whenever they were off duty the men would gather near the bow and stare out over the waves, waiting for the land to appear. Some of them reported seeing great fish many times larger than a man swimming beside us, though I never saw them.
Like a shadow travelling in advance of its owner, I knew the coast must be close when the sea began to fill with an ever greater number of small vessels. I watched them nervously, but they were merely fishermen and shallow coastal traders who gave us a wide berth. Soon afterwards the land itself appeared: a low and inviting strip of shore that turned out, as we drew closer, to be only the arms of a great inland lagoon. We passed through to a flat sea studded with fragments of islands; on one of these, still some way from the land, was the port of Tinnis.
I had believed that a man who had lived in Constantinople could never find any place exotic, that every race and colour of men, together with all their works and produce, were to be found in that city. Tinnis, though, was different: the dhows and feluccas that swarmed around the island like bees in a hive; long poles with drying flax hanging off them like hair; the slender turrets of the Ishmaelite churches and the mysterious chants of their priests, which echoed across the still water five times each day. But even more strange than that, I suspected, was the knowledge in my heart that this was Egypt, a land that had been ancient even in the time of the ancients. Byzantine emperors had once ruled this land, and Romans before them – but they were mere footnotes in a history of infinite depth and magnificence.
Our unexpected arrival caused considerable stir. Two war-galleys rowed out to challenge us, and our sailors waited anxiously by the naphtha throwers while Nikephoros conducted a brisk exchange with the Fatimid captain through the stammering efforts of our priest. Eventually, we convinced them of our neutrality – though even when one boat returned to the harbour to deliver the news, the other hovered vigilant near by.
For three full days we hung there on our anchor, like a mote of dust caught in a sunbeam. The captain struck the sails and fashioned makeshift awnings to shade the deck, for the planks were beginning to warp apart in the glare. After the second day, I thought the sinews of my mind might be warping too. I watched the sun inch across the sky until my eyes burned, and found myself longing for each repetition of the plaintive Ishmaelite prayer-chant to mark the passing of the days.
By the fourth afternoon I was almost past caring. So I did not hear the measured splash of oars approaching, or the creak of the thole-pins, and only realised that the confines of our solitude had been broken when the sleeping crew about me suddenly leaped up and began to array themselves in formal display. Almost before I realised it, something thudded gently against our hull and dark hands reached over the side. Nikephoros strode out from his cabin, his jewel-crusted lorum draped hastily over his shoulders, as the Fatimid envoy hauled himself onto our ship.
Every man on deck fell silent. Most stared in astonishment, though a few dropped their eyes in shame or embarrassment. The colour drained from Nikephoros’ face so that he seemed even more pale beside the visitor.
The new arrival was an African. To many of our crew that alone would have been an incomparable novelty. I had seen a few of his race in Constantinople – expensive slaves in the noblest households, or porte
rs on the docks – but never any like him. Everything about him marked him as a lord or prince: his proud bearing, his extraordinary height, the rich golden bands around his arms and the yellow robe that hung to his ankles. He was so different to any other man that it would be hard to call him handsome, but there was something in his face – beside his strangeness – that attracted the eye and held it. His scalp was shaved clean and glistened like wet tar in the heat, while his strong features wore authority easily. Strangely, he reminded me of Sigurd, though he could hardly have been more different from the hairy, sallow-skinned barbarian.
He smiled – a broad, white-toothed smile that you immediately wanted to share – then said: ‘Praise be to God, the Lord of the universe – and peace.’
Nikephoros remained obviously unmoved by the man’s smile – indeed, he seemed to be speaking through a mouthful of barely swallowed anger. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.
‘I am Bilal al-Sud, captain of the Qaysariyya guard. My master, the caliph of the Fatimids, the Commander of the Faithful, has sent me to greet you. If you come in peace and honest friendship, you are welcome in his realm.’
No doubt he expected some piece of well-honed diplomatic courtesy in reply. In this he was disappointed.
‘You speak Greek.’ Nikephoros’ tone suggested it was more a curiosity, like a dog trained to answer questions, than an accomplishment.
Bilal flashed his brilliant smile again, though this time the white teeth seemed somehow sharper. ‘I learned it from Greek slaves. The caliph has many in his palace.’
The warning had its desired effect. Nikephoros mastered his sneer and assumed a more polished, tactful demeanour. ‘I have gifts and messages for the caliph from my master, the emperor Alexios of Byzantium.’
Bilal nodded. ‘The caliph is eager to see them. He has ordered me to escort you up the river to al-Qahira.’ He looked around. ‘Your ship is magnificent, but she will not manage the bends and shallows of the Nile. You will come in my barge.’
We left the comforting bulk of our ship behind and rowed across the lagoon. The shores drew closer and began to pinch together, though if you looked ahead they never seemed to join. At some point I suppose we must have entered the mouth of the river, though there was nothing obvious to define it: the land off our beams was still as distant as ever, far wider than the Bosphorus at Constantinople. I looked out across the brown waters, curious to see something of this fabled land, but all I saw was water and reeds.
