They had brave rear guards, who died in their red footprints but held off the Imperialists long enough for the rest, still a large army, to board their ships and put to sea.
Harald stood on a high ridge, looking over the waters. Oars threshed, sails rattled loose, the galleys milled about. Beyond the reefs, the Byzantine fleet waited. But Harald frowned. "Our ships are not well ordered," he said.
Ulf nodded. "That's what comes of putting a fat wine bibber in command. Let's hope the harm he does is not too great."
They watched, and as day declined they saw the enemy break past with small trouble, assume formation, and slip over the horizon. The Byzantine dromonds wallowed in pursuit for a while, but were outdistanced and must crawl back.
"Let's return to camp," said Harald bleakly. "I'm fain to see what Gyrgi does about this."
Again officers crowded the pavilion. They shifted on their feet, unspeaking, numbed by their losses. Georgios entered, a javelin in one hand. Lamplight shimmered off the mail shirt and helmet he still wore. Not often had Harald seen a mouth turned down so bitterly. He seated himself behind his table and drummed with his fingers. That was the only noise.
After a very long while, Stephen entered. The admiral had delayed to bathe and change into silken raiment. He paused a moment under their eyes, then took a chair before the Archestrategos. Georgios said never a word.
"Well ..." Stephen cleared his throat.
"Be silent, caulker!" Georgios spat. "Men died today to win what you lost again."
Stephen flushed. "It was God's will," he mumbled.
"God's will my arse! It was your cowardice and incompetence, as well you know. Now we must await a fresh invasion."
Stephen rose, trembling. "That's enough!" he shrieked. "I'll thank you to remember, you, I am His Sacred Majesty's kinsman, and you can address me with respect. If I hear any more of your insolence ..."
Georgios rasped in his throat, leaped to his feet, and brought the javelin down. Its butt cracked against Stephen's head. The admiral staggered.
A moan went among the packed nobles. Georgios dropped his weapon, recalling whom he had struck. Pride kept him stiff and glaring.
Stephen wobbled about, mopping the blood from his scalp with the scented scarf. "Rebellion," he whispered. "So you rebel against God's anointed, Maniakes. They'll hear of this at court."
He swept out into darkness. Georgios stood a while longer before he said, "Dismissed."
One by one they left him. Harald wanted very much to speak to him, but he could think of no words.
The army returned to Messina, marching as if it had lost the battle. Georgios shut himself up with his work, Stephen in his house. Time would be needed for the dispatch ships to get to Constantinople and back. Meanwhile life went on, after a fashion.
"What will come of this?" Harald asked Nicephorus.
The older man spread his hands. "What think you? Maniakes will be imprisoned, perhaps executed." "But he was in the right!"
"Most certainly. The fact remains, however, that he struck the Emperor's kinsman. Even had John no care for his own family, this could not be suffered. Our Emperors never forget how insecurely they hold the throne, how many revolts have been raised among the great nobles."
"Gyrgi should rebel. By Gabriel's pinfeathers, I'd join him!"
"Maniakes sets the Empire above himself, Araltes."
So long did the waiting become that anger was spent and men accepted drearily what was foredoomed. Georgios was deposed, to be taken back under arrest. It was the further order that brought Harald to his feet with a curse. Stephen was now commander of the Sicilian forces.
But, God be thanked, the Varangians were summoned home. This island was now believed firmly held, while fresh troubles were arising everywhere else in the Empire. The Northmen embarked gleefully, not just because they longed for the fleshpots of Constantinople but because they would not have to serve under Stephen the Caulker. Nicephorus Skleros returned with them, vowing he would hereafter stay among his books and have no more to do with a corrupted age.
Georgios Maniakes was fortunate: he was jailed but not mutilated. Otherwise the news that year was altogether evil. Stephen's dominion fell swiftly apart; fresh hosts from Africa ate up the land again, until only Messina remained of all the Sicilian conquests.
Serbia rose in revolt against the taxes John had imposed, and won an independence the Empire dared not contest. For the great Bulgarian provinces seethed with the same spirit; tax collectors and soldiers were murdered; the cities were full of plots and the hills full of armed men.
Harald paid scant heed. He had suddenly gotten something else to think about.
VII
How Harald Was Betrothed
1
Upon the Norse prince, when the Varangians came back, the Emperor bestowed the high title of Manglabites. Thereafter Michael removed himself to the shrine of St. Demetrios in Thessalonica for ever more frantic prayers; he was becoming dropsical. Zoe remained in Constantinople. She had begun finally to show her age, turning fat and gray and religious.
Harald found himself with little to do but manage palace guards. He was more pleased than he would have admitted when an invitation came to visit Nicephorus Skleros. He dressed with care, though in Western rather than Eastern style: white linen shirt, gold-embroidered coat, scarlet hose, blue cloak lined with sable, rings on his fingers; a Persian slave accompanied him, bearing his gift of an antique calyx that he had brought from Syracuse. Their horses clopped through long sunset light, into the Blachernae quarter where Nicephorus dwelt.
The nobleman's house, was small, a porticoed building amidst a walled garden. The hillcrest on which it sat commanded a view of the city's endless flat roofs, gleaming domes and mask-raked vapors aglow in the Golden Horn. Nicephorus received Harald in an airy, simply furnished atrium; his plain white cope suggested a toga. ""Welcome, Araltes!" He pressed the Norseman's big hand. "It was good of you to come. The first of many such occasions, I trust."
They exchanged gifts. Nicephorus offered a costly dagger which Harald refrained from saying looked like poor steel. "Another time I should like you to meet some of my friends," the Byzantine said. "I have not many, but some few are worth knowing, men who talk honestly, though ..." He paused shyly. "I spoke so much of you to my wife and daughter that they wished to make your acquaintance themselves, which they could scarcely do when decorum binds them in company. I thought we would dine as one family tonight."
Thor help me, Harald groaned to himself. The lowborn women of the city he liked, even those he got no chance to tumble; they were often cocky and quick-witted. The veiled and secluded noble ladies he had met were an empty lot, even those he got into bed. He began to think of excuses for leaving early.
"I would be most happy to meet them," he said.
Nicephorus nodded to a servant, who bowed and slipped out. Meanwhile he poured wine with his own hand and turned to admiring the calyx. "See, is this not lovely? No such work could be done today. See how she stands there. Aphrodite risen new-born from the sea, wringing out her long tresses while the world sings about her. . . . Oh, good evening, my dears. My wife Dorothea, my daughter Maria. The right noble
Manglabites Araltes, captain of the Varangian Guard and heir to the throne of Hyperborea."
The older woman was quiet, good-looking in a faded way. It was on the younger one that Harald's gaze fell, and stayed.
She was tall, youthfully slender in her long silken gown, graceful on her feet. Her head was proudly carried, the blue-black hair piled in classic mode, the unveiled face so clean of line that it seemed cold until one noticed her smile. Beneath arched brows her eyes were big and dark, encountering Harald's steadily. He had rarely seen such beauty as lay in those faintly tipped eyes.
"This is a great honor, despotes." Her voice was low-pitched. "And how can we ever thank you for saving our father's life?"
"A ... a lucky chance," mumbled Harald. "Naught more. He, um, he would belike only hav
e been held for ransom anyway."
"That would have been nigh as bad," Nicephorus said. "We are not rich." He waved them toward chairs. "Be seated, I pray you. I've promised Maria you would explain what happened at Draginas. To me the battle was sheer chaos."
Harald, who had taken a deep draught of wine, began to feel it. "Gyrgi, Georgios Maniakes, alone understands fully what went on," he said. Striving to curb the return of anger: "He and I had our quarrels, but he remains among the best men I have met down here; next to Olaf the Stout and Jaroslav the Wise, the best man I ever served."
"A vile trick they played on him," said Maria. Harald saw the color rise in her cheeks. One small hand drew into a fist. "The Empire has so few men worth anything. And then to throw this one into a dungeon!"
"Hush!" Her mother glanced fearfully at the doorway. "You are of Her Sacred Majesty's court."
"By Zeus, we will speak truth tonight," exclaimed Nicephorus. "Our servants are old and trusty folk come with us from the country. I say God will punish the Empire for its ingratitude to Maniakes."
"At least the Saracens will," drawled Harald.
Maria surprised him with a chuckle. "Why do you stay in this ungrateful place, Manglabites?" she asked.
"For gold," he shrugged.
"Now there's an honest man, father. The true Homeric insolence . . . Forgive me, despotes. I should not have spoken so familiarly. Dwelling far from court as we did most of my life, I fear I never learned proper manners."
"Why, kyria," said Harald, "what they call manners down here seems to me only . . "He broke off, feeling he approached dangerous ground. "As for the battle of Draginas," he said in haste.
When he had finished with that, Nicephorus suggested they dine. The meal was at once more simple and more subtle than most Byzantine cookery: fruits, soups, fish prepared in olive oil, well-chosen wines. Harald paid most heed to the candle glow shimmering along the curve of Maria's breast. The talk soon turned to himself, by her doing. "Will you never return home?" she asked.
"Indeed I will, when the time seems ripe. I had to flee my country, but someday I shall come home to be its king."
Her eyes widened. "One man alone dares speak of winning a whole nation?"
"It can be done," said Harald eagerly. All at once he found himself telling her of it: of his youth, Olaf the Stout and the battle at Stiklastadh; of his refuge in the wilderness, the ride across the Keel, the winter in heathen Sweden and the journey across the Baltic; of Jaroslav's folk; of warring in the marshes of Poland and on steppes where cornflowers blazed blue under an endless mournful wind; of the fleet that went down the Dnieper toward Miklagardh the Golden; of the years since, roving and lurching about the Midworld Sea, remembering even while whetted metal sang how the young beech trees had laughed in a Northern springtime.
The candles guttered low, Dorothea quietly lit fresh ones and slipped off to bed, Nicephorus kept Harald's goblet filled, while still he talked. So had he never spoken to anyone ere now. It torrented from him, a rush of years, sword blink and sea blink, horses and ships and all high longings, in that night he gave more to the girl who listened than he had ever given even to himself. He saw how she leaned forward, lips parted, to feel his pain as good men died or stood beside him on a sloping deck with spindrift in her hair. Belike the wine had somewhat to do with it for them both, but nonetheless, when much deeper in his cups he had never so laid down his soul's shield.
After he stopped, there was a long stillness. They heard church bells peal, far and icy sweet across the great slumbering beast of a city. "How you have wandered!" she breathed at last. "What have you not seen and done?"
"Much," he said, rather hoarsely. "I have not yet been hailed king at the Frosta-Thing, nor avenged Olaf, nor laid the Northlands under me, nor sailed to that western land of wild grapes and the Wonderstrands which Northmen found and lost again."
"If anyone can, it is you."
He gave her a sharp look, jarred out of his past, but saw no flattery in her. She seemed to have forgotten she was a woman and to be speaking to him as one of his own warriors might—the same scarred faithful man who called him "thou" and would say to his face that he was wrong.
"Could I but have seen a little of your world," she sighed.
"It has been ruled by war," he said. "And war is rain, mud, heat, fever, saddle sores, hunger, thirst, blisters, lice, filth, wounds, and death."
"Yet you have mastered those troubles."
"Well, one learns ways to make life in the field somewhat easier."
"Could I not?"
"If you were a man. Fortunately, kyria, you are not."
"I am only one of a hundred veiled serving ladies at court," she said, seriously and the least bit drunkenly. "Twice have I seen you there. Of course you did not notice me, but how I remember! You came in like a breath from the sea, blowing out those stale perfumes. I thought I could feel your strides ringing through the floor."
"Do you not like Her Majesty's service?"
"Well ... it seemed a chance to ... to do something new, as well as gain influence to help my brothers. But now—"
"You'll soon be wed and have your own household, kyria."
"Indeed." Her nostrils flared. "A whole house to move about in, a whole score of ignorant slaves for companion, and—no, not a whole man to myself. A half man whose work is to lick the Paphlagonian's buskins."
She rose. "Come," she said, "let us go out in the peristyle. The air indoors has gotten so thick."
Nicephorus watched owlishly as they left, too full of wine to accompany them as propriety demanded.
They stood between slim white columns, looking downhill over the city and the Golden Horn and Asia, shouldering black across the harbor. A breeze touched them, lightly as the moon did the waters. Overhead glistened a thousand stars. It was very still. Harald saw the girl's face outlined upon darkness.
"The old days were better," she said after a while. "When Artemis hunted in forests wet with dew, and the gods dreamed on Olympus, and every tree and spring and mountain was haunted by its own spirit . . . Almighty Zeus, what has the world become?"
"I think you are half pagan," he jested.
"More than half, perhaps," she said.
"From what I've heard, though, there ancients kept their own women well locked up."
"True . . . Penelope weaving the same tapestry over and over. . . . And yet she waited for a man who had wrought mightily." Maria shivered. "Best we go in again. The night grows cold."
Nicephorus nodded at them when they returned. "Do come back soon, Araltes," he said.
"Why, was that a hint he go?" laughed Maria.
"Well, I shall come back," said Harald, shamelessly adding, "Had you any particular day in mind?"
2
He joined the Skleros family one morning not long afterward for an outing in the hills beyond Galata. Nicephorus went on horseback like his guest; four brawny porters carried his wife and daughter in a litter; a retinue of slaves and servants came chattering after.
Harald felt tongue-tied, somewhat ashamed of giving himself away so much the last time. Maria must have had the same feeling, for she sat mute behind her veil. But when they passed the palace of Blachernae, she leaned out and said, "Father, you should show Manglabites Araltes the Bellerophon statue."
"Why, so I should, if he has never seen it," Nicephorus agreed. "Go on ahead, we'll come fast enough."
Dismounting, he and Harald went past the outer walls and into the Panhagia. There they stood, the hero and his winged horse, caught in one great leap; it was as if the wind of their flying still whirled through the dusky chamber, as if the horns of gods long dead blew again in heaven. Neither man spoke, they had a need of silence. .
When they were again riding, Harald said, "That is enough to make a man believe there are such horses."
"Just so," said Nicephorus. "Do you wonder that we remember that age as golden?" He tapped his brow. "Up here I know full well that they were men like us, who sweated a
nd stank, cheated and slandered and fornicated and committed stupidities as much as any Christian. But by Apollo, in my heart I know otherwise."
"Something like that might be built again," Harald ventured.
Nicephorus shook his head and smiled with closed sad lips. "Men cannot raise the dead. If genius is to bloom anew, it must be from virgin soil. I fear I've done Maria an ill turn, filling her head with that which is now a thousand years behind us. How can she be happy in this sated, stiffened world? She ought to live where men work toward something new."
"That may well be right," said Harald thoughtfully.
"I have had few friends. My sons were good and dutiful, but only Maria seemed to feel as I did. God forgive me, I took advantage of that."
TLV - 01 - The Golden Horn Page 10
