They caught their party beyond the gate and accompanied it over the bridge and so down a wide highway between the villas of the rich. Harald brought his horse next to the litter. A curl had fallen across Maria's forehead. "That thing you ride in should be good training for shipboard, kyria," he smiled. "I myself would get seasick."
"It is not comfortable," she answered tonelessly, "but it is considered proper for a lady."
"Can it be a virtue in us barbarians that we have fewer manners?" he teased.
Her interest awoke. "Is it true what I've heard, that your Northern women go about freely, unveiled, even crossing seas with their men?"
He nodded. "My mother ruled a large estate alone after my father died. Perhaps she still does. I've heard nothing of her for some ten years now." With a tightening in his breast, Harald said roughly, "There are few such women."
"I wish I could meet her," said Maria.
Dorothea made scandalized gestures, but Harald ignored them and continued talking with the girl. The ride became short.
They halted on a wooded ridge. The attendants busied themselves raising a pavilion and setting a table. Maria sprang from the litter and walked over to a steep bluff. Harald followed, aware of how the thin garments fluttered and were flattened against her in the wind. When they stood side by side, looking down across fields and orchards and houses to the remote flash of the Golden Horn, her head reached to his breast.
Slowly, she took her veil off. "Let the servants gabble," she said with a note of scorn. "They will anyhow."
He spread his cloak on the grass and they sat down together. She drew her knees to her chin and hugged them. The wind fluttered that one stray lock of hair; the rest shone like a raven's wing in the hot light. There was a tiny beading of sweat along her upper lip.
"Have you ..." She halted. "I pray pardon. Pay no heed."
"Have I what?" he asked. His left arm brushed her shoulder as he leaned on that hand.
She flushed and would not look at him. "It was a foolish question, despotes. See, what a fleet that is coming out the Horn!"
"Well, then," he said brashly, "if you'll not tell me, I must guess. You were about to ask if I had a woman waiting for me at home."
"I was not!" she cried.
"Will you swear to that?" he grinned.
"You are being rude, Manglabites."
"I am a barbarian with no manners," he mocked. "It was not hard to guess. Every woman thinks about the same thing."
Her anger drooped. She looked almost sorrowfully at him. "Do you really think so poorly of us, then?"
Taken aback, he fumbled after a clever reply but found none. "Not all women, surely. I cannot say. I've had little to do with them."
She saw him in retreat and followed him with quick merriment. "So, a monk! A paragon of chastity!"
Lest she think him unmanly, he answered more frankly than he meant to: "Now let me finish. I have been with women, of course, but we were never ... I suppose we never understood each other. First I was a boy, and since then I have been hastening off to fight somewhere."
She said so low he could barely hear: "You must be a lonely man."
"There is no woman waiting," he said. "Unless my mother lives."
Her hand brushed across his, a touch instantly gone again. The wind soughed through the poplars and tossed them in serpentine ripples, bright beneath the sun.
"I know not what there is about you, kyria," he said. "You loose my tongue more than is seemly. What a one you must think me, clacking away like an old carline!"
"No matter. No matter . . . Araltes. I am not one to gossip to others."
To cover his bewildered delight that she had addressed him by name (was that her intention?), he shaded his eyes and peered toward the water. A train of galleys crawled on their oars like beetles. "I think those must be the supplies for Sicily," he said. "They'll have a favoring wind in the Marmora."
"In ancient days," she said, as anxious as he to speak lightly, "they could have gotten a bag of wind from Aeolus and been sure of good passage."
"At home our fishermen often buy wind sacks from the Finn," he remarked.
"Perhaps Father's guess is right," she said. "If the Achaean wind god was Northern, perhaps the Achaeans themselves were."
Harald rubbed his chin. "Well, I shall tell you. The Finn is an old man, withered as an empty wine bag, who sits in the smoke under a skin tent and cracks fleas. Even the fellow who carved Bellerophon would be hard put to make a nude athlete of him."
"He could be carven as a god of fleas, then," she suggested. "Marble fleas upon him."
"Which clump when they hop," he said.
"And have tiny chisels to bite with."
"They could be trained to work for stonecutters ..."
Dorothea was shocked at how immoderately her daughter and the Manglabites laughed, through the entire meal and afterward, and none of their words made sense! She was relieved when they went home in the evening.
Torches flared as they paused outside Nicephorus' house. "Will you not come in for a last cup?" he asked.
"No, thank you," said Harald. Maria had told him she must go early to bed because of having to attend the Empress in the morning. "I must get back. But will you and your family not come dine with me soon?"
Nicephorus studied his shrewdly. "With pleasure. I will be sure to bring my whole family."
Harald clattered back through a gloom of avenues, wondering why his head should be in such a whirl. Curse it, he thought, he knew nothing about preparing a feast, nor did his present cook. Tomorrow he must go out and buy a slave who understood such arts. No, tomorrow the Varangians would be drilling. Well, Satan sink them, Halldor could take charge of that.
3
Ulf Uspaksson sat on a bench outside the Brazen House, carving, amidst the looped vines, an elephant's tusk and beasts beloved of Northmen. Sunlight rained over him, his shirt clung wetly to the squat powerful frame and his black-furred arms were bare. He looked up as Harald's gigantic form rounded the corner. "Good day," he nodded. "I've not seen you for a while."
"No," said Harald, "I've been busy elsewhere. I only stopped here today to see how things were faring."
"Oh, thus and so." Ulf laid down his knife and mopped his low forehead. "The Caesar asked me yesterday why you had absented yourself from his reception. I lied like Mohammed on your behalf, but he remained ill pleased."
"The Caesar? Bugger him," said Harald shortly.
"Look here," said Ulf, "this cannot go on forever. You got your titles and honors for fighting and standing guard, not for moping about like a bloated bull calf. Beware lest they weary of you."
Harald glared down at the broad ugly face. "Who's the chief of this corps?" he snapped.
"Somebody must speak plain truth to you. It's common gossip that you're so smitten with some girl at court you've even stopped having to do with other women. By the nine thousand lovers of Freyja, why do you not lay her and be done?"
"Enough!" Harald's hand dropped to his sword.
"Well, marry her, then. If I did not care about your good name, and your life, I'd not have said anything."
With an effort, Harald throttled his temper and nodded. "You run off too freely at the mouth, Ulf, but I'll take it as well meant."
"I call you no fool," said the Icelander gently. "Once or twice in a lifetime, if a man is favored by a good Norn, that happens to him which seems to have happened to you. I ask naught but that you take steps to ward what you have won."
"Yes ..." Harald left him.
He spent the day weighing Ulf's words. Often an outsider has clearer sight. He had been seeing a great deal of Maria Skleraina these past weeks; let him own honestly that he wanted her, and that a hundred years in her company would be too short. Let him then ask her hand, by heaven! He shook his head, awed at the suddenness of his resolution. But why not, why not, why not?
That evening he appeared at the Skleros home. Invitations had quietly stopped being needful some time a
go. Nicephorus and Maria were alone in the library, he resting on a couch while she read aloud to him from the Agamemnon. Harald stood silent in the doorway, listening.
" 'Now do I swear no more behind a veil
my truth shall hide like a new-wedded girl.
A shining wind shall blow strong to the sunrise,
and like a breaking wave lift to the light
something far greater than this pain of mine . . .' "
She grew aware of him. The book fell from her hand. "Araltes," she said, as if his name belonged to the poem.
Nicephorus rose. "Good evening," he said. "Come join us. Do you know Aeschylus? I swear there will never be another like—Why, what is the matter?"
"Nothing," said Harald. "Nothing wrong."
Maria's eyes widened. Her hand went to her mouth. "Araltes," she whispered, "you're not being sent away ... to the Serbian war?"
He must grin at that. John had grown much too frightened of revolt at home to dismiss the trusted Varangians. He shook his head and, awkward again, sat down on the edge of a chair."Nicephorus, can we talk freely?" he asked. "I will go," said Maria.
"No, stay." In a rush, like charging a line of pikeman: "I wish to ask for your daughter in marriage."
Harald dared not look at her, he was watching the older man, but he heard how she gulped.
"This is not unexpected," said Nicephorus slowly.
"Well, I suppose I am no good dissembler." Harald's fingers strained against each other. "But I am a king born, and rich, and can take care of my own. I can make her a queen."
Nicephorus bit his lip. "Can you make her happy, though?"
"Can anyone else?" Maria's words wavered.
"So that is how it stands, eh?" Nicephorus sat down again himself. "I could pray for no better son-in-law," he sighed.
Maria went to him. Candlelight and shadow ran across the folds of her dress. "Say what you think, father. This is a time for truth."
His smile was weary. "I had hoped to see your children. But it is selfish of me."
"I can stay here," Harald blurted.
Nicephorus shook his head. "I would not ask that, my friend. I should always think of the lions caged at the Hippodrome. But you, Maria . . . it's a long journey to a barbarous land."
"Do you think that matters?" she cried.
"I had to say it." Nicephorus looked old for a moment, before he shook himself and smiled. "But having done so, why, Christ bless you both."
Maria knelt to embrace him, burying her face in his breast. "Come with us!"
"Now, now, let us remain practical. Perhaps you can send a letter now and again. It's not quite like dying." His thin hand shook as he stroked her hair.
Then he became the scholar once more, observing life from its edge. "Let us consider the other dry necessities at once. How long do you plan to remain here, Araltes?"
The words came from afar as if someone else were speaking through the roar in Harald's head. "Two years, perhaps?"
"Maria cannot quit her service at court overnight. The Empress is so easily offended. And then too, my dear, your mother would be grieved by a hasty wedding. To me it means nothing, but you know what tongues are like in this city. Best we plan upon the marriage next year."
Harald nodded. He could see the sense of that, however it galled him.
"Very good." Gently, Nicephorus freed himself from the girl. "We will forget the proprieties a while, for you two have much to talk about and . . . you are an honorable man, Araltes. Good night."
When he was gone, Maria flung herself into Harald's arms. He caressed her clumsily and wondered aloud why she wept.
"You long-legged idiot," she gasped, raising her face to his, "did you never guess how I was hoping?"
He kissed her, tasting the tears upon her lips.
4
He was often sleepless at night, but the days could be more than sweet. Neither Harald nor Maria might escape their work; oftimes the better part of a week went by without sight of each other, but he found how a man can live on memory. He flung himself back into steering the Guard, as one way to fill such emptinesses.
The year waned in autumn storms and winter chill, the new was rung in by chimes that shuddered through rain. As he came out of Hagia Sophia, Harald felt a raw wind blowing in off the Bosporus, driving a downpour before it that smoked along the streets and gurgled in the sewers. Belike there was snow at home, he thought, white and still. They seldom got snow here. More and more he wanted to go home.
Early in the year he found himself with a free afternoon, and so did Maria, and sainted Olaf—who had himself loved—made it warm and bright. They sat together in the walled garden of Nicephorus, alone except for the needful duenna. Her father had provided the oldest, deafest, dimmest-eyed poor relation he could find; she fell asleep in her chair and Maria came to join Harald on a bower bench.
Her hand lay in his with a trustfulness that turned over the heart inside him, but they talked quietly. She had set herself to learning the Norse tongue, beginning with his name.
"Hah-rrahlt. No, there's a delta on the end, is there not? Hah-rrald!" She wrinkled her nose at him. "What a language! You sound like a bear waking up angry."
"Not angry at you," he said. "I could never be that."
"Well, teach me next to say, 'I love you.' "
He did, and she said it in Norse, and he kissed her for it. She felt how his hands strained not to close on her with their full bone-breaking strength.
"Poor darling." She rumpled his hair. "This betrothal time is not so easy for you, is it?" She flushed. "We have not long to wait. And then . . . And next year, God willing, to travel with you toward the Pole Star. With youl"
"I'll make you queen over the whole North, Maria."
"It will be enough to be your wife. Truly, I wish no more. Oh, I'm proud as Satan when they talk at court of your victories. Nevertheless—"
"Go on." He lifted her chin in his hand.
"Oh ... I am being weak and foolish, I know. But I cannot keep from thinking of the other women, whose men never came back. And the peasants dragged off to war, who asked nothing but leave to work their fields in peace. One night I dreamed I stood before the Imperial throne, the Emperor was on it and somehow the Emperor was you, too, but the throne was wet with blood and when you—he—lifted his hand, I saw blood clotted between his fingers."
They had talked somewhat of this erenow. "The Norse throne I must have," he said. "If I take that not, I am a craven who cheats his own sons. But as for the rest, perhaps you can talk me into ways of peace."
Her mood sprang over to lightness. "How many sons shall we have? I hope they will be many. Big noisy boys tramping through the house. And will you give me just one daughter?"
"To be sure. If she has your looks, she'll be wooed by kings. Which will be useful to our throne, eh? But enough of talking. Yonder crone will not nap the whole day, worse luck." He drew her to him. She kissed him with hunger.
Then after a timeless time, feet stamped in the peristyle and a Northern voice cried, "Hoy, there, Harald Sigurdharson! Where the Devil are you?"
"Ulf!" Harald came swiftly from the bower. "What's this?"
The Icelander entered the garden. Teeth gleamed in his dark face. "I thought I'd find you here. News has come."
"Well?" said Harald like a curse.
"A messenger from the palace to the Brazen House. The Bulgarians have risen in force. They're advancing through Dyrrachium, slaying every Greek they can lay hands on. The Emperor is on his way back from Thessalonica to raise a new army. We'll be among them."
Harald stood motionless before he asked, most softly: "How bad is the case?"
"Bad enough. Slavic troops have cast off their allegiance and thrown in with the rebels. The governor in Dyrrachium seems as big an ass as Admiral Stephen, he's being whipped everywhere." Ulf spread his hands. "Well, if the Emperor himself plans to take the field, you can judge for yourself how matters must stand."
"I see." Harald t
urned back to Maria.
"What were you two saying?" she asked, white-faced.
He told her. "So we cannot be wedded until after this war," he finished, "and the war looks to be a long one."
She had shuddered and he had thought her about to weep. But she drew herself straight instead, and the hands she laid in his did not tremble greatly.
"I'll pray for your safety," she said. "God love you."
VIII
How Emperor Michael Went to his Weird
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TLV - 01 - The Golden Horn Page 11
