Lord of Slaughter

by M. D. Lachlan

  ‘My investigations,’ he said, ‘have uncovered devil work going on here in the city, which we must eliminate as quickly as possible. The northerners worship demons. They are causing the problems here.’

  ‘The northerners? We should have them eliminated,’ said the chamberlain. The eunuch seemed deeply shaken. He kept wetting his lips with his tongue and his eyes roamed the church.

  ‘I don’t think it can be the Varangians,’ said Loys, ‘but other northerners.’ The Varangians were pagans, true enough, but Loys wanted no blood on his hands if he could help it.

  ‘Which others?’

  ‘I have yet to identify them,’ said Loys, ‘I have yet—’

  The chamberlain jabbed a finger at him. ‘This is no time for trifling. I read men and I read you like a psalter on a chain. I am not your dog, scholar, so do not think to throw me a scrap and dismiss me.’

  Loys bowed again. It was time to show he had advanced his studies in some way, that he was to be taken seriously.

  ‘I need to speak to the wolfman,’ said Loys.

  The chamberlain was impassive. ‘I would have thought he would have been the first person you sought to interview.’ He gave no sign he had concealed the wolfman’s existence and Loys knew better than to mention it.

  ‘He had escaped before I came to do so.’

  ‘What do you think an interview with him will reveal?’

  ‘There is a story his people hold to be true – that of the coming of the end of their gods. They think it is happening here. There is a well in which their god gave his eye for wisdom. The well offers insight but asks a great price for its gifts. The god is coming here in the form of a man to die.’

  ‘The Arabs too say a one-eyed man will herald the end of the world.’ The chamberlain seemed lost in thought for a second. ‘There is so much lore, so much …’

  ‘I have checked the events against the text of Revelation and there is a …’ Loys searched for the right word ‘… a correspondence.’

  The chamberlain crossed himself.

  ‘This northern demon, how is it coming here to die?’

  ‘At the teeth of a wolf.’

  ‘What? What wolf?’ The chamberlain took a pace towards Loys and for a heartbeat the scholar thought he might strike him with his cane.

  ‘I don’t know. The wolfman? The sky? They have a myth about a wolf who eats the sun.’

  The chamberlain scanned the bodies. Sweat cut dark lines in the powder on his face.

  ‘You are telling me the lies they believe are true?’

  ‘No. I am saying they open themselves up as a channel for demons. Their gods are clearly demons in disguise. We need to find the sorcerer who has summoned them and eliminate him.’

  ‘Go and find the survivor of this,’ said the chamberlain, ‘and ask him what happened here. I have had enough of keeping you and your northern slut in finery for no result. An explanation and an end to this in a week’s time or you will be going to the Numera and she will be going back to her father.’

  Loys bowed.

  ‘I have your authority to search the Numera for the wolfman? My evidence indicates he is the key to this.’

  ‘You do not. You have bungled this matter so far and I was right to think I couldn’t trust such an important task to you.’

  ‘We should purge the soothsayers to be sure,’ said the messenger captain.

  ‘No!’ said Loys.

  ‘The time for half-measures is over,’ said the chamberlain. ‘Do it, and quickly. Do not chide me with your eyes, scholar. This is your doing. If you worked more efficiently none of this would need to be done.’

  The messenger captain bowed. ‘We will begin immediately, lord. Allow my men to search the Numera for the wolfman. I can have forty troops in there before the next night bell.’

  ‘Leave him,’ said the chamberlain. ‘You’ve wasted enough time already. Now, scholar, do as I tell you and find this survivor. The rest of you, clear up this mess. All bodies to be buried or put into the sea before tomorrow at dusk. If you can call it dusk.’

  Loys bowed and the chamberlain swept from the great church, his troops clattering out behind him.

  35 The Moon on the Water

  ‘You said I should come here at this hour if I needed you.’

  Beatrice knelt in the little chapel, lowering herself carefully. She felt so hot, so heavy and so tired with the baby. She desperately wanted to give birth so she could just walk without wheezing again. Everything had been so new and difficult since she arrived in Constantinople she had hardly had the time to think of the danger she was in simply by being an expectant mother. Plenty of women died in childbirth. The care at the palace was excellent but still women died, and regularly. She put it from her mind. Azémar had disturbed her too greatly for her to dwell too long on that.

  The chapel was the Lady Styliane’s private space for worship but the guards had been told to admit Beatrice.

  The lady knelt beside her in front of the candles on the little altar and an image of Christ preaching.

  ‘What is it you want?’

  Beatrice was no fool and realised that by going behind Loys’ back to this woman she was taking a great risk. Lady Styliane had said she herself knew ‘a little’ of magic and pagan practices, which Beatrice recognised as a coded invitation to talk about these things.

  ‘My husband is greatly burdened by his task of office.’

  ‘It is no surprise. The waters of this court seem still to the outsider but they teem with dangerous currents.’

  ‘Quite so. But there has been a development.’

  Could she trust the lady? She had no one else to turn to. The Church? The priests of this place were strange and did not speak her language, and anyway she had always needed to be dragged to church by her maid. It was not her instinct to confide in holy men but in other ladies.

  ‘What sort of development?’

  ‘Someone has come looking for us.’

  ‘You are under my protection, and in the palace no one can harm you.’

  ‘I just need your advice. Your husband made a study of demons.’

  ‘He wrote a book on them before he died.’

  ‘Is it possible a demon can come out of hell to walk the earth as a man?’

  ‘Demons are full of tricks. I think it might be.’

  ‘I have dreams. I have always had dreams, and they concern something that is looking for me. In the dream it is a wolf but it is also a man at the same time.’

  ‘Half man, half wolf?’

  ‘No, not exactly. It appears as a wolf but in the dream I know it to be a man, or it appears as a man but he has a violence in his eyes that tells me he is a wolf.’

  ‘This is the development?’

  ‘No. My husband’s friend came here to warn us of an assassin stalking us. The friend was cruelly imprisoned. I had never seen this man before he came here but I know him. He is the one from my dreams. He is a wolf and a man at the same time.’

  ‘Your husband released the scholar Azémar from prison as a quaestor conducting an investigation. I have no power to put him back in there.’

  ‘It was you who imprisoned him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘ “Why?” is not a question guests of the palace address to great ladies.’ Her face was stern in the candlelight.

  ‘You are angry he has been released?’

  Again the lady said nothing. Beatrice needed to confide in her.

  ‘I left my home to get away from him. I had a fever that nearly cost me my life, and in it I saw him, in terrible dreams. I wonder if Loys’ investigation into these magical abuses hasn’t called him forth by error.’

  ‘When one gazes into hell, hell gazes back at you,’ said Styliane.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Beatrice, ‘so is it possible hell regards Loys as an enemy and is moving to stop him?’

  ‘I thought this man was his friend. He has done nothing to hurt him so far.’

  ‘D
emons are in no hurry, so my nursemaid told me.’

  The lady thought for a moment.

  ‘My brother’s choice of your husband seemed at first to me to be a political one.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He is a foreigner and an outsider. Difficult for a man like that to make any progress here. Lady Beatrice, your life is under many threats; to add one more would seem only a small matter.’

  ‘I don’t understand you, lady.’

  ‘If I confide in you and you betray my trust – to anyone, including your husband – then you will not live to see the dawn, should it ever come under this black sky.’

  ‘I am trustworthy.’

  ‘I find it interesting my brother chose your husband. I find it interesting this man you perceive to be a wolf has come.’

  ‘He is working for your brother too?’

  ‘There are greater bonds in the world than those of money, or of duty or of kin.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘The wolf is important to my brother. It’s something he spoke of many times when we were growing up. Is it possible there is a magical bond between my brother and your wolfman?’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, there’s the question. It might be useful, given you seem central to all this, to ask some questions of you, to explore why this man has troubled your dreams.’

  ‘Any there are, I will answer gladly.’

  ‘It is not easy, though it could be done tonight if you are willing.’

  ‘What done?’

  ‘What do you believe of God?’

  ‘In one God, the father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. I believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God—’

  Styliane put up her hand. ‘Spare me the creed. In God, Jesus his son and the holy spirit?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you find it possible to believe God was worshipped in this way for many years before Christ?’

  ‘No, because Christ was born one thousand years ago. He could not have been worshipped in that way before.’

  ‘Perhaps the Bible is only one telling of a much longer story. It is not so much about people and things – how Jesus was sent by Pilate to die – but of the fundamental nature of eternal God. How the divine nature is threefold, how God suffers for his power.’

  ‘I am not a philosopher, lady.’

  Lady Styliane raised an eyebrow. ‘But you know sacrilege when you hear it?’

  Beatrice bowed her head. ‘I only want an answer to why I feel such dread when I look at the man my husband has rescued.’

  Lady Styliane put her hand on Beatrice’s.

  ‘I am willing to help you. I have examined that man before. I saw him coming here too. It is no surprise to me he is free. Imprisonment was only ever a temporary measure. What to do? What to do?’

  ‘How did you see him coming here? In dreams?’

  ‘In something like them. It is possible to choose to dream if you know the way. When I was brought to this palace I was three years old – a child of the slums. I was raised correctly and in the ways of Christ. There are other ways and ideas here. My brother arranged for me to be adopted by a noble family, but perhaps the chamberlain, arranger of fates, was himself arranged. I was taken in by one of the city’s oldest families. They were Christian people but their slaves had been with the family for generations. They had come from Egypt years before and kept some old traditions in secret. I was raised to understand the things my mother would have taught me, had she lived.’

  ‘Your mother the sorceress?’

  ‘Hardly. Just a woman of insight who kept the old ways, from what I’m told. I heard the rumours about our family. When I came of age my family’s maid took me to the hillside and under the sickle moon she showed me the rites I had been denied by my adoption.’

  Beatrice crossed herself.

  ‘So it is you who is in league with devils?’

  ‘No. I believe in Christ, who died for our sins but I know God cannot be limited to one form or one expression. So I know too he walks with the moon as his lamp in the form of Hecate, goddess of the gateways, lighting the way to the lands of the dead, lighting the way from the lands of the dead.’

  Beatrice made to get up but Styliane stopped her with a gesture.

  ‘Remember my warning, Lady Beatrice. It was not a joke. This sky, these deaths, are nothing to do with me. I only foresaw calamity. Your father’s court must have had fortune tellers and seers visit for your amusement. Think of me, then, as like them. I saw this fellow who comes to you before he arrived. I had him captured and interrogated and I visited him. I tried a rite of divination but I could not go through with it. I saw only death around him and, like you, I was terrified.’

  ‘So why did you not kill him?’

  ‘Because he has the protection of a mighty god, or a demon. He cannot be trifled with without extreme peril to those who move against him. It was not clear, the vision was not clear. I put him into a dungeon so I could have time to think. Your husband released him. This only confirms what I thought. Something is protecting him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We could find out. Or endeavour to.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Let me perform the rite with you. Let us both explore your dreams. I will go with you there. I will see what you see.’

  ‘That is sorcery.’

  ‘Think of it as prayer. I will not ask you to pray to any devil or goddess. Pray to Christ. Ask him for his guidance. Do so with me, tonight, when the hidden moon is full and the labyrinth that leads us to truth is bathed in a light no cloud can obscure. There are paths we can walk that may lead to an understanding of this man of dread. We can go together to the gardens of heaven where Christ walks in his many forms.’

  ‘It will imperil my soul.’

  ‘No. Could you go there unless Christ wished it? Could you stand before the face of the creator if he didn’t wish you to? Come, my dear, have more faith in God.’

  Beatrice thought of the man in her chambers. Her husband had called him friend, but she remembered the carnivorous smile that lay upon his face as he slept, the horrific dreams that had consumed her in her fever, that strange shape that seemed to writhe and slink and howl in her heart.

  ‘I will go with you,’ she said.

  ‘Then follow.’

  The lady extended her hand to help Beatrice to her feet and led her out of the little chapel, down a corridor. They turned left past another guard and walked through more corridors decorated with forest scenes. They were empty of people. Everywhere else in the palace eyes followed you. Here, in Styliane’s quarters, they did not.

  Eventually they came to a plainer corridor and then to a door where a guard stood. Styliane simply lifted her finger and pointed to the door. He went through it and closed it behind him. The draught of cold air told Beatrice it led outside. On pegs on the wall hung three dark cloaks. Styliane passed Beatrice one and put another on herself, pulling up the hood.

  ‘We wait for a while,’ said Styliane.

  ‘Gladly.’ Beatrice leaned against the wall, trying to get her breath. ‘What are we waiting for?’ she said.

  ‘Transport,’ said Styliane.

  ‘I cannot ride a horse.’

  ‘A boat, not a horse.’

  The women stood silently in the corridor. Shortly, the door opened again and the guard came back through, saying nothing, just resuming his post. Styliane stepped through the door followed by Beatrice.

  A long damp jetty ran down to a gate. The night was dark and they had only the light of a small lamp to guide them. Beatrice’s ears and her nose, though, told her where she was – by the sea. They went down through the cold air to the gate. The bolt was stiff and Styliane struggled to pull it back. Beatrice could not think what secret would make a great lady of the court struggle at a gate like a common guard.

  When the gate was open, Styliane pointed away from the palace. Beatrice peere
d into the night. Two lights hung in space. The smaller light moved. It took a while for her eyes to work out what she was seeing, but then Beatrice realised it belonged to the promised boat. They went down to a small beach, Styliane bowing three times as she passed through the gate.

  Beatrice found the gesture very disquieting, with its pagan overtones, but she had made up her mind – she would not turn back. If Styliane wished her harm or wanted her dead then she had no need to go to such elaborate lengths. She felt the baby inside her, kicking. She put her hand to her belly.

  ‘Not yet, child. You must wait until we’ve done what we need to do.’

  The boat was small – no more than a fishing vessel, though well built and sturdy. A middle-aged man and a youth, slaves by their dress, waited beside it.

  ‘We can cross?’ Styliane spoke to the older man.

  ‘The lighthouse is visible from here and the palace has enough lights to guide us on the return. We can cross.’

  The boy helped both women in, the man climbing in to sit at the oars.

  ‘Strange times, lady,’ said the oarsman.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Styliane.

  ‘Should she be here in that condition?’

  ‘It’s a needful time.’

  Beatrice was struck by the familiarity with which Styliane treated these people, allowing their questions without reminding them of their place. There was no distance between them; she adopted no superior air. Beatrice’s father would have warned her such an attitude would lead to trouble with the servants. Her father, Rouen and the court. That life seemed so far behind her.

  They went on through the water, the lights of the palace fading behind them, their own lamp and the bigger light in front of them the only breaks in the darkness.

  ‘I’m like Charon,’ said the oarsman. ‘Do I get a coin?’

  ‘What?’ said Beatrice.

  ‘The boatman on the river of the dead,’ said Styliane. ‘The old Greeks said that we cross from this life to the next across a river and Charon rows.’

  Beatrice could not appreciate the humour and kept her eyes on the growing light in front of her.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Leander’s Tower,’ said Styliane. ‘A lighthouse.’