Rogerius would have said something about that. Hagen clenched his jaws tight against the sudden renewed ache in his heart.
Off to his left, the awesome sweep of the benches was broken. From the middle of the crowd rose a sort of square tower built up out of the wall. A huge silky pavilion topped it. This must be where the Basileus would sit to watch the race. Hagen walked closer along the top tier of the racecourse wall; from this height he was above even the floating purple silk canopy, and he saw easily into the space beneath it. There seemed to be no one inside it, although ranks of armed guards were slowly filing into place along the outside of the square wall that supported it.
These were men wearing leather armor, like the men who had killed his brother. He found himself standing taut, with fists raised. He reminded himself that he knew nothing of this place—he had no understanding of the course of events that had caught him and Rogerius up momentarily and ground his brother’s life away.
Down on the racetrack, a few of the spectators had climbed the wall and dropped to the sand, and one took a string and made it into a sort of bridle for the other and pretended to drive him up and down past the benches of onlookers. A swelling roar of approval greeted this performance. Flowers and pieces of bread sailed out of the stands onto the track, and people applauded and crowded and cheered and shouted derisively.
Now other people were scrambling down from the benches onto the racecourse. Tumblers did flips and handstands up and down the sand, and someone tried to climb the stone column at one end of the central ridge.
The day was wearing on. The sun burned hot, and still the Imperial box was empty. All around the crowd, people began to clap in unison. Swiftly the hand-drumming spread, and everybody turned to peer at the pavilion, with its billow of purple silk rising and drifting on the wind from the sea. The rhythmic applause swelled to a thunder, all hands together.
“Come forth!” they shouted, a hundred voices at once. “Come forth, O Radiant One, Glory of the World, our pride and our hope! Come forth, come forth—let the races begin!”
Nothing happened. Hagen walked closer to the canopy; where he walked stone men and beasts packed the ledge so densely that he had to squeeze between them.
“Come forth, Joy of Christ—Protected of God, come forth!”
Now Hagen was almost directly above the Imperial balcony, and he could see people inside, moving around behind the drawn curtains. He squatted down on his heels, close enough now that he knew he would be spotted if he did not conceal himself a little.
The purple silk fluttered. For a moment longer, the pavilion curtains hung closed, and then abruptly a fanfare blared out from the brass throats of a dozen horns. The rippling drapery was thrown back, and out on to the expanse of white marble at the front of the box walked a woman dressed all in gold.
The crowd howled at the sight of her. They tossed their hats and baskets and empty wine jugs into the air and waved their arms, while the horns blasted, and drums rolled, and at the edge of the pavilion the golden woman raised her hand and made the Sign of the Cross over them, first to the left, then to the center, then the right. Her clothes shimmered. The sunshine struck her gown and surrounded her with a dazzling nimbus of reflected light. Her face itself shone like gold. With two little pages around her to spread out her glittering skirts, she took her seat in the center of the balcony.
Now more horns tooted, and the whole crowd shifted its attention from the Basileus to the racetrack, every head turning. The noise dropped to a hush of excitement, like the slack of a wave, and then mounted again to a shout that rocked the Hippodrome. The chariots were coming out on to the track.
There were four, all in a line, each drawn by four horses. They went decorously around the track, showing themselves to the crowd. The cars were only large enough to hold the man who drove the team. The horses were big, strapping beasts, with long thin heads, and legs like deer. They snorted and danced in their harness, the little cars jiggling along lightly on their heels, comical afterthoughts to the power of the brutes that drew them.
Hagen admired these horses. The two stallions he had now were Syrian-bred; he and Rogerius had bought them in Aleppo, and he was determined to get them back to Frankland, even if it meant paying out all his money for their passage to Italy, so that he could breed them to his Frankish mares. But the horses from Aleppo were mules compared to these racehorses.
Below him, now, the four little cars lined up side by side. The crowd fell still. On the side of the racecourse, a man stood with his arm up-stretched, holding a flag.
The flag fell. A trumpet blew. The horses surged forward down the track, and from the great crowd watching a yell went up that washed away all sound and left Hagen with his ears ringing.
The horses swept down the track, the cars flying at their heels, fighting for position to take the sharp curve on the inside track and save some ground. In the turn, the cars swung out on one wheel, the drivers leaning hard to the left to keep the flimsy vehicles from overturning. The cars lurched back and forth, banging into one another. Teetering on the verge of a crash, one skittered along sideways through the whole turn, and the crowd screamed for every bump and wobble.
Now they were racing down the far side of the track. In the lead was a driver in a blue cap, leaning forward over the rumps of his team, the reins in both hands, urging them on with his whole body. Around his upper arm was a rag of some color other than blue; Hagen wondered what that meant. In the far turn, the blue driver swerved his team around under the noses of the horses running second and straightened his car out down the middle of the track as a flying team of greys and blacks ranged up alongside.
The crowd doubled its huge voice. Below Hagen’s vantage point, people wept and prayed, clung to one another and beat the air with their fists.
“Prince Michael! The Prince—The Prince—”
“Mauros-Ishmael! Ishmael!”
“The Prince! Michael! Michael!”
The fool who had cried out for Mauros-Ishmael was quickly beaten to the floor by the people around him. Hagen stared at the fight, amazed, and when the nameless Greek lay bleeding on his bench, Hagen looked around at the Empress Irene in her pavilion.
She sat canted forward, her face taut, hawklike, her gaze on the race. Her fists were clenched on her knees. Her cheeks blazed like a maid’s in the marriage bed. As the crowd around her shrieked, its ardor rising to its climax, Irene herself raised her voice in a wild animal cry, and heaved in her place, her arms pumping, urging on the teams that hurtled toward the finish line, and then, the race over, she sank back as if exhausted, limp and sated in her chair.
Hagen looked past her. A flock of women surrounded her, but among them his eye caught on only one, a tall girl with black hair, who stood with a mirror in her hand, staring down at the track. A blue ribbon floated from her ebony hair.
Theophano. So she had gotten back here, somehow—run away, left his brother bleeding, and made her way back to safety and high position, with no thought probably for the man whose death she had caused. Hagen bit his lip, forcing down a wild vengeful rage.
The crowd was settling down again, quieting, the low murmur of ordinary talk picking up, a giant rumble of careless conversation. The race had unified them; without it, they fell into chaos. Here and there in the spreading disorder, several other fights became obvious, and among their fellows people ate and stretched and walked about.
Hagen glanced into the Imperial pavilion again. It was certainly Theophano, sitting there on a stool just behind the woman of gold.
Now a tremendous roar went up from the crowd, and he jerked his gaze back to the racecourse. Clowns and tumblers had rushed out on to the sand to perform. Music struck up, so far away that Hagen could detect only the insistent throbbing of the drum. In among the stone people, crouched on the ledge above it all, he settled down to watch and wait.
“The star-blessed little
bitch,” Karros said. “There she is, safe and sound, looking as if she’d never set foot outside the Daphne.”
“Really.” John Cerulis lifted his head and turned his gaze on the Basileus and her attendants, less than thirty feet away from him.
The Basileus was watching him. He smiled at her and bowed his head and made an elaborate gesture of subservience with his right hand, and there under her purple silks she returned his smile, and raising her arm made the Sign of the Cross in his direction. John touched the corners of his mouth with his scented handkerchief, his guts gnawed by the worm of envy: what right had she to be where he so longed to be?
None of this discontent showed on his face. He was a spare, tall, hollow-chested man in later middle age, his clothes elegant, his grey hair polished to a silver sheen, his every mannerism evidence of his excellent breeding and perfect education. He was Basileus in every particular but one: he could not wear the purple. It was an oversight on the part of the Creator that he had been working hard to amend for the last twenty years of his life.
“Well,” said Karros, clasping his hands behind his back, “she can’t have that list of names, anyway. The last I saw of her she was going out the window, and she didn’t have enough clothes on to hide a pimple. She must have hidden it somewhere on the road.”
He was still staring at Theophano, in the Empress’s entourage. Abruptly Karros’s face stiffened, his gaze sharpening, and quickly he jerked his whole body around to put his back to the pavilion.
Intrigued by this indication of alarm, John Cerulis adjusted his seat slightly, to look around him again at the pavilion. Nothing in the scene there seemed enough to provoke such a response. Beyond the Imperial box, up on the highest level of the Hippodrome, a slight movement caught his eye: there was someone up among the antique statuary stored on the upper level. Cerulis glanced at Karros again, but the fat man was relaxed now, his hands clasped behind his back, rocking up and down on his heels and toes. Whatever had bothered him had not apparently bothered him very much.
Perhaps Theophano had seen him. The slut. John Cerulis raised his handkerchief again to his lips, smiling.
“Here comes the second heat,” Karros said, eager.
The four teams were rolling out on to the track. Prince Michael led the way, since he had won the first heat. John Cerulis noticed again the bright scarf fluttering on his arm.
“There, you see? He’s involved in some sneaky business.”
Karros said, “I don’t understand that.”
“Someone does, you fool. Didn’t I tell you to find out what he’s up to? Why must you fail me in everything?”
“Most Noble, I’ve talked to Michael himself at great length sometimes—I swear to you, nothing concerns him but horse-races.”
“Then why does he send secret signals to his followers? No! You’ve been duped again, Karros, you fool.” John kept his voice mild. This was why he was not emperor, because he had the use only of silly and ignorant men who could not understand what they were seeing. “I’m telling you, go make friends with him, and find out what he intends.”
“Yes, Most Noble.”
Cerulis placed himself more comfortably in his chair, smiling. He tried to smile always, since people were always watching him, and it would not do to betray any mood less than perfect serenity. The chariots were lining up for the start of the next heat. He leaned on his elbow, smiling, to watch.
One of the horses on the team from Trebizond was refusing the start. Rearing and pitching, it backed away from the ribbon in spite of the whip and the shouts of the driver. The groom assigned to lead the Trebizonders into place was approaching warily, his hands out.
Because the Trebizond team had finished last in the first heat, they had the inside position for this one, and so the race could not begin until the horses were settled. Mauros-Ishmael calmed his raging heart.
Kept his eyes forward, his hands firm on the reins. He felt, as he always felt before a race, that he was made of fire.
Now the crowd began to scream and chant, stamping their feet. The colors of the teams fluttered in the air. Ishmael’s wheelhorse tossed its black head, impatient; Ishmael felt the action through the reins and his fingers opened and closed, giving and taking rein, the man and the horse perfectly tuned together.
Before them lay the track, the sand gleaming, furrowed by the rakes. The shadow of the Hippodrome wall cut across the straightaway halfway down its length; the whole far end was deep in the shade. In the sun, the crowd rose up like a mountain, howling and cheering and all moving at once, all watching him.
Hot all over, his blood burning in his veins, his eyes boiling, he longed for the explosion of the start.
Now the inside team’s flanker was calming down. For an instant it stopped plunging, its head thrust up high, its nostrils pumping the air in and out, and the grooms bolted to the side walls. The starter raised his flag. The crowd hushed, gathering its breath.
The flag dropped, and the ribbon fell away. The bronze horns blared forth two notes, and the crowd’s thundering cheers drowned the rest. Needing no cue from Ishmael, the horses flung themselves forward down the stretch of sand.
The inside team’s flanker had chosen exactly that moment to rear again, and so the Trebizonders lost the start. Ishmael with his greys and blacks bolted out into the lead, half a stride ahead of Michael on the right, a horse’s length ahead of the team on the left. Before the surging horses had even steadied their stride Ishmael was urging them sideways, toward the inside track, left open by the faltering of the Trebizonders.
The roar of the crowd, the rattle of wheels and the pounding of the horses’ hoofs blended into an indefinite thunder that was like hearing nothing at all. The four heads of his horses bobbed in unison, their braided manes laid back on the wind of their passage, spume flying from their necks and mouths. He tightened his inside hand and the big black wheeler responded, edging closer to the spina, pinching off the team between them and the inside, charging toward the open sand ahead.
“On! On!”
That was the driver of the team on Ishmael’s left; he went to the whip, lashing his horses, trying to keep them up and hold Ishmael out. Ishmael’s horses needed no whip. They knew racing as well as their driver. With the black wheeler guiding them all into the open track inside, they slackened stride just a little, just enough to keep team, and forced the horses in their way to shorten up or crash.
Losing ground with every stride, the inside team faltered still more, and Ishmael swept on ahead of them. Now Michael was racing up fast on the outside, urging his team out ahead of Ishmael’s, now leading by a neck, now by half a length. Ishmael gripped his reins tight, giving his horses the strength of his arms and shoulders to steady them. Michael was straining for the lead, but the turn was on them, and Ishmael had the inside track. Gripping the wheeler as short as he could, he sent on the flankers in a burst of speed, whirled around the turn in perfect rhythm, and came out of the curve ahead of Michael by a clear length.
They charged down the straight and Michael went for the lead again. His horses surged up alongside Ishmael’s car, their long lean heads flat as blades. Ishmael leaned into his outside reins and his flankers moved out sideways a little, forcing Michael wide, holding him off. The horses raced together, two teams side by side, buckle to buckle. For long strides they raced even. The crowd was screaming their names, some calling the drivers by name, some calling the horses, its passion like a whip. Ishmael himself screamed. Through the reins he knew the splendid unfaltering strength of his team, and there beside him Michael’s horses and the Prince himself were racing with the same power, the other half of this little world, locked into an eternal contest at the peak of life.
The turn swept at them. Ishmael leaned his horses into it, asking the flankers for more speed, drawing the wheeler in a little, but he asked for too much, or did it wrong. Their rhythm broke. They lost somethi
ng, a failure of concentration, trembling back through the reins into his hands, so that for precious instants he drove not a single pulsing power but a collection of separate and contending wills. Faltering, they went wide, forcing Michael also wide.
Under Ishmael now the car rocked up onto the inside wheel. He leaned out hard toward the outside, trying to bring it down. The car lost its track entirely and skidded, swinging hard toward the wall. The horses had to slow; Prince Michael surged out ahead of them, while Ishmael, sobbing with desperate fury, worked his horses down and got his chariot firmly under him and turned them straight again.
The other three teams were already entering the next turn. The race was lost. Ishmael flung his whole heart and mind forward and sent the horses hurtling after, down the passage of the sand.
They responded. Impossibly far behind, the four horses leaned into the harness and stretched their legs into the rushing wind. Flying down the straight into the turn, they gathered themselves like an arrow drawn to the full might of the bow. Hopeless. Yet they raced on.
This time, without other teams there, they executed the turn perfectly. Coming into the straight beyond it, they were eight, no, ten lengths back. Ishmael’s hands gripped the reins so tight the blood striped his palms. He wept and called to his horses, his voice lost in the wind and the roar of the crowd, and straining for every inch, for every instant of speed, the team crept into the gap between them and the others, narrowed it, and at the far turn, closed it.
This was the last turn. Ishmael held them close against the spina, to save everything he could for the straightaway. As they wheeled into the turn, he prayed for help, and help came.
Swinging around the turn, the Thessalonian team, on the inside just ahead of Ishmael, began to drift wide. On the outside the Trebizonder driver screamed at the errant racers and lashed at his own horses, but to no purpose. The Thessalonian horses veered out across the track, leaving the inside open, giving Ishmael just enough space to fit through.
The Belt of Gold Page 6