The Belt of Gold

by Cecelia Holland

  “One moment,” Irene called, and leaning down took Theophano’s hands in hers and looked into her face.

  “You must. My love, for me, will you do it?”

  “Oh, mistress—” Theophano laid her cheek against the Basileus’s hand. “I would do anything for you, you know it, but—”

  “I shall rescue you, I promise. God will not abandon you, if you do His will. I shall not abandon you. But we must have knowledge of his plans, or we shall all be destroyed, and the Empire with us.”

  Theophano gathered breath. She was frightened of John Cerulis and the idea of putting herself into his power again turned her heart to ice. The hands on her hands were warm and soft and loving, a mother’s hands. The womanly face that looked down into hers was soft with love. She could not fail the Basileus now. Lifting her eyes, she said, “I will, mistress.”

  Irene leaned down and firmly kissed her lips. “Stay by me a while longer, we shall discuss ploys to use against him.”

  She called out, and Helena came in, on her heels the Parakoimomenos. Theophano drew back into a corner, struggling with her tangled feelings.

  To serve the Empire: she wanted nothing more. She fixed her mind on that, the one worthy goal.

  Before her, the Empress had risen, restless, her hands unceasingly moving. The Parakoimomenos had prostrated himself when he entered, and now he rose to his knees.

  “Augustus, Chosen One of God, glory of the Empire!”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Irene said. “Speak.” She drifted away up the room toward the window.

  “The holy man in the desert, Augustus, is a hermit named Daniel. He is coming this way, along the Paphlagonian highway, causing damage as he goes—”

  “How?” The Basileus wheeled. The sunlit window behind her turned her into a featureless shadow.

  “He preaches a new breaking of the images, Basileus. Wherever he goes, some of the people heed his words and obey him, and then the others are drawn into the strife to protect their churches.”

  “Has he followers?”

  “Some. Not many. Some say he is mad, given to visions, inspired to prophecy.”

  The dark figure before the window spun around again, giving off flashes of light from the gold ornaments in her hair. “Very well. We shall keep watch on him.”

  “Yes, Augustus, Chosen One of God.”

  “He is no danger, unless he attracts followers.”

  “Yes, Augustus, Chosen One of God.”

  “See to it.”

  The Parakoimomenos prostrated himself again. From the corner Theophano looked on with a new quaking of her heart. The Grand Chamberlain was in charge of the household of the Basileus, nothing more. He had no right to duties outside the Palace. Why was she giving him such powers? Now he was coming to his feet, his body submissively bent, his hands together. Neither man nor woman, what strange lusts manifested themselves in him? And Irene was giving in to him, giving him what he wanted. Theophano turned her head away.

  “Now, for contrast,” Nicephoros said, and shuffled through his stacks of paper. Until his appointment to the office of treasurer, the accounts of the Empire had been kept on wax tablets and sheets of horn, but he had reorganized the procedures, made the scribes use paper, and went over all the books himself. He produced a sheaf of accounts from the stack on his left.

  “In contrast, Augustus, to the frail condition of your own finances, let me present the finances of the monastery of Studion.”

  “Studion,” she said, startled, and walked quickly toward him. “What relevance have the monks to any of this?”

  “If the Augustus will condescend to read through these—”

  The Treasurer laid out sheet after sheet of the figures, in his own precise Damascene hand; she glanced at them and with a sweep of her arm scattered them onto the floor.

  “Damn you, Nicephoros! Why show me that? They are rich! They are monks, God makes them rich, and I cannot touch any of it—why do you show me that, when I am poor, to tempt me? Or to taunt me, damn you?”

  As she shouted, she strode up and down the room faster and faster, another form of temptation. Yesterday she had led the sacred procession to Saint Anthony’s Stone, and at the effort of the long walk the crushing pain in her chest had come back. All night long she had lain in her bed unable to sleep. Now the pain was gone, and she walked, she worked her body, pushing, pushing, because it frightened her, and when things frightened her she knew no other answer than to defy them.

  Nicephoros was bowing at her from the desk, his nose skimming the heaps of paper. She walked straight up before him. “Well?”

  “Basileus, I see no reason why the monastery of Studion, and the other havens for the holy monks, should not contribute somewhat to the running of the Empire—”

  “Render unto Ceasar,” she said. “The monks have suffered enough, in the past days.”

  The monks had put her on her throne. She had promised them—especially the monks of Studion, the greatest monastery in the City itself—that she would not tax them.

  “As you wish, Augustus.”

  The papers littered the thick tufted rug beside the desk. She stared down at him, bemused; the monks kept their accounts utterly secret. “How did you find these figures?”

  Nicephoros slid off the stool and knelt down to recover his notes. “I deduced them, Basileus, from information available to me from other sources.”

  “Then you don’t really know how much money they have.”

  It was mad, that the Empire should tremble on the verge of bankruptcy, while this household of celibates ate off gold plate.

  “My sources are reliable,” said the Treasurer.

  Her intuition told her he was right; Nicephoros, methodical, intelligent, loyal, laid his reputation on nothing he could not verify a hundred ways. She went back to the window.

  “I do not see how we can separate the monks from any of their treasure, Nicephoros.”

  He murmured a few rote phrases. She rubbed her hands together. Today, as usual after an attack of the chest pain, she felt vigorous, alive, brimming with vitality; yet it was not a triumph over the pain, but a partner with it, this high hot energy that would not let her rest. She felt herself teetering on a pinnacle; like a whirling top, if she ever stopped moving, she would fall. She looked out the window into the garden.

  There below her, in the rose garden, was the Parakoimomenos, talking with Helena as the chief lady-in-waiting plied her loom. The Empress rubbed her palms together until the skin warmed like a fire.

  When the pain came, she could do nothing but lie down. She was vulnerable, then, as a rabbit in a mown field. Of all her ministers, these two, Nicephoros and the Parakoimomenos, were most dangerous to her if they perceived her weakness—Nicephoros because he controlled the finances of the Empire, the Parakoimomenos because he controlled her household.

  She had to leash them, somehow. Below her the Parakoimomenos was gossiping with Helena, whose tongue would eventually slip, and yield up the secret of her mistress’s weakness; behind her Nicephoros was writing something on one of his sheets of notes.

  She could set them against each other, which would be easy enough, since they were already rivals for power, and by nature hated each other. And she knew them, both men, very well. She could devise traps for them that their own characters would lead them into.

  Her body was nagging her again, to walk, to move, to use up the overflowing energy rising through her. To use herself, and see how much she could do, how far she could go, how hard she could work, before the pain struck her down again. To find her limits.

  She paced up the room. “Well, Nicephoros? Surely you have some ways in mind to tap this gold reserve at Studion?”

  “Yes, Augustus.”

  “Excellent,” she said. “I shall hear them eagerly. Go on.”

  9

  “You shou
ld go to the ceremonies,” said Constantine, taking off his cloak.

  Prince Michael grunted at him. “Folly needed to be soaked.”

  “By the true nature of the Trinity, Michael, you can’t tell me you spent the afternoon soaking a horse’s leg. You know, there’s more to life than horse-racing.” Constantine went down the aisle of stalls to Folly’s and leaned over the door. The horse snapped at him, its ears flat to its neck. “Is it any better?”

  “I don’t know. He’s getting old, I guess—I think maybe there’s something going wrong in the leg, or maybe in his shoulder.” Michael went after him. The grooms were gathered at the far end of this aisle, probably dicing, and the horses were munching through their hay. There was nothing to do until dinner and Michael was bored. He leaned over the stall door and indicated the dark bay flanker’s near foreleg.

  “See? There he is, pointing his foot out again. I hate to see him do that, I think he’s going unsound.”

  “He looked good enough during the race.”

  Michael sighed, chewing his lip, his eyes on the black foreleg, which the horse held slightly extended forward, the weight resting on the tip of the hoof. Constantine was right. The horse had raced well, but then this morning he had come up lame.

  “How went the ceremony?”

  “She was perfect.” Constantine’s voice softened, breathy with sentiment. “I love that ritual, and she has the gift for it, you just feel God’s hands around you.”

  Beside him, Michael leaned into the stall and unbuckled Folly’s halter. That was what happened to a man when he stopped being able to race; he got soft and spent his mind on rituals. Might as well go into a monastery, Michael thought, and took the halter off the bay horse.

  “I keep telling them not to leave their halters on at night.” He swept his gaze up and down the four stalls where his horses stood, champing through their afternoon. “They ran Ishmael’s Khorasan horses right off their wheels.”

  “On that track they’d give their lives for you. You have the hands of Castor. Still, when I was racing, we’d have given you a run for it.”

  Michael shut off his ears. That phrase recurred in his uncle’s speech several times a day, and he had heard all the stories that succeeded it. He stood watching Folly point his forefoot, worrying about the horse, about replacing him, about having to destroy him, whom he loved. Constantine rambled on about some long-past challenge series. Somewhere in the next aisle, a man yelled.

  Michael paid little heed to that, but a moment later the yell came again, closer, and he looked up. One of Ishmael’s grooms ran around the corner, all agape, his eyes wild.

  “Prince, my prince—Esad! He’s fighting in the back with some wild man from the steppes!”

  Michael swore under his breath. “Damn him, let him get beaten up. He’s always taking on people he can’t handle.”

  The groom danced up and down before him; he was very young. “Master, this man’s going to kill him.”

  Constantine hissed between his teeth. “I don’t believe it.” But he and Michael went at a trot down the aisle.

  In the back of the stable was another door, leading into the Palace grounds; down here someone had brought in two strange horses, country-bred, and opened the top of the door to give them some air. In this row of stalls, half a dozen of the grooms from the racing teams had cornered the owner of the horses and were exchanging some hot words with him. Chief of the grooms was Esad, who fought all the time, but when Michael and Constantine got there, no one was fighting. The stranger sat calmly enough on top of the door of the first of his horses’ stalls, smiling, calmly returning the sharp insults the grooms were hurling at him and his horses.

  Michael stopped short, a hot spurt of anger threading through his veins. It was the man who had been flirting with Theophano at the Bucoleon, the night before.

  To Esad he said, in heavily accented street Greek, “Look, horseboy, in my country only the slaves fight with their hands. If you want to fight me, go find a sword.”

  “Oh?” Esad threw out his chest and strutted around a little. He was a big, strapping fellow, a Canaanite, covered with crisp black hair, lantern-jawed and ham-fisted. He did not notice that Michael and Constantine had come up behind him. “If you’re as good at sword-fighting as you are at buying horses, I don’t think I’ll have much to worry about. Come down here and fight me, outlander, if you have the guts.”

  The other grooms cheered him on, snarling and hissing at the stranger. They were always willing to make brave talk for someone else. Esad pranced up and down the aisle again, while the big barbarian, fair as Esad was dark, kicked his heels against the side of the stall and smirked at him, and then Esad went to the wall and took down a long whip.

  “Well, if you won’t come down, we’ll have to chase you out, hah?”

  The other grooms muttered and backed away in a rush. One or two of them looked alarmed. Michael crossed his arms over his chest. The big white-haired barbarian had sounded tough enough the night before at the Bucoleon; it would be interesting to see if he could act up to his talk.

  Esad uncurled the whip and stroked it across the floor. “Come out here and take your punishment,” he said, purring, his eyes glinting, and snapped the whip at the barbarian.

  The white-haired man came down from the door of the stall in a single fluid leap. He dodged the first curling snap of the whip, and when Esad jerked it back up over his shoulder, the barbarian lunged at him and caught the end of the lash.

  Esad yelled. He pulled on the butt of the whip, and the white-haired man gave him some slack and then yanked back hard, dragging Esad forward onto the tips of his toes, and with a quick coiling motion of his arm looped the bight of the whip around Esad’s neck.

  Michael gave a hoarse cry. He plunged into the midst of the crowd and got between the barbarian and his groom, who was making horrible half-throttled noises. Michael’s hand closed on the whip an inch from the barbarian’s. Face to face, chest to chest, they stood with the whip gripped hard between them.

  The white-haired man’s eyes opened wide. “Where the hell did you come from?” he said, but he let go of the whip, and backed up a few feet.

  Michael cast the whip down. He looked quickly over his shoulder to see that Esad was safe. The other grooms knelt around him, helping him unwind the whip from his throat. Michael faced the barbarian again.

  The barbarian hitched himself up onto the top of the stall door again. The horse inside it came up to nuzzle him.

  “What brings you into this?” he said to Michael. “No women to impress here, are there?”

  “Look,” Michael said, and poked the barbarian in the chest with his forefinger. “Stay away from my grooms.”

  The barbarian struck his hand down. “Keep your hands off me.”

  They glared at each other. The other grooms were carrying Esad away, his hands to his throat, where the red weals showed like necklaces of blood. Michael stooped and picked up the whip and rolled the lash in his hands. He hated this barbarian with an intensity like white heat. He was the champion; he had won the awe and respect of everybody in Rome, and now this common brute, hardly a man at all, was sneering at him.

  “Get out of here,” Michael said. “Get those nags somewhere else. There’s nothing for you here but trouble.”

  “Thank you for the warning.”

  “If you have any brains at all you’ll heed it.”

  The big man made no answer, but his nasty smile said he had no intention of leaving the Hippodrome. Michael went away down the aisle.

  “What happened to him?” Ishmael leaned out to see the groom Esad, stumbling into the tavern in the arms of several other men, among them two of Ishmael’s grooms.

  “He got into another fight,” one of these called to him.

  Ishmael laughed, easing back onto his stool. Michael’s head groom was forever fighting and gett
ing beaten. He turned back to the man who was paying for his wine.

  “When will there be another race?”

  “When the Basileus declares one.” Ishmael was watching Esad stagger into a chair at the back of the tavern. The skin of his throat had peeled back like the rind of an orange, and he could barely keep his feet.

  This tavern lay down the street from the Hippodrome, and the racing teams all spent much of their free time here. From his place near the wine tuns, Ishmael could see twenty men he knew, most of them crowding around Esad, demanding the story of his battle wounds. Bits of horse gear hung on the walls; above the wine tuns, on a hook in a rafter, dangled a dusty leather belt, studded with gold plates, that some long-ago champion had won in the challenges. Legend said that when that belt came down, the Hippodrome walls would crumble and weeds grow on the track. Legend also said the plates were brass.

  “He’s one of the Prince’s men, isn’t he?” said Karros, who was sitting across the table from Ishmael. Picking up the wine jar, he filled Ishmael’s cup again.

  The charioteer took a deep drink of the wine. John Cerulis’s bully boy had sought him out for some reason, and now maybe he would find out what it was. “Yes, he’s the head groom.”

  “He’s a hero to the multitude, Michael is.”

  “True. Anybody who wins is a hero. As long as he goes on winning.”

  Karros stroked his beard. He was Armenian, or a good part of him was, and his curly black beard betrayed his Eastern blood. For a man who made a living being tough, he looked a little soft, his stomach swelling over his belt, his neck and upper arms sagging and plump and pale. He cocked his thumbs, his leer showing wide-spaced yellowing teeth.

  “You’d love to have it, wouldn’t you. Just once.”

  “Hunh.” Ishmael pushed away the wine cup, which was empty anyway. “Do you have something to say to me of any consequence?” Once would not be enough. Never enough.

  “You know the race yesterday?”

  “Yes, I think I remember something happening yesterday in the Hippodrome.”