Karros smiled humorlessly at him. “Michael wore a color on his arm during the race.”
“Did he? I don’t remember.”
“He did. A yellow scarf.”
“Maybe for luck.” Now, his memory filling in, Ishmael did recall, as he raced his team hopelessly in the dust of the Prince’s car, a yellow scarf fluttering like an insult in his face.
“Why now? He’s never used a luck charm before. You don’t think it was a signal?”
“I don’t know what it was, Karros. Why don’t you ask him?”
Karros’s lips twisted in a wry grimace. The whites of his eyes were tinged with brown.
“Think of this, Ishmael. He’s the darling of the people. If he wanted to be emperor, nothing could stop him.”
“‘Emperor,’” Ishmael said, astonished. “You’re crazy, Karros. Whose idea is that?”
“The yellow scarf—it’s a signal to his supporters, we think.”
“Horse dung.” Ishmael looked suspiciously into Karros’s face, wondering where he got such stories; he blurted out, “Why would he want to be emperor, when he is Champion of the Hippodrome?”
Karros said, “You race drivers see the world a little narrow, don’t you think?” He nodded toward the door. “Here comes the man himself. That was one hell of half of a race, that last heat.”
Ishmael’s temper slipped. “Thanks for the cup.” He jerked himself up onto his feet, glared at Karros, and went across the tavern to the big table at the back where Prince Michael usually sat.
Michael had stopped to speak to Esad, who was feeling his throat and talking with a rasp. Ishmael waited until the Prince turned away from the injured groom.
“What happened to him?”
Michael went on toward his table. “He talked too much to the wrong man. Sit down and share a jar with me.”
Ishmael pulled up a stool to the scarred wooden wheel of the table. The lamp hanging above it smoked in billows and the ceiling was black with soot; the shadow of the lamp fell on the table. He fingered the deep marks on the worn surface of the wood, where generations of patrons had idled away their time with their knives. “Where did Esad get into this fight?”
“At the stables. There’s a stranger in the back, there, a white-haired man; have you seen him?”
“He has two Syrian stallions—a bay and a black? Yes. He looks very rough in harness. Whose man is he?”
Michael had already signalled the tavern’s serving girl, who brought a double-handled jug of a very fine western wine over to the table and set down a cup before each of the charioteers. “Apparently he is in the service of the Basileus. Maybe he’s one of her spies.”
Ishmael fingered his cup. Karros had pumped him full of drink already, and he disliked being tipsy. The notion of spies beguiled him. Karros was right: he looked too little at the world outside the Hippodrome. That reminded him of the yellow scarf, and he glanced at Prince Michael.
The other man’s eyes rested speculatively on him. “Have you heard anything about this new team from Caesarea?”
“I’ve heard he’s very daring, but his hands are a little heavy.”
“What are his horses like?”
“Ferghana crosses, probably.”
The other teams did not interest him much. He knew he could beat any of them in straight heats. Ishmael had won the right to race for the Greens of Constantinople in a summer-long competition in which he had not lost a single heat; he knew himself the best, and was not worried about the need to qualify again for the championship series. All the teams but Michael’s had to fight for a place in the track with the champion; the qualifying heats would be run over most of the summer, according to the whim of the Basileus.
“When will you and I race again?” Ishmael asked.
“Before the hot weather’s done, certainly.” Michael leaned back, his long arms outstretched on the table. His white tunic, of the finest, softest silk, could not conceal the perfect structure of his chest and shoulders; his upper arms were as thick as a lesser man’s thighs. When he fluttered his fingers, the great muscles of his forearm jumped. “The harder the summer, the more often the races.” He shook his head at Ishmael. “You will never beat me, you know.”
Ishmael straightened, his back tightening. “Someday.”
“You will never beat me.”
Affronted, Ishmael got to his feet; the stool scraped on the floor. Worse than losing was hearing about it all the time. He walked off a few steps and wheeled.
“Michael!”
The whole place fell quiet. Everybody looked around.
“Prince Michael,” said the man at the table, correcting him, calmly.
“That yellow rag, Prince, that you were wearing during the race, Prince—what did it mean?”
The other driver laughed. “A present. From a female friend.” His teeth were white against the cropped black beard. He drank his wine down and put the cup on the table.
Ishmael went to the door. On the way, he passed Karros, still sitting alone at the table by the wine tuns, and paused to speak to him. “There. You see?”
“He wouldn’t say in front of everybody, would he,” Karros said.
“I yield,” Ishmael said. “There is no answer.” He walked out to the street.
Karros lingered on in the tavern as long as he could, which was most of the day, drinking and listening to gossip. He liked this kind of work; what he did not like was going back to his master without some definite word on the intentions of Prince Michael. He held his drink well, so that in midafternoon he was only slightly drunk when a street urchin ran in with a note for him on scented paper.
The scent was familiar to him. He knew who had written it even before he unfolded the paper and saw the firm strokes of her writing. When he read the words, he began to smile.
She was a meddler, the little bitch; now she thought she could meddle again. Swiftly he got up from his table, collected his cloak and the shoes he had kicked off under his chair, and went out the door into the street.
It was near nightfall. Outside the tavern, the whores were gathering, ready for the evening’s work. Karros plowed through them without even a glance. He had promised himself, once, that when Theophano had lost the protection of the great, he would take her himself. Now she was asking for it again.
He went up past the public baths, to a little church on the slope there, surrounded by the tenements of the poor. A swarm of workmen and housewives were waiting in the churchyard for the mass to begin. Karros went by them and in through the front door.
The church smelled of stale incense. The priest’s boys were running irreverently up and down under the dome, taking candles up to the altar, and on the way back playing some game, skidding over the smooth floor, and giggling. When Karros came in they pulled themselves up into an exaggerated sobriety of pace. He went around to one side, outside the ring of footed columns that supported the dome, to a bench where a woman was sitting, her face heavily veiled.
It was Theophano, pretending to pray. Karros sat down beside her. Her perfume excited him.
“Good evening, Theophano.” He licked the salty taste of sweat from his lips, remembering the last time he had seen her. “You are much more clothed than you were at the inn in Chrysopolis, my dear.”
She crossed herself, silent, as if she did not hear him. He could make out nothing of her face behind the veil.
He tried again; he said, “Lying down with sweaty unbathed barbarians these days?”
She seemed not to hear him at all, and for a moment, his stomach suddenly giddy, he wondered if she were the wrong woman—if he were making some horrible mistake. But then she sat back on the bench, lifted her veil, and faced him, her heart-shaped face perfectly framed by the mass of black gauze, her blue eyes guileless.
She said, “Tell me, Karros, is the Patrician discouraged with
me?”
The fat man blinked at her, taken off-stride by this unexpected question. “You want to come back to him?”
Her eyelashes fluttered; new color bloomed in her cheeks. Karros cleared his throat. He knew he should talk her into thinking she would be welcome. John Cerulis would give much to have her within his power again.
He said, “I believe he loves you, my dear—he will forgive anything to one he loves.”
Impossible to get that through his lips without stumbling. He patted his mouth with his fingers, wishing he had not drunk so much.
She said, “Then you think he will have me back again?”
“I shall make the way straight for you.” He wondered why she was doing this. Certainly on orders of the Empress. But what difference did it make? Once within John Cerulis’s grasp, she would never escape again.
She said, “I had to go with them, you know—I really do want to serve the Patrician, but Shimon dragged me off to meet Targa. And then those Franks—”
“Oh, yes, my dear. I saw how much you struggled against the Franks.”
Her eyes widened; in a voice that quivered with false feelings, she said, “I don’t know how to thank you for that, Karros—had you not come in just then, I fear he would have raped me.”
Karros laughed out loud; people were filing into the church, now, and his boisterous mirth drew pointed looks. He settled himself. Up at the altar the boys were lighting the candles. Karros put his hand over his mouth.
“Those barbarians.” He remembered the man he had thought he had seen, on the top tier of the Hippodrome, a man he never wanted to see again. “You don’t happen to know where they are now?”
“Well, as it happens—”
“Yes?”
“I don’t, actually.” She smiled at him, sweet as a child. “Have you seen them since Chrysopolis?”
“I thought—” He frowned, watching her closely; did she really not know that one of them was dead? “I thought I saw the big one at the races the other day. Probably I was wrong.”
“I have seen neither of them since the inn,” she said. “I have no desire to do so, either, and nor should you—they were little more than common criminals, those two.” She gathered up the veil in both hands. “Tell the Patrician John Cerulis that I shall present myself to him soon, and hope to recover a place of grace with him.”
“It shall be my privilege.” Karros leered at her, delighted; this news would quite make up for his failure to learn anything about Prince Michael. “If you were to bring him the list, he would certainly welcome you with every honor.”
“The list is gone,” she said. “Think no more of that.” She lowered the veil over her face. Karros got up, expecting her to leave the bench past him, so that he could brush up against her, let her feel his body, but she backed up to the other side and went out that way. Disappointed, he tramped off through the mob toward the door.
10
The Empress had a map of the world, woven of silk threads with an emerald to mark Constantinople, and a great white pearl to mark Jerusalem; the sea was the blue of lapis lazuli, the Empire was of gold, and the rimlands of earthen brown and green. Nicephoros, coming early into the council room, saw this beautiful work displayed and went up to the wall where it hung to admire it.
He was of Syrian blood, the Treasurer of the Empire, born near Damascus; he had been brought to Constantinople as a baby, when his parents fled the oppression of the Caliph, but the authority of his blood still marked him, in the dark hue of his skin, his great hook of a nose, and his passion for numbers. As a boy, sitting cross-legged on a terrace before his tutor and his tutor’s cane, he had suffered through Homer and Pindar, struggled with geography and astronomy, and gloried in the work of numbers. In their abstractions he found a peace beyond controversy, and their clues to the fundamental relationships between apparently disparate things seemed to him revelations of the order of the cosmos.
What that order was, he had never come to grasp; it was enough, usually, to know that an order existed. Especially in the administration of the Empire, it was a necessary belief that beneath all chaos there was pattern, even if comprehension of it were beyond the reach of men.
He stood before the map, seeing in the arrangement of the colors a problem in geometry; the door behind him opened, and he wheeled, ready to prostrate himself. But it was only the Parakoimomenos.
The tall eunuch advanced through the room with stately pace. His skin was white and smooth as goat’s cheese. “Nicephoros,” he said. “Perusing the book of the world, are you?”
Nicephoros greeted his colleague with a bow. “I am assured we are here today to discuss matters of war and barbarian government. I wished to refresh my understanding of the details of the earthly frame.” He sniffed. The Parakoimomenos wore a subtle fragrance he could not identify, disturbingly feminine. It suited the council room, its cushiony gold and white luxury.
“The Basileus may not appear today,” he said. His voice vibrated musically in the bellows of his chest.
“Oh?” Nicephoros raised his eyebrows.
“I understand she passed the night very poorly.” One long pale finger reached out and picked at the pearl of Jerusalem. His fingernail was perfectly oval, the color of a moonstone. In a hushed voice, the Grand Domestic said, “You know she is unwell.”
“I know no such thing,” said Nicephoros, and glanced over his shoulder.
The eunuch laughed richly at this response. “Oh, but she is. Perhaps it is a passing thing, a mere indigestion, or a touch of female troubles—in spite of all, we must remember that she is still a woman—”
He sniffed; his black eyes glowed hotly a moment. Nicephoros said nothing. It was never wise to trade confidences with a eunuch, or with a complete man, for that matter.
“She has never named an heir,” said the Parakoimomenos. “Perhaps the moment is upon us when that must be done.”
Nicephoros said, “She will never name an heir,” and promptly clamped his lips shut, vexed with himself for letting out such a revealing comment.
“Oh? Why ever do you say that?”
The Treasurer shrugged, turning away. “Merely a passing thought, my dear fellow. Think no more of it.”
“No, no.” The Parakoimomenos pursued him sedately back across the room. The piles of carpet silenced their steps, as if they walked on clouds. “Your opinion in such matters is ever acute and edifying, Nicephoros—please, amplify your remarks.”
Nicephoros bowed to him, hands pressed palm to palm. “I would not take your precious time with my ignorant daydreams, my dear Parakoimomenos.”
“Oh, but—”
The door swung inward again, and several more of the Imperial staff swarmed into the room; the Parakoimomenos, thwarted, stood back from Nicephoros, and went to greet them, and Nicephoros sat down, much relieved. He pinched the bridge of his enormous bony nose between thumb and forefinger.
The Empress would never name an heir, because to associate anyone else with her in the Imperial dignity would give her enemies one more angle of attack. He raised his head, facing the map again, his hands in his lap. For that reason also, if she were ill, she would do all necessary to conceal it. For that reason, to suspect her of illness, even rightly, or to pressure her to name an heir would be to provoke her suspicions; Nicephoros had no desire to find himself the target of his Empress’s suspicions.
The Parakoimomenos knew all this as well as anyone. Why then was he muttering into men’s ears? Nicephoros glanced across the room at the eunuch, who in the midst of the crowd of officers went from one to the next, pressing hands, talking in his melodious voice. Eunuchs were not supposed to have ambitions for themselves. But then neither were women.
Now she was here, among them as suddenly as if she had dropped from Heaven. Nicephoros sprang to his feet and at once went to his knees. She strode into their midst, her coat of
gold and pearls all asparkle in the lamplight, and turned in the center of the room, and Nicephoros lay down on his face at her feet.
“Hail, Basileus, Augustus, Chosen of God!”
Some of the others had not even seen her; gaping, they were caught on their feet as in a great rustle of their clothes the men sank to the floor and raised their voices to her. Lifting his head, Nicephoros saw her smiling down at him.
Had she set the Parakoimomenos on him to test him? Perhaps that was it.
“You may rise,” she said, in her cool voice. She walked restlessly around the middle of the room, her garments swishing and swaying around her. If she were ill, it lay lightly on her; she was full of energy, her face bright with life, her eyes snapping. Nicephoros and the others rose and arranged themselves around the room according to rank, the Parakoimomenos foremost. She went along the rank and spoke or smiled to each one, and put out her hand, and each man bowed and touched her hand—this was a little private ceremony of hers; she did it always. A womanish thing: she trusted her sense of touch to find out falsehood. Nicephoros pressed his fingers to her fingers and her smile fell on him like a lover’s look. He lifted his head, his spirits suddenly high.
“Excellent,” she said, when she had seen them all. “Now. What is the news from Europe? Drungarius?”
The Grand Drungarius stepped forward and flexed his arm in a military salute. “Basileus, from Stauriakos comes word that he is steadily recapturing those villages along the coast of the Adriatic that were lost three winters ago. The Bulgars are fleeing back toward their mountain strongholds. But it is piecemeal work, Basileus.”
“Ah. Bit by bit we shall recover what is ours,” she said. “Very good. You may write to our general Stauriakos and tell him we are pleased.”
“He needs money, Basileus.”
“I shall take that under consideration.”
“Basileus, Stauriakos is a brilliant general—if we sent him more men and more money he might drive the Bulgars completely out of the Empire in a matter of months! I—”
“No,” she said, and turned her back; she went to the map on the wall and laid her hand on the hand-shaped landmass of Greece. “He does well. Bit by bit, this is how to win wars. That way, we always know what it is that we have won, and if we lose, we lose only a little. Let Stauriakos do as he can with what he has.”
The Belt of Gold Page 11