Also, Nicephoros thought, to concentrate so much power in the hands of one man would make him a rival for her throne. She distrusted armies and always had. Soldiers would not obey a woman, they would always seek to put a man in her place; she had no choice but to stand alone.
“Now,” she said. “Nicephoros, you have some report on the finances of the Empire?”
He cleared his throat; he felt all eyes turn on him. Stepping forward, he faced the Empress and said, “Basileus, the most diligent of the tax-collectors have not been able to make their quotas this year. Besides the poor harvest, the plague has broken out in Paphlagonia and Chaldia again and people are fleeing from the villages there.”
Behind him the others murmured at the mention of the plague, and the Empress glanced around the room and came a step toward Nicephoros.
“The bearer of bad tidings, Nicephoros. The more galling is it that we must somehow amass the tribute for the Caliph, whose emissary is to arrive here in a little while to receive it.”
Nicephoros saw no reason to speak on this matter. He knew there would be very little money for the Caliph, but he knew also that the Basileus meant to do rather more than give the Arabs money. He backed up, returning to the protective company of the other men.
“The Caliph is sending us the Emir Abdul-Hassan ibn-Ziad,” she said, “whom many of you will remember from the last embassy here from Baghdad, a genial man, a son of the Barmakids, that industrious and farsighted family that does the Caliph’s practical work for him. While he is here—” She turned smoothly toward the map again, and putting out one red-painted fingertip directed their attention to Baghdad. “I intend to seduce him.”
Some fool behind Nicephoros actually gasped. Nicephoros laughed; some of the others hushed the fool in a barrage of hisses, and the Empress wheeled, her clothes a dance of fiery glitter as she moved.
“What! Bardas Therias, do you not believe I am capable of it? No, my good fellow, I meant it as a figure merely.” She paced forward, her hands before her, a smile curving her lips. “He has been here before, he speaks our language—somewhat—and he has learned a little of our ways. This time, we shall show him what a man’s life may be like. Let him see what it is to be Roman, and he will not want to be anything else.”
Around Nicephoros, the men murmured their rote praises of her. Nicephoros glanced behind him, looking among the ranks of officials for the Prefect of the City, whose task it was to manage the affairs of the City of Constantinople itself; the Prefect had not yet appeared, although his report would be called for next. The Empress was facing her map again, her mind still fixed on her plans for the Barmakid ambassador.
“They have wealth, in Baghdad,” she said, and put her hand out toward the blue of the twin rivers. “Mere wealth will not bend his mind toward us. In his own country he may have anything he wishes, anything he can conceive of. It is our superior uses of our wealth that will infect him with that disease most useful to our purposes—civilization. Nicephoros.”
The Treasurer bowed, spreading out his hands in gestures of submission. “Basileus.”
“You have travelled to Baghdad—you know what in our City will compare most favorably with his own. You will escort ibn-Ziad about Constantinople.”
“Basileus,” Nicephoros said, alarmed; his duties already consumed every daylight hour. The Parakoimomenos was bending forward also, urgent, intent.
“You may speak,” the Basileus said to him.
“Basileus, Augustus, Chosen of God—” The eunuch’s flexible tall shape bent in several bows as elegantly as a palm tree yielding to the blast of the wind; in the course of his obeisance he advanced himself several feet closer to the Empress.
“Basileus, the most noble and glorious Nicephoros is already much involved in the problems of the taxes and the money difficulties of the Empire—am I audacious in suggesting that this largely ceremonial duty of escorting the Arab visitor be lifted from his shoulders and placed on one with more idle moments at the disposal of his Augustus?”
She smiled at him; her smile extended to include Nicephoros, now caught in a painful conflict: dealing with ibn-Ziad was a chore he wanted neither for himself nor for the Parakoimomenos. The Empress’s eyes sparkled. Surely she enjoyed making rivals of these two men.
“You shall share the task,” she said. “Nicephoros shall bring his experience, the Parakoimomenos his own resources; in no way then can our objective confute our efforts. So be it.”
The officers chorused, “So be it,” and many patted their hands together in a polite applause. Nicephoros bowed, accepting the task, hiding his expression. The Parakoimomenos should never have thrust himself forward; yet that was a trifling lapse of decorum compared with her allowing him to dictate his will. She had slighted Nicephoros, giving him an important duty and then taking it away, even if he had not wanted it. His guts churned. He hated the Parakoimomenos, and it was wicked of her to force him into company with the eunuch. And where was the City Prefect?
Not here. Nor did she expect him here, because she was now moving on to some other problem of the government, eliding smoothly over the gap where the report on the affairs of the City should have been.
Nicephoros straightened. He was a servant of the Empire; he wore the belt of service to the Basileus, and whatever the Basileus wanted was the will of God. He had no right to these poisonous sentiments against the Parakoimomenos. The eunuch was another of the belted men, his colleague, his helpmate. Besides, he had no testicles. Nicephoros folded his hands together before him, pressing subtly against the front of his coat, reassuring himself with the witnesses of his manhood. He lifted his head. The Empress needed him. He would serve, as he always had, with no thought for himself.
After the meeting in the council chamber, Nicephoros went out to the courtyard called the Phiale of the Greens, a spacious terrace in the Palace grounds, where a fountain of fanciful shape showered the air with its cooling moisture. It was the first true summer day of the year, and the heavy, windless heat oppressed the spirit and laid waste to the body’s resources of strength and energy; the walk down to the terrace left Nicephoros damp under the arms and down the back. The cool of the fountain was a benediction. He sat down on a stone bench at the side of the terrace and prepared to eat his midday meal.
The terrace was paved in rounds of grey stone, with the spaces between filled in with red and green and blue pebbles. Doves and pigeons in busy swarms hurried over this ground; over the low wall that surrounded the area grew a profusion of wild roses. Looking on it was a tonic to Nicephoros’s spirits, and he sat a moment, his hands on his knees, smiling at this pure and unaffected beauty.
The pigeons, bold as bandits, hurried in a clucking waddling rush toward him. He broke off a corner of his luncheon bread and crumbled it up and scattered the bits around his feet, and laughed to see the birds fight over this largess. Besides the bread, he had brought a piece of cheese wrapped in a wine-soaked cloth, a little jug of the same wine, some olives and pickled mushrooms. While he was arranging this repast on the bench, his friend the City Prefect appeared.
“Good morning, my dear Nicephoros. You won’t mind if I join you?”
Nicephoros looked up, surprised; he had assumed his friend was ill. “No, of course—sit with me. We missed you, at the council.”
The Prefect pulled his coat skirts up around him and sat down. He was a younger man than Nicephoros, a native of the City, tall and handsome, with curly dark hair and a splendid beard and a ready, charming smile; in his rapid rise through the government to his present eminence this rare and delightful mixture of ingratiating charm and impeccable refinement had been more valuable than any genuine skill at administration.
“Nicephoros,” he said, with no more preamble, “may I ask a favor of you?”
“Ask me, Peter.”
The Prefect was poking into Nicephoros’s lunch; he nibbled an olive and nodded,
pleased.
“Ummm. Not bad. Is the cheese as good?”
“Try some,” Nicephoros said patiently.
“Thank you.” The aristocratic fingers of the younger officer went hard at the block of crumbly cheese, which gave off its briny fragrance like a protest at this rough treatment. The Prefect leaned on his arm, a pose no less pleasing for the studiousness of its effect, the folds of his coat sleeve falling precise as mathematics to the tight-fitting cuff. “The presidents of the Guilds have come to me with a huge petition, Nicephoros, asking for a whole long list of changes in the laws of commerce. God’s Judgment, you would not believe it without reading it—they want nothing less than the overthrow of the entire economy.” The Prefect lifted his eyes to Nicephoros’s, his look candid as a baby’s. “It’s a catastrophe. She will never agree to a word of it.”
“Tell them so,” Nicephoros said.
“Nicephoros, I cannot do that. It’s not so easy as that. You know the Guilds—how hard it is to get them to do anything in concert? This petition took them weeks to draw up. Every single page is signed and sealed with every single president’s name. I can’t simply throw it into the scrap basket and say, ‘Not this time.’”
He was eating the cheese in great chunks; Nicephoros watched another toothsome piece travel to the Prefect’s lips and disappear within. What he was saying made sense. Through the Guilds of Constantinople, the Basileus regulated every detail of commerce—who bought what and at what price and for what purpose; under normal conditions, these rules provided for the smooth functioning of industry, allowed a decent living for everybody, and brought the Basileus sufficient income in taxes to support the court. Unfortunately conditions in Constantinople were seldom normal. The iconoclasm had aroused the people to unnatural passions, which even now surged powerfully into evidence at the least excitement, and the steady shrinking of the Empire itself over the past century had lost the City Guilds important markets and sources of raw materials, while driving thousands of new people into the City. The Caliph’s court in Baghdad had come to contend with the Romans for the raw materials of civilization, the gold and wax, gems and incense, wood and furs and slaves, forcing all the prices up.
“She has to see it and make some answer,” the Prefect said. “Nothing less is appropriate.”
“I agree with you,” Nicephoros said. The cheese was gone. He put the jug of wine before his friend. “What I cannot as yet perceive, Peter, is what favor you require of me in this context.”
“I can’t face her, Nicephoros.”
“Peter.”
“I mean it!” The Prefect leaned toward him, as if shortening the distance between them intensified the force of his words. “I cannot take this petition to her, Nicephoros.”
The Treasurer laughed, disbelieving and amazed; but the expression on his friend’s face moved him to the yet more amazing understanding that the Prefect meant what he said.
“She terrifies me,” said the Prefect, and his voice sank. “And you know—you know, Nicephoros, she cannot grant the changes. She will think me a fool, or worse, for proposing them.”
Nicephoros drank some of the wine; he turned his gaze away, toward the fountain’s pleasing sprays. As certain as he was of the Prefect’s real alarm at facing his Basileus, the Treasurer was just as certain that the reason for it was not what he said it was.
“Will you take it to her? You could say that—it does fall as well within your province, after all, and perhaps is better explained to her— defended to her from your point of view. Nicephoros. Please?”
“I shall do what I can. Have the petition sent to my secretakoi.”
Into the handsome face of the Prefect rushed a warm glow of relief. “Nicephoros, what a wonder you are! I shall never be able to repay you.”
“I’ll think of something, Peter, have no fear of that.”
“Anything, Nicephoros—any extravagance I can secure for you. Only name it.”
Nicephoros grunted. None of this tasted sweet to him. He reached for the wine again. “Look—there is Prince Michael.”
The Prefect turned. The wall behind the bench where the two men sat fell off on the far side ten feet to a walkway through the dense hedges that lined the Empress’s mulberry orchard. Along this walkway two people were walking, hand in hand—a girl and the charioteer.
“He’s certainly a greater driver than any other I’ve been privileged to witness,” Nicephoros said.
The Prefect was staring glumly down at the Empress’s kinsman. “I wish he would lose.”
“Oh, do you? I wouldn’t be so quick to look for Michael’s downfall. The mob adores him. The Empire itself will tremble when he loses.”
The Prefect turned around, putting his back to Michael, who was walking directly behind and below them now, his feet crunching the gravel. “Yes, but the odds they give on him are dirt-low.”
“Ishmael has an extraordinary fire and style. He’ll win against any but Michael. Bet on him.”
“The odds on him are just as low.”
Nicephoros was eating the pickled mushrooms, which, in keeping with his high-bred tastes, the Prefect disdained. “Gamblers only win in their dreams, Peter. Tend your purse in your waking hours.”
The Prefect scratched his nose, muttering under his breath. “You’ll talk to the Basileus?”
“Yes, yes.”
“You’re a lovely man, Nicephoros.”
“Yes.”
11
“Augustus,” the Parakoimomenos said, in his mellow tremulous voice, and reached out to tap a line in the letter they were drafting, “Is it not perhaps unduly—shall we say—provocative? to mention Africa among the Imperial provinces?”
“I thought that over quite some while,” Irene said. Helena was doing her nails. The Empress sat sprawled on a low divan covered with red and blue and green pillows of silk, the Parakoimomenos beside her on his knees on the carpeted floor, the letter between them. This corner of the day room was the only quiet one. The Empress’s nameday was fast approaching and crews of workmen were hurrying to redecorate this room and the rooms around it for the celebration, and even now three half-naked men were struggling to hang a chandelier from the ceiling at the end of the room to match the one already in place above the Empress’s head. The rest of the furniture was covered with drapery to protect it from the dust. Irene could have gone elsewhere to work but she wanted to supervise the redecorating herself, to avoid any unpleasantness later. Now she watched as the men teetered off balance on a ladder and one another’s shoulders, the huge heavy candle-holder swaying in their midst.
“However,” she said, returning to the matter of Africa and the letter to Alexandria, “Africa was indeed a third part of the Empire, in the days of Augustus, and with God’s help will be part of the Empire once more, when we have recovered it from the Arabs. To leave it off the list would seem to surrender even hope, would it not?”
The Parakoimomenos pursed his lips. “Perhaps. Still, this may not be the most appropriate moment to insist on such things.”
“Pagh.” She waved her hand at him. “If we say it often enough they will believe it.” In the doorway, just beyond the workmen, who had succeeded in hanging the chandelier, a page appeared, and behind him, Nicephoros. She sat up.
“Now, what do you suppose he wants?”
The Parakoimomenos looked where she was looking, and rose at once to his feet. “The most excellent Nicephoros? You did not summon him?”
“He asked for entry.” She suspected what was Nicephoros’s business. Nonetheless it suited her to keep the rivalry between him and the eunuch on her left as lively as possible short of bloodshed and poison. “I cannot guess what he wants. Would that he were as open with me as you are, my angel.”
The Parakoimomenos swelled at the caress of her voice. She smiled to herself; with one hand she gestured Nicephoros across the cluttere
d room toward her.
He knelt down and pressed his face to the floor at her feet. The Parakoimomenos watched him with the avid intent of a hawk watching an unwary mouse, and indeed, when Nicephoros rose, he spared no look for the eunuch, ignoring him entirely.
“Augustus, Chosen One of God, I ask your leave to present to you a petition from the Guilds of Constantinople.”
From his coat he took a sheaf of papers, which he bent down to lay at her feet. Irene put her shoe down on it. She had known this was coming.
“Really, Nicephoros. This is not your office, is it? Where is the Prefect of the City, whose responsibility such a matter must be?”
“Augustus, Chosen of God, the Prefect and I discussed the matter, and we concluded that the issues that force the Guilds to plead with their most beloved Basileus for recourse might be better elucidated from my perspective.”
She tongued her lower lip; her gaze slid to the Parakoimomenos, and she smiled and put out her hand to him.
“If you will be so good—go and find out where our refreshments are? Helena, you may go with him and help.”
The eunuch’s mouth drooped. With a bow and a series of eloquent gestures he backed away from the couch, lingering as long as he could; Helena swept right by him, her skirts trailing off the divan. A pillow rolled after her and the Empress caught it and put it back where it belonged.
“Now, Nicephoros,” she said, “you know this will not do.”
“Augustus.” On one knee, he gathered up the petition and put it firmly beside her among the silks. “I assure you, the sufferings that these words represent are as real as—”
“No, no, no,” she said. “I shall read the petition, that isn’t what I meant. It is the Prefect whose little foot doth not fit his shoe. What’s wrong with him?”
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