“No—I was not laughing at you—I was thinking of something else.”
“What?”
“Nothing. A girl.” The barbarian picked up his cup to drink.
“I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Hagen. Hagen the White.”
“Well, I can see why that is. Do they pay you when they are supposed to?”
“They? Who?”
“The Basileus.”
The blue eyes were sharp now, the smile still curving his mouth. “The Basileus pays me nothing. Not money, anyhow.”
“Oh. I heard you were one of her spies.”
Hagen laughed out loud. “No, no, no. I am only on my way home. I have a little business here to do, and then I will be gone.”
“Oh.” Disappointed, Ishmael drank his wine, and reaching for the jug poured another cup for himself and for Hagen, but as he reflected on it he realized that Hagen was not telling him the truth, since mere passersby could not stable their horses in the Hippodrome. Of course a spy could not reveal himself at once, or at all, if he could help it.
“Where are you coming from?”
“Jerusalem. The Holy Places. I was on a pilgrimage.”
“Really? I’ve never been outside of Constantinople, myself.”
“That’s not a Greek name, is it? Ishmael?”
“My father came here from Nicaea. My grandfather from Aleppo, my great-grandfather from Medina. All men are citizens of Rome, as the saying goes.”
“This is not Rome.”
“Well, I am here, nonetheless.”
“I’ll never understand you Greeks. How—”
Abruptly the big man stiffened, looking past Ishmael, and in his eyes there blazed the same cold killing fury that had been in his face in the stable. Ishmael wheeled in his chair to see what had so taken his attention.
Karros was in the doorway, John Cerulis’s man. He saw Hagen at once, and whirled and ran.
“Thanks for the wine,” Hagen said, and bolted off his chair and out the door.
Ishmael leapt up, so quick he bumped the table and tipped the wine jug over, and raced to the door. The wench got in his way and he dodged around her.
They were gone. Looking up and down the crowded street, he saw neither Hagen nor Karros. He swore under his breath. The barbarian had secrets to hide, after all, and must work for the Empress, since at least one of his secrets concerned Karros. Standing on his toes, he searched the solid stream of passersby, but he could see nothing of Hagen or Karros. He would have to wait and see what happened. Dissatisfied, he went back into the tavern, to finish his wine.
Out of breath, Karros ran down the side of the street where the traffic was lightest, cut through an alleyway that stank of cat-piss, and crossed the Mesê, fighting his way through the crowd. On the far side, between the fluted columns of the walkway, he stopped and searched the street for the barbarian, but the big man was nowhere in sight.
Karros blew out his breath. He had outrun him. Relaxing, he sighed, smoothed down his coat, and hitched his belt up, his lungs cooling slowly. He might be getting fat but he was still fast on his feet. Soothed by that knowledge, he went around the column and walked into the arms of the barbarian.
He screamed; when he turned to run, a big hard hand clamped over his mouth, and a knife appeared before his eyes. In his ear, the rude accented voice said, “This is for my brother, Greek.”
“No!” Karros screamed into the barbarian’s palm; he clutched the other man’s wrist with both hands, holding the knife away from him. “Let me talk—let me talk—”
The knife pricked his nose. “You killed my brother!”
“No—no—I didn’t—”
Roughly the barbarian jerked him around to face him. “Then who did?”
“Theophano!”
The big man’s head jerked up. His hands slid away from Karros; he retreated, shrinking back away from him. “What?”
“It was Theophano, as God forgives all sinners, I swear it, it was Theophano.” Karros’s mouth began to work at top speed. “It wasn’t what you think—that business on the road. She is two-faced. She serves the Basileus but she serves John Cerulis, too, my master—she’s really his thing, the Basileus thinks the other way around but the more fool she.”
The barbarian was moving, closing with him again, and the knife rose through the light and shadow, the blade flashing. “Keep talking.”
“She was only pretending to be escaping from us—it was for the Basileus’s sake, a play, to fool the Basileus. I’m telling you, she killed your brother—she stabbed him from behind, in the neck.”
He saw, in the wash of expression across the barbarian’s face, that he made sense of that. Karros licked his lips, wanting to get away from that knife; his eyes followed every move of the blade, fascinated by it, the play of light along it.
“Listen to me. I’ll prove it to you. She will be at my master’s house tonight. If you come there, you’ll see her—I’ll let you in, you can see her sitting at the table with him.”
The barbarian shut his mouth tight. Bad temper hardened all the planes of his face, his eyes like flint, his lips bloodless, but at least he put the knife away.
“All right, then. Take me there.”
“Tonight.” Karros put out his hand. “You know, maybe you could work for my master too—he can use a good fighting man. Hah? Think it over.”
“Bah.” The big man struck violently at his hand. “Tonight. I’ll come to the back gate, the one by the myrtle tree.”
“How do you know about the myrtle tree?”
The barbarian struck at him again, a short vicious punch in the chest. “I know a lot, more than you think. Don’t try to fool me. The myrtle tree, at sundown.” Glowering, his shoulders bulled forward, the big man strode off, out toward the Mesê. Karros watched him go into the crowd; he could see him for a long way, since he was a head taller than anybody else. Karros’s heart was racing again. He was short of breath again, although he had not run at all. He thought, I’m getting old for this. On shaky legs he made his way back toward the palace of John Cerulis.
John Cerulis went to mass in the chapel of his palace, wearing his best coat, all worked with gold and pearls, as near to the imperial as it could be without the purple. He knelt down on the floor and asked God for help in achieving his purposes, although he knew it was God Himself who blocked him—for what other force could deny the throne to one who so obviously deserved it more than any other?
Outside, surrounded by his retinue and clients, he distributed money and bread to the poor, who came every day into his courtyard to receive his largess. They came to him, one by one, and kissed his hand, and bowing they all praised God for his wealth and his generosity, and then sent their own prayers hurrying up to God in favor of John Cerulis.
When that was done, he went into the reception hall of the palace, and there, seated in a chair covered with the pelts of leopards, smiling, ever smiling, he heard the petitions of his underlings. They came to him with flatteries and promises and begged him for his help, in gaining office, in buying land or selling licenses, in making marriages, in dissolving them, and if their oratory was clever, and quoted Homer in appropriate ways, and built up from subordinate phrase through subordinate phrase to the fully rounded climax, he granted what they wished.
He sat there in his gorgeous coat, his scribes beside him scribbling, his ministers behind him murmuring his praises, his clients before him praying for his purposes, and who seeing him would not know that he was truly emperor—in all but the diadem?
While halfway across the City, she who wore the diadem went on, hour by hour, moment by moment, using his place, spending his treasure, wasting his power.
In the middle of an oration, in fact in the middle of an elaborate period so contrived that John had lost track of the subject, a servant hurri
ed up to him, knelt down beside his chair, and said a name to him.
He sat bolt upright. What a fool she was, the whore, to put herself again in his power.
The rhetorician before him was decorating his speech with gestures as stylized as the figures on his coat. By the force and variety of these ornaments, John Cerulis guessed the man was near the summit of his discourse, and he made himself wait (smiling, smiling) until the end should come, when he might cut short the reception without any undue excitement or conjecture. Yet his hands itched, his legs shivery, thinking of his sure revenge.
The speech ended in a pile of phrases. He did not grant the request, because, at the last, the orator lost control, and mixed his metaphors so atrociously that the scribes all sighed over their scribblings and the ministers all sniggered.
At a gesture from their master, the heralds marched forward and dismissed the gathering, in the name of God and John Cerulis. A page lifted up the master’s cloak from the chair, so that he could rise without its weight upon his shoulders; another page went ahead of him with the rods of office. They went back through the palace and into his private apartments.
In a room carpeted with rugs from Persia, where icons framed in silver hung on the walls, there stood Theophano.
He stopped when he saw her, arrested by her beauty; he loved beauty, although not as much as he despised people who betrayed him.
“So,” he said, and went forward into the center of the room. A snap of his fingers brought his servants leaping to divest him of the embroidered coat and belt of links of gold. Under it he wore a long white tunic, which they embellished with a vest and several necklaces of garnets and lapis lazuli, and a page brought him his chair and held his clothing straight so that he could sit down without wrinkling it. Theophano watched all this calmly. She was pale as candle wax. Her hair was so black it shone blue in the daylight.
Once he had held her in his arms, and fulfilled that passion which in him was so sensitive a taste that he had believed it doomed forever to disappointment. For that alone he let her live a while.
He said, “As the huntress Artemis goes forth upon the mountains of Taygetus, Theophano, so you have come among us here, outshining all my handmaids.”
She turned her head slightly, her eyes upon him, and for a moment was silent; he began to be disappointed in her, but then she spoke, and her words were both apt and Homeric.
“Alas,” she said, “what kind of people have I come among? Are they cruel, savage, and uncivilized, or hospitable and humane?”
He stretched out his hand to her and took her fingers in his, smiling in delight at her knowledge of Homer, her lovely voice, her excellent form and figure. “At any rate,” he said, “you are among a race of men and women, Theophano.”
“Then I need not break off a branch to hide my nakedness,” she said, and smiled, and tried to free her hand from his, but John Cerulis held her tight.
“Yes,” he said, “Nausicaa herself was not as lovely as you, laughter-loving Theophano. Now tell me why you so foolishly put yourself in my power again, after betraying me as you did.”
“I never betrayed you,” she said. “It was Shimon and Targa who betrayed you—they forced me to go away with them, when I would have cleaved to you, my only Emperor.”
He lifted his head at that, his spirit elevated by her words, although he believed nothing she said. He regarded her from head to foot, charmed by her perfection of taste. Her dress of white silk, decorated across the breast and down the sleeve with gammadions of gold thread, was of an elegance so restrained and pure a man of lesser refinement would have thought it plain. He said, “And now you have brought yourself to me, to suffer for your sins against me, hmm?”
In his hand her hand was cold as the fire in the heart of a jewel. She said, “I have brought you that which you most desire, John Cerulis.”
“Ah?”
“I will give you the gift of purple boots, if you will harken to me, and let me live.”
His grip tightened, almost a spasm of the fingers. He drew her close against his knee. “Yes? What trick is this, laughter-loving one?”
“No trick, sir. The Basileus hates me, suspecting me of what is the truth, that in the weighing out of hearts I have found more value in your cause than in hers. My life’s thread lies in the shears now, and every breath may be my last. Yet I will breathe my last among those who serve the true Emperor.”
He laughed at this, at this dissembling innocence, moved to a rare affection, although he believed it no more than he believed anything else. She was here now, in his power. He would keep her alive as long as she amused him, and if she did indeed have some hidden knowledge of the usurping whore Irene, he would extract it from her as he chose. He had ever yearned for an ear inside the inner circle of the Empress, her women, and Theophano, willing or not, would give him what she knew.
“Tell me, then,” he said, “what you believe to be of value to me.”
“You know of the holy man in the desert,” she said.
“Oh,” he said, disappointed; the holy man was old news.
“You must convince him of the justice of your cause.” Her cheeks suddenly bloomed with a subtle delicious color, more perfect than any jewel to complement her clothes. “He will preach your cause to the people, and the people of Rome will rise up and make you emperor.”
“I see little hope of that, divine beauty.”
“I can tell you this, John Cerulis, that the Basileus dreads more than any other course you might pursue that action which I have described to you.”
He sat silent a moment, letting this suggestion mature in his understanding. The holy man was out in the desert, somewhere off to the east. It was tedious to leave Constantinople; nor did he believe that any serious advantage could be achieved outside the walls of the City, and the holy man would be dirty and probably obnoxious of manner. Rome was full of holy men, a new one every month.
He smiled at her. Relaxing his fingers, he let his hand fall to his knee, and she stood before him, unfettered, yet bound to his merest whim. He meant to see her die. Unfortunately, once she was dead, the pleasure would be over, and so he would prolong the anticipation a while, whetting his enjoyment.
He said, “We shall see, my lovely one. We shall see.”
She bowed to him. “I await the moment when the diadem is on your head, beloved of God.”
“I should think,” said the City Prefect nervously, “that the honor of competing would be enough.”
“Do you,” Ishmael said. “God, what gives you that notion? When do I get the money, then, if not today?”
The Prefect looked around him, his mouth twisted. “Can’t we talk about this someplace else?” He waved his hands at Ishmael as if the charioteer were shouting at him, and looked around for some escape, but Ishmael would not be put off. He knew the ways of the Imperial officers, and he needed money desperately, now, the landlord threatening to put him and his wife and babies out, the bakers refusing to sell them more bread on credit. He glared at the City Prefect.
“I need at least some of it now. Today, this afternoon, now, here.”
The Prefect shook his head. “Everybody wants money, everybody thinks I have control of the purse. Why don’t you talk to Nicephoros?” His voice was bitter. He nodded across the terrace.
Ishmael looked where he was indicating. The whole court was gathered here, on the pavement before the Chalke gateway into the Palace, where the Caliph’s emissary would soon be received. Already a hundred people crowded the semicircular area between the gate and the scaffolding, which was supported at the back by the wall of Saint Stephen. The Basileus would appear on the scaffold, now shrouded by heavy purple curtains. Ishmael sighed.
“Take me to Nicephoros.”
“Can’t this wait?” The Prefect wrung his long soft hands. “Heavens, if you only knew how many people are in your position�
�”
Ishmael got him by the arm and applied force. “I don’t care about them. I’m tired of being hounded by tradesmen.”
The Prefect fell still and with an air of limp resignation he let himself to be maneuvered through the crowd. The Treasurer Nicephoros stood among a little circle of courtiers, listening to a joke being told; as Ishmael and the Prefect reached him, he was venting a mechanical, uninterested laugh. The Prefect touched his arm, and the tall Syrian turned.
“Ishmael.” Nicephoros put out his hands, smiling, and grasped the driver’s hands in a firm warm welcome. “How wonderful to see you again. You’ve heard, I’m sure, of the wonderful news?”
The Prefect opened his mouth, his eyes sliding from Ishmael to the Treasurer and back again, but before he could warn Nicephoros, Ishmael stepped down hard on his foot. “Has the Basileus assigned the next race, then?”
“Saint Helena’s day. Truly auspicious, isn’t it? You’re sure to win.”
Ishmael smiled at that, triumphant, the power in his hands. “Well, then, you’ll have to give me some money.”
The Treasurer’s smile slipped an inch. The Prefect said, “He wants to be paid, Nicephoros.”
“Does he really,” Nicephoros said, his lips quivering. “What a novel idea.”
“And if I am not paid,” Ishmael said, “I will not race. How does that feel in your money bag?”
“Aaaah.” Nicephoros shot a bitter look at the City Prefect. “What do you wear the belt for, anyway? Can’t you do your job?”
“He made me bring him here to you.” Nervously the Prefect’s hands tapped on his belt of office.
Nicephoros faced Ishmael again, his smile quite gone, his eyes narrow, and the great wedge of his nose like a prow before him. “How much do we owe you?”
“Eight hundred irenes.”
It would barely pay his debts. The Prefect muttered in surprise at the amount, but Nicephoros only stared at him a moment longer, his thick lips pressed firmly together. Ishmael met his eyes, struggling for patience. They would not please the crowds without his team; there would be trouble if he did not race. He hoped the trouble would be worth eight hundred irenes.
The Belt of Gold Page 16