“He isn’t here. Go away.”
“Wait.” He stuck his foot into the crack in the door to hold it open. “Has he been here recently?”
Go away.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
At that, she melted into floods of tears, and sank down in the doorway, and the door swayed open. Weeping, she huddled at his feet, and from behind her came forward a little boy, unmistakably Ishmael’s child, who said, “My father has been gone two days, sir.”
“Where is he?”
“Down to the holy man—down to wait for the Heavenly City.”
Now the woman lifted her head, her face smeared and red. “He says we are no more married! He says I must do for myself now—he won’t care for us anymore—” She sobbed. “The neighbors have given me bread for the children the past two days, but what shall I do now?”
She reached out her hands toward Hagen, who recoiled from the need raw in her face, her desperate eyes. “I have no money—not a crumb in the house—please—”
Behind her the boy stood, silent, watching him, and now beside him an older child appeared, a girl. They said nothing; they only stared at him over their mother’s head. Hagen thought, They could die and no one would notice, here, and in his mind saw them swept away, whirling like fallen leaves along the great rushing torrent. He pulled the purse from his belt.
“Here. Feed them.” He shook out coins, the money Nicephoros had given him for saving his life. The money bounced ringing off the stone doorstep. “I’ll get him back.” He turned and went long-striding off toward the street, to his horse.
Ishmael was half-drunk. There was nothing else to do but drink; he had lain here on this meadow grass for hours, waiting for some sign, for the holy man to come again and preach, for the Heavenly City to show itself again in the sky, but nothing had happened, except that more people had drifted down from Constantinople into the fields below the camp of John Cerulis.
He supposed he should be praying, but he could not. The world was rushing to its end, surely; there was no more preparing for it, only the final event itself. He wished the holy man would speak again. It was hard to keep his mind focussed on eternity without some help from God.
He lifted the leather flask of wine and drank again. His stomach hurt.
All around him were others waiting for the Coming of Christ, some praying, some talking, some asleep or eating or drinking—it seemed incongruous that these gross functions of the flesh should be necessary, now, but people could not be expected to become saints overnight. Ishmael did not watch the ragged man who was going from sleeper to sleeper, fingering their clothes, and taking little things away. None of that mattered anyway. The material would all disappear, in the Heavenly City; they would walk around in shapes of pure flame. He squeezed his eyes shut, imagining the city, its white streets, its vaulting domes and towers.
With his eyes shut, he swayed, half-lost in drink, but he did not lie down. If he lay down they would rob him.
Behind him a horse snuffled. The familiar stable sound cut through the haze of drink and the bonds of faith and touched the quickest part of him, and he gasped out loud. He had not seen his horses in days. He fought against the upsurge of anger at God, that finding God meant giving up his dearest love, and the struggle had him rigid and inward for a long moment, until Hagen sank down beside him.
“Ishmael.”
“What are you doing here, blasphemer?”
The barbarian sat on his heels. He did not look at Ishmael, but turned his gaze forward, toward the camp of John Cerulis, and his jaw was set. His cheek was faintly pocked from some old disease. His pale eyes and his hair were bright in the sunlight.
He said, “I just left your wife, Ishmael. She is afraid, and alone.”
Ishmael bit his lips. Oh, these were temptations of the Devil, to deprive him of the Heavenly City.
“I gave her some money,” Hagen said.
Up there in that camp, somewhere, was the holy man who could call the City down; why would he not preach again? When he spoke, Ishmael was certain of everything.
“Are you a man, then, to let another man take care of your woman and your children?”
Ishmael flung himself sideways onto the barbarian, snarling; he attacked him so unexpectedly that Hagen went down flat on the soft ground under him, and Ishmael pounded him three or four times hard in the head. Under him the barbarian rolled over and flung him off. Ishmael skidded backward through the dirt.
“Fight! Fight!”
From all around the meadow people came running, joyful, toward this diversion. Ishmael got to his feet. Startled, he looked around him at the ring of cheering onlookers, urging him on.
Hagen was up on his knees, his hands at his sides. His hair was dirty. From the crowd a clod of earth flew at him, and he ignored it. Slowly he got up onto his feet.
“Your Heavenly City,” he said, and spat.
Ishmael raised his fists at him, and the crowd screamed, delighted. “Kill him! Beat him up!”
Through the luxuriant silk sleeve of Hagen’s stola, a crimson stain was seeping. Ishmael struggled with himself, trying to keep his temper up, but he saw now that the barbarian was wounded. And Hagen was going. His face twisted with contempt, he started toward his horse.
“Keep your damned dream, Ishmael.”
“Wait,” Ishmael said.
Hagen did not wait. He walked straight toward the horse, and the people blocking his way jeered and thumbed their noses and flew their fingers at him and yielded a way for him through their midst. The blood was streaming down Hagen’s hand, dripping from his middle fingertips.
“Wait,” Ishmael called, and went after him.
The Frank ignored him. Reaching his horse, he took up the reins and put his foot in the stirrup and mounted, and Ishmael got hold of the bridle.
“Can you make it back to the Palace? You’re hurt.”
“I don’t need you, Ishmael.” He closed his good hand into a fist and jammed it against his arm, to stop the bleeding.
“I’ll go with you.” Ishmael led his horse toward the road.
Hagen said nothing. There was the sound of tearing cloth; when Ishmael looked back Hagen was wadding up a pack of cloth against the hole in his arm.
“What happened?” Ishmael asked, when he and Hagen were sitting down in the tavern near the Hippodrome.
“I got into a fight.”
The wound had stopped bleeding. Hagen sat slouched on the bench, drinking red wine. Ishmael had gone to the stable and seen to his horses, and now he meant to go back down to the meadow again, to await the Heavenly City, but surely it would not matter much if he stayed a little while, here where he had had so many happy times. He nodded to the tavern wench for a cup of wine.
“You will not race, then?” Hagen asked.
“I shall never race again.”
“God, you’re a fool, Ishmael.”
“Shut up. You won’t think me a fool, when the earth is being consumed, and you with it, and I am safe in the Heavenly City.”
“That did not look like a congregation of saints down there today.”
“God does not work according to the rules of men.”
“That’s what you told me before. When is Saint Febronia’s Day?”
“Three days from now,” Ishmael said.
“And then the holy man will enter the City preaching, and also the race will be run?”
“So.”
“And on that day, John Cerulis will become emperor.”
“No! On that day, all this shall fall away, and we shall become saints,” Ishmael said.
But he had to struggle to believe it. Here, in this place where he had been so often, his certainties went otherwise than up to God. He shut his eyes. What a weakling he was, how his faith failed him. Or he failed his faith. He thought of hi
s wife, depending on some stranger’s money to feed her children.
The Devil did this to him—tormented his mind like this.
“Here is the Prince,” Hagen said.
Ishmael straightened. Prince Michael was coming into the tavern.
The usual flock of hangers-on swarmed around him, but Michael seemed utterly alone in their midst. He walked upright as a column of marble, his eyes wide and fierce. Ishmael had seen him before, on the day before a race, and he always had this look, this soaring pride, this fierce intent purpose barely restrained.
Without realizing it, he stood up on his feet before the champion. Michael stopped to stare at him.
“Will you race?” he said.
Ishmael met his eyes, and made his tongue move. “I have given myself to God, Michael. I will not go back to Mammon.”
Across the face of the Prince the dark anger flashed like a streak of lightning. “I should have known you haven’t the heart for it.”
That fell across Ishmael’s soul like a lash, and he jumped up in his place, facing Prince Michael. “It’s God’s will, Michael—”
“God’s will!” Michael snorted, contemptuous. “You should know by now, Ishmael, that nothing matters but the race.” His gaze moved, going past Ishmael, and his voice changed slightly; now he was talking to Hagen, and there was a guarded respect in his voice. “Can you make no sense to him?”
Hagen grunted. He sat there with his arms laid across the tabletop, his cup between his fists. “No. Nor can you, if you think nothing matters more than horse-races.”
“Oh? And if I disagree with you, will you hack me up with your sword, warrior? Is that more honest and just than the Hippodrome? You live in a simpler world than I do, if you believe that.”
He turned to Ishmael again and their eyes met. Michael lowered his voice to a murmur. “If the Judgment comes, Ishmael, He will take you for what you are, and what you are best is in the arena.”
“You speak with the voice of the Devil,” Ishmael cried. He pushed through the cordon of men between him and the door; he had to get away from here; he knew if he lingered they would seduce him into it again, into that heat of struggle and uncertainty, death and power. Outside in the street, the sunlight was so strong he blinked and flung up his hand to block the glare. Half-blinded, he wobbled away down the street.
“Ishmael! Ishmael!”
His own name burned like a whip now. He flinched from the sound of his name. In his path a ragged dirty old man appeared, his head wrapped in a brown cowl, a bundle of herbs tied around his neck: one of the soothsayers.
“Ishmael! You will win. This time you will carry off the Golden Belt! I saw it—I saw the omens in a dream, Ishmael!”
The charioteer staggered; he ran down the street away from the old man, away from the tavern, going toward the Mesê, the way to the holy man. He had to reach the holy man, who made life so simple, so bearable. Who would bring the Heavenly City to him. He hoped no one had stolen his place in eternity. Swiftly he raced down the street full of people.
In the tavern, Hagen watched Ishmael go, and his heart fell. When Prince Michael came in, he had seen in Ishmael’s face that he would return, take up the challenge, and be a man again. He glowered up at the Prince, who still stood on the far side of the table, watching him, his head back, aloof and arrogant.
“I hear you are a veritable Achilles,” Michael said. “It bears some remembering that he was a barbarian also.”
“Is there any way to bring Ishmael back to his right mind?”
Michael laughed. He pulled back a chair and dropped into it, half the table between him and Hagen. “Have no concern. When the horns call forth the Blues and the Greens, on Saint Febronia’s Day, Ishmael will be there. He could not do otherwise and be Ishmael.”
His hangers-on were still pressing close around him. He swung his head, driving them back with the force of his gaze, and when the area around them had cleared a little, he turned to Hagen again.
“Let me talk to you, Hagen.”
That surprised the Frank, that Michael knew his name. He laced his fingers together. “Speak, Patrician.”
“Prince,” Michael said, correcting him. “We are Athenian nobles, not city courtiers with long fingernails and flowers in their underwear.”
He stopped. A girl was bending over the table with a cup for him and a jug of wine; she fawned on him, but he did not seem to notice. Hagen watched him curiously. A man with no more consequence to his life than a game, he needed that overblown arrogance.
“What I want to ask you—” Michael lifted his head. “Do you know where Theophano is?”
“She is dead,” Hagen said.
“Dead.”
“John Cerulis had her killed. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, well. We were lovers once. I liked her. I noticed she was gone, but she was often gone, on errands for my cousin.” Michael frowned, his eyes focussed on the empty space before him. All his strut and swagger left him; startled, Hagen saw that Michael was younger than he was by several years.
“She was such a beautiful girl,” Michael said.
“Oh, yes,” Hagen replied. “Almost as interesting as a horse-race.”
The Prince gave a light, glib phony laugh. “Oh, it would have to be a hell of a horse-race.”
Hagen swung at him. Smoothly Michael wheeled around, half rising from his seat, and his hand clamped tight on Hagen’s wrist. It was like catching his arm in a closing door; Hagen could not move his fist an inch either forward or backward. Michael leaned into his face.
“Stop milling at me—I don’t take that from anyone!”
Hagen’s breath was stuck fast in his throat. Michael’s strength amazed him; for a long moment, staring into the other man’s eyes, he worked over in his mind a way to beat him, but then, sighing out his lungs, he relaxed, leaning back, his arm loose in the other man’s hold.
“Let go of me.”
Through the torn, stained sleeve of his shirt, the fresh blood suddenly bloomed. Michael saw it, and his eyes widened. Letting go of Hagen, he slid away into his seat again.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were hurt.”
Hagen pulled his sleeve down. “You’re strong, for a Greek.”
“Therefore you want to fight me? God, you barbarians.”
Hagen laughed, seeing this a new way, and shook his head. “I don’t have anything to prove to you.”
“Nor I to you,” Michael said swiftly.
Hagen reached for his wine cup. “Whatever you say.” Ishmael had told him that he was wrong about Prince Michael, and perhaps he was. It would be hard to be a man in Constantinople, with every breath prescribed by law.
“How did she die?” Michael asked.
“I told you, John Cerulis had her killed.”
“And you are letting it go at that?”
Hagen raised his eyebrows at him. “Your cousin will not let me take him.”
He raised his cup in a salute. “To Theophano.”
“To Theophano.” Michael lifted his cup in answer. They drank deep.
“She would never have gone home with me anyway,” Hagen said. “She would have never liked Braasefeldt.”
“‘Braasefeldt.’ What a name. That’s where you come from? What is it like?”
“Not like here.”
In his mind, he summoned up the place, the dark swift-flowing many-fingered river, rushing through the fields and marshes, in among the wet knees of trees, and on the high ground, the hall, its doorposts made of the trunks of trees still rooted in the earth. He smelled the reeds and the river and the sea and heard the wind, and felt the icy cold of the winter mornings when the first sun brought the mist like wraiths up from the flat water.
“No, in truth,” Michael said, “I doubt Theophano would have done well in your Brazen Field.” He propped h
is elbows on the table. “Do you want to go back there? Why?”
“It’s my home. I have things to do there—” His mill, his dike, his reclaimed fields, his ripening oats and hay, the wealth of which money was the counterfeit. “Besides, when John Cerulis is emperor—”
“John Cerulis will never become emperor.”
“He is becoming so even now. All over the City, he is killing off the Empress’s supporters, and she will do nothing. I talked to her of it and she gave me some drivel about God and faith—”
“She will overcome him,” Michael said. He gestured, and a wench brought them another jug.
“She is a woman. What can she do against a man as determined as John Cerulis?”
Michael leaned toward him over the table. “Don’t be a fool, Hagen. Don’t think your balls are made of gold. My cousin may be a woman, but mark this: she was born the daughter of a poor provincial nobleman; she had no treasure, no friends, no education, not even a place in the City, but today she is Basileus. John Cerulis is rich, but he came into it with his christening, and although he has been plotting all his life, he has no more power now than he was born to.”
Hagen reached for his cup. “As Ishmael says, the ways of God are inscrutable.”
Michael shrugged. “Water always runs downhill. I see no need to find the hand of God in every river.”
“You’re a very reasonable man. I thought that was against the law here.”
“I’m allowed to be, since I confine my use of it to horse-races.”
Hagen was getting drunk. He reached for the cup again, wanting to be drunker. He had made a mistake about Michael; his passions had fooled his judgment. Now, finding the Prince’s eyes on him, he lifted his cup in a little salute.
“Pax.”
They drank.
27
In the morning, with the rest of the Imperial Service, Nicephoros heard mass in the Church of the Holy Wisdom, and saw once again the Crowned Christ before him in the person of the Basileus. Together with his fellows, he knelt down and put his face to the floor and worshipped her. Overhead, the great dome seemed to float upon the radiance of light that streamed through the windows, as if, when Justinian built this place, he made a union here between Heaven and earth.
The Belt of Gold Page 33