by James Wilde
‘And you think this Victor Verinus will give you that? I know men like him. He will use you for what he can, and when he has drained you and left you a husk, he will toss you out to the rats.’
‘No!’ Ragener shouted. ‘He heeds me! He heeds me! I told him of your Roman love, and the English bastards … all of them … all of them who thought me nothing …’
The sea wolf was babbling now. Meghigda could see that his grip upon his wits was thin.
‘And Victor will end all their days,’ he continued. ‘I will get my vengeance for the misery heaped upon me! Hear! And then he will raise me up with him, and all will see my true worth. I am wise … wise and clever … and he will heed my words … and you … and all of you will be forgotten—’
Meghigda rammed her heel against Ragener’s fingers where they curled around the iron bar. With a howl of pain, he threw himself back. She thought she might have broken bones. She hoped so. Crawling forward, she looked down upon him writhing on the stone and said, ‘Crawl back to your master, rat. Let him throw you a few crumbs. But know that when I am free from here, I will not rest until I have found you. And then I will take your other eye, and your hand, and your feet as well, and I will leave you in the filth of the street where you belong.’
Ragener hurled himself at the bars, but the queen was too quick for him. She slid back against the wall, letting the candle light her triumphant grin.
‘I will see all of you killed,’ the sea wolf yelled. ‘Mark my words. Soon all of your days will be done. And you will be the first!’
Snatching up the candle, he stalked back along the passage, muttering to himself. Meghigda felt warmed by her defiance. It was a thin victory, but still a victory.
But as the light disappeared into the distance, she crawled back to the bars. Cocking her head, she listened. She was sure she had heard other footsteps following Ragener out of her prison. Someone else had been there, watching from the dark, someone even the pirate had not realized was present.
CHAPTER FORTY
DARKNESS ENGULFED THE silent monastery. Holding his guttering candle in front of him, Alric brushed one shoulder along the cool stone wall to guide him in the gloom. Only the rasp of his breath and the whisper of his soles upon the flags rustled out in the stillness. He tried to smother his frustration. The other monks were in their cells, at prayer or asleep. But he was lost in the maze of corridors, and he was tired and his wrist felt as if it were on fire.
The day had been hard. At times a black despair settled upon his shoulders at the loss of his hand, until he felt he might never see the light again. And when it did finally pass, his thoughts were distracted by the murder of the sacrist. Even there, in a house of God, he could not escape the darkness in the human heart. He promised himself he would spend the night on his knees, offering his supplications to the Lord. Such reflection often eased his troubled soul. But here he was, still wandering, still anxious.
Somewhere nearby a door slammed. Loud laughter boomed out.
Alric slowed to a halt. No monk would make such unseemly noise in the hours of devotion, nor when all there were in mourning. Puzzled, he listened as a man’s deep, rich voice drew nearer. An arrogant man, making no concessions to the monastery’s inhabitants, Alric thought.
Some instinct tugged at his mind, and he found himself blowing out his candle-flame before he was seen. A wavering light glowed along a wall at the end of the passage, growing brighter. After a moment, a tall, powerful man with long grey hair emerged from a branching corridor. He was holding a lamp swinging on a hook. The dancing illumination transformed his features into a travesty of a human face. Beside him was a boy with a strangely blank expression. The lamp-flame danced in his staring eyes.
‘Nathaniel!’ the man roared, seemingly good-humoured.
A door swung open and light flooded out into the corridor. Alric pressed himself back into a doorway. The tall, bony monk he had seen earlier stepped out. As the two men grinned at each other, Alric saw the resemblance in their features.
‘Brother,’ the new arrival said in greeting, ‘I have come to help you celebrate your new appointment. A sacrist now, eh? And while the dead man’s seat is still warm.’
Alric heard a knowing tone in those words. He frowned. And Nathaniel had already been promoted to fill the dead monk’s role? He knew from experience how slowly the wheels of monasteries usually turned.
Nathaniel glanced around, uneasy that they might be overheard. ‘Come, come,’ he urged, beckoning the new arrivals into his cell.
Once the door had closed, Alric crept forward from his hiding place. He wanted to hear more of what was being said in that chamber, but as he neared the door a hand fell upon his arm and he all but cried out in alarm. It was Neophytos. The eunuch pressed one finger to his chubby lips as he pulled Alric away.
When they reached the end of the corridor, Neophytos whispered, ‘Some things should not be witnessed.’
‘Who was that?’ Alric hissed.
‘Nathaniel is entertaining his brother, Victor Verinus, and Victor’s son Justin.’
Laughter rang out from Nathaniel’s chamber. The Verini seemed to be making merry.
‘Let me take you back to your cell,’ Neophytos said. ‘Say nothing of what you have seen or heard this night.’
‘I do not know what I have seen and heard, but it tugs at my thoughts still.’
‘A wise man keeps his own counsel,’ the eunuch said. ‘Come.’
As they walked away, Alric narrowed his eyes, suddenly aware. ‘Why are you here, at this hour?’ he asked. ‘Were you spying upon this meeting too?’
Neophytos smiled. ‘And a wise man pays heed to everything. Who knows what useful morsels can be picked over?’
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
A DOG BARKED away in the night. A shout rang out. Another responded. A babe cried as its mother struggled to lull it to sleep with a lilting song. A whistle. The sound of running footsteps. A string instrument, gently plucked.
Hereward wandered along the narrow street, baked mud beneath his feet. The houses pressing close on either side were little more than shacks, a world away from the grand homes near the Great Palace and the hippodrome. Swarthy-skinned men sat by their doors, sipping wine. They watched him pass with sullen suspicion. From the shadows of doorways, women summoned him with coy eyes and flirtatious smiles. Rats scrabbled along the paths among the jumbled dwellings. Noise throbbed everywhere. And yet he could not complain, for the Nepotes had called in old favours to find him and his men a place to hide away, here in the quarter where the Syrians, Turks and Arabs gathered and Constantinople’s rich rarely ventured.
His nose wrinkled at scents known and unknown. Odd spices, burning charcoal, sizzling meat, and earthier human reeks. And when he glanced up into the heavens, he saw that even the stars were different here. He had travelled from the land of his birth before, but never to so strange a place. Here, even the familiar was skewed.
One constant remained. Men acted as men always did, wherever they called home. They lusted for power, for money, for a woman’s thighs. They loved, they hated, they envied.
They killed.
Behind him, a foot scraped across a rut during a rare lull in the rumble of life. Nothing out of the ordinary in that, but he had heard it three times now. It had followed him from the moment he had left the forum of Theodosios. Streams of folk drifted through that square, even when dusk had fallen. He had stood on the edge, hooded and, as he had thought, unobserved. And he had watched Victor Verinus press the palms of the powerful – senators, wealthy merchants, the emperor’s advisers – as the Nepotes claimed he did each even.
Smoke drifted across the sweep of stars. The hearth-fires of Constantinople had been lit to ward off the night’s chill. The Mercian peeled away from the street and plunged into an alley winding among the clustering houses. When the dark had closed around him, he paused and listened. The footsteps followed him, and not just one pair. Beneath his cloak, his hand slipped to th
e hilt of his sword. He tried to guess how many there were.
Dropping his shoulders, he strode on. The rats fled away from his boots. Now he thought he could hear voices, mutters and cursing as his pursuers stumbled over the obstacles on the narrow path. They could only be Victor’s men. He had been seen in the forum and they had been dispatched to hunt him down like a deer. Another English corpse to be left in the street with the filth and soon forgotten, just like Germund.
He would never forget Germund.
At the end of the rat-run, he stepped out on to another narrow street. Here he could smell the dank waters of the Bosphorus on the breeze. Breaking into a run, he sped north-west towards the dismal shacks where his men had made their home.
At his back, someone barked an order. The sound of running feet echoed off the walls. Confident they had him, his pursuers were no longer trying to hide. And have him they did.
Hereward raced on past the last of the houses into an area filled with workshops. The sounds of the looms had long since stilled and the forges had grown cold. The stink of brimstone still lingered in the air.
In a small square of hard-packed mud and horse dung, he skidded to a halt, whirling. The street had come to an end. Only shadow-filled alleys crawled out between the workshops.
Cornered, like a rat. Cornered as he had been so many times before. Hereward felt his blood thrum in his temples. He backed against the cracked, sun-bleached wood of a workshop. Brainbiter sang as it slipped from its sheath.
His pursuers skidded to a halt as they entered the square. At first they were only silhouettes. But as they drew their swords and stepped forward the moon lit rough faces, slow eyes, lips quick to sneer. The faces of men who broke bones for a living.
Ten of them, the Mercian counted. Not even he, with his devil riding him, could defeat that number.
Victor’s men fanned out around the square. Even though they were so many, they were wary, choosing their moment to strike. Someone had warned them of his prowess. Not Victor; he had seen none of it. Then who? He thought for a moment, and realized it could only have been Ragener. Hunching their shoulders, they raised their blades. The edges glimmered in the moonlight. One of them barked something in a tongue Hereward did not recognize. ‘English!’ someone else called, and they all laughed.
‘Who speaks English?’ the Mercian called back. Shifting his weight from foot to foot, he swung his blade along the line, ready for the first attack.
‘I do.’ The speaker was a tall, thin man with hollow cheeks and pox scars. He looked like a ceorl who worked the fields, with big fists, a mass of unruly hair and a mouth that hung open to reveal twisted teeth. Grinning, he glanced around at his brothers. He was enjoying the moment.
‘You will be the last to die,’ Hereward said.
The grin sagged. The man’s eyes rolled, slow and stupid. He could not tell if that was some attempt at humour or if this cornered fool truly thought he could win.
As he raised Brainbiter, the Mercian flexed the fingers of his left hand, beckoning. ‘But who dies first, that is the question.’
Victor’s men eyed each other. They were unsettled by this show of confidence. But then, with a snarl, one of them lurched forward, swinging his sword up high.
Hereward only grinned.
An instant later, the clank of hauberks and axes rattled out across the square. Shadows separated from the gloom among the workshops. As the Romans whirled in surprise, the English flooded out and formed a line across the backs of the Mercian’s pursuers.
‘Cornered, yes,’ Hereward said. ‘But not me.’
Victor’s men searched for a way out of this trap, but there was none. The English blocked the street and every alley, two of them for every Roman, all implacable faces and glinting eyes, their spears and axes and shields readied as if this were some distant battlefield and not the City of Gold, the city of learning, the city of gentle folk.
‘Mercy,’ the English-speaking man called.
‘You would have killed me without thinking,’ Hereward called back, ‘and no doubt taken my head back to your master. And most likely one of you held the knife that ended Germund’s days. The time for mercy has passed. Begone.’
The English fell upon their prey like wolves. Blades slashed, spears thrust, blood glittered like jewels in the moonlight. The screams of the dying men cleaved through the night, but no one came. The people who inhabited the meagre shacks of this reeking quarter knew that even in the city of gentle folk life could be hard.
The cries ceased. When ragged bodies littered the square, and the baked ruts had become a churned, ruddy marsh, the English gathered around the sole surviving figure. Whimpering, he crouched among the remains of his brothers. Hereward wondered what terrors flitted through his head as he looked up into the silent, judging faces silhouetted against the night sky.
He pushed his way through his spear-brothers and squatted beside the cowering man. It was the English-speaker. His jaw was still slack but his mocking grin had long since departed. Tears flecked his eyes as he wordlessly pleaded with his captor.
When he began to mewl at whatever he saw in that grim face, Hereward held up a finger to silence him. ‘First, you will speak. You will tell me everything I need to know, or at least all that you know of these things. Do you hear me?’
Choking back a sob, the man nodded.
‘You are in the employ of Victor Verinus?’
The man’s eyes darted. Even here, he was afraid to speak, such was the power the Roman held over him. Hereward unsheathed his knife and tested the tip with the end of his finger. Swallowing, the prisoner nodded forcefully.
‘Your task was to slay the English dogs, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why does your master want us dead? We are … we were … no threat to him.’
‘I do not know. Truly.’
Hereward balanced the knife upon his fingertip. ‘Your master … he has a new friend? A man with a face that would haunt your nights?’
The rogue shuddered. ‘I have seen such a man, but only once. He hides in the house of the Verini, never walking in the sun.’
Feet crunched along the dry street. Heads turned and then his men parted. Hereward saw Salih ibn Ziyad walking towards them. Black bristles framed a mouth that showed no emotion, but his eyes gleamed. ‘Ask him,’ he demanded.
‘Now I would know of a woman,’ Hereward said to the prisoner. ‘Dark-skinned, from Afrique. Your master has her.’
‘I have heard tell he keeps her captive. I know not why, or where.’
Hereward sensed Salih stiffen. ‘She yet lives?’
‘For now, I am told.’
‘He plans to kill her?’ the Mercian pressed. ‘Soon?’
‘I do not know his mind.’
Hereward looked up at the wise man. Salih nodded. They had the answer they needed. Now it was only the finding. The Mercian looked around the shadowed faces of his brothers. ‘Victor Verinus killed one of us. We kill ten of his. From now on, that is how it will be. We will fight this like any other war, the way we fought William in the fens. We will not be driven out, crushed, made to run. We have found our acre of land, and it is ours, and it will remain ours, and no one will tell us otherwise. We have had our fill of powerful men choosing the roads we must walk. Never again.’
A whisper rustled around the English warriors. His final two words, repeated.
Hereward let the hilt of his knife fall into his palm. For a moment, he weighed it, and then he loomed over the cowering prisoner. ‘Go, now,’ he commanded his men without looking up. ‘I have more questions, and I will have answers to them soon enough.’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
WAVES LICKED AT the body drifting in the Bosphorus. Nine more floated nearby, skin the colour of cave-fish, hair swirling like seaweed in the currents. The eyes had already been a feast for the gulls.
Along Constantinople’s walls, folk gathered under the glaring morning sun to see the grisly spectacle. Hereward had already lear
ned it took much to stir the hearts of these Romans. In their teeming city, filled with wonders from all corners of the earth, they thought they had seen everything under God. But bloody violence, that was another matter. For most it existed far beyond Constantinople’s walls, a matter for the army, with victories proclaimed in the fora and defeats quietly forgotten. But now there was a war upon their doorstep, and, if the rumours were to be believed, only the first of many.
Death was coming to the city, and on this day he had brought it.
His hood pulled low, the Mercian edged away from the throng on the walls. He felt pleased that his men had lost none of their edge after their hardships.
Slipping through the streets, he made his way to the monastery of St George. The grand central dome was framed against the clear blue sky, the white stone incandescent. With its many windows and marching rows of columns, he thought how far removed it looked from the gloomy minsters of Ely and Eoferwic. Back in those grey places, the rain dripped through the thatch of the refectory and the wind howled under the boards. Here the majesty of God was burnished by the sun.
Within, he lost himself in the maze of corridors until he found a monk who could direct him to where the newly arrived English cleric toiled. Hereward found Alric kneeling at the shrine in the church, swathed in the sweet aroma of incense. His friend was laying down the offerings that had been delivered to the monastery gates that morning.
Alric seemed to sense his presence, for he looked round. For a long moment, they held each other’s gaze.
‘Have you come to take my other hand?’ the monk enquired when the Mercian ventured over. But he caught himself, adding, ‘That was unfair. You did what you had to do. You saved my life, and for that you have my eternal thanks.’