by Tom Harper
He glanced down below the prisoner’s waist, and allowed derision to enter his face; I shot a quick glance at Krysaphios, but his smooth face remained wholly opaque. ‘I could make you quite valuable,’ Sigurd said with a leer. ‘Not like some Armenian boy whose parents have simply squeezed his balls back where they came from. I can turn you into a carzimasian, as pure as a girl with not a shred of your flesh remaining. You’d fetch a higher price then than you ever did as a mercenary.’
He affected to tire of his monologue and fell silent. Even the priest, who had translated every word, seemed to be shivering: I think Krysaphios was the only one of us who did not cower at Sigurd’s threats. Certainly the Bulgar was paying attention, his eyes fixed in terror on the evil curve of Sigurd’s axe which jerked and twitched bewitchingly as he spoke. The axe which was now raised as high in the air as the dungeon would allow, hovering over Sigurd’s shoulder like a vengeful angel waiting to strike.
‘No,’ I protested, but my mouth was dry and the words barely scraped forth. And too late: the axe swung down in a flashing arc and struck thick sparks from the stone floor; the prisoner screamed like an animal and thrashed about in his chains. Fresh blood ran down his wrists and the priest yelped in horror. But no blood fountained from the Bulgar’s groin, and no gruesome lump of flesh was lying limp on the floor. The axe must have passed inches before his body.
Sigurd lifted his blade from the stone and eyed it curiously. ‘I missed,’ he said, surprised. ‘Shall I try again?’
He had to kick the priest to translate this, but even before he had spoken a torrent of words began to spew out of our prisoner. The shock of his near emasculation had shaken something loose within him: he sobbed and ranted as though a demon possessed him, and I was glad of the chains which restrained him. Only after much soothing talk, and after Sigurd had retreated well into a corner, did he slow his speech enough that the translator could make sense of it.
His name, he said, was Kaloyan. Yes, he had worked for the pimp Vassos, mostly collecting debts and beating girls who no longer wished to work for him, sometimes protecting them from men who became angry or refused to pay. Occasionally he would do something else, something more dangerous, for Vassos was a man with ambitions and he enjoyed the thought of having a private army. Mostly, though, they were a ragged bunch of former soldiers and strongmen, who drank and brawled with each other when not called upon to fight professionally. Until, that was, the monk arrived.
‘Describe him,’ I said tersely, my fingers clutching the hem of my tunic in anticipation.
‘He cannot,’ answered the translator after a brief exchange. ‘He says the monk always wore a hood, always, even in the forest.’
‘In the forest?’ I realised I was disrupting the story. ‘Never mind. What did the monk want?’
‘The monk wanted five men. The pimp provided them, Kaloyan was one. He took them to a house in the forest, where for two weeks he trained one of them in the use of a strange weapon, a barbarian weapon the like of which Kaloyan had never seen.’
‘Was it a tzangra?’ I asked, describing it as best I could.
‘Yes,’ said the interpreter. ‘Just so. It could shoot through steel. Kaloyan wanted to try it, but the monk guarded it jealously and let no-one but his apprentice use it. Once one of Kaloyan’s companions tried to steal it while the monk was sleeping. He did not leave the forest alive.’
‘So Kaloyan was not the assassin.’ I could not know whether to be elated or confused by how close I had come. ‘Does he know the one who was?’
I saw the Bulgar shake his head weakly. ‘He never knew him before,’ the priest confirmed. ‘Vassos found him somewhere in the slums.’
‘Did the monk say what he purposed with the weapon? Why he went to so much trouble to train another man in its use?’ My questions were coming faster now, for every word the Bulgar spoke demanded explanation, and the frustration of the long pauses while the interpreter spoke first with the prisoner and then formed his phrases was beginning to wear on me.
‘The monk never told them his purpose, and he did not welcome questions. All he said was that he had a powerful enemy whom he wanted removed, and he could not do so himself.’
Another thought struck me. ‘So if he trained only one of them in the use of the tzangra, what were Kaloyan and the others for? Did he fear for his safety?’ Did the monk have other enemies of whom we knew nothing?
‘Not for his own safety.’ The interpreter puzzled at something the Bulgar had said. ‘He was afraid that the apprentice would flee away if he had the chance.’
‘Why would he do that?’ Surely the monk paid well enough, if he could afford a quartet of bodyguards.
An even longer pause. ‘Because of his age. He was little more than a boy, the Bulgar says, and wild, untameable.’
I heard the ringing thud of metal on stone as an axe-head fell to the ground. The interpreter flinched; the Bulgar screamed, though it was only Sigurd dropping his weapon. It was some moments before there was calm again, and all that time I strained with a burning impatience to ask my final question.
‘A boy?’ I said at last. ‘The assassin was a boy? Has the Bulgar seen him since?’
It seemed an age while my words were echoed into the Bulgar tongue, then while the interpreter frowned in concentration at the long answer he was given. He curled a finger through his beard and eyed me nervously, sensing the importance that had settled on this last question, though in no way understanding it.
‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘He did see him again. He says he tried to kill him this morning.’
ζ
I was running out of the dungeon almost before the priest had spoken, out past the blank ranks of lamplit slaves, up the twisted steps, and into the mercy of the cool air in the courtyard above. There were shouts and footsteps behind me but I did not care: I had held the assassin in my arms only hours ago, had saved him from an almost certain death. I looked about at the great columns enclosing me like a giant cage, and realised I did not even know my way out of the palace.
‘Where did you take him?’
I spun around to see Sigurd emerging from the stair behind me. He was breathing heavily, though still could hold his axe with a single hand.
‘To a monastery.’ I hesitated, suddenly thinking what he might do to the boy who had tried to kill the Emperor. Of course a murderer deserved death – but I had saved his life, and I had not shaken the soldier’s superstition that you buy a man’s life only with a small piece of your own.
‘Which monastery?’ Sigurd demanded. ‘Christ! The boy might already be gone. There’s no time.’
‘The monastery of Saint Andrew. In the Sigma district.’
‘Follow me.’
His armour jangling like shackles, he led me at a run through the corridors of the palace. The scribes and noblemen we passed stared but said nothing; no guards challenged us. Doors opened before us as if by some unseen hand, and sometimes it seemed that a room which I had seen cast in darkness as we approached was bathed in light when we arrived. Then the lamps became scarcer, the stairs steeper. There was little life in this part of the palace, and that, mostly furtive-faced slaves scurrying past with their eyes cast down. I hastened to keep close to Sigurd.
At length the columns and marble floors gave out and we came into a low tunnel. Sigurd nodded to the brick vaults above our heads.
‘The hippodrome.’
We passed under it in silence, our footsteps mute on the sandy floor. There was a gate at the end and Sigurd had the key: beyond it I could hear sounds of life, of laughter and labour, and smell the warm odour of horses.
‘Hipparch!’ bellowed Sigurd. ‘Hipparch! We need two horses, saddled and bridled.’
‘Late for your mistress again?’ A tall man, elegantly dressed, stepped into the square of the stable yard.
‘At least I have a woman, you horse-fucker.’ Sigurd clapped him on the shoulder. ‘But she will have to wait.’
The hipparch raised hi
s eyebrows. ‘So urgent? I have two mounts awaiting the logothete’s dispatches.’
‘Then the dispatches can wait too. Send a boy to the chamberlain and tell him we’ve gone to the monastery of Saint Andrew, in Sigma.’ A thought struck him. ‘You can ride, can you, Demetrios?’
I could, although galloping a horse bred for the imperial post through the darkening streets of the megapolis was not something I was practised in. It taxed all my luck and concentration merely staying upright on the beast, and it was a mercy that with the day ending the crowds were gone, and that the emerging watchmen had the wit to retreat into the arcades as Sigurd and I thundered past.
We arrived at the monastery, Sigurd sliding off his horse and crossing swiftly to the gates. They were locked, but the butt of his axe-shaft was soon pounding out notice of our arrival loud enough to reach the ears of the dead in the distant necropolis.
A small door set within the gate cracked open a finger’s breadth.
‘Who’s there?’ Suspicion and fear had driven all trace of sleep from the speaker’s mouth.
‘Sigurd, captain of Varangians and guardian of Emperors. You keep a boy with you who I need to see.’ Sigurd shouted the words like a challenge in the arena.
The monk, to my surprise, found sufficient moral indignation to resist.
‘The monastery is closed for contemplation and prayer. You may return in the morning. No-one passes the gate during the hours of darkness.’
‘I have almost lamed two of the logothete’s finest horses to come here.’ Sigurd was working himself into a powerful frenzy. ‘I will not now sit on your doorstep.’ Without warning, he lifted his boot and slammed it into the wooden door; there was a yelp of pain as it swung inwards.
We stepped through, Sigurd scraping his shoulders on the frame. Inside a monk was rubbing a bruised shoulder, and cursing us with words that no man of God should know, but we ignored him as I led the way across the courtyard to the arched doorway where I had left the boy. Forestalling Sigurd’s axe, I knocked.
‘One day your patience will betray you,’ Sigurd fretted as we waited in the cold darkness. ‘If this doctor’s in there, let me call him out.’
‘One day you’ll knock down the wrong door,’ I told him, ‘and find so many enemies your axe will be blunted before you can kill all of them.’
Sigurd shrugged. ‘Then I’ll beat their heads in with the haft.’
‘And leave another to clean their wounds.’
We both looked to the door, which had silently opened to reveal the woman doctor to whom I’d entrusted the boy. She held a candle, and wore only a long woollen shift which left her arms and feet entirely bare. There were rises in the fabric where her nipples pressed against it: the sight of them stirred something within me, but the look on her face was of pure anger.
‘What do you mean by hammering down the monastery gates at this hour, and then calling me from my work? If you must profane the laws of God, you might at the least respect the business of healing.’
‘We seek the boy who was brought here this morning,’ said Sigurd, before I could offer an apology. ‘Is he here?’
She gazed at him contemptuously, while my heart raced to hear the answer. Had we come so close, only to be denied our prize by my compassion?
She tossed her head. ‘He’s here. He could hardly have left. He cannot stand, let alone walk. At the moment he sleeps.’
‘We must see him. Immediately.’ Sigurd’s voice was heavy with menace. ‘We come on palace business.’
Two flames were reflected back in the doctor’s dark eyes. ‘The Emperor himself cannot raise a sick boy to health simply by his command. The boy is feverish and delirious. At the moment he is sleeping, and that is probably the most wholesome thing he has done in a month. Unless you are the man who sliced so deeply into his leg, you would tremble to wake him.’
‘Lady, I am the man who stopped the Bulgar from killing him.’ Sigurd’s voice was loud now, and he stepped forward so that he almost touched her. She was minute before him, like Andromeda beneath the Kraken, but she did not waver.
‘No,’ she said. ‘While the boy sleeps, you wait.’
‘What if he escapes by the back door?’ Sigurd was in retreat, now, but he would not surrender until he was satisfied.
‘There is no back door, Captain – only two high windows through which you would struggle to fit your forearm. Good night.’ And blowing out the candle, she left us in darkness. On the far side of the door I heard a bolt shoot home.
Sigurd stood very still, staring at his axe where it caught the moonlight.
‘You can’t chop your way in,’ I warned wearily. I sat down on the step and leaned my back against the base of a column. ‘And the boy won’t move. What can we do but wait?’
Sigurd clearly had many ideas, but with a reluctant growl he at last laid his weapon on the stone floor and made a seat beside it.
‘We don’t move,’ he warned me. ‘And we don’t sleep. Anyone who comes out of that door before dawn will find my axe through their throat.’
I did not ask what would happen to me if I failed to stay awake.
I hesitated to talk with Sigurd after that, but when half an hour had passed in silence I risked the hope that the chill air would have numbed his anger a little.
‘Your zeal in defence of the Emperor is like something out of legend,’ I said quietly, thinking he could ignore me if he chose. ‘No wonder he prizes his Varangians so highly.’
‘Only the English.’ Sigurd stared moodily at his fist. ‘There were others in the guard, Rus and Danes and their sort, but he expelled them because he could not trust them.’
‘Why the English?’ I was genuinely curious: to me one fair-headed barbarian giant seemed much like another.
Sigurd grunted. ‘Because the English are the only men who will hate the Emperor’s enemies as if they were his own. I will tell you. Fifteen years ago, at a battle near Dyrrachium, the Normans trapped a company of Varangians in a church. At first they offered gold, and riches, if the English would desert the Emperor and join them in battle, for they knew of our fame in war, but the Varangians refused. Then they grew angry, and threatened to slaughter them to the last man if they did not surrender, but still the English defied them. So at last they set fire to the holy sanctuary where they had sought refuge, and razed it to the ground. Not one man escaped. We would rather the Normans burn us alive than surrender to them. That is how deep the hatred goes.’
‘But why? Why leave wives as widows, when they could have been safely ransomed after the battle?’
Sigurd leaned forward. ‘Because the Normans killed our king and stole our country. Their bastard duke tricked and lied his way onto our throne, then laid the land waste.’
‘When was this?’ He spoke with such a savagery that it could have been yesterday.
‘Thirty years ago. But we do not forget.’
‘You would have been a child thirty years ago, no more than five or six years old. The same as me.’
A sound from the door behind us broke off our conversation. Before I could even turn my head Sigurd was on his feet and lifting his axe, poised to strike. I had a flash of panic that he would behead some innocent monk attending a call of nature, but it was not a monk, nor yet the boy escaping: it was the doctor. She had wrapped a stola around her shoulders, covering the indecency of her shift, and held two steaming clay bowls in her hands. Had it been me, I thought, I would probably have dropped them in the face of a lowering Varangian, but she simply set them down on the floor before us.
‘Soup,’ she said. ‘I thought you might be cold. I did not want to find a pair of obstinate men with frostbite in the morning.’
Sigurd resumed his seat, and we tipped the hot food eagerly down our throats. The lady stood over us, watching, until we had wiped the bowls clean with the bread she gave us. To my surprise, she did not then retreat inside with them; instead she smoothed her skirts under her legs and seated herself on the steps between us.
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br /> ‘It’s cold out here,’ I warned, my clouded breath illustrating my words.
‘Indeed,’ she agreed. ‘Too cold for two men to sit here all night keeping an unconscious cripple from wandering out of his bed.’
‘We do not merely guard against his escape. There are men out there who would ensure he never left his bed again, if they could reach him.’
‘And what do you want with him then?’ she pressed. ‘To offer him prayers to speed his recovery?’
‘Justice,’ said Sigurd harshly.
‘Tell me, how did you come to be a doctor?’ I interrupted, hurriedly pushing the conversation into less contentious grounds. ‘And in a community of monks at that? I am Demetrios,’ I added, aware that none of our unruly meetings had yet yielded an introduction. ‘This is Sigurd.’
‘I am Anna. And I am a doctor care of a wise father and a crass lover. My father taught me to read and learn the knowledge of the ancients – the texts of Galen and Aristotle. My lover, to whom I was betrothed, chose to abandon the marriage at the last minute. After that humiliation, none would marry me, so after the tears I chose this profession. I had friends who had suffered at the hands of incompetent surgeons, men who knew no more of a woman’s body than of a camel’s. I thought I could do better.’
She pressed her palms together, and in the moonlight I saw that despite her cloak she was shivering.
‘Do you think me shameless?’ she asked. ‘Telling near strangers my intimate history?’ She leaned forward. ‘I see a dozen patients a day, and every one of them asks me my story. You grow used to it.’
‘You could tell them you were inspired by the example of Saint Lucilla,’ suggested Sigurd gruffly.