Byzantium - A Novel

by Michael Ennis

  Byzantium - A Novel Michael Ennis

  Pan Books

  First published in the USA in 1989 by The Atlantic Monthly Press, New York

  © Michael Ennis 1989

  ISBN 0 330 3159 X

  For my mother and father

  The gods make mighty him who bows to their yoke.

  Homer, The Iliad

  Foreword

  In the first half of the eleventh century, while Europe lumbered fitfully towards the end of the Dark Ages, the Byzantine Empire stood at the apex of its power. Direct heir to the might and glory of ancient Rome, the Empire of Byzantium already could look back on seven uninterrupted centuries of world dominion. The hub of this enduring and seemingly invincible power was Constantinople, the magnificent fortress capital founded in AD 330 by Constantine I, the first Christian Emperor of Rome. Invulnerable behind miles of towering walls, the Queen of Cities was a luxurious metropolis of a million inhabitants at a time when London and Paris were squalid, overgrown villages of ten or twenty thousand.

  Presiding over the splendour of Byzantium was the most powerful man on earth. Lord of the Entire World, the Byzantine Emperor was thought to rule literally side by side with the Lord of the Universe, Christ the Pantocrator. But the Emperor’s divine prerogative was coveted by many, and this all-too-fallible mortal often feared for his life even in the staggeringly opulent sanctuaries of his vast palace complex. For this reason the Byzantine emperors surrounded themselves with an Imperial bodyguard of Viking mercenaries, men of unquestioning loyalty and unyielding ferocity. Known and feared throughout the world as Varangians, these few hundred Viking warriors became essential to the stability and survival of the world’s mightiest empire.

  The most famed of all Varangians was a young Norwegian prince named Haraldr Sigurdarson, who would play one of the most fateful roles any man has ever undertaken on the stage of history. This is his true story.

  While this is a work of fiction, it has been based very carefully on historical fact, a truth more extraordinary than any fiction. All except the most incidental characters actually lived and died almost a thousand years ago, and all of the major events actually took place.

  In the interest of authenticity, various measurements and terms actually used in the eleventh century have been retained here. The units of measurement most commonly used by the Norse were the thumb, about an inch; the ell, a span of eighteen inches (based on the measurement between the elbow and forefinger); the bowshot, a distance of roughly two hundred yards; and the rowing-spell, a distance of about seven miles. The Byzantines used the fathom - six feet - as well as the Roman foot. The stade, a measurement based on the length of the hippodrome track, was about two hundred yards.

  The Vikings of the eleventh century never referred to themselves by the sobriquet they earned in later centuries; they called themselves simply Norsemen, while the word viking described an activity roughly translatable as ‘adventuring in search of wealth’. The word Varangian, which was widely used in Scandinavia as well as Byzantium, literally meant ‘pledgemen’, as the Norse warriors obeyed an inviolable pledge to defend one another, and their sworn leader, to the death. The Norsemen called the Byzantines Griks and their Empire Grikkland or Grikia; the city of Constantinople was often called Miklagardr, the Great City. But the Byzantines, who in fact spoke the Greek language and incorporated all of Greece in their Empire, emphatically considered themselves and their Empire ‘Roman’; Constantinople was often referred to as New Rome. The Byzantines frequently referred to Norsemen in general as Rus, because the Norse usually reached Byzantium by a route that took them through Rus Land, which later became Russia. In elegant court circles, Norsemen were also known as Tauro-Scythians, a condescending and affected anachronism that meant Scythians, (i.e. savages) from beyond the Taurus Mountains. Of course, in the eyes of the Byzantines all foreigners, regardless of status or place of origin, belonged in one basic category: barbaroi, or barbarians.

  Prologue

  Stiklestad, Norway 31 August 1030

  Reduced to predawn embers, the hundreds of camp-fires speckled the still-darkened meadow like a constellation of dying stars. Each was the site of an anxious communion, as a thousand men whispered a question only one man could answer: Will we fight today? The cumulative sound of this hushed speculation was an eerie, detached sibilance, as if giant wings slowly fanned the darkness above.

  The King of Norway stared into the faintly pulsing coals at his feet and repeated the name he had murmured a moment before. ‘Ingigerd.’

  Jarl Rognvald brushed the shag of frost-white hair from his forehead. The Jarl was well into his sixth decade, his walrus-tough skin slit with deep creases. Like the King sitting beside him, he was dressed for battle, in a knee-length coat of chain mail called a byrnnie. ‘My King?’ he asked absently.

  King Olaf sat erect; the links of his byrnnie chinged in a tiny, sad note, the instrument and its music suited to the man. Olaf was thirty-five, huge, with the face of a scowling, oversize boy who had shed his baby fat and become a tough, overbearing bully. And yet his painfully blue eyes were gentle and haunted; not a sensitive boy’s eyes but those of a man long pursued by an unkind fate. ‘The last time I saw Ingigerd,’ said the King, ‘I promised her that before I died, I would hold her in my arms again.’ He stirred the coals with his boot, and sparks flew up as if sucked by the vast whisper in the air. ‘I held her in my arms last night. A dream so real that I could taste her flesh and feel her heart beneath mine.’

  Jarl Rognvald knew then that the King had made his decision. Ingigerd, the King of Sweden’s daughter, had been the love of Olaf’s youth; though Olaf had never admitted it, Jarl Rognvald was certain that they had slept together. Perhaps for that reason the King of Sweden had always despised Olaf, and had married Ingigerd to Yaroslav, Great Prince of the Rus. Olaf and Ingigerd had not seen each other for almost twenty years.

  ‘Where will we fight them?’ asked Jarl Rognvald.

  ‘Here. When they see how few we are, they will come down from the high ground.’

  The two men stood and looked to the east. The forest began on a small slope at the edge of the meadow where Olaf had encamped his army; it seemed filled with an unnatural, incandescent orange mist that illuminated the bases of the pine trees. All night long Olaf’s scouts had gone out into that forest and returned with a grim accounting of their enemy’s strength, so evident in the massed light of their campfires. They were seven times as many men as Olaf had mustered, a mercenary mob hired by an unlikely coalition: the owners of Norway’s largest estates, who envisioned a Norway fractured into their own sovereign principalities, and Knut, King of Denmark and England, who envisioned a Norway shackled to his empire. And once Norway’s King was out of the way, Knut could easily impose his vision on his erstwhile allies.

  ‘We could still pack our gear bags and leave this field before dawn,’ Olaf said, ‘and live to meet them at a time of our choosing. But as word spread that King Olaf had run, their ranks would increase. We would simply die on another day, but in retreat, rather than with honour. No king could ever follow me, except a foreign king.’ Olaf turned to face the Jarl. ‘My choice is simple. If I live to fight again, Norway will die. If I die today, Norway lives.’

  Jarl Rognvald removed the conical steel helm from his leather gear bag and cradled it in his hands, his rough fingers tracing over the intricately scrolled dragons engraved round the rim. The Dragon of Nidafell, the Jarl silently noted, the giant-taloned serpent that would fly in the last black night of the world. The creature with the jaws of infinity, the beast that would draw all creation, the works of men and gods alike, into its endless maw. Jarl Rognvald still believed in this pagan apocalypse, despite Olaf’s relentless campaign to estab
lish Kristr as Norway’s God.

  Olaf watched the Jarl deal with doom in the fashion of his youth. ‘I know you still believe in the old gods,’ he told him softly. ‘I wish I could have placed your feet on the ladder to Paradise. But when you drink at the ale benches in the Valhol this evening, tell Norway’s Kings that I tried to honour them with my death, and that no man honoured me more with his life than Jarl Rognvald.’

  The Jarl’s thick neck pumped with emotion. ‘What of Norway’s next King?’

  Olaf strapped his sword belt around his waist. ‘Yes. Where is Haraldr?’ Haraldr Sigurdarson was Olaf’s fifteen-year-old half-brother and next in line for the throne; Haraldr’s father, Sygurd Syr, had been King before Olaf. But Olaf had been much more than half a brother to Haraldr; Sygurd Syr had died when Haraldr was only a small child, and Olaf had become by any measure Haraldr’s father.

  ‘Haraldr is with the skalds,’ said Jarl Rognvald. The skalds were the court poets. ‘He will want to fight.’

  ‘All boys who have never fought want to fight. It is time for Haraldr to learn that sometimes it requires more valour to live than to die.’

  ‘Where will you send him? His life will be worthless in Norway.’

  ‘Kiev, in Rus. Ingigerd will look after him there.’

  ‘They will hunt him down in Rus, even. Every hired thug, sand wanderer and Dane’s slave will want to earn the price on the head of the Prince who did not die at Stiklestad.’

  ‘He will take a new name. Within a year he will probably grow so much, he will look entirely different. I am not worried that other men will take him for the Prince of Norway, if he can keep quiet about who he is.’ Olaf glowered, the light of the dying fire on his troubled eyes making him seem more haunted than haunting. ‘I am worried that Haraldr himself will forget he is the King of Norway.’

  ‘Steadfast will we feed the gulls-of-blood.’ The skald pulled anxiously at his whiskers, contemplating his newly minted verse. If he had to recite it this morning, he realised, it would probably be his last.

  ‘Gulls-of-blood,’ repeated Haraldr Sigurdarson in his piping, occasionally cracking adolescent voice; he stood next to the pensive skald, no such doubt reflected in his swaggering version of a court poet’s elegant oratorical pose. He was immature for his age, his lean, fine-featured face all pale down, his long golden hair almost as beautiful as a woman’s. His blue eyes were said to be the image of his brother’s. His metal-studded canvas byrnnie swallowed skeletal limbs; only his man-sized hands and feet hinted at the stature he might acquire. ‘That is the kenning for raven,’ Haraldr said authoritatively; kennings were the elaborate metaphors favoured by Norse poets. ‘The gull is a bird, and the bird that drinks blood is the raven. We will feed the ravens the Danemen’s blood.’

  The skald ignored Haraldr and squinted at the men approaching in the dim light. He dipped to his knee when he recognised King Olaf. The King was attended by Jarl Rognvald and two of his house-karls, members of his personal guard.

  ‘Olaf! Jarl Rognvald! Listen! “Dark nigh the dread of arrow-storm--” ‘ Haraldr broke off when he saw the grim set of Olaf’s face.

  ‘Haraldr.’ Olaf’s beefy hands engulfed his brother’s frail shoulders. ‘This morning I am going to ask you to serve your King and our Norway with a hard task. It is the most difficult I will ask of any man this entire day.’

  Haraldr had already imagined so many acts of his own heroism that he hardly knew which image to supply, now that his years of day-dreaming had culminated in reality. What feat did his brother and king require?

  ‘You cannot enter the shield-wall today.’

  Haraldr’s head snapped back as if he had been struck. He was too shocked to say anything.

  ‘Guaka and Asti’ - Olaf indicated the house-karls - ‘are going to take you to Rus. You have heard me talk of the Rus Queen, Ingigerd. I want you to stay at the Rus court in Kiev until you are told it is safe to return home. Your name will be known only to Guaka and Asti, and to Ingigerd and her husband.’ Olaf squeezed Haraldr’s shoulders so hard that the boy’s eyes glazed with pain. ‘You must swear to me on your father’s soul that you will tell no one else your name until you are able to return home to Norway. No one. If anyone discovers who you are, you will never come home. I can promise you that.’

  Haraldr sniffled and tried to force his shoulders up and his chest out. ‘I won’t go to Rus. My wand-of-wounds will feed the raven-wine to those Dane-sucking dung haulers!’

  Olaf squeezed Haraldr’s shoulders again. ‘Haraldr, you have not passed fifteen summers. I never intended to let you fight. No boy your age will ever die for me.’

  ‘You went a-viking in your twelfth summer.’

  ‘I carried water skins to men who had gone a-viking.’

  ‘The skald Thorfinn Munnr says you killed a man that same year.’

  Olaf shook his ponderous head wearily. ‘When a man becomes King, he magically grows two ells taller and suddenly he has ploughed the belly-barley of a different woman for each night since he was a swaddled infant. The truth is that I became strong because I was not asked to pull an oar until my back was ready for it. That is how I intend it for you.’

  ‘My back is ready. If you are going to fight here, I am staying with you.’

  ‘I do not have the time to convince you that I am not jesting, little brother. We are not playing games at Nidaros.’

  ‘I am aware of that.’

  Olaf’s hands gripped so hard that Haraldr thought his bones would be ground to meal. ‘You are about to shame yourself. If I have to have you tied up, I will.’

  ‘And if I have to tie my sword to my hand, I am going to fight today!’ Haraldr was momentarily startled by his own shrill shouting. His face was suddenly brilliant with outrage.

  Olaf reached swiftly for Haraldr’s sword and whipped the blade out of his brother’s scabbard. Haraldr leapt like a springing cat, his eyes wild. He clamped both hands on Olaf’s wrist, which was as thick as a small tree, and wrestled it with mad fury, as if it were indeed a tree he was trying to uproot. With his free hand Olaf tried to prise Haraldr’s astonishingly powerful grip but after a moment gave up. He drew back his immense fist and clobbered Haraldr just behind the ear.

  Haraldr dizzied and fell to his knees, sparks popping in his head. ‘You don’t have to truss me up,’ he said meekly. This isn’t finished, he told himself.

  Olaf gave Haraldr’s sword to Guaka. ‘You must go before it gets too light.’ He brought his bristling, burly face close to Haraldr’s and his eyes were dark, endlessly deep, as if fate had somehow chased the entire star-flecked universe into their void. This can’t be happening, Haraldr told himself. But Olaf’s eyes said it was. ‘Do you swear on your father’s soul not to reveal your name to anyone?’

  Haraldr swallowed thickly; a cold stone seemed to be stuck in his throat. ‘I swear it.’

  Olaf’s eyes filled again, not with life but with the swirling mists of memory. ‘Haraldr, when you get to Rus, you must remember me to Queen Ingigerd. Tell her she was with me.’ He snatched his brother into his arms and held him against his massive metalled chest. ‘I will always be beside you,’ Olaf said. ‘No matter where you are, no matter where I am. I love you, little brother.’

  The next thing Haraldr knew, he was walking into the pall of the new day, Guaka and Asti flanking him, and the tears on his cheeks were cold.

  ‘I’ll carry it.’ Guaka shrugged and handed Haraldr his sword. The dense forest was dappled with mid-morning light; the patches of sky visible through the trees were like glazed cerulean tiles. The ether of the pine resin was intoxicating. To the right, only fifty ells away the woods parted and a field of large jumbled black rocks descended to a nearly dry creek.

  ‘Guaka, I have to piss.’

  Guaka turned to Asti. The towering, armoured house-karl shook his head as if to ask, ‘We have to go all the way to Rus with him?’

  Haraldr pointed to a dark, almost mysterious clump of pines to his left. ‘I need to g
o in there.’

  Guaka grinned knowingly at Asti and again shook his head. ‘You can go right here. We don’t mind.’

  Haraldr hiked up his byrnnie and tunic. His urine splashed over the pine needles for a moment and then he turned quickly and directed the stream over Guaka’s bare knees.

  ‘Kristr, damn!’ shouted Guaka, and he danced backwards several steps. Haraldr immediately dashed to his right, through the woods and onto the field of boulders. In spite of his gawky frame, he moved across the big rocks with the grace of a panther. The house-karls followed, bellowing obscenities, but they had nowhere near Haraldr’s agility or speed on such crude terrain. Haraldr crossed the trickling creek, loped over the rocks on the opposite side, and disappeared into the forest.

  Haraldr crouched behind a parapet of smooth black boulders on a small hill overlooking his brother’s encampment. The meadow was like an emerald platter before him; at one end half a dozen huge, fractured black boulders lay on the grass as if tossed there by a giant’s hand. Olaf’s men had already set themselves in the classic shield-wall defence, a circle three men thick and five hundred men round, shoulder to shoulder, an enormous ring plated with steel and bristling with spears. Inside this human fort were the King, his skalds and his house-karls. Haraldr could easily distinguish the tiny, jewel-like figure of Olaf; he wore a blue silk tunic over his lacquered steel byrnnie, and his white enamelled shield was embossed with a large gold cross. Three bowshots beyond this formation, almost directly opposite Haraldr, the forested, slightly elevated rim of the meadow teemed with the vanguard of the opposing horde. In their predominantly brown canvas byrnnies they looked like a muddy wave, silted with silvery steel blades and armour, about to burst from the forest and crash down the slope.

  The battle oath of Olaf’s army was clearly discernible: ‘Forward, forward, Kristr-men, cross-men!’ The shield-wall advanced towards the line of trees, virtually without distortion of its immaculate geometry. From the forest came a vast exhalation: ‘Thor crushes all!’ The metal-flecked, turbid wave of the Dane’s men came out of the trees, multihued battle standards carried along like the masts of a vast, miniature fleet. Dense clouds of arrows rose up from both armies, flying as swiftly as passing shadows. Spears and javelins darted in quick, glittering volleys. The wave surged against the shield-wall and halted.