Byzantium - A Novel

by Michael Ennis

  Haraldr watched the miniaturized conflict in utter fascination, forcing himself to adhere to his plan: wait until the crucial moment and then rush to his brother’s rescue. He had a vision of himself in the setting sun, acclaimed on the field of fray, amid the corpses of his foes, the youngest marshal in the history of Norway. As he dreamed, he vaguely wondered why the sky was darkening.

  A small portion of the shield-wall buckled in and Haraldr’s heart thudded as his brother’s gold-embroidered standard, ringed by his house-karls, moved to buttress the defence. But it was not yet time; the breach was quickly repaired. Haraldr noticed that the cloud had still not moved from the sun and that it was a very dark cloud. Yet why was the rest of the sky a flawless, deep cobalt blue? He finally gave up a moment of his battle for a look over his head. He gasped and stood, gaping, no longer concerned about revealing his hiding place.

  It was another wonder, a celestial parallel to the marvel at his feet. In the still-brilliant, unmarred sky, the sun was dying. It was as if a crescent chunk had been taken by some great jaws. He distantly remembered a man at court talking about a day when the sun had vanished and the midday became midnight. Much more distinct in his mind were the pagan tales he had raptly listened to; Jarl Rognvald had often talked of Ragnarok, the doom of the gods, when the wolf Fenrir would swallow the sun, only to be devoured in turn by the black Dragon of Nidafell in the last night of creation. Haraldr weighed the two theories and concluded that this portent was too coincidental with the affairs of men to be merely an accident of nature. It was the work of the old gods.

  He squinted at the sky until his face hurt. Fenrir only slowly ingested the sun, but the day darkened more quickly than a sunset in a deep fjord. The din of battle fell in concert to the fading light. Thousands of heads tilted upwards to watch an even more epochal confrontation. The unearthly wails of the wounded, no longer masked by the screams of combat, carried across the meadow.

  The landscape became coppery, almost fiery, as the mythic jaws swallowed all but a final, desperately glimmering fragment of the sun. Haraldr looked at his sword, his arms. Blood. Blood sun, blood sky, blood on the land. His mind went blank, perfectly suspended between wonder and fear. The wind gusted from the meadow, carrying with it the ferric scent of opened flesh. The dying voices rose in a harrowing dirge. Haraldr plunged into fear. He scrambled from his redoubt, tumbled part of the way down the slope, and then he was conscious only of the blood-tinted grass racing beneath him.

  No one stopped Haraldr from entering the shield-wall. He looked about, bewildered, at the craning warriors. A wounded man moaned, only a few ells from him. Shouting began, from the front of the shield-wall, but Haraldr could not see what was happening because the huge armoured backs of the house-karls blocked his view. Men pushed back towards him in large groups, their faces drenched with sweat. The shouts were louder still, and they were joined by the shriek of metal on metal; it seemed to Haraldr that he could actually feel the noise, like needles in his bones. A house-karl staggered towards him like a careening metal beast, coughing up blood, his lips and chin glazed crimson.

  And then they were all running. He followed them to his right, not really knowing why, until they stopped abruptly. He did not know where he was until he realized that the huge black boulders he had seen from his perch were now at his back; he could reach out and feel the cold stone. He saw Olaf’s standard only half a dozen ells in front of him, the gold dragon embroidered on it bloodied by the moribund sun. The grip on his arm was like a sword stroke.

  ‘By all the gods, where did you come from!’ shouted Jarl Rognvald. His byrnnie was smeared with blood and two deep, open cuts intersected the seams on his cheeks. The Jarl bellowed almost frantically for Olaf. Olaf finally shouldered through the crush of house-karls. His demonchased eyes did not change expression when he saw Haraldr. He shouted in Jarl Rognvald’s ear. Without looking at Haraldr again, he turned and immediately went forward. Jarl Rognvald let Haraldr’s arm go but stayed by him.

  It was too much for Haraldr to acknowledge that this was all that was left, that the shield-wall had been shattered and most of Olaf’s men engulfed by the brown wave, that the house-karls had set this last line of defence against the boulders. Instead a heedless bravado seemed to pump up his gangling limbs and he wriggled between the metal torsos of the house-karls, pushing to the front. The enemy, separated from the house-karls by a no man’s land no broader than two arms spans, were a sword-waving, spear-thrusting, barking, howling wall, teeming like an immense pack of monstrous deadly vermin. He was close enough to see their gnashing teeth. Their eyes were thousands of fiery coals.

  An eerie hush fell as five huge men stepped into the no man’s land. Four of them wore steel byrnnies, but the man in the centre, the tallest and stoutest of them, wore an armour of layered hides with the fur still attached. Berserks, or bear-shirts, were said to wear such hide armour, and when Odin gave them the Battle-Rage, no man could stand before them.

  The Berserk took another step forward. His black beard had white streaks; his eyebrows, hacked away in countless frays, were bestial, whiskered tufts above tiny red eyes. The end of his nose had been sliced off in one of his previous combats; his truncated nostrils were huge and upturned like a pig’s snout. ‘I am Thorir, called the Hound,’ he said, his voice strangely tranquil. ‘You are lost. Give up your King and your Prince, and our accounts will be settled.’

  The house-karls answered with a gale of obscenities. ‘Sow fucker!’ ‘Corpse lover!’

  The Hound calmly waited, eyes flickering, until the outburst had ended. ‘Then you will all die,’ he said. ‘I know the King.’ He pointed at Olaf. ‘When we begin again, I will kill him first.’ The tiny red eyes began to roam among the house-karls, as piercing as hot, sharp irons, and Haraldr knew what they were searching for. He was too mesmerized to look away and the moment of contact was like a knife slitting him from his groin to his windpipe, ripping out his fool’s courage and replacing it with a cold, leaden, mortal dread. ‘I think the boy is the Prince,’ said the Hound; he turned to the silent army behind him for confirmation, and several men nodded. ‘I will kill him as well.’

  Olaf’s vast bulk hurtled from within his cordon of house-karls. Someone grabbed Haraldr and pulled him back and he fell hard on his seat, but before he went down he glimpsed his brother’s sword pound into the Hound’s furry hide armour. Men stepped over and on him and he thought he would be trampled. He heard a moment later the explosive collision of the two armies, the screech of clashing steel and the desperate, thundering oaths of doomed men. Then he could see Olaf and Thorir the Hound again. They seemed to move so slowly, like figures in a nightmare. Olaf’s blade flashed in long, ruby-tinted strokes, again and again, and yet the Hound still stood. Then a third man entered the dream-like vignette, one of the huge men who had come forward with the Hound. This intruder crouched low, and when his sword scythed parallel to the ground, Haraldr perceived it moving much more swiftly, everything was speeding up, and the blade struck Olaf’s massive leg and recoiled and Olaf’s knee seemed to disintegrate and he was falling. Another man stepped into Haraldr’s suddenly rushing nightmare and his spear caught Olaf under his byrnnie, jerking him up and sideways before it was pulled from his belly. Olaf’s hand clutched but he could not grasp, and his slick, coiled bowels began to ooze down his thighs. A sword struck his neck and his head tilted freakishly to the side and blood pumped onto his shoulder.

  The blow knocked Haraldr on his back and something flew swiftly into his eye like an angry bird, and his vision flooded with warm serum. Stand to fight! shrieked a voice so loud, it could only have come from inside his skull. But his limbs were locked in an icy dread and a terrible truth quarrelled with the other voice: I am a coward, it said, as his fright gushed out of him and soiled his breeches with a repulsive warmth. A boot crunched with stunning force into his chest; his heart, painfully bruised by his ribs, seemed to beg for death; if only he would not have to stand and face it.

&n
bsp; The Hound was above him. The huge nostrils, the horrible sucking. Haraldr lay there, frozen with terror, his head screaming with the dark poetry of the last instant in time. The Hound’s sword rose high, lost in blood-tinted night; it was no sword, it was a creature, a raven’s beak descending, falling from night into night. Then there was a terrific concussion, as if the sun had exploded in its final dying fury, and Haraldr fell away from its heat and light, falling, falling endlessly into the vast, airless, utterly black craw of the last dragon.

  The man from Denmark grasped the jaw and turned the corpse’s puffy claret face towards him; the head flopped as if no longer attached to the neck. He fanned away the flies and slipped open the livid eyelids for a moment; the blue eyes glared in a ghostly fury. He stood and faced the Hound. This is King Olaf. Now show me the Prince. Haraldr Sigurdarson.’

  The Hound’s chest heaved and the air wheezed through his gaping nostrils. ‘I struck him on the helm. There was blood all over his face. Then two men attacked me. When I finished with them, I saw him still lying there. I don’t see how he could have got away.’

  ‘But some men were able to flee?’

  ‘No more than two or three. Cowards.’

  ‘Or men intent on saving their Prince.’ The man from Denmark removed a bulging leather wallet from his expensive Frisian wool cloak and shook out four gold bezants. ‘My King said he would pay you the bounty for the King of Norway and his heir. I give you partial payment as the task has yet to be completed. But consider how much easier your errand has become.’ The man from Denmark hefted the wallet. ‘Before today, you had to kill a King and a Prince to earn this. Now you only have to kill a fugitive boy.’

  The Hound held the gold coins in his flat palm and gently prodded them with his scarred, blood-smeared fingers, almost as if they were small, delicate creatures of a species he had never imagined existed. ‘Haraldr Sigurdarson,’ he said quietly, and then he closed his huge fist.

  Isle of Prote, Sea of Marmara September 1030

  ‘ “Learning is but foliage compared to the fruits of a holy life, and the tree that bears nothing but foliage must be cut down and burned. But the finest result is when the fruit is set amongst its foliage.” ‘ Father Katalakon permitted himself the vanity of a slight smile as he finished his impromptu recitation. He was a tall man, his long but neatly combed hair and beard the colour of the grey sea mist that on this bright day was, blessedly, still only a dreary memory of winters past and a foreboding of the cold months ahead. Indeed, all of the fruits the Pantocrator had delivered to his Holy Brethren on the Isle of Prote were on this day brightly lit by the brilliant candle of Our Lord’s glorious vault. The September sun gleamed off the floor of rose-veined Proconesian marble and burnished the gold acanthus-leaf pattern that bordered the lacquered, coffered ceiling of the library. Father Katalakon turned to the man next to him. ‘Of course I do not intend to convey that your intimacy with the words of Theodore the Studite requires a restorative from my lips, Brother Symeon.’

  ‘Wisdom is never disgraced by repetition, Father Abbot, as holiness is only cultured by our efforts to emulate it.’ Brother Symeon, the new Chartophylax, or archivist, of the Monastery at Prote, was content to allow the Father Abbot to meander towards their objective. After all, Brother Symeon reminded himself, he would not have been summoned here to Prote had he not long ago achieved the state of apathia that bridled impetuous, worldly desires. He looked about the library with admiration; the sumptuous marble revetments and gilded scriptoria attested to the material abundance of Prote, while the shelves stacked with books - some bound in oak, many sheathed in carved ivory, cloisonne or gems - revealed spiritual wealth. Brother Symeon peered through the clear glass panes of the gracefully arched windows; beneath him, sun-washed rocks fell away to the gem-blue Sea of Marmara. So what I have been told of Prote was no exaggeration, reflected Brother Symeon. The island scarcely has enough arable soil to support a herb garden, and yet the splendours of the establishment rival those of the monasteries at Bithynia and Chios. Ah, well, Christ the Pantocrator will no doubt soon reveal the identity of Prote’s benefactor. All things according to His immutable plan.

  Father Katalakon appraised his new archivist; like the Father Abbot, Brother Symeon wore the long black wool frock and high round cap common to all the monastic orders of the One True Oecumenical, Orthodox and Catholic Faith. Yes, Father Katalakon was satisfied that his careful inquiries had indeed been rewarded. The aged Brother Symeon had manifested no impatience on this deliberately circumlocutional tour of the facilities, nor had he evidenced any curiosity as to the source of this magnificence. Of course, Brother Symeon had become noticeably weary of the walking, his thin shoulders slumping and his lips purpling against his snowy beard. Hopefully the new Chartophylax would live long enough to finish his archival research here on Prote; most certainly he would not live long enough to speak of those labours elsewhere even if his worldly passions were somehow revived by what he might find amid the late Father Abbot Giorgios’s voluminous archives.

  Well, it was time. ‘One could linger here in contemplation of these glories until the Trumpet of Judgement sounded.’ Father Katalakon graciously extended his hand to Brother Symeon. ‘But I am sure you are curious to see the documents of which I have written to you.’

  The carved wooden door slid noiselessly to reveal a chamber lit by an ornate glass-and-gold candelabra and a single window looking onto an enclosed, private court. Brother Symeon virtually gasped in astonishment. The floor, paved with moss-coloured Thessalian marble, was almost entirely obscured by dozens of stacks of unbound parchments; some of the bundles, wrapped in silk cords, rose almost to Father Katalakon’s lofty chin. Surrounded by these thousands upon thousands of documents was a marvellous little writing cabinet with an ivory and niello top and gold fittings on the lacquered wooden drawers.

  ‘Yes, you see that I did not embellish fact when I wrote to you that Father Abbot Giorgios, may Christ the Pantocrator bless and sanctify his soul, was an extraordinarily prodigious correspondent. And certainly you can see why a Chartophylax of your eminent repute was required.’ Father Katalakon slid the door closed. His hazel eyes took on a flinty texture in the light from the window; his voice lowered and lost its unctuous buoyancy. ‘Father Abbot Giorgios was a man of unusual energies and occupations. Not only did he correspond copiously with other Holy Men from places as distant as Cappadocia and Rome, but he also exchanged letters with many eminent persons in the world our Lord has inveighed us to turn our backs upon. No doubt he diverted many souls from the foul paths of perdition to less errant if more arduously inclined avenues of righteousness.’

  Father Katalakon looked out on the courtyard. A blue-and-gold-tiled fountain lofted pearly spray. ‘Father Abbot Giorgios gave these weary souls the accumulation of his own holy wisdom, and they in turn gave to his holy establishment at Prote from their wordly accumulations.’ Father Katalakon looked directly into Brother Symeon’s eyes. If he saw any retreat there, he would send the man away.

  ‘The foremost patron of Prote was the purple-born Eudocia,’ resumed Father Katalakon after his searching pause. ‘Niece of the late Emperor and Autocrator Basil called the Bulgar-Slayer, daughter of the late Emperor and Autocrator Constantine, sister of the Empress and Basilissa Zoe the purple-born, and sister of the Augusta Theodora. Under the blessed Eudocia’s generous auspices, the typicon granting our establishment its current rights and privileges was signed by the Emperor and Autocrator Basil the Bulgar-Slayer. Father Abbot Giorgios was Eudocia’s friend and counsellor; it was he who persuaded her to renounce her temporal ambitions and their concomitant woes and join the Sisters of the Convent of the Theotokos in Protovestiary.’ Father Katalakon paused again and lowered his steel-coloured eyebrows. ‘Father Abbot Giorgios was also the purple-born Eudocia’s confessor.’

  The fountain in the little courtyard faintly gurgled over the long pause. ‘I am not a hesychaste, a silent monk,’ Brother Symeon finally offered in a soft yet i
mplacable voice. ‘But in the matter of the archives that Christ the Pantocrator has placed in my keeping, my silence has been vowed for many, many years.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Father Katalakon as he slid the door open and prepared to leave his new Chartophylax to his holy duties. ‘I knew that when I asked the Pantocrator to send you to us.’

  Father Katalakon quickly left the library and walked past the towering domed apse of Prote’s splendid Church of the Holy Apostles, through the colonnaded arcade that fronted the barrel-vaulted cells of the monks, and entered the lovely cypress grove that carried the procession of the arcade out along the wooded green spine of the little island. He walked swiftly, savouring the rich sea air, his step lifted by the conviction that he had acted both decisively and prudently. If the Sisters of Theotokos in Protovestiary were not overly apprehensive - and he had never known them to be so - then the purple-born Eudocia would soon escape the miseries and blandishments of the flesh and take her place at the feet of Christ the Pantocrator. And then who would prevent Prote’s generous typicon from being redrafted by the new Emperor? Unless, of course, there was an heir to whom the rights to the Holy Establishment at Prote might be transferred.

  The tiny convent at Prote lay just beneath the point where the verdant spine of the island again dipped a rocky flank into the sea. The chapel had three small domes, and the cells, refectory and larder were wrapped round the landward-pointing apse like a bent elbow. The mouldy stone complex was deserted, having been occupied only once, for less than a year, and that seventeen years ago. Father Katalakon had been on Prote then, though he had only been cellarer at that time. As such, he had not been privileged to visit the little convent. Still, he had heard the play of promiscuous lips among some of the Brethren.