The armoured figures leapt back to the warship. Oars dipped into the water and the ambassador’s ship went on towards the line of dhromons while the small warship moved forward. The question thundered into Haraldr’s head: will the dhromons follow? If the seagoing monsters now moved even an ell, he could not hesitate to give the last order of his short-lived command.
But the dhromons remained motionless except for the slightest swaying; it was as if the colossal warships were great buildings anchored in the earth rather than vessels floating on water. The small Byzantine warship came on with startling speed. It seemed no larger than the Rus ships, with just a single row of oars. The pitch-slathered hull was solid black, but the railing, prow and swooping stern were brilliant arabesques of gold and red enamel. The planked deck, painted a gleaming white, supported enormous crossbows on wheeled carriages. Most of the men on deck wore steel jerkins or bright blue steel byrnnies and conical helmets.
The Byzantine ship closed, oars almost brushing the hull of Haraldr’s ship. An armoured figure, apparently an officer, and a single civilian came to the railing amidships. The officer’s head was uncovered, and his short, curly hair was raked by the breeze; his beard was neatly trimmed. He wore a mail jerkin and a short scarlet tunic. The man beside him was swathed from head to toe in a solid black robe. Only a stubble covered his head and squinched, distorted face.
The wind slackened. Haraldr could hear snatches of the two men conversing. He scampered down the mast. Gleb followed.
‘Haraldr Norb--Nord-briv!’ shouted the man in black. His Norse accent was not nearly as good as Gregory’s. ‘You are now under the authority of Michael, Lord of the Entire World, the Emperor, Autocrator, and Basileus of the Romans. His Imperial Majesty has sent as his representative the Droungarios of his Imperial Fleet, Nicephorus Taronites, who has sent as his representative the homes Bardas Lascaris.’ The officer narrowed his dark eyes menacingly and barely nodded. ‘I, John Stethatus,’ continued the man in black, ‘temporary secretary in the Office of the Barbaroi under the Logothete of the Dromus, speak for the komes!’
‘I am Haraldr Nordbrikt! This fleet is under my authority. And I speak for myself, and those under my command!’
The two Byzantines spoke rapidly in Greek. The question was settled quickly. The man in black shouted in Norse again.
‘Then the command you will give your fleet is this: wait for our signal.’ He pointed to the single mast of the warship. ‘One red flag and one white! Then follow us, under sail, in single file. We will escort you to the Queen of Cities!’
The warship moved quickly to a post fifty ells ahead of the Rus vessel. A single yellow flag went up its mast. An answering yellow flag went up one of the masts of the nearest dhromon, and the beasts bellowed again. The spiny oars of the dhromons emerged and slapped the blue-slate surface of the Bosporus. The great ships began to fan off their formation and head south along either bank of the strait. It was as if the Byzantine warships were forming a huge funnel to draw the Rus flotilla down the Bosporus. Or to surround and annihilate it.
Haraldr turned to Gleb, but the old Slav just chewed and ground his boot against the rough planking. ‘I’ve never seen an “escort” in such force. But remember that the Greeks rarely do the obvious.’
Haraldr had already made his decision. ‘We’re sailing Rus washtubs, not Norse dragons,’ he said, forcing a jaunty smile at Halldor. ‘If we run, if we fight, a dozen ships might survive to reach the Dnieper, and how many of those would survive the Pechenegs? No, that way death is certain. We don’t know how the Griks think, but we know that this trade must be of value to them or it would not have continued for so many years. This way we have one gaming piece on the table.’
Ulfr swallowed thickly and nodded. Gleb chewed and spat. Halldor shouted the order back. The red flag went up on the mast of the small warship just ahead. The white flag followed. Oars dipped and the Byzantine warship began to move forward. Gleb ordered the sail set, the gust caught, and the ship lurched forward. The rest of the Rus fleet followed.
Soon the giant dhromons flanked the Rus River ships on both sides, at distances of only a hundred or so ells. They were floating islands: three, perhaps four, times as long as Olaf’s dragon-ship, a vessel that had been the marvel of the north. The massive black hulls were as high as the walls of Yaroslav’s palace, and a gilt-and-red building as big as the average Norse farmer’s dwelling sat on each foredeck. The spout-snouted beasts at the bow and stern of each ship were more than twice as tall as a man, and there was a third such spout on the deck between the two masts. Some of the spouts had been turned at angles to face the Rus ships; apparently these man-made dragons could swivel their necks just like living creatures.
The dhromons, oars methodically plodding at the sluggish pace of the merchant ships, continued to flank the entire Rus fleet as it moved south. The buildings on either shore, but particularly to the starboard, became more closely spaced and yet more complex in structure. We have already passed the dwellings of a dozen Yaroslavs, thought Haraldr. But if this is Miklagardr, where are the Great City’s fabled walls?
An apparition appeared on the horizon, a wavering ivory line flecked with bits of coral and silver. Haraldr shouted at Ulfr and Halldor and pointed. Gleb watched the three huge Norsemen standing there jabbering like excited boys and smiled knowingly. Haraldr scrambled for the mast, followed by Ulfr and Halldor.
‘Kristr the Pure!’ Haraldr gasped. From the top spar he could see the immense sprawl of miniature palaces on the starboard shoreline. Though still diminished by distance, the buildings would have to be as large as those they were passing now, but the sparkling little domes and cubes now densely blanketed an area that stretched as far as the eye could see. Haraldr’s knees weakened. Men could not build this! Gods, perhaps, but not men.
Ulfr shouted and pointed to larboard. No! It was simply not possible, even for the gods. Another Great City on the opposite shore of the Bosporus! Had the Griks built a twin of Miklagardr? Impossible. Kristr’s Mother! This Miklagardr was no less sprawling and lavish and brightly twinkling than the other. We have left the middle realm, thought Haraldr. We sail on the clouds, towards the city, the twin cities, that Kristr built in Paradise. He is truly the conqueror.
The ship pitched on a wave and metal glinted on the water directly between the twin cities of Miklagardr. Haraldr’s bowels knotted with alarm: another fleet, even greater than that which already surrounded them. And the purpose of this second armada was obvious; there was already sufficient escort. Haraldr whipped his head around to observe the dhromons, expecting them to initiate the slaughter. Ulfr continued to elaborate on his discovery of the second Miklagardr, struggling to come up with some clumsy verses.
‘Look.’ Halldor spoke with his insistent reserve. He pointed towards the deadly scintillae of the second great fleet.
A heavy, cresting swell tossed the bow high again. Haraldr’s feet slipped and his fingers clawed the mast. He looked at the frothing wake below and his heart raced. When he looked up again, Halldor was still pointing. Only his eyes spoke. Haraldr sighted down Halldor’s trembling finger.
All the gods. All of them conspired to create this vision, Haraldr told himself, this dream that mocks mortal existence until it seems nothing. The twin cities that we thought were Miklagardr are merely court men, skalds who announce the entrance of the glorious Sovereign of the Entire World. All the gods, I have seen what I will see when I close my eyes for the last time.
Gold and silver bubbled up from the sea, shimmered and froze, a froth of enormous bubbles that rose and fell over hills of solid ivory. It was an enormous island of gold and silver and ivory. No, it was perhaps a huge finger of land jutting into the sea; one could not see where it ended.
Wind rattled the rigging and the ship sped towards the vision. The shimmering bubbles were domes, like the ones they had seen earlier, but hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, climbing up and down gleaming hills, domes built upon domes to rise like globular
mountains. Forests of enormous pillars stood in polychrome rows, and window glass, almost unknown in the north, sparkled like diamond dewdrops. Constantinople, the Queen of Cities, rose from the sea like a huge gem-encrusted reliquary.
On they sped, the vision steadily rising from the water, becoming more intricate in its fantastic, multicoloured details; awnings winked into view and tiny figures appeared on scrolled balconies. The vast seawall, a towering, elaborately crenellated structure of brilliant ochre brick, girdled the entire visible stretch of waterfront like a huge golden belt.
‘Asgard,’ said Ulfr numbly. The city of the gods. On the deck below, the Rus traders and oarsmen crowded the railing, exclaiming in wonder. ‘A miracle wrought by the angelic host . . .’
‘Father Almighty . . .’
‘Christ the Pure has brought us to his heavenly mansions. . . .’
The Byzantine warships slowed and veered hard starboard, towards an arm of the sea that embraced the city on the north. The entrance to this prodigious harbour was marked by a soaring turret of mournful, ashen stone set at the edge of the water. The grim tower was a sinister contrast to the vivid colour of the buildings behind it; for some reason Haraldr shuddered as if he had seen a vision of his own grave. Gleb had already shouted the order to stop when Haraldr saw what the old Slav pilot was pointing at. The mouth of the harbour was blocked by a colossal boom of skiff-size metal chain links alternating with wooden floats the size of tree trunks. The daunting waterborne barrier extended from the brooding grey tower to the teeming docks on the opposite shore, a span of about fifteen hundred ells.
A tender towed the boom towards the tower, and the two fleets resumed their procession. In the distance, perhaps half a rowing-spell off, chequered dun-and-green hills sprinkled with chalk-white dwellings rose above what Haraldr assumed to be the western terminus of the harbour. The harbour was crowded with perhaps a thousand ships: dhromons, smaller galleys, exotic merchant vessels, many types Haraldr had never seen before. Along the shoreline, as far as one could see, enormous warehouses supported on pilings extended from the towering seawall out over the water; from the landward side of the city’s girding wall, palatial stone edifices, some of them extravagant concoctions of clustered cupolas and meandering arcades, ascended the hills to the shallow summit of the city’s long, languorous spine. Broad white avenues, teeming with laden porters, mules, carts, and four-wheeled wagons as big as Norse cottages, disappeared into the architectural maze of the city.
As the Rus fleet sailed on into the harbour Haraldr turned and again studied the harbour chain. No hull could challenge the cyclopean links and floats. When the boom was drawn back behind them, they would leave only with the permission of the Griks.
‘Emmanuel counted them. He says there are only one hundred and fifty or so. The Prefect had anticipated four or five hundred ships. Now he will start gouging the butchers and the silk merchants to make up the shortfall. I wouldn’t be surprised if we find he has set the prices higher tomorrow.’ The Augusta Theodora stood on the third-storey balcony of her ancient country palace; her home was sufficiently far from the city to be considered a place of exile. She had a view across the olive-green hills, occasionally speckled with white-marble porticoes and red-tile roofs, that sloped to the distant, slablike surface of the Golden Horn, the enormous natural harbour flanking Constantinople on the north. The sails of the usual merchant traffic surrounded the wharves like swarms of white-and-beige butterflies. In the middle of the harbour the Rus ships, lashed together in a long single file, looked like a wooden causeway set between two rows of giant, metal-beaked dhromons. Constantinople seemed cool, silent, almost misty in the early evening light. The last rays of the sun caught the ornate palaces high on the city’s spine; from this distance the long expanse of enormous buildings appeared to be a single intricate carving in gleaming ivory.
‘I am told they have brought some very fine sable skins,’ said Maria. ‘I intend to get enough to line three coats, even if I have to auction a vineyard to pay for them. Of course, the price will go down next year when the Rus return in greater numbers, but whatever I might save on next year’s sables won’t keep me warm this winter.’
The Rus may never return, at least to trade. Emmanuel says’ - Emmanuel was Theodora’s chamberlain; although he had accompanied her into exile, he still maintained a priceless network of informants among the eunuchs of the Imperial Palace - ‘that both the Grand Domestic and the Droungarios of the Imperial Fleet favoured attacking the Rus fleet in the Bosporus this morning. Apparently the Manglavite was murdered by one of the Varangians he had recruited, and now the murderer commands the entire Rus fleet. It is claimed that this Varangian is a dangerous privateer and an “enemy of Christendom”.’
Maria snorted with disgust. ‘I would consider the murderer of a Manglavite a friend of Rome.’
‘Perhaps so. But the military clique and their Dhynatoi sponsors are still looking for an incident to spark a confrontation.’
‘What does Joannes say?’
‘He is holding them back for the time being. As usual, his real interest is obscure. I think he might use the Rus to bargain with the Dhynatoi, then give them up. If Joannes and the Dhynatoi ever came to an accommodation, I would fear for my sister’s life.’ Theodora pursed her thin spinsterish lips. She was tall, with an angular frame and a disproportionately small face; her immature, pinched features gave her the aspect of a small child grown into middle age without ever ripening into womanhood. Though she was younger than her sister, the Empress Zoe, Theodora often seemed old enough to be Zoe’s mother. ‘How is my sister?’ she asked.
‘Unhappy. Her husband has not spent the night with her for almost a month.’
‘I had hoped she would find . . . peace with him. After Romanus . . .’ Theodora paused and scraped at the coarse stone with her silk slipper. ‘Are you happy, darling?’
‘I think I am in love.’ There was a curious melancholy to this pronouncement.
Theodora smiled, though her face seemed capable only of irony, never genuine mirth. ‘Is it one of them, or both?’ She peered down into the unkempt yard directly beneath the balcony. Alexandras and Giorgios looked like little boys foraging; they were peeling the thick layer of ivy from the weatherworn statue of an ancient Roman deity. ‘I could tell immediately that the brown-eyed boy is in love with you.’
‘He is the one,’ Maria said numbly.
‘Darling, you know I have always tried to refrain from judging you. But will you be careful? I think of my sister and how different everything might have been. . . .’ Maria knew that Theordora was referring to her older sister, Eudocia, who had conceived a child out of wedlock, given birth in a convent, and had died shortly thereafter. The baby was always said to have been stillborn, though Maria sometimes wondered if it had been adopted by a simple family, and now, oblivious of its Imperial destiny, lived a far happier life than its mother ever could have enjoyed.
‘I know all the precautions,’ Maria said. ‘There is even a physician from Alexandria who specializes in the field.’
‘I don’t mean those precautions, darling, or even the measures one must take to guard the heart. I mean the precautions of the soul.’
Maria nodded vaguely and studied the line of Rus ships in the harbour.
‘It shames heaven. Kristr forgive me, but it shames heaven.’ Ulfr shook his head and stared.
The Great City blazed away in the night. How many lights? Enough to make it like day down by the wharves where the porters still struggled with sacks and barrels and bales, enough to turn the enchanted crown of the city into a dazzling universe. Drapes and garlands of winking lights spread over the hills as far as one could see. The stars in the glassy black night were barely visible in comparison.
Haraldr let the boy stand for him before this vision; the man, the commander of a fleet, had given his orders and slipped off to await the day. The boy stood in the inky night and saw a dream - every Norse boy’s dream of distant, magic Miklaga
rdr - become real.
‘Haraldr!’ Gleb hobbled frantically across the hold, his face lobstered. His breathing was virtually apoplectic, and he had to clear his throat several times before he could speak. ‘It’s Lyashko. He’s a merchant from Novgorod and a fool. . . .’
Haraldr quickly remembered who Lyashko was; he was as big round as he was tall, with a blunt nose and a greasy bald head. He’d made trouble ever since St Gregory’s Island, lagging behind and then sailing out of sight ahead of the file until Haraldr had threatened to chain both him and his equally foolish pilot. After that he had simply sailed up every day to grumble about ‘incorrect headings’.
‘Yes, the very one,’ Gleb said, seeing the recognition in Haraldr’s eyes. ‘He’s got himself and his men drunk. Says he’s going into the city to find Greek whores. Perun strike me if he didn’t threaten my life when I tried to stop him!’
Haraldr left Gleb far behind as he sprinted along the bridge of lashed-together Rus ships, hurdling railing after railing. Damn fool Lyashko. After they had entered the harbour that afternoon Haraldr had been called upon by an official announced as the ‘Legatharios to the Prefect of the City’, a pale, emaciated man dressed in the most intricately embroidered silk robe Haraldr had ever seen; though the Legatharios had merely gazed into some metaphysical distance throughout the interview, his interpreter (the first Norse-speaking Byzantine they had met who was not a eunuch) had issued a long set of directives Haraldr and his men were expected to observe under the Byzantine-Rus treaty. The Byzantine officials had expressly instructed them to lash their ships together and remain anchored in the middle of the harbour until a complete inventory of their cargoes and crews could be taken; any vessel leaving the rank was to be considered, in the interpreter’s words, ‘a brigand, and will be dealt with as such by elements of the Imperial Fleet’. Haraldr had spent the rest of the day making certain that every shipowner and pilot understood the Byzantine orders. A single ship out of formation and the lurking dhromons might be provoked into attacking the entire Rus fleet.
Byzantium - A Novel Page 11