Byzantium - A Novel

by Michael Ennis

  Zoe looked slyly at Maria, whose cheeks became slightly tinted. The barbaros had a certain deftness, Zoe observed to herself; by making his hypothetical Roman a man, he had avoided a direct aspersion to the Imperial Dignity. In the manner one should treat a lover found more skilled than one had expected, it was time to lead this Haraldr on to more . . . intriguing postures. ‘Maria says you are a harbinger of our destruction. I have often wondered why so many of my children have an inordinate fear of you fair-hairs. Of course, your role in casting us into the abyss has long been chronicled in The Life of St Andrew the Fool, and in our time this sagacious oracle seems to be present at every meeting of the Sacrum Consistorum - though God accepted the saint’s worthy soul half a millennium ago. However, since you are of the fair-haired race and St Andrew was not, might we know if you are an agent of such sabotage?’

  Haraldr’s heart seemed to constrict involuntarily at this line of questioning, but he was certain that his identity was not what the Empress wanted to know. What was she getting at? He cautioned himself that this Imperial beauty was a thorn-girt rose; her question had ridiculed both him and Maria and apparently also disparaged the policies of Imperial officials, all to an end that was no more discernible than a headland lost in a fog.

  Answer soberly, Haraldr instructed himself; you have permitted yourself enough recklessness for the evening. ‘It is true. If the Empire of the Romans turned against my Father the Emperor and my Empress Mother, I would be the agent of the Romans’ destruction.’

  Maria spoke to Zoe, waving her hand dismissively; Haraldr recognized the words serpent and flatterer. Haraldr felt as if she had physically slapped him; his bed and his heart would be empty tonight. It saddened him to think that his fantasy love had been inspired by such an astringent reality.

  Zoe sipped with both hands on her goblet, as if she were a priest consuming the blood of Christ. ‘I understand that you have made yourself most favourably known to my husband’s brother.’ Zoe’s voice was devoid of inflection, neither innocent nor accusing.

  Haraldr made no attempt to conceal the shock of realization. Of course! The mouth, the eyes. One face a grotesque inflation of the other, and yet . . . Brothers! That was why the Emperor had appeared to be a mere puppet of Joannes; more likely his Imperial Majesty, who lacked none of the aptitudes for leadership, simply valued the advice of his older brother. It explained so much.

  ‘The Orphanotrophus Joannes,’ prompted Zoe, dismayed by the barbaros’s crude disingenuousness in attempting to conceal the liaison. Surely he was more skilled than this.

  ‘Yes . . . Joannes,’ said Haraldr, recovering. ‘He had suggested I not boast of the honour he has paid me. Yes, he indeed offers me the inestimable gift of his guidance.’

  ‘But of course. Our Orphanotrophus guides all of our earthly fortunes much as Christ the Pantocrator guides our immortal souls. He has the hands to mould whatever he will with the clay of our beings.’

  Maria spoke sharply. Something about hands too big and statues lacking in grace; Haraldr would remember to ask Gregory later. Then he was chilled to the core despite the swaddling warmth of the down cushions. Kristr! Maria hated Joannes. There had been no doubt of her enmity that night at Nicephorus Argyrus’s. Could the Empress share this animosity? Had there not been a strange timbre to her voice when she had spoken of him? Cold, stormy, mortally dangerous, these Roman waters were indeed.

  Zoe looked keenly at Haraldr. She was certain that this interpreter was good, and that the barbaros was really almost a semi-barbaros with a fair command of Greek already. And yet he had betrayed nothing when she had mentioned sabotage, and had stumbled with witless guile over her mention of the grotesque monk. He was either an innocent or a dissimulator worthy of Odysseus, an actor to make the entire Hippodrome weep. Either way he would be useful. But before she took this . . . seduction further, she would need to know which. She signalled Symeon to escort her guests out, and spoke in parting.

  ‘Your Mother has enjoyed this interview,’ translated a gratefully exhausted Gregory as Zoe finished. ‘When we arrive in Antioch and begin our official entertainments there, I will ask that you be seated at my dining couch.’

  ‘Brother,’ muttered Constantine, mocking the imperious tone of the letter’s perfunctory salutation. He continued to read.

  My instructions will arrive in two separate missives. This is the first. As is your duty as Strategus of Antioch, you will send the escort you are obligated to provide her Imperial Majesty to the scheduled rendezvous at Mopsuestia. At Mopsuestia your Turmarch (I of course presume that you will not accompany your army into the field, given the ever-present threat to Antioch itself) will not accept the transfer of command from the Strategus of Cilicia. Instead, due to the temporary depletion of your own ranks and the necessity of defending your own city, the Strategus of Cilicia will be humbly beseeched to continue his escort of the Imperial Party as far south as Tripoli. You are to pay for the accommodation of the Cilician troops within your theme with the surcharge to the land tax I ordered earlier this year. I trust you will show the Strategus Meletius Attalietes every hospitality your splendid city has to offer.

  Your second set of instructions will be delivered to you in the form of a letter introducing the homes of Her Majesty’s special Varangian Guard. This Tauro-Scythian, named Haraldr Nordbrikt, is a tool I plan to use for one surgical procedure, after which he will be blunted to uselessness. Until then, see that he is particularly well cared for.

  With affection and in the service of our Holy Brother,

  Joannes Orphanotrophus

  Constantine took a small key from an unlocked drawer beneath his writing table, then opened the lock of another drawer. He removed a box with an ivory lid, unlocked the padlock that secured the sliding top, and deposited the letter in the box, then locked everything back up again. He sat for a moment with his hands clasped across his chest, his beardless, slightly sagging chin slumped forward.

  Brother. Never consulting, never asking, always the command: Brother. Yes, his brother, Joannes, had pulled him along as he rose in the Imperial Administration; and yes, Joannes had engineered the stunning deification of their precious little Michael, over whom Joannes doted as if his youngest brother had sprung from his own mutilated loins. But had anyone ever wondered how Constantine might have performed on his own, had he been the firstborn? Or had he been the last-born, permitted to go through life with the undamaged reproductive equipment that had placed Michael on the Imperial Throne? Yes, Joannes had given up his manhood, but so had Constantine, and yet everyone revered Joannes as if he alone had made this ultimate sacrifice for the family. And Michael, now unbelievably the Emperor and Autocrator of the Romans, had given up nothing for the family! Yet now, from beneath the Imperial Diadem, he looked down upon his ‘second brother’, Constantine, as if the Strategus of Antioch were merely a court fool dressed for the part, incapable of performing the simplest Easter distribution without the personal intervention of the all-knowing Orphanotrophus Joannes!

  The fountains gently tinkled in the courtyard, balming Constantine’s anger. A man does not say when or who will bring him into the world; only the Pantocrator determines that fate. Joannes’s schemes had worked in the past, and this current exercise, however nebulous it might seem at the moment, would no doubt bring them all further success. And some day Constantine would be brought back to the Empress City, and there he would prove to both his eldest and youngest brothers the true measure of his abilities. Until then, Antioch was the fairest exile a man could know.

  He rang for his chamberlain. ‘Basil,’ he told the bowing eunuch, ‘order the Turmarch to my office right away.’

  ‘You would prefer we discuss this flatulent Plato our Hellenist is always ranting about? The man is an Aeolus, so prodigious is the hot wind he makes.’ Zoe was irritable after the jolting, pitching descent from the Cilician Gates.

  ‘I simply do not think that this single Tauro-Scythian offers anything other than his own considera
ble wind. While we toy with this savage the repulsive Orphanotrophus Joannes continues to strengthen his stranglehold on your people. I would not be surprised to hear that in your absence he has snatched up the Imperial Diadem and placed it on his own head.’

  ‘Joannes could not keep the brother I have crowned on the throne for a day without my Purple-Born connivance. The people would put the palaces of the Dhynatoi to the torch and then smash down the palace gates to evict the usurper.’ Zoe’s voice was as fierce as her pride in the devotion the common folk - the merchants and labourers and fishers and butchers and porters - reserved solely for the authority derived from birth in the porphyry Purple Chamber of the Imperial Palace. She and her sister, Theodora, were the last Purple-Born survivors of the Macedonian dynasty established by their uncle, Basil the Bulgar-Slayer, and woe betide the upstart who would attempt to take from the folk of Constantinople the living legacy of the Emperor who for half a century had lifted them up and protected them against the Dhynatoi.

  ‘No,’ Zoe said, ‘Joannes is as presumptuous and arrogant as Babel rising from the Plain of Shinar. But we must not forget that he is also thorough and patient. Which returns me to our Tauro-Scythian. Why would Joannes sponsor a barbaros upstart if the barbaros did not figure in some important equation? If this Haraldr is innocent of Joannes’s wiles - and despite your protests, I believe that this is possible - if he is innocent, we can turn him to our purpose. And if he is a willing accomplice of the grotesque Joannes, then we can send him back laden with poisoned treats to offer his patron. And what could we possibly betray of our own objectives? Between the sexless brute Joannes and myself is that absolutely transparent intimacy that can exist only between the most implacable foes.’

  ‘I do not assail your logic, Mother.’

  Zoe pushed the curtain slightly aside to see why her carriage, and presumably the rest of the Imperial caravan, had stopped.

  ‘Well, you know I value your intuition, little daughter. What is it?’ ‘

  ‘For a moment I got the sense that this Haraldr fancies himself ... I don’t know. He looked at me as if he considered himself a king.’

  ‘Well, he certainly cannot think he will conquer the Roman Empire with his five hundred Varangian malfeasants. But do you think he has ambitions for himself?’

  ‘Ambitions? I am not sure that is the correct term. Fate rules all, and yet fate has no ambition. This man ... he chills me. It is not as if he is an agent of some worldly power but an emissary of destiny itself. There is this current of raw fate that seems to surround him, almost as if you could touch him and . . .’ Maria clasped her hands, as if to stop them from quivering. ‘I do not make sense, I know. But I have told you what Ata said about the three lines crossing. He never said that the man might be a barbaros fair-hair. I don’t know.’

  Zoe placed her hands over Maria’s. ‘I think this Tauro-Scythian is a chorus player in this drama of ours. But perhaps . . . don’t take offence, daughter, but you said once he brought you pleasure, if only in the evanescence of sleep.’ Zoe smiled wryly. ‘Perhaps he is an instrument of a simple fate. I know you find the Tauro-Scythians pleasurable to countenance, and you never did conclude your . . . investigation of the Hetairarch’s . . . abilities. Perhaps you make too much of a basic desire, the one, as you so astutely pointed out the other day, that is easiest to assuage.’ Zoe laughed delicately. ‘You would hardly be the first lady of my court to take a Tauro-Scythian barbaros to your bed.’

  ‘Perhaps. I confess that he was in my bed last night after your conversation with him.’ Maria’s eyes widened as she recalled the vision. ‘May I tell you?’

  ‘Oh, yes, little daughter,’ said Zoe, all weariness forgotten.

  ‘He came to me, quite naked, his chest covered with hair like golden threads, his arms as hard and smooth as sculpted stone. He ripped my gown away. I submitted totally, willing it. Mother, it embarrasses even our confidence to mention my shamelessness - I begged him to enter every orifice with the most savage thrusts. I screamed at him to break my flesh with his teeth, to bite my lips and nipples, and blood and sweat mixed to a hot oil spread between our merciless breasts. And then I rose above him, now pulling his hair, then clawing his eyes, and he knew my pleasure. We rose, conjoined in ecstasy, towards a golden dome, and in my hand I discovered a knife, a cold, icy blade, and at the moment of supreme passion I plunged it with all my force into his neck and he faded, he died as I was transported, raised by the last warmth of his burning member as his body froze, and the arms of the sun held me. When I awakened from the dream, I was drenched in my own effluxions.’

  ‘Maria! You exceed yourself! Your nocturnal musings would make our esteemed specialist in sexual disorders faint away like a maiden at the sight of her first unsheathed column! So you see, you can have your pleasure of him. But I think we can ultimately dispose of our overweening Tauro-Scythian in a fashion that might be less . . . provocative, but more useful to our cause.’

  Maria nodded, her jaw still tense. Yes, she could finally admit that the desire existed; after all, it was of the type easiest to assuage. What she could not confess, even to her beloved Empress mother, was that her dream had demonstrated to her a frightening but essential truth. Her desire could only be quenched in the moment that its object was destroyed.

  If Constantinople was the Queen of Cities, stately and elegant, then Antioch was a ravishing courtesan. The walls, golden in the late-afternoon sun, were almost as vast and proud as those of the Empress City; studded at intervals of a bowshot with huge round towers, they rose from a glowing emerald-and-ochre valley to the pine-dotted heights of a mountain ridge thousands of ells above. The city tumbled down the slopes; beneath rocky heights were terraced fields, rowed vineyards, and gardens dotted with lemon and orange and ivy, interspersed with the white domes of vast palaces. The buildings thickened as the incline graduated to the flat plain before the river, crowding together in fantastic arrays of domes and spires and colonnades that faded into the southern horizon.

  For almost a rowing-spell the people of the surrounding villages had come out to stand by the road; they were simple farmers in brown tunics brightened by vivid shawls and sashes. They threw flowers and aromatic herbs beneath the wheels of the Imperial carriages and chanted in Greek mixed with a tongue Haraldr did not know. The women held their children and pointed, saying, ‘Theotokos’; apparently many of the peasants could not distinguish between the Mother of the Romans and the Mother of God.

  The city became more distinct as the Imperial party advanced parallel to the looping, sluggish yellow river that flowed towards the city’s eastern flank. The buildings seemed more open than those of Constantinople, with rows of wide arches and canopied balconies to draw the breeze that wandered idly through the valley. Banners fluttered and glazed domes sparkled.

  ‘It does not have the aspect of a virtuous city,’ said Halldor lightly.

  ‘She is a whore,’ offered Ulfr admiringly. ‘Goddess of neck-ice, golden-haired shaker of the limb of Frey’s orchard.’

  ‘Please repeat that,’ asked Gregory. ‘That was a very difficult kenning.’

  ‘He means that this whore is both very beautiful and very skilled,’ said Halldor. He gave his horse a little spur and came up beside Haraldr. ‘You haven’t had a woman in some time. I think abstinence has made you despondent. Your comrades have decided to plunder this wanton city until we find a woman who will put the fire back in your eyes.’

  Haraldr struggled to smile. ‘I can always count on you to be blunt.’ He thought for a moment. Halldor had bedded a woman in Nicomedia, one in Nicaea, one in Ancyra, one in Adana. None of them whores, either, but seemingly well-born women prominent in provincial courts. The one in Nicaea, with dark hair and dark eyes and a waist like a wasp, had rivalled even Maria in Haraldr’s fancy for several restless nights. Why had he not considered this before? If a man’s arrows consistently missed their target, should he not ask the advice of an archer who inerrantly struck that at which he aimed? H
araldr asked Halldor to join him in riding up ahead of the Varangian ranks.

  ‘I knew you were lovesick,’ said Halldor when Haraldr had finished his tale, ‘but I thought it was still that Khazar girl.’ Halldor rubbed his fine nose with his forefinger as he thought for a moment. ‘Haraldr, do you know why I drink a full cup of love for every drop that dampens your lips?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘Because you approach love like a poet, your breast bared for all to see, while I approach love like a trader with his hacksilver hidden in the lining of his girdle.’

  ‘But you have never had to pay for a woman’s favours.’

  ‘Exactly. Look. The wise trader sees an object he must acquire. He does not run pell-mell to the merchant’s booth, swoop the desired merchandise into his arms, with heaving chest declare that his life will end if he cannot have this exquisite item, and then offer to hack off a limb to place on top of the merchant’s price so that he may have it. No. The wise trader in fact strolls idly by this merchant’s booth, then looks for hours, perhaps days, into the booths of the neighbouring merchants. He examines their wares and sets his praise-tongue wagging over the quality of their merchandise. Then, his bag already full of items he has purchased at the other booths, he walks by, almost walks on, thinks better of it, and pauses to poke here and there among the wares that surround his treasure. He asks the price of this and that, and then, well, since he is here, what about this? And then of course he haggles, as if this treasure is nothing more than dried dung to be burned, and how could he possibly pay such a price and so on. Soon the merchant is so convinced he will never be relieved of this worthless item that he virtually gives it away. So as I see it, this Maria is a wiser trader playing games with you. Now all you need to do is turn the tables on her.’