Byzantium - A Novel

by Michael Ennis

  Deceptive eyes, thought Haraldr; he had seen the authority in them the night before. ‘Chamberlain, I hope you will not think it impertinent if I discuss with you my anxiety about the safety of Our Mother.’ Symeon nodded. Haraldr recited Brymmedes’s concerns while Symeon fixed him with a curious look; not indifferent, but perhaps regarding Haraldr as only one of an entire multitude of things he witnessed at once. Then Haraldr added, ‘You will see that we are dependent on the thematic armies to guarantee the security of such a diffuse perimeter. Tonight will we sleep with the assurance that these bricks have been set with the proper mortar?’

  ‘Komes,’ Symeon intoned with ancient resonance, ‘the Empress herself is the architect of her fate. She has set these bricks you speak of in the pattern she finds most pleasing.’ Symeon closed the curtain and his carriage rumbled on.

  ‘Daphne.’ Zoe pulled aside the curtain and inhaled deeply. ‘You can smell the roses.’ She watched as her carriage passed a long marble pergola smothered with ivy. She inhaled again. ‘The air is as fragrant and pure as the water. You know how they say, “Antioch, near Daphne”, don’t you, dear? You have to be here to realize how true that is.’ Zoe again imbibed the fresh, floral-scented air. ‘Cypress, pine, roses . . . paradise! Fair Daphne, your virtue is our reward!’ She turned to Maria. ‘You are not troubled, are you, little daughter? Symeon simply thought we should know. I can hardly see that it changes anything.’

  Maria’s nostrils flared. ‘It means that this Haraldr is almost certainly a principal in this conspiracy. If it is to happen near St Symeon, and this Haraldr says it is to happen here, is he not saying watch out for the dog at our feet when he knows that the lion approaches from behind?’

  ‘But Komes Haraldr implies that Constantine and Attalietes are allied in this enterprise. There is no sense to that accusation, unless--’

  ‘Yes! Yes! The best actor is both a liar and a madman! Euthymius would pay a thousand solidi for this Haraldr’s talents!’ Maria’s cheeks glowed, stoked with outrage.

  Zoe settled Maria’s hands. ‘I believe he is innocent simply because there is no method, no plan to his contrivances. Why would he have so visibly challenged Attalietes last night if he was in league with whomever wishes Attalietes to play the ass?

  In doing that, he has already made Attalietes the fool, thus relieving the scene that will follow of its necessary drama. And why would he warn us of a conspiracy we have already been far more subtly, and misleadingly, alerted to?’

  ‘So you believe it will happen here?’

  ‘Oh, dear, I have no concern where it happens.’ Zoe settled back and admired the sad elegance of a crumbling arcade. ‘You must enjoy your day here, my darling. Simply remember that I now regard my Tauro-Scythian, Komes Haraldr, as wedded to me by a loyalty that would embrace death with greedy arms. You must only think to weld him to our cause with a yet more implacable bond.’

  Maria looked out on the dead splendour of Daphne and said nothing.

  ‘Who are these men?’ White wisps of hair clung to the parchment scalp behind Symeon’s ears, and several errant strands floated in the breeze like gossamer. The Varangians stood at rigid attention, breastplates gleaming.

  ‘I have detailed these men to follow the Empress at a discreet distance wherever it is her pleasure to go.’ Haraldr stood with his single-bladed axe pressed against Emma’s polished links.

  ‘These men are not necessary.’ Symeon studied the Varangians with his watery stare. ‘They are relieved from their martial duties so that they may imbue themselves with the culture of the ancients. It will heighten their appreciation for the glories of the Roman Empire. Certainly that will make them better servants of Her Majesty.’ Symeon returned to Haraldr. ‘The Empress believes you alone are sufficient escort for her Sacred Person and her ladies.’ Symeon’s bony fingers moved through the air like the passage of an apparition. ‘And, Komes, do not go to her in your war costume. She does not want to be reminded of military matters in any fashion.’

  The Empress was accompanied by the eunuchs Leo and Theodore, two serving ladies, and Maria and Anna. She waited for Haraldr and Gregory beneath a single large laurel tree; her own fragrance and that of her ladies blended with the scent of the leaves. ‘Komes!’ she offered enthusiastically. Haraldr mastered his urge to look at Maria’s face. He knelt before Zoe and she gave him her hand to kiss. When Haraldr and Gregory stood again, Zoe regally scrutinized Gregory. Then she spoke sharply to him.

  ‘She asks if you can trust me. . . .’

  ‘I understood, Gregory.’ Haraldr looked at Zoe. ‘With my life,’ he said in Greek.

  Zoe nodded slowly and graciously, then lifted her crimson hem and whirled. ‘Daphne!’ She plucked a leaf from the tree and pressed it to her cheek. ‘Dear little Daphne. Do you know her story, Komes Haraldr?’ Haraldr shook his head. ‘Daphne was the fairest nymph who lived in this, the fairest place on earth. Apollo, son of Zeus, devotee of beauty, looked down upon her as he rode in the chariot of the sun. Struck by mad longing, he leapt to earth and pursued her! She fled in terror to save the lovely flower of her chastity!’ The ladies seemed highly amused by this passage. ‘But Apollo was swift and relentless! He was upon her, his golden shaft poised to pierce her with the wound from which there is no recovery! Was there no pity among the gods! Daphne pleaded and sobbed, and good Gaea, Mother of the Earth, was stirred to mercy. “Poof!” Gaea decreed. Even as Apollo held her in his arms, Daphne bloomed into the very tree we see here!’ Zoe pressed the leaf to Haraldr’s lips. ‘You see, she still has the freshness of a virgin.’ Zoe turned to her ladies. ‘And she will be fresh and pure for ever, for that is the reward for woman who has never known man.’ Haraldr was startled; the Empress had been so gay a moment before. Zoe whirled again. ‘Ah,’ she said, the lust returned to her voice, ‘but to have loved Apollo even once, to have felt the heat of his golden arms!’

  Despite the frivolity of the tone in which the Empress had told her tale, Haraldr sensed that the Romans still had a reverence for their old gods. He looked about at the wonders of Daphne. Behind the laurel tree stood a row of columns, half toppled, with fragments of architraves forming zigzag patterns; the crocus-veined marble was chipped and weathered and spotted with lichen. Beyond these ruins was a perfect grove of ancient cypresses set as formally as the row of columns, and above these cool, dark spires unfolded a tumbled-down city of enormous crumbled columns and jagged walls and ruptured towers and curious rows of small stone terraces, all of it set as if by giant hands into the garland-scattered limestone cliffs. The old gods, the gods of the ancient Greeks and Romans, had lived here once.

  ‘Nephew!’

  Michael Kalaphates strode among the Imperial party, his sparkling robe of white Hellas silk far superior to the tunic of Syrian silk he had worn the previous night. Kalaphates knelt and kissed the Empress’s hand. She clasped his shoulders and raised him up, then turned and whispered to the youthful, full-jowled eunuch, Leo. Although the Empress gave no signal that Haraldr could discern, the ladies stepped away from her. Haraldr was confused; he wondered if he should stay and guard his mother, or offer her his own discretion.

  The hand on his arm was as light as if a butterfly had settled there. Maria smiled up at him without guile, her coiled hair almost touching his upper arm. The crimson lips, the pearl teeth; he shuddered perceptibly at the thrill of her presence. You will be with me.

  ‘May I use your name?’ she asked. Did the multihued, ethereal lights of Halogoland have a sound? If so, her voice was it.

  Haraldr nodded. ‘May I call you by your name?’

  ‘Certainly, Har-aldr.’ The weight of her hand increased minutely. ‘And perhaps you will think of another name for me before we leave Daphne.’ Her tone was an invitation.

  Yes, thought Haraldr, your name is already snow-breasted goddess.

  ‘May I show you Daphne?’ White silk dazzled as she waved her ivory fingers towards the ruins on the heights. With Gregory, the unseen voice, following behi
nd them, they crossed to a paved path that rose in a series of worn stone stairs flanked by small, disarrayed columns. Birds sang and a green lizard scampered from atop a chunk of white stone carved with a floral pattern. Soon the rows of cypresses draped them in cool misting shadows.

  ‘Did you enjoy our mother’s tale of how Daphne gave her name to this place?’

  ‘I found it quite beautiful. A skald will often use a tree kenning to describe a lovely woman.’

  ‘Ken-ning. I’m afraid that word does not translate into the language of Homer.’ Gregory elaborated in Greek. ‘Oh, yes, when a poet likens one thing to another. “He went on his way like a snowy mountain.” So the Bard spoke of fair-helmed Hektor, because his size and ferocity and, some would say, his arrogance put him above other men.’

  There was no dominant tone here that could guide Haraldr. Was she teasing him, or was there a threat in her bewitching melody? Had Hektor been too arrogant, too bold, and if so, was Hektor/Haraldr considered to share the same faults? ‘Yes, a kenning is much like that, though not entirely so. Take this example: raven-flocked laurel tree of the golden sea cliffs.’

  Maria stopped for a moment and looked up at him. Her silk-sheathed breast brushed momentarily against his sleeve. ‘Whatever might that be?’

  ‘You. The lovely laurel tree, with hair as dark as the raven’s breast, who comes from the Great City where the mountainous walls that face the sea are golden in the sun.’

  Maria simply looked at him for a very long moment. It was as if her eyes were mysterious chasms with blue lights in their depths. She turned and guided him up the steps and out of the cypress grove.

  Incredible, thought Haraldr. How could such things be built and then discarded? Men would not abandon such a place, only gods. The huge marble structures clung to the cliffs, dappled all over with flowering vines and lacy ivy. Haraldr and Maria and Gregory walked towards two broken towers surrounded by the glacier-like rubble of their former magnificence.

  ‘Rome built this,’ said Maria. ‘The old Rome that rose by the river Tiber in Italia.’

  ‘But you are the Romans.’

  ‘We are the new Romans.’

  The ruins of the towers lay in huge ashlar blocks among which berries and flowers had begun to grow. Here and there were fragments of carved human forms, a muscular leg, an arm and shoulder, a partial head covered with short curly hair; it was as if here the old gods had waged their last battle, their bodies now frozen amid the titanic wreckage of that ultimate struggle. ‘The old Romans,’ asked Haraldr, ‘what happened to them?’

  Maria stooped to caress the ancient stone face of a beautiful young man, a fragment so curiously lifelike that it seemed as if the delicately parted marble lips might take in air and restore a blush to the weathered cheeks. ‘Travellers who have visited the old Rome make the cross of Christ the King when they talk of it, so vast is that tomb, as vast as the Queen of Cities, yet peopled only by spirits and demons and slinking dogs. All like this. Stade after endless stade, all like this. A vast sepulchre. So sad. To think of them . . .’ Maria touched the stone youth’s lips. ‘They were flesh as we are, soft lips . . . dust. All to dust.’ She drew back as if the lips had burned her fingers, or, perhaps, as if they had stirred to life.

  She took his arm now, curling her elegant, statue-smooth fingers just above his elbow and pulling him next to her so that her silk flank swished against his. Haraldr was stirred and yet the awe, the holiness of the place, overwhelmed him. He looked up at a wall covered with carvings of young men; naked athletes, not armoured warriors. Maria led him beneath an arch that pierced the wall and descended a dozen steps into a brilliant field of light. Haraldr gasped; what was this place? It was a vast, long field of unkempt grass and shrubs surrounded by row upon row of steps. No, seats, as if for a thing-meeting. But there was room enough here for every man in Norway, it seemed.

  ‘The stadium,’ said Maria. ‘For the games.’

  Haraldr shielded his eyes from the glare off the bleached stone seats. ‘What sort of contests?’

  ‘The ancients called them Olympics, after the mountain on which Zeus dwelt. The man who won here became a god. As one, every citizen of Antioch stood to sing the victor’s name.’ Maria paused. A flight of small black birds descended on a shrub at the end of the field nearest them and chorused noisily. ‘Can you hear the name they are singing?’ she asked wryly, though her scrolled lips had a bitter set.

  Maria guided Haraldr around the pathway at the top of the stadium to a row of almost intact, neatly fluted columns. The columns were the entrance to a large, cottage-sized niche carved into the very rock that seemed to embrace the long southern flank of the stadium. Haraldr peered into the gloom behind the sun-warmed columns. In the shadows a huge figure loomed. Haraldr bent for the dagger he had hidden in his boot.

  ‘You think he lives.’ Maria laughed. Haraldr’s eyes adjusted to the light. He saw a stone man taller than himself, even if the statue were to be taken off the stone pedestal upon which it stood. The figure’s marble arms were coursed with living veins, and every other detail was equally lifelike, even the curl of hair that crowned his manhood. Haraldr was embarrassed.

  ‘Heracles.’ Maria sighed, as if she was a rapt maiden. ‘He was half man, half god. They say that Apollo and Hermes were fairer. Perhaps. Yet one does not reflect on their beauty in his presence.’ She stepped around an empty basin that stood before the statue and wrapped her fingers about Heracles’s veined marble ankle and softly ran her fingers up to his bulging stone calf. She pressed her cheek to the leg and nuzzled it for a moment, then leaned her head back and looked directly at the demigod’s flaccid, strikingly human organs. Haraldr could not believe her immodesty, but her boldness stirred him far more than downcast eyes and fluttering lashes.

  Maria slowly released the demigod and stepped towards Haraldr. Her hips inclined slightly forward, only a thumb’s width from his thighs. She held her hands just above his chest and spread her fingers. For a moment she looked directly at him, her eyes reflections of the brilliant azure sky outside, her lips slightly parted. Her fingers touched his chest like the barest breeze. That was all. She closed her eyes for a moment and stepped away. She looked once again at the towering Heracles and then went into the sun by herself.

  ‘It is so dark in there,’ she said, taking Haraldr’s arm again. ‘Sometimes in the dark I feel I cannot breathe.’ They entered a shaded arcade roofed with thick ivy. She was quiet for a while. They left the stadium and wandered in a small poplar grove, poking at statuary fragments with their feet. Between the rows of trees, the limestone cliffs fell away to the green-and-gold plain below. The trees that ringed Daphne shimmered in the late-afternoon breeze. Maria’s fingers moved softly against Haraldr’s sleeve. She spoke as if mesmerized. ‘Do you fair-hairs believe in the Apocalypse?’

  Haraldr asked Gregory to clarify, but Maria interrupted. ‘The End of Creation.’ She looked out over Daphne, now a mosaic of golden spires and long, misty, smoke-purple shadows. ‘We shall subdue the sons of Hagar, the Emperor shall regain Illyricum, and Egypt shall bring her tribute once more. And he shall set his hand upon the sea and subdue the fair-hair nations.’ Her recitation was dreamlike. ‘Then a base woman will rise up and rule the Romans and there will be conspiracies and slaughter in every house and this impure queen will anger God and He will stretch out His hand and seize His strong scythe and cut the earth from under the city and order the waters to swallow it up. And the waters will crash forth and raise the city spinning to great height, and then cast it down into the abyss.’

  Haraldr knew that Maria had sensed his tremor of anxiety. Was she testing him with this reference to an ‘impure queen’?

  ‘I see I have frightened you,’ Maria said, her voice light. ‘It is such a wicked tale. Do you have one like it?’

  Haraldr assumed she had only been playing. ‘Yes. Ragnarok. The Doom of the Gods.’ Haraldr watched Daphne glitter in the lowering sun and felt Odin stir to life. ‘The sun turns
black, earth sinks in the waves, the blazing stars are quenched from the sky. Flames leap fierce to scorch the clouds, until Heaven itself is seared to ashes.’ Haraldr lost the skaldic rhythm with the words that followed. ‘And then the wolf, Fenrir, will devour all, even one-eyed Odin the All-Father.’

  ‘Odin? Is he your fair-hair demon?’

  ‘He is the god of war, verse and vision. He hung from the tree of infinite roots to seize the mead of verse from the Underworld, and in his palace, called the Valhol, slain warriors raise their swords again, to wait for Ragnarok.’

  ‘So you do not believe in Christ the King.’

  ‘I was baptized with the water of all-conquering Christ.’

  Now Maria seemed perplexed. ‘So you believe that Christ will rule in the end, after Odin perishes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you believe that you will be spared to enter the New Jerusalem?’ She gathered that he did not understand. ‘You see, when the Empress City has been cast into the abyss, God will allow the fair-hairs to rage forth upon the earth and they will consume blood and flesh and the sun will turn to blood and the moon darken. And then the Antichrist, a serpent in the guise of a man, will arise to battle Christ. After terrible tribulations Christ will cast the Devil and all of the unjust into a lake of fire. And the just shall be brought into a great city of crystal and gold, the new Jerusalem that will descend from heaven.’ Maria seemed to recite from some text. ‘And there shall they dwell in the sight of God, and there shall no longer be night, nor need of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will give them light, and the just shall reign for eternity.’

  Haraldr pondered this tale in which the Norsemen played such a menacing role. Was this why the Romans feared the northern nations, even with their God-granted gift of liquid fire? He looked down and saw Maria’s flickering blue challenge. ‘So you believe that we fair-hairs will hasten the rise of Christ’s great foe the Devil Antichrist?’