Byzantium - A Novel

by Michael Ennis

  ‘Father!’ The Augusta Theodora rushed forward and kissed the Patriarch Alexius’s jewelled hands. ‘Father.’ She stood speechless, blood visibly pumping into her pale cheeks, unable to ask all the desperate questions that had been running through her mind.

  Alexius made the sign of the cross at her forehead and then, uncharacteristically, gently stroked her braided brown hair. He had never looked more defeated. In his rough woollen cloak, his face virtually the colour of penitential ashes, his pacing eyes now exhausted, wounded gravely, he looked like the survivor of a shipwreck. ‘My child,’ he said quietly, ‘we may never see another day like this.’

  ‘Father, I was not even certain you were still . . . that you were safe. After what we heard yesterday . . .’

  Alexius stared at the beige plaster walls of Theodora’s temporary refuge in the Church of St Mary Chalkoprateia. ‘The Mother Church has withstood the assault of the mad heretic Michael. The siege of the Hagia Sophia was lifted half an hour ago when the forces that had imprisoned me were called away to counter a greater threat.’ Alexius shook his head wearily. ‘I confess that the effluence of love and support for your sister has been a revelation to me. She has raised all Rome against the demon.’

  Theodora wrapped her arms tightly around her torso, as if she were on the verge of doubling over with pain. ‘Father, is she . . .’

  Alexius smiled as thinly as a dying man mocking himself. ‘Your sister is safe. I have been told that the mad heretic brought her back to the palace this morning. No doubt to save his own skin from the wrath of her people.’

  Theodora seemed to breathe in the news of her sister’s deliverance; her torso straightened and her small, pained face became fierce and punitive. ‘Father, you must know now that I cannot do it. I have suffered the agonies of the damned just knowing that my sister might be ... Father, last night . . . Father, I do not know if my sister still loves me. But nothing in my heart can make me betray her now. If Our Lord had wanted me to make that sacrifice, He would not have put so much love for her in the hearts of her people. Or in my heart.’

  Alexius was too weak to resist. His black eyes lay still. ‘Of course, my child. I am returning you to your home immediately. I, too, believe Our Lord has asked us to consider another means of defending our spiritual empire.’ Alexius paused and touched his fine silver beard, as if to ascertain that he still possessed corporeal form. ‘Mar Hunrodarson betrayed us. That does not surprise me. I had reasoned that in such an event we could still deal with him. But he turned against his fellow Varangians. Now I am told that he has been defeated in a great battle that took place in the Hippodrome this morning. He broke his sword, and ours, in the defence of a usurper who never could have been legitimized. I can only assume that Hunrodarson believed that he could place his own barbaroi feet in the Imperial buskins. I knew that the Emperor was mad. I had no idea that Hunrodarson shared his affliction.’ Alexius again stroked Theodora’s hair. ‘My secular sword no longer exists. And your sister’s sword, the love of her people, is a vastly more formidable blade than I had ever imagined. You have made your sacrifice for myself and for Our Lord, my child. Now you may return to the mansion your Lord intended for you.’

  Theodora nodded. ‘If I may, Father, I would like to stay here until all this is resolved. My sister . . .’

  Again the weak, moribund smile. ‘Certainly, child--’ Alexius broke off but did not turn to the insistent pounding on the door. Finally Theodora crossed the room and cracked open the heavy wooden door.

  The priest burst into the room, his woollen hood flung back, glimmering slices of his white silk vestments visible under his dull brown cloak. His face was brilliant with exertion. ‘Father, this could not wait.’ He handed Alexius a small parchment.

  Alexius received the missive with indifference. His long, elegant fingers fumbled with the parchment. His eyes were so dull as he read that it seemed he was only staring at some design. And then, almost miraculously, he returned to life; but not even Lazarus had returned so quickly or vehemently. His face, a moment earlier as grey and coarse as weathered stone, became flesh again. His eyes flickered, awakening rested, eager. He clutched the parchment in a powerful fist. ‘Perhaps our Lord has merely divined to test our faith.’

  ‘Father . . .’ Theodora was clearly frightened by the Patriarch’s resurrection.

  The eyes offered no mercy. ‘My child, the situation has changed. You must now prepare yourself for your climb to Golgotha.’

  Theodora flinched but did not retreat. ‘Father, I will not. The crown of thorns I must wear is my love for my sister. And I will never remove that crown, no matter how painful it has become.’ Theodora’s lips set grimly and her eyes were like bits of lapis lazuli. ‘Father, I will not do it. I will not do it.’ She squared her broad shoulders as if preparing for a physical confrontation. ‘Do you think you can chain me and drag me screaming to the ambo and place the Imperial Diadem upon my writhing head?’

  Alexius was stunned into silent acquiescence. Perhaps his ordeal had left him irreparably weakened; perhaps he had always known that his protégé would someday challenge his strength. He looked away from Theodora and walked slowly to the simple oaken cupboard. A pair of gold-framed icons had been set on the top shelf. Both depicted the Virgin; one was an intricate cloisonné, a surface of vivid colours and fine gold striations, the other a faded encaustic, many centuries old. Alexius looked between the two images for a long while, his palms pressed together and fingers touching the tip of his powerful humped nose. Finally he turned.

  ‘My child, would you be agreeable to sharing your sister’s Holy burden? If you will not, I fear that both your sister and the Roman Empire will soon be lost.’

  ‘What has happened, Father?’

  ‘I am not yet certain. That is why I must know what you are prepared for me to offer in your name.’

  ‘Yes. I will share the throne with her. If it is necessary to save her and to save Rome.’

  Alexius made the sign of the cross three times and without another word strode urgently from the room.

  The future of Rome had been drawn in the sands of the Hippodrome. Haraldr stood over the hastily sketched campaign map; at his side were the co-commanders of the citizen army of Rome, John the leather cutter and the Blue Star. John had a bloody gash over his forehead, but his eyes blazed with triumph; his guildsmen had taken the Chalke Gate, with the help of some Khazar defectors. John pointed to the small square that indicated the Numera, where Michael’s Pecheneg guard was quartered. ‘I have left my bakers and grocers to harass the Pechenegs. When should I give them the signal for the afternoon attack?’

  Haraldr looked around the stadium. Ulfr and Halldor and the rest of his Varangians now stood where Mar’s men had that morning, on the commanding vantage of the Imperial Box, ready for the final massive assault on the Imperial Palace. The Blue Star had removed her wounded from the stadium steps and the ranks of the guildsmen and the army of the Studion had reassembled on the track; they were already going over the chants they would sing when they had the usurper Michael before them in chains. He realized that there was no reason to wait. And in an awful way he wanted to wait, because he knew in his soul that when he entered the palace, he would find the answer to the question that now pierced his being. And if fate had answered him with Maria’s death, her life for his? Then fate would have killed them both.

  ‘Haraldr!’ Ulfr’s voice boomed down from the Imperial Box. He waved. Behind Ulfr were the luminous white robes of the palace chamberlains. The eunuchs rapidly filled the Imperial Box and stood at attention as they might on a race day. The army on the track below looked up and erupted with speculation. Had the Emperor Michael come to capitulate?

  A few moments later the solitary black-shrouded figure appeared against the wall of the white-robed eunuchs in the Imperial Box. Her head was veiled in a black nun’s hood, her eyes black holes, her face aged decades in days. Only the voice proved that this ancient woman was Zoe the purple-born, Empres
s and Augusta of the Romans.

  ‘My children!’ proclaimed Zoe. Her words brought an absolute silence to the huge throng beneath her. ‘I am well. I have not been harmed. My son, your Emperor and Father, and I have quarrelled between us, as a mother and her son are wont to do. He has taken actions in his anger that he has now repented of. I am satisfied of his sincere contrition. He has promised that he will respect the dignity of your purple-born Mother as long as he wears the Imperial Diadem. He has sworn to do penance to the people of the city with distributions of food, entertainments, remission of certain taxes, and a lifting of the Prefect’s profit ceiling for the guilds. I have taken your father Michael to my bosom and forgiven him. Now I beseech my children to show him their forgiveness, for love of me.’ Zoe stepped back and made the sign of the cross over her people.

  The first reaction was applause from some of the guildsmen, particularly the small merchants who would most benefit from the lifting of the profit ceiling. Someone in the Studion ranks shouted, ‘That is not our Mother. She is an impostor!’

  ‘That is no impostor,’ said the Blue Star, her eyes stricken. ‘She has been coerced. There are knives at her back.’

  ‘A more dangerous coercion, I fear,’ said Haraldr. ‘A coercion of the heart.’

  ‘I think she wants to avoid further bloodshed,’ said John. ‘If she is willing to guarantee these reforms, we have no further quarrel with the Emperor. He was good to us before all this, and now that he has brought our mother back . . .’ John shrugged.

  ‘You would abandon her to them while you go back to your salted fish and Vlach cheese!’ snapped the Blue Star. She whipped her powerful arm and pointed at the terrible litter on the seats behind her; at least a thousand lay dead. ‘We did not die here so that the tyrant could imprison our Mother in his palace and appease the guildsmen with more races in the Hippodrome where so many have now died!’

  ‘You have not seen the dead at the Chalke Gate, woman!’ John’s swarthy face darkened. ‘If this bloodshed is no longer necessary, it must end. If your cutthroats desire more blood, let them prey on their own cutpurses and whores!’

  The two factions slowly gathered around their leaders and began their own chorus to this argument. ‘We were not whores when we slew men!’ shouted a woman standing behind the Blue Star. ‘Rabble!’ cursed the guildsmen. ‘Sluts and thieves!’

  Haraldr watched the two sides converge from the ends of the track; it was as if they were two roiling cloud masses about to collide as a thunderous storm. ‘Ulfr! Halldor!’ he shouted to the stadium roof. ‘Bring the men down!’ He turned to mediate but could not make himself heard. The factions shrieked at one another and scuffling broke out. Haraldr broke up one fight only to have another, and then another, flare up around him. He prayed his men could get down here before the first death. A combined assault on the palace was impossible now, but a civil war in the city was not unlikely. Fists cracked into faces. Haraldr saw bright blood again, and it sickened him more than all the day’s carnage. He fought desperately to keep men apart. A guildsman fell, howling, clutching his stomach.

  And then the shrieks of conflict subsided slowly, and men and women paused, still clutching their adversaries’ cloaks. The fallen guildsman moaned. Haraldr looked over the heads of the crowd, towards the bronze starting gates at the north end of the stadium. The army of the Studion was parting, to allow the army of yet another Roman Empire pass among it. Mounted on his donkey in emulation of Christ, flanked by scores of his priests in white-and-gold vestments, himself a jewelled icon in the billowing robes of his office, the Patriarch Alexius rode among his flock.

  The donkey blinked, his gentle gaze a pointed contrast to the equally dark and feral but far more deadly eyes of his master. Alexius was assisted from the saddle by his deacons. He studied Haraldr, John and the Blue Star silently for a moment. He spoke first to Haraldr. ‘Is it true that Mar Hunrodarson is dead?’ Haraldr nodded. Alexius turned away and faced his flock. ‘Your Mother has borne the cares of her people for many years now!’ His voice thundered and echoed through the stadium. ‘Now she is weary of her travails; she is too exhausted to revoke the sanction she has granted to her treacherous son.’ The ranks of the Studion murmured assent. ‘And yet she is not the only purple-born daughter who can offer’ - Alexius paused meaningfully and his voice roared -’or revoke that sanction! The purple-born Augusta Theodora, daughter of the Autocrator Constantine and niece of the Autocrator Basil, called the Bulgar-Slayer, also carries the blood of Macedon in her veins. She is willing to sacrifice the life she cherishes, that of contemplation, to share with her sister the burden of caring for her children! Would you deny yourselves a love this generous?’

  The folk of Studion erupted into spontaneous acclaim. ‘Theodora! Theodora! Purple-born Mother!’ John and his guildsman lieutenants considered the matter at greater length. Their informal caucus reflected on the succession of men Zoe had brought to the throne of Imperial Rome; they decided that a prosperity hostage to Zoe’s whims was a false security. Theodora would stabilize the throne. John brought his arms up and began to lead the guildsmen in a chant. ‘Theodora! Theodora!’

  Haraldr shouted to the Patriarch. ‘Father, what of Michael?’

  Alexius looked at Haraldr with his glaring panther eyes, then pulled Haraldr’s shoulders down so that he could speak in his ear. ‘By the sanction of the purple-born Zoe, my hand placed the Imperial Diadem on his head. Under command of the purple-born Theodora, that Diadem will now be plucked from his skull!’

  Haraldr nodded and listened to the chants. For the tyrant Michael it was finished. And yet for him it had only begun. Where was Maria?

  ‘That porcine sot.’ Michael crumpled the message and glared at his uncle. ‘This is gratitude!’ His voice was high-pitched and whiny. ‘I have provided these luxury-loving monks with typica so generous that they are all but a licence to plunder, and not one of them will come to my assistance during a period of transient difficulty. I tell you, Uncle, when my throne is again secure, there shall be a wholesale redrafting of these typica. And I can assure you that many of these fatted monks will be as lean as desert goats when I am through with them.’ Michael fanned away a silk-robed chamberlain with an impatient hand. ‘Reject the offer. We will remain here and weather this outburst.’

  Constantine mopped his brow with a delicate linen handkerchief. ‘Majesty, I do not think it wise for us to remain in the palace. Mar Hunrodarson is dead, Haraldr Nordbrikt is even now negotiating the surrender of the Scholae and Excubitores of the Imperial Taghmata, and the Augusta Theodora is already in the Hagia Sophia.’

  Michael stared sourly at his purple boots. ‘That dried-up old thing. Uncle, you cannot think she will depose me. Zoe will have her out of the palace before the day is over. There is no love between those sisters.’

  ‘The Patriarch Alexius seems bent on preserving his client’s privileges this time.’

  Michael leered over at his uncle. ‘The Patriarch Alexius is a Satanic apostate, you know that, don’t you? The Pantocrator will never receive him. He is adamantly opposed to it.’ The Emperor straightened. ‘I still have the loyalty of the Numeri and Hyknatoi units of the Imperial Taghmata. I will have them throw the unclean Alexius out of our Holy Mansion. He quite disgraces it. And the bitch with him!’

  ‘Majesty . . .’ Constantine paused and accepted the dispatch from a chamberlain. He read it quickly, his face drawing taut with shock. ‘Nephew,’ he finally whispered, ‘the Varangian Haraldr Nordbrikt has received the surrender of all units of the Imperial Taghmata.’

  Michael shot up from his throne and kicked away the gilded stool at his feet. ‘Nordbrikt! Nordbrikt! It was his whore who tempted me to begin with! Nordbrikt!’ Michael stood, glaring; his chest surged wildly. ‘Tell my Pechenegs to destroy Haraldr Nordbrikt!’ he screamed with neck-cording rage.

  ‘Nephew,’ said Constantine, ‘Haraldr Nordbrikt also requested the surrender of your Pecheneg guard. When they refused, his Varangians slaughte
red them to the last man.’

  Constantine walked forward and clasped Michael’s arms. ‘We must accept the offer of sanctuary.’

  Michael was suddenly calm, again introspective, hearing other voices. ‘Yes. Quite. We must save our lives and await the collapse of this absurd coalition against us. Whom did you say had the charity to receive us?’

  ‘The blessed Brothers of the Holy Studite Monastery, Majesty.’

  The lowering sun bored through the windows high above and projected great tunnels of light directly across the vast, darkening interior of the Hagia Sophia. The subdeacons and doorkeepers moved about on the arcades and soaring ambulatories, beginning the lengthy ritual of lighting the bronze and silver candelabra, lamps and polycandelons. The Augusta Theodora, clad in the purple robes of state, was seated on a throne beneath the semi-dome at the west end of the nave; the bejewelled diadem of the Imperial Augusta seemed like a piece of ornate architecture perched atop her small head. The improvised court that knelt one by one in obeisance before her was unlike any Rome had seen before. The dignitaries were present in their robes of state and emblems of rank, but the new Empress was also attended by the people of the city -guild members, merchants, the humble poor of the Studion. And women had been admitted to the floor of the great church, as only befitted an Empire that was now ruled by two sisters.

  Haraldr was one of the first presented to the new Empress, as Alexius had wisely proscribed formal protocol during this acutely delicate time of transition. After the ritual prostrations he knelt at Theodora’s feet and was offered her hand to kiss. ‘I know of you,’ she told him in a flat, faintly wry voice. Unlike her sister, who had a face for pure pleasure set off by pain-ravaged eyes, Theodora had melancholy features countered with flashing, almost girlish eyes. ‘You want to take my Maria away from me.’ Haraldr was weary, hungry, and he hoped that his plunging spirit did not register on his face. Where was Maria? All day he had sent runners out to comb the palace, and each had returned with the same report: no one had seen her, even heard of her whereabouts. And even if she was safe somewhere, would he now need this Empress’s permission to take her to Norway?