by Tom Harper
Anna laughed; a soft, forgiving laugh.
‘Come, Demetrios,’ she mocked me. ‘You were married, and raised two daughters to womanhood. Surely you must have uncovered these mysteries before. Am I so shameful?’
‘Shameless, I think.’ My humour returned a little, and I risked looking back. I was just in time to see her arms wriggling through the sleeves of a woollen camisia, which tumbled down over her body to mask its temptations. I felt an ache of regret that I had not looked longer, but dismissed the thought at once.
‘Do you always undress before strange men in the middle of the day?’ I watched her pull on her green dress and fasten the silken cord around it.
‘Only when they appear at my door half-frozen and close to death. I had to force some heat into you, so I lay beside you in the bed until you stopped shivering. You served in the legions — surely when you campaigned in the mountains you huddled together with your comrades at night?’
‘If we did, we kept our clothes on.’ I had endured much that day; it seemed almost too much to believe that I had risked mortal sin lying with Anna and not felt a moment of it.
Again I drove back my thoughts from the places they strayed. ‘And how did I come to be here?’
‘Sigurd brought you. He said he found you almost drowned in a cistern.’
‘Is he here now?’ Had he watched while Anna undressed and shared my bed?
‘He had important things to do. He said he would return, and try to bring some fresh clothes.’
Only now did I realise that under the blankets, I too was wholly naked. I pulled the covers closer.
Anna tied the scarf over her head and crossed to the door. ‘I must go. I have other patients to see. I will send an apprentice with some soup, and try to visit soon.’
‘Will you share beds with all your wards?’ I raised myself on one elbow.
The door closed without answer.
Not long afterwards, Sigurd came. His face was flushed despite the cold, but he waited while I dressed with the tunic, leggings, boots and cloak he had brought. He must have gone to my house, or sent someone there, for they were my own. Which was as well, for his tunic would have reached almost to my feet.
‘That’s the second time I’ve saved you from a battle you were foolish to enter,’ he said pointedly. ‘There may not be a third.’
‘I know.’ I was honest in my gratitude. ‘But how did you find me? And what of the monk?’
‘Your elder daughter found me with Aelric. I met him in the street; he had left his station to go and buy food.’ I did not envy Aelric explaining that to his captain. ‘We followed your tracks through the snow as far as the Adrianople road, where there were plenty of witnesses who could remember a bare-headed monk and a half-dressed madman chasing him. From there we searched the side-streets until we found you.’
‘And the monk?’
‘We saw him trying to drown you at the bottom of that hole, but as I came down the ladder he fled. I let him go; only a fool would follow a man into that abyss. My men are guarding the entrance. If he comes out, we’ll catch him.’ He looked theatrically at the sky, though the sun was veiled in cloud. ‘If he’s still down there, he’ll already be dead.’
‘We should go and see.’ I stood, feeling the trembling in my legs as they took my weight. I was weak, but the food which Anna had sent gave me strength, and the hunger to see the monk who had almost killed me was all consuming.
‘Will the doctor let you go?’ Sigurd asked with a smile. ‘She protects her patients like a tiger, you know.’
That was only half true. Some she protected like a tiger; me she waved away with a dismissive snort.
‘If you choose to risk your health and your strength running around the city, trying to do the monk’s work for him, then do so,’ she said briskly. ‘I need your bed for the more deserving anyway.’
Sigurd and I walked out of the monastery. It was late afternoon, and the road was almost solid with the humanity herded onto it. The snow, so pristine that morning, was now ground to a grey slush and mixed with grit and mud. It was well that the ground stayed frozen, or many might have sunk into an inescapable mire.
‘I must go to the walls first,’ said Sigurd. He had seemed cheerful at my bedside, but now his mood was grim. ‘I need to check on the garrison. The monk will wait an extra half hour — whether he’s under, on or in the ground.’
I did not argue, but pushed my way after him through the tide of men and beasts which flowed against us. It was straining work, and if I had not had Sigurd’s commanding bulk to follow I doubt I would have progressed a step. There was an intensity in the crowd now which I had not noticed previously: a hunch to their shoulders and a desperation in their gaunt faces. Perhaps it was the burden of snow and cold added to their already straitened condition, or perhaps they knew that the city was ill able to provide for them after the many others who had preceded them.
Sigurd had anticipated an extra half an hour, but it was almost an hour later, near dusk, when we at last reached the walls. Along them the Watch had kept a corridor free for messengers and heralds to gallop through, and I was glad of the space to breathe as we came into it.
‘My men are up that tower,’ Sigurd told me. ‘Will you wait?’
A squadron of cavalry thundered past, drowning my reply and spraying me with mud. Above me, a ballista was being winched up a tower on a scaffold, straining at the thick ropes which held it.
‘I’ll come up.’ I did not want to end that day crushed under a horse or a falling siege weapon.
As ever, Sigurd was recognised, and we were waved up by the guard at the foot of the stairs. It was not an arduous climb, but my head ached again and my legs begged for rest. About me, I could see sentries scurrying about, shouting and calling, though I could not hear what they said.
We came onto the broad rampart and my interest rose. A hush had fallen, and the guards were still, their faces pressed against the embrasures as if watching for a miracle. Sigurd ignored them and continued up the steps to the turret, but — drawn to the spectacle — I crossed to the battlements and stared.
Out across the snow-swept fields the sun had sunk beneath the rim of the clouds, facing us like a glowing eye. The sky and land alike were caught in its crimson glare, shimmering red, but that was not what had silenced the watchmen. On the ridge across the plain, some two miles distant, an army had appeared. They rode towards us with the sun behind them, their spears like pricks of flame and their banners dark above them. They were moving forward, but as one row passed into the shadows below the ridge another came up on their heels and took its place. It was a host of thousands — tens of thousands — and the snow turned black underfoot as they marched towards our gate.
The barbarians had come.
15
‘This changes everything.’ I had waited three days for an audience with Krysaphios, and now that I had it I was giving full vent to my feelings. ‘Can you believe it is merely chance that not three weeks after the Emperor was almost murdered, an army of barbarians arrives at our walls?’
Krysaphios stroked his beardless chin. ‘This changes nothing,’ he said calmly. ‘Except to raise the penalties should you fail.’
‘The man who directed the assassin was a monk who prayed according to the western rites, and used a barbarian weapon unknown to our people. Now ten thousand of his kinsmen, armed for war, are camped just across the Golden Horn. Can it be happenstance?’
‘You disappoint me, Demetrios. You had a reputation for insight, for seeing the hidden truths which other men did not. Not for pouncing on chance.’
‘I may see deeper than other men, but if I find a man standing over a corpse, with a knife dripping blood and a stolen purse in his hand, I do not presume that there must be a more subtle explanation and let him go.’
‘This time you should.’ Krysaphios clapped his hands together. ‘The barbarian army had barely crossed our frontier three weeks ago. Even if the attempt on the Emperor’s life
had succeeded, they would have profited nothing from it. And besides, they are come to aid us, to drive the Turks and Saracens from our lands in Asia and restore them to their rightful owners. For all the mob may fear them, they are our allies, our allies, our welcome guests.’ He did not try to hide the scepticism which underpinned his words. ‘It is on that understanding that the Emperor tolerates them, that he gives them food for their bellies and straw for their horses.’
‘Nonetheless,’ I pressed, ‘I would like to see these men. Even if it is a foolish fancy, you know that I prefer to be thorough.’
‘As thorough as you were in the cistern?’
Krysaphios mocked me. Aelric and his companions had spent a day and a night standing watch over the cistern’s entrance, but no-one had emerged. They had concluded that the monk must be dead, but I had insisted on finding a body, and had led many men down there with nets and torches to scour it. We found nothing except fish: the monk, it seemed, had dissolved into the water like powder. Or more likely, as the hydrarch suggested, crawled out through one of the pipes which fed it.
‘As thorough as I was in the cistern.’ I had not been deterred by the complaining doubts of the Varangians, and I would not defer to the eunuch’s scorn. ‘My instincts are sound, Krysaphios, if not always true. I need a pass into the barbarian camp, and perhaps an introduction to their captains.’
Krysaphios’ eyes dipped in thought.
‘After all,’ I added, ‘even if — as you presume — the man who would kill the Emperor rests within our city, it cannot have escaped his notice that a foreign army will give him great scope for mischief.’
Krysaphios looked up. ‘I fear you are too easily tempted by digressions, Demetrios, and succumb to fancy.’
‘My fancies have served well enough.’
‘That is why I will give you the opportunity you seek. The Emperor will send an envoy to the barbarian captains tomorrow, and you may accompany him. If, of course, you can stand their stink. Report to me in the new palace by the walls when you return.’
The path out of that courtyard had grown familiar in the past weeks, and my face was now known well enough that the sentries did not challenge me. Winter had at last entered the palace; the gaiety and laughter which I remembered from my first visit were replaced with grim intent, and the gilded walls seemed dulled.
‘Demetrios.’
One man at least could muster some warmth: Sigurd, striding toward me along the arcade. The hollows of his eyes were dark, all the more so against the pale skin, but his greeting was hearty enough.
‘I thought you were at the walls.’
‘I was. But the Franks are keeping quiet enough in their camp, and without siege engines or boats there’s little they can do to trouble us.’
‘Surely there should be nothing they would do to trouble us in any event. Krysaphios tells me they are here as our allies.’
Sigurd eyed me as a teacher with a peculiarly obtuse student. ‘When ten thousand foreign mercenaries are camped before the city walls, you do not trust to kind words and noble intentions. Particularly if they are as duplicitous and greedy as the Franks. The Emperor will not believe they are his allies until they have defeated his enemies and returned to their own kingdoms. Until then, he will treat them like a tame leopard — with good will, and great caution. Otherwise, he may find one day that they have bitten off his hand and more besides.’ He scratched his beard. ‘But I cannot waste time educating your credulous ignorance, Demetrios, for I must get my company ready to call on the Franks tomorrow. We will be escorting the Emperor’s ambassador, the estimable Count of Vermandois.’
‘The Count of where?’
‘Vermandois.’
‘I know that the Emperor’s lands stretch far across the world, but that does not sound like a Roman place.’
‘No.’ Sigurd grinned. ‘It’s in the kingdom of the Franks, not so far from my own country. The Count is the brother of their king, apparently.’
‘And he’s the man the Emperor chooses as his emissary to the barbarians?’
‘He has been here some weeks as the Emperor’s honoured guest. An unfortunate shipwreck deprived him of a grander entrance. His time here has convinced him to swear loyalty to the Emperor, for here at last he has found a man who respects his position with all the riches and women he deserves.’
‘He’s been bought.’
Sigurd fixed me with a warning stare. ‘He has, Demetrios, he has. As have you.’
I had, but my price was a sorry trifle against what the Count of Vermandois — Hugh the Great, as he styled himself — must have commanded. He appeared before us the next morning an hour late, clothed in a robe whose very fibres seemed spun from pearls and emeralds. His skin was pale and smooth, like silk beneath his golden hair: doubtless he meant to look magnificent, almost angelic, but his eyes were too cold, too petulant for that. Nor did his beard flatter him, for it seemed a recent creation: a thin, uneven affair which would not have looked amiss on an adolescent.
He did not speak to us, but mounted his horse in a haughty silence at the head of our column. There must have been fifty Varangians in a double file, headed by Sigurd looking magnificent in his burnished mail and helm. The guards’ customary axes were in slings by their sides, and they carried instead fine lances, tipped with pennants which rippled in the breeze. At their rear, Father Gregorias and I — dressed in a monk’s mantle — were a less than fitting tail for the glorious cohort.
We kicked our horses into a trot and rode out of the palace, out through the Augusteion and down the broad Mesi. Our pomp drew crowds, convinced that this must herald an appearance by the Emperor, though when they saw that it was no Roman who led our column but in fact a barbarian, their shouts became jeers, and they turned their backs on us. No longer did they recede out of our way, and our lines became ragged, uneven, as each man drove his own path through them. I had worn my hood, for anonymity as much as warmth, but now I tipped it back so those around me could see I was of their race. It seemed to ease my way a little.
At the Gate of Lakes we halted, in the shadow of the new palace where, according to rumour, the Emperor Alexios preferred to keep his private quarters. Sigurd bellowed a challenge, and a fanfare of horns rang out from the tower as the gates swung open. It was a grand spectacle, though whom it impressed besides the Count I do not know.
We passed under the arch and out of the city, keeping close to the placid waters of the Golden Horn. It was almost two miles to the village where the barbarians were billeted, but in all that distance we saw hardly a soul. No-one worked the fields or shared our path; not so much as a single hen pecked at the roadside, and no smoke rose from within the dwellings we passed. I remembered Aelric’s talk of the desolation wrought upon his country by the Normans, and shivered to think that it might happen here.
Soon, though, there were many signs of life ahead: the smoke of a hundred fires, though it was only midday, and the smells that men and horses bring wherever they settle. I could see a cordon of mounted soldiers stretched out across the landscape, spaced like the towers which crowned the city walls. As we came near, one of them challenged us.
‘Who travels this road?’
‘The Count Hugh the Great,’ answered Sigurd. ‘And his escort. Here on an embassy from the Emperor. Much good may it do us,’ he added under his breath.
‘You’ll need patience,’ observed the sentry. We were close enough now that I could see he was a Patzinak with a scarred face and narrow eyes, from another of the Emperor’s mercenary legions. From the time I had spent talking with Sigurd and Aelric, I knew even the Varangians bore them a grudging respect.
‘Have the Franks hired you as their guardians?’ asked Sigurd. ‘You should be protecting the Emperor, not these whoresons.’
‘We protect them from themselves,’ the Patzinak said with a toothless grin. ‘They come in the name of the cross, they say, so we keep their souls free from the cares of the world beyond. Like the walls of a monastery.’<
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‘Or a prison.’
‘Or a prison.’ The Patzinak pulled his horse aside, and waved us past. ‘Strange enough, we had a scuffle with some of them last night. They said much the same.’
We rode on, into the makeshift town which had descended onto our plain like the new Jerusalem. They had been here only four days, but already the earth was ground to mud by the passage of a thousand feet, and the trees had been felled for kindling. Blacksmiths had constructed rudimentary forges under canvas awnings, and sparks flew through the blue smoke as they worked against the ceaseless demands of arms and horses. Peddlers of a dozen races proclaimed their strange and multifarious wares, while on every corner of this tented city women shouted offers which, in any tongue, were readily understood. Many of them, I saw, were our own people, who clearly had bribed or crept their way through the Patzinak cordon.
At length we came to what had once been the village square, now covered with a vast tent. The knights who stood grouped before it seemed larger, stronger than the haggard creatures we had seen before, and there was a stiffness in the way they held themselves. On a crude post behind them, beside the pavilion door, was draped a banner emblazoned with a blood-red cross and a slogan in barbarian characters: ‘Deus le volt.’
‘Thus God wills it,’ whispered Father Gregorias in my ear.
‘Does He?’
The Count Hugh dismounted, grimacing as his fur boot settled in the mire. Sigurd and the nearest Varangians followed.
‘Halt.’
A guard by the door angled his spear across the Count’s path and spoke brusquely. The Count responded with anger, though to little effect.
‘He says none are allowed in his lord’s chamber bearing arms,’ explained Gregorias. ‘The Count replies that it demeans his honour to be denied his vassals.’
Honour or no, he at last agreed that the Varangians would wait outside while he conducted his audience with the barbarians. Gregorias and I pushed forward.