The Varangian

by Bruce Macbain

  When I found Moses later, our surgeon was binding up the stump of his right arm above the elbow. “Had to take it off, sir, it was hanging by a flap of skin. Cauterized it. Should be all right. I offered him opium, he would only take a little. Here, give him more if he wants it.” He handed me the flask, left us and moved on to other casualties.

  I squatted down beside Moses. “This is an unhappy day, my friend. I would rather your general had lived.”

  He held up his hand to silence me. “It was his life or yours. He wanted you dead, not just beaten.”

  “But why?”

  “You’re too dangerous to their plan. Listen, Tangle-Hair, I have much to tell you. Harald and Halldor, with Ulf and five or six others left the army a week ago, in disguise, on horseback, heading back to Constantinople. They must have slipped past you on the road at night.”

  “For what reason?”

  “Treachery. I was outside the general’s tent on the night they made their plan, Halldor talking pretty good Greek—I didn’t know he could. I heard everything. The general knew he couldn’t take Constantinople by storm. It’s never been done, he said, unless someone inside opened a gate. Harald volunteered to do it. Said he still had plenty of friends in the Guard. Said he would kill you if you got in the way. They never even thought you would come after us. Harald and his men would hide out in a little farmhouse he has in the fields on the north bank of the Lycus about three-quarters of a mile inside the Fifth Military Gate. He drew a map for the general, you’ll find it in his tent. When the general got close he would send a man to alert them. And then—”

  “And then Harald would be Commandant again under Emperor George Maniakes.” Harald and Maniakes, I thought bitterly. But didn’t they hate each other? That was the reason for sending him. Harald swore an oath to me on the body of Saint Olaf and I believed him. What a simpleton I am!

  A shudder went through Moses’s body. I gave him the flask of wine and opium and this time he took a long drink. “Maybe it doesn’t matter now,” he said when he could speak again, “we aren’t marching on the city.”

  “But Harald doesn’t know that yet. I’m sure he believes Maniakes has defeated our little force—he very nearly did. But when he learns otherwise, he’ll steal everything he can and escape to Gardariki. If I let him get away from me this time, I will hang myself for shame.”

  Moses’s eyelids fluttered and his head sank on his breast. I covered him with my cloak and ordered him carried to a tent. I was needed elsewhere now. I went among my wounded—there were dozens of them—calling each man by his name and praising him. As usual, we Varangians preferred to patch each other up, using the methods we’d learned from our mothers, rather than trust a Greek doctor. My own wounds—my injured shoulder where Maniakes had struck me and assorted cuts and bruises—could wait until later.

  The most pressing question was what to do with Maniakes’s army. Pergamenus was for executing every one of the senior officers. I put a stop to that. In the hour that followed I went to their camp and settled things. The Varangians all crowded round me and swore they’d never taken an oath to Maniakes or, if they had, it was Harald who made them. And when they saw my dragon standard floating above our ranks, they refused to attack us, though Maniakes threatened to flog them. And I took them at their word. What else could I do? I gave orders that the army was to elect a new commander and march back to Italy without delay. There was still a war to fight. I chose only one cavalry regiment, the elite Scholae, to return to Constantinople with us. Pergamenus swore and blustered but I ignored him.

  Later that night, I went back to look in on Moses. Too late. Some of his Khazars were gathered round him, chanting words in their language and tearing their clothing, which is a thing the Jews do when someone dies. “What is an archer without his arm?” he had said, and turned his face away and died.

  Early the next morning, Gorm and I with six other Guardsmen and a captain in the Scholae (a man known to Harald), all of us mounted and leading pack mules, set out at a fast pace for Constantinople.

  45

  Dream No More

  My men and I crouched under the shadow of the wall. The night was quiet, save for the whisper of the Lycus flowing sluggishly past us. A crescent-moon hung low in the sky, half-hidden by cloud. A mile to the east, the domes and towers of the city were a black silhouette. I peered into the dark, hardly breathing, gripping my sword. It would be soon now. Soon. And—yes—there it was, the glimmer of a lantern coming toward us at a walking pace; the soft chink of armor. Harald walking into the trap I had laid for him.

  Two weeks had passed since we set out from Ostrovo. We entered Constantinople dressed as ordinary travelers, our weapons and armor covered up and bundled onto the backs of the pack mules. We followed the Mese through the wide swath of farmland, dotted with barns and houses, that stretches between the ring wall and the city proper until we came to my old country house. We didn’t risk going into the city, I dared not even send a message to Selene. We could not take any risks that might alert Harald that we were nearby. Of course, we were noticed by my curious neighbors, but I handed out purses of silver to buy their silence for a day and a night. That was all the time I needed.

  According to Moses, Harald and his men were hiding in his little farmhouse near the Fifth Military Gate, where the stream of the Lycus runs under the ring wall and meanders toward the city.

  The land fortifications of Constantinople are massive and impregnable. A line of double walls thirty feet high and fronted by a deep moat that runs for three and a half miles from the Golden Horn to the Propontis, making a virtual island of the city. The walls are punctuated by enormous square towers and entered through a dozen gates. Some of these gates are splendid constructions of marble and gilded iron, others are smaller and merely utilitarian. The Fifth Military Gate was one of these. It was the weakest spot in the wall because at that point the land dips into a valley and the moat drains into the river. The gate does not lead to any public thoroughfare and there are no monasteries in the neighborhood. Harald had chosen it carefully.

  That afternoon I had sent my Greek cavalry officer to Harald’s farmhouse with a message purporting to be from Maniakes. I’d written it in camp after the battle and sealed it with his own seal. The general (it said) was nearing the city with a flying column of cavalry. Harald and his men were to go to the gate at moonrise tonight, overpower the garrison—manned only by a few ill-paid mercenaries—and open the inner and outer doors. Then Harald would show a lantern from the top of the wall and Maniakes would charge in at the head of eight-hundred lancers, trumpets blowing, banners flying. With the city stripped of soldiers, he could seize the palace with ease.

  While the officer was delivering this message to Harald, I went to the gate, just at dusk when the guards were bolting the doors, identified myself, and warned them to be ready. All I needed them to do was hold the gate, we would do the rest.

  When Harald and his men were almost close enough to touch, we leapt at them out of the dark, bellowing all around them to make ourselves sound more numerous than we were. “Maniakes is dead!” I shouted, “throw down your weapons. You’re under arrest.” Gorm and I together tackled Harald, threw him down on the ground and bound his arms and legs with ropes we had brought.

  He thrashed and bared his teeth. “Kill me then, Tangle-Hair. You wasted your last chance. But you haven’t got the guts, have you, you coward.”

  “Cut your throat now? That’s too easy a death, Harald. When the Greeks finish with you, you’ll wish I had killed you.” I drove the pommel of my sword into his teeth and then hauled him to his feet.

  Halldor put up a fight but we overpowered him. The others surrendered meekly. When the fighting was safely over—and it was over in a moment—the garrison soldiers emerged from their blockhouse and offered to help us guard our prisoners. I made the mistake of letting them. And it was then that Ulf Ospaksson kneed one of them in the stomach, wrenched free and dashed away into the night. We’ll catc
h him later, I remember thinking.

  Ten days later, Pergamenus and the army returned, marching in triumph through the Golden Gate. The whole city poured out to cheer them. Maniakes’s head preceded them on the point of a lance. Six of his officers were tied backwards on the rumps of asses with their heads shaved and their faces smeared with dung. Monomachus rode out to meet the procession dressed in full regalia and mounted on a white horse, as though this were his victory instead of the product of his weakness. Sclerena, of course, was there with her brother Sclerus, whose foolish spite had nearly brought down the dynasty. After this, the celebrations went on for days with pageants and parades and public banquets and basketfuls of coins showered on the crowd—all paid for out of our dwindling treasury. Pergamenus was rewarded with Maniakes’s Anatolian estates. I was honored with the ceremonial sword of a manglabites and the rank of protospatharios—the same rank that had been given to Harald once.

  Harald.

  What to do with him? We argued over it in the Emperor’s council chamber. He and his men were now prisoners in the underground cells beneath the Baths of Zeuxippos (the same in which he had once tortured Zoe’s servants). Would we let them rot there? No one wanted to charge them with sedition. We could not afford to admit publicly that Varangians, for the first time in their history, had joined an insurrection against an Emperor. But we could, at least, charge Harald with theft: all the purloined gold that had been discovered in the well behind Constantine’s house. If Harald hadn’t actually stolen it, he had spent it freely. Constantine could be dragged out of his monastic prison to give evidence against him. So that was decided. But how to punish him?

  “Blind him!” cried Zoe, stabbing the air with a shaking finger. “Cut off his ears and nose and send him to a monastery.” Poor, put-upon Zoe. Years of bitterness were finding their voice at last. Pergamenus and Sclerena agreed with her and so did Theodora, who was acting less like a nun every day.

  “And what is your opinion, Commandant?” the Emperor asked me.

  I’d been brooding over this for days, of course. Harald mutilated and humiliated? What a tempting thought. But the shame it would bring on the Guard—no, I had a responsibility to protect their honor. “Better a quick and quiet death in his cell,” I said finally. “Halldor too. Release the rest and dismiss them from the Guard.”

  But Psellus, who as Logothete cared most about foreign affairs, reminded the Emperor that Harald was a royal prince of Norway, and did we want to bring those savage people down on us? Didn’t we have enough enemies without that?

  “Norway’s far away,” I said, “and King Magnus has no love for Harald.”

  But Psellus insisted, “Harald has connections with the Rus, too, and God knows those people have done us great damage in the past. No, it’s too dangerous.”

  “More dangerous than leaving him in prison? To do nothing is cowardice.”

  “Tangle-Hair, to do nothing is sometimes the better course,” he replied sharply.

  Psellus and I rarely disagreed but we were both angry now.

  “Enough,” cried Monomachus, holding up his hands. “I do believe it’s time for lunch. We’ll take this up again another day.” Argument always upset his digestion.

  But the weeks went by and that day never seemed to come.

  One night around this time I awoke from a restless sleep. I rose from bed, pulled a fleece around my shoulders, shuffled into my shoes, and went out onto the terrace. We lived now in a handsome two-storied mansion on the Horn, near the Gate of Saint John. It had once been Harald’s. I leaned on the balustrade and looked out across the water, dappled with moonlight. Beneath me, the city slept. This city of burnished gold and rotting filth, of beauty and cruelty, of piety and cunning. The city guarded by God, the Greeks liked to say. No. Guarded by me, with my life.

  Selene came up quietly and stood beside me; she put her arm through mine. “You were talking in your sleep.”

  “Saying anything I shouldn’t have?” I tried to smile.

  “In your language. What were you dreaming?”

  “Something to do with my mother, I think. Doesn’t matter.” Jorunn Ship-Breast. It was her face I had seen, tear-stained, half-hidden by her streaming hair, leaning over me, the night she sent my brother and me to find our sister’s killer. I had woken up with my heart pounding. “It’s gone now, whatever it was.”

  I felt Selene stiffen. “Your mother is your native land, that’s what the dream books say. You do want to go back, don’t you?”

  “Selene, hush.” I put my arm around her waist and held her close. “This is my home. There’s nothing for me back there. That’s all past.”

  “Dearest, we think we leave our past behind but sometimes it reaches out and pulls us back when we least expect it.”

  “Not me.”

  “Then what did it mean, your dream?”

  “No idea. I don’t believe in dreams or sneezes.”

  She gave a little laugh. “You’re a bad liar,” she said. “Come back to bed now. Make love to me. And dream no more.”

  46

  Yelisaveta’s Tale

  Spring, A. D. 1043

  Yelisaveta Yaroslavna kicks her stallion to a gallop, splashes across a stream and through a stand of birches just coming into leaf, her long yellow hair streaming out behind her, her hawk riding on her fist, the greyhounds racing beside her. Ahead of her is her dacha, a neat little house of painted shingles and pointed eaves, her own house, where she never has to lay eyes on Ingigerd, her mother. Behind her rides her brother Vladimir and the others of their party. It has been a good day, her first hunt since the snows melted; she is bringing back ermine, weasel, hare, a baby fox.

  Inside the garden gate she leaps from her lathered mount, tosses the reins to a groom, and runs into the house. With one motion, she flings off her cape and takes a proffered goblet of hot wine from Ala, her dwarf.

  “Mistress, you have visitors,” Ala says. “Two foreigners came this morning, Varangians they said. They wanted a bath, I sent them to the sauna.”

  “Then fetch them out.” She slaps the foolish girl on the cheek.

  Varangians! She feels her heart beating. Can it be? At last?

  She tosses down another draught of the wine, trying to calm herself. Meanwhile, her brother has slipped in through the door. Vladimir, at twenty, is five years younger than she. He is the only one in the family she loves.

  “Volodya, it’s him!”

  But it isn’t him, after all.

  Two blond-bearded strangers appear in the doorway, shepherded by Ala, their faces red and hair damp from the sauna. Bolli Bollason and Ulf Ospaksson; they introduce themselves, speaking in Norse, a language she has hardly spoken since the day Harald fled from Novgorod, leaving her behind, a heart-broken girl of fifteen. She cannot hide her fear.

  “Harald Sigurdsson? He isn’t ..?” Her throat is tight.

  “He isn’t dead, Princess,” says the one called Bolli. “But he soon may be, or he may be blinded, or castrated. He is a prisoner these eight months. Sometimes he gets a message out to us—”

  “So long!”

  “We couldn’t come sooner. Storms at sea, your Russian winter. Take us to your father now. Only with his help is there a hope of rescuing Harald.”

  Yaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Kievan Rus, is in his study, as usual, hunched over a book, a fur cap on his balding head and a rug over his knees against the cold. He is called ‘The Wise’ because he owns dozens of books in both Slavonic and Greek, and has even written a book of laws for his turbulent nation. But as a husband and a father? Perhaps not so wise. He looks up, blinking his watery eyes, as his children and two strangers enter.

  “Young Harald in prison? But how can it be?” His hands flutter, he touches his white beard.

  Bolli and Ulf, both speaking at once, pour out their well-rehearsed story. How the noble Harald was accused—unjustly—of rebelling against the Emperor, betrayed by his best friend, Odd Thorvaldsson, who schemed to get the post
of Commandant for himself. At the mention of that name, Yelisaveta and Vladimir exchange a swift look. That youth with the shaggy black hair and glib tongue, Harald’s skald, clever at languages. A pagan, and didn’t care who knew it.

  And their mother’s lover.

  “Dear God,” cries Yaroslav. “Of course, we must rescue him … my daughter … and he … but how ..?” As the old man struggles with his words, there is the sound of a hacking cough from the doorway. Ingigerd, his wife, stands there, steadying herself with a hand on the jamb.

  Yaroslav winces. “Yes, well, come in, my dear, we’ve just had some terrible—”

  She takes them all in with a cold stare. The woman is more than fifty years old, the mother of ten children; she is bone thin, her skin like paper, and she has a sickness in her lungs. How much longer can she live? Only willpower keeps her going. Willpower and rage. She already knows what news these Varangians bring. She has a spy in her daughter’s house.

  “Harald Sigurdsson in prison? Let his great carcass rot there. We haven’t heard from him in so long I dared hope he was dead.” A coughing fit overcomes her and she sinks onto a chair.

  “Why must you hate him so, Mother?” Yelisaveta screams at her, making white-knuckled fists of her hands. “He came to us just a boy, seeking refuge with us, but you treated him like an enemy from the first day.”

  “You know why,” Ingigerd hisses.

  Yes, they all know why. All, that is, except innocent Yaroslav. As long as Harald lives, Magnus Olafsson, the young King of Norway, will never be safe on his throne. Ingigerd will do anything to protect Magnus, whose father she loved.

  “I am nearly an old woman already, Mother. If I cannot marry Harald I will die, unloved, a virgin. Is that what you want for me?”