Decadence is available to all; only with the rich it is better fed, better clothed, better bedded.
Cities were built for conquest, and I, a vagabond, must conquer this one with what weapons experience had provided.
To a man without money, for I could not call myself a poor man, the obvious way to riches was theft. Thievery, however, is a crime only for the very ignorant, in which only the most stupid would indulge. There is a crass vulgarity in theft, an indication that one lacks wit, and the penalties far outweigh the possible gain.
To a man in rags all doors are closed. In my present circumstances only the humbler occupations would be open. I, son of Kerbouchard the Corsair, a seafaring man, a swordsman, a merchant, a scholar, a linguist, a physician, and even an alchemist of sorts, had the possibilities of being an acrobat or a magician, but what trade is beyond a man with wit?
Of what use are abilities if they are unknown? To make them known, and myself, was now my problem.
My health and physique were now too poor to be an acrobat. As a magician I must fall far below the average in such a city. As a mercenary soldier the way to wealth was too long, and I had a father to find and, once found, to rescue.
Lacking the necessary clothing, I could not be a physician, for a ragged, ill-dressed physician inspires no confidence.
A storyteller, perhaps? A weaver of tales? Thus far my flights of fancy had been reserved for the ears of women, for long since I had observed that masculine beauty as an enticer of the female is much overrated. Women are led to the boudoir by the ears. For one who talks well, with a little but not too much wit, it is no problem.
Where women are concerned it is the sound of the voice, the words that are spoken, and the skill with which they are said, especially when combined with a little, but not too much, humility.
A few coins, just a few paltry dirhems, these I needed; so I would become a weaver of tales, since most who practiced that skill dressed in rags, anyway. By such means I would inform my listeners, if such there were to be, what manner of man I was.
Ayesha, drawn by some internal magic of her own, had brought me to the edge of a bazaar, and in the shadow of a great old building there was shade, and in the shade, a stone.
A stone polished, no doubt, by the posteriors of the idle poor. With the stone came inspiration. Tying Ayesha in the shade where she might poach a few leaves, I seated myself on the stone and looked about at the passersby and the loiterers.
Before I could open my mouth to speak there came a frantic roar, and a great, bearded booby of a man came rushing upon me, shouting and expostulating.
“Away! Be gone, vagabond! Do you not know that you have taken the seat of Abdullah, the storyteller?”
He loomed over me, his beard quivering with rage, his eyes bulging, his vast stomach agitated.
“I do not doubt,” I replied coolly, “that others have taken your seat, but I am not one of them. If it is this stone to which you refer, I found it unoccupied. Now, Father of Vermin, Son of Iniquity, begone! I am about to regale these gentlemen”—my gesture included the growing crowd of amused bystanders—“with the harrowing tale of a thief and the daughter of a sultan, a thief who crept into her bedchamber.”
“What?” He fairly screamed. “Nay! None shall tell stories upon this spot but Abdullah! Away, or I shall have out my sword!”
“Insect! You are too clumsy to hold a sword and too fat in the belly to see its point!”
The fat graybeard grasped his sword hilt threateningly. “Away! Or I shall have out thy heart! Draw your sword!”
“My mind is my sword,” I replied, “and if you linger you shall feel its edge.”
A crowd had gathered, eager as always to enjoy any argument or scuffle, and from their expressions they were pleased to see the pompous old storyteller getting the worst of it.
My eyes swept the crowd. Beggars and loiterers, but a few shopkeepers and artisans, also.
“What stories can you tell?” I scoffed. “You, who have done nothing but polish this stone with your fat behind? And I? What sea has not known my ship? What road has not left its dust upon my feet?”
He blustered and ranted and grasped his sword again, glaring wildly.
“Draw the sword,” I invited, “and I shall spank you with your own blade, or pluck your beard, hair by hair!
“Look upon him!” I gestured toward the huge stomach. “Is this bloated thing a teller of tales, or a concealer of wealth? It has been said that Abdullah the storyteller is really Abdullah the Tale-Bearer, receiving rewards for information.”
Leaning toward the crowd, with a wink to show I was not serious, I said, “Do you think that monstrous swelling is a stomach? If you do, you are fools. It is a huge sack in which he carries his wealth!”
Pointing at the huge stomach, I said, “I wonder how much wealth he conceals in that huge sack? Shall we open it and see?”
“No!” Abdullah shouted. “This man is a—!”
Drawing my dagger, I tested its edge with my thumb. “Come! Let us open this bag to see if I am mistaken or not. If I am wrong”—I threw my palms wide—“I will admit my mistake and apologize.
“Perhaps,” I said deprecatingly, “it is only wind! But let us see. Come, Abdullah! A fair test! Let us open the bag!” I glanced around at the crowd. “I will wager this bag is filled with coins! Who will take my wager?”
The crowd joined in, amused at Abdullah’s angry astonishment, an astonishment rapidly changing to protest and the beginnings of fear.
A huge-shouldered man with an exposed, hairy chest pushed through the crowd. “I wager it is nothing but wind! There are no coins there! I accept your challenge! Open it up!”
“Come, Abdullah, you are a sportsman! Help us to settle our wager!” I reached for his sash with my left hand, the dagger in my right.
He sprang back with amazing agility for such a huge man, but in so doing, he stumbled and fell into a pile of camel dung. “Come!” I protested. “Do not hide down there! I shall have your sack open in an instant!”
So saying, I grasped him by the beard, a deadly insult in any Moslem country, and held the point of my dagger at his fat belly.
Turning my hand, I struck him lightly in the belly with the fist that held the knife. “Here?” I asked the crowd. “Or shall we open it here?” And I struck him lightly in the side.
“Try it there!” The big-shouldered man pointed with a toe at a spot just below the wide sash.
“Perfect!” Releasing my grip upon his beard, I lifted the dagger. “Now—!”
He shot from under my dagger like an eel from a greased hand, lunged to his feet, half fell against the building, and then fled, followed by the laughter of the crowd.
Some of the people began to drift off, but many remained. “There!” A Greek pointed to the rock. “You have dethroned the king, do you take his place and tell us a story!”
This Greek was a slender, graceful man in a rich semicircular cloak of maroon, decorated at the collar and lower hem with a richly jeweled band of embroidery. The jewels were pearls and garnets. Under it was a tunic that came almost to the knees. His legs were cross-gartered.
He gestured to Ayesha. “Your mare is of the blood. Such a mare would be the pride of a king.”
“There are kings and kings,” I said, “and the mare is mine.”
From his sash he took a coin and tossed it to me with a careless gesture. It winked gold in the sunlight as I took it deftly from the air. “Come, Teller of Tales, let us hear what you can do.”
Bowing low, I spoke mockingly. “O Mighty One! What is your desire? Would you have a tale of the Caliph of Baghdad? Or from the siege of Troy? A reading from Aristophanes? From Firdausi? Or would you hear of far seas and lands unknown to the Byzantines?”
“Can there be such?” He lifted a supercilious eyebrow. “Byzanti
um is the center of the world!”
“Ah…?”
“You doubt it, vagabond?”
“I was remembering Rome, Carthage, Babylon, Nineveh…each in its time the center of the world, all ruins now.”
He was amused. “Do you imagine this city will be as those? You jest.”
“Had I asked in any of those cities, would anyone have believed they someday would lie in ruins? Each age is an age that is passing, and cities, my friend, are transitory things. Each is born from the dust; each matures, grows older, then it fades and dies. A passing traveler looks at a mound of sand and broken stones and asks ‘What was here?’ and his answer is only an echo or a wind drifting sand.”
Bowing again I said gently, “Perhaps your city will draw new life from the steppes, new blood.” I looked into his eyes and said, “Perhaps the blood here is thinning now, and perfume appreciated more than sweat.”
“You spoke of Troy? What know you of Troy?”
“Perhaps no more than Virgil knew, or Homer. Yet perhaps something more, for I myself have pulled an oar in a galley.”
“A slave? I suspected it.”
“Are we not all slaves, occasionally? To custom? To a situation? To an idea? Who among us is truly free, Byzantine? Yes, I have been a slave, but other things also, and a sailor upon Homer’s wine dark seas, as well as those unknown to Byzantines.”
“That again. What seas?”
“Have you read Pytheas? Or Scylax? Eudoxus? I have sailed seas Pytheas sailed. Shall I speak of them?”
“We would be diverted.” The Byzantine did not like me. “Tell us, vagabond, and if the tale be good you shall have another coin.”
“Know then”—I crossed my legs upon the polished stone—“that far to the west a cold finger of land thrusts into the dark waters of the sea called Atlantic. Strange and rockbound is that coast, and along its shores live a hardy folk who from ancient times have taken their living from the sea. From a time beyond memory they have quested far a-sea in search of fish.
“Know then, Byzantine, that long ago these men built great, oak-hulled ships that towered above the galleys of Rome; great ships they were with leathern sails and no oars. Within these ships men sailed to far lands, breasting the cold green seas to follow the trail of the great gray geese, which each year fly westward over colder and colder waters.
“They sailed to IceLand, GreenLand, even to the shores beyond.”
“Beyond?”
“There are always the shores beyond, for this have the gods given to men: that we shall always have those farther shores, always a dream to follow, always a sea for questing. For in this only is man great, that he must seek what lies beyond the horizons, and there is an infinity of horizons that lie ever waiting. Only in seeking is man important, seeking for answers, and in the shadow he leaves upon the land.”
“Shadow?”
“Man in himself is small, but his Parthenons, his pyramids, his St. Sophias, in these he conceives greatly and leaves the shadow of his passing upon the land.”
He did not like me, for I offended his ingrown sense of superiority. He was becoming aware of things he had not known, and the thought irritated him. Yet he studied me thoughtfully. “You appear to have some knowledge. From whence do you come?”
“From afar.” I did not like him, either.
“Do you wish to sell the mare?”
“No.”
“I might simply take her.” He measured me with cool attention, and I guessed him capable of trying.
“I would not,” I said, “for we understand each other, and I shall have her until one of us dies.”
“That might be arranged.”
That brought a smile, and the smile surprised him. “Then plan it well, Byzantine, for death is a visitor who can call upon any man.”
“You dare to threaten me?”
“Threaten?” My surprise was as genuine as I could make it. “I but made a philosophical comment.”
He tried to stare me down, to make my eyes yield. “I have thought”—he spoke coldly—“education to be a dangerous thing.”
“How would you know?” I asked.
He went white to the lips and stepped as if to strike me, but I did not move. “I would not,” I said, “unless you are prepared to accept the consequences.”
For a moment we were eye to eye, then he swept his cloak about him and walked away.
Nearby, a young man had stood listening. “You make enemies easily. The fat storyteller is nothing, but this man is dangerous.”
He seemed friendly, and I needed friends. “I am Kerbouchard, a wanderer.”
“And I am Phillip.”
“Of Macedon?” I smiled.
“Strangely enough…yes.”
My audience, if such they could be called, were drifting away.
“You are dusty from travel,” Phillip suggested, “why don’t you come with me?”
There was little I wanted more than a bath and a change of clothing, and the gold coins would help me to some simple dress at least.
We walked away, leading Ayesha, who had been very happy near the bazaar. Phillip spoke of the young aristocrat with whom I’d had words. “He is named Bardas, a close friend of Andronicus Comnenus, the cousin of the Emperor, Manuel I.”
A brilliant, erratic man, Andronicus was handsome, witty, and elegant, an athlete and warrior, beloved by the people who knew little of his true nature. He had been called the “Alcibiades of the Byzantine Age” and was adored by women, yet he was a perjurer, a hypocrite, and an intriguer.
He had gathered about him what was considered by many to be the intellectual and artistic elite…actually a group of bored men and libertines who were glib-tongued, talking much of art, literature, and music but without any deep-seated convictions upon any subject aside from their own prejudices. Mainly concerned with their own posturing, they were creatures of fad and whim, seizing upon this writer or that composer and exalting him to the skies until he bored them, then shifting to some other. Occasionally, the artists upon whom they lavished attention were of genuine ability, but more often they possessed some obscurity that gave the dilettantes an illusion of depth and quality. In the majority of cases what was fancied to be profound was simply bad writing, bad painting, or deliberately affected obscurity.
Suspected by Manuel of plotting against him, Andronicus had spent most of his life in exile. Now, at sixty, he had returned to the capital.
“Do not misunderstand,” Phillip warned. “Bardas not only has power but he is vindictive, and he is close to Andronicus, who can be fiendishly cruel.”
“It is unlikely I shall see him again,” I said. “I must find a way to earn money, and I shall rarely be in parts of the city where I am likely to meet him.”
“He prowls the markets,” my friend explained, “and might be anywhere. He dislikes women of his class and seeks out ugly, often dirty women from the slums. Except when with Andronicus, he avoids those who might be considered equals.
“He prefers women he despises and to whom he can be cruel without fear of retaliation. There has been talk of him in all quarters of the city.
“He maintains a group of ruffians who protect him. They are perjurers as well.”
Phillip’s house was a comfortable one, but ancient. The bath was a relic of Roman times, huge and luxurious. While I bathed he went to the market and bought clothes for me with the gold coins given by Bardas.
My problems were such as to discourage any man. My father was enslaved, suffering I knew not what indignities and torture. I was powerless against a castle that had defied the strongest kings, and the Old Man of the Mountain had spies everywhere. Even now they might know of me.
First, I must have a means to income. Behind lay the wreck of all I had done. Had our goods been sold, I should have been a wealthy man, free t
o move as I chose, even to hiring a group of mercenaries to assist me.
The Hansgraf was dead, all the members of the company I presumed dead, and if Suzanne lived, how could I go to her again with empty hands?
44
MY TWO PIECES of gold provided me with adequate clothing, and for that I owe thanks to Bardas, whatever else I thought of him or he of me.
After giving myself over to pure enjoyment of the hot, scented water, I began to consider my problem. My Druidic training taught me the basic principles of reasoning: to first define the problem, for a problem clearly defined is already half solved, to gather evidence pro and con, to discard the irrelevant, to formulate a tentative solution, and finally to put the solution to the test.
My problems were several. To recover my strength and health, for I would need them to bring about my father’s escape; to obtain money to pay my way; to rescue my father from the Valley of the Assassins.
First, I must consider my route from Constantinople to the Elburz Mountains and the fortress of Alamut. Also, there was the question of the identity I must assume to conceal my purpose. Furthermore, I must explore all the methods of entering the fortress itself.
The man who was Safia’s source of information must be reached.
A slave brought food and wine, and wrapped in a thick robe, I seated myself on a marble bench and began to eat. Phillip joined me, bringing two books, the Chronographia and the Alexiad. The former I had read, the latter I had not.
The first was by Michael Psellus, a young man whose life was devoted to scholarship and court affairs in the great years of the Byzantine Empire. Born in 1018, he spent his life at the imperial court, often in positions of importance.
The Alexiad was an account of Emperor Alexius I from 1069 to 1118, written by his daughter, Anna Comnena, one of the most brilliant women of her time.
Phillip broke bread and gestured to the books. “Books are rare in Byzantium now, but it was not always so. Once we had great schools, and books were plentiful, but the schools were abolished for religious reasons.”
The Walking Drum (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) Page 34