Haraldr smiled, grateful for his friends but unable to share their belief in him. He had thought that his newly won wealth would open the gates to the Imperial Palace immediately, and it was his secret, desperate hope that even Mar would be so impressed by his coup that he would accept him as a valued and respected ally. Mar. No word from him, either. The knifing guilt that he had not, could not, tell everything to his pledge-men. And each passing hour tightened the fetters of anxiety. Haraldr could almost sense his destiny being determined by forces beyond his reach, perhaps even beyond his knowing. Was Mar himself devising his use for Haraldr, or were others now taking up the threads of his fate, and those of the five hundred he had pledged to lead? Two days ago he had been a triumphant god. Now, waiting outside the walls of the Empress City like the mendicants outside his own gate, he was but an infant desperate for his mother’s breast.
‘Haraldr Nordbrikt! Haraldr Nordbrikt!’ Marmot-Man tugged on Haraldr’s sleeve. ‘You must talk to Euthymius!’
Haraldr took his sword from his scabbard and checked its polish and edge against the light from the freshly lit oil-light. Night was falling quickly, and the sky smelled almost like damp earth. ‘Is a Euthymius a merchant?’ he snapped. ‘An agent for some property owner? A tax collector? A whore? If it is any of those, I’d like to test my blade on this Euthymius.’
‘No, no, Haraldr Nordbrikt, indeed he is not, indeed. He is Euthymius.
The
Euthymius. You can’t imagine what his coming here means. Quickly, Haraldr Nordbrikt, quickly!’
The man who strode jauntily through the doorway was tall, perceptibly bony even in his stiff robe of damson silk, and he moved so strangely that Haraldr wondered for a moment if a Euthymius was another of the Emperor’s magical metal beings. This note of artificiality was heightened by the man’s face, which lay beneath more paint than Haraldr had ever seen on man or woman; it was as if Euthymius had been lacquered and dipped in wax. His long, sweeping golden hair scarcely seemed more real - had it been hammered from brass? - and his equally golden, pointed beard might have been bevelled with a chisel. He spoke, in Greek, without prompting, and sounded as if he were projecting his words through a large tin funnel.
‘Haraldr Nordbrikt, Slayer of Saracens, to whom brilliant Achilleus and resourceful Odysseus and indeed the entire host of strong-greaved Achaians are but phantom mists seared to oblivion in the withering sunburst of your fame! Rise up, O former denizens of Olympus, a man lives among us who would be our successor to your Heracles! Rise up, O Christendom, embrace your new champion! Rise up, O ye firmament that doth illuminate our flickering lives. A new beacon is set among you!’
Euthymius advanced, fell to the floor, and threw his arms around Haraldr’s new leather boots. ‘Haraldr Nordbrikt, I greet you with as much felicity as can surmount the towering edifice of reverence already constructed to your immortal memory!’
Haraldr understood only a fragment of this; he had been told of Odysseus and Achilleus and Heracles, heroes of the ancient Greeks, and he knew the terms for
ghosts
and
sun.
But he hardly needed a complete translation to understand what a Euthymius was; he had finally met a Roman skald.
‘Tell him I thank him for his verses,’ Haraldr told Marmot-Man, ‘Unfortunately I have both Ulfr and Thorfinn the Otter to serve me in the role of skald, and possibly Grettir before too long. Besides, from the look of him, even now I could not afford his upkeep. But tell him his verses would surely please Odin, our patron of poets.’
‘No, no, Haraldr Nordbrikt, this is
the
Euthymius, as he urges me to tell you, “impresario of entertainments, husbander of amusements, commander of an army of mirth”. He offers you one of his amusements, celebrated in the Hippodrome and throughout the Empire. Theatre. Dance. Song. Comedy. Drama. All specially created for the entertainment of you and your men. Believe me, Haraldr Nordbrikt, this is an honour you will enjoy beyond all others!’
‘I will be all right, Nicetas.’ Maria whisked her hands gracefully at the concerned-looking eunuch. He bowed and retreated into the villa.
Maria turned to Giorgios. ‘How did you find me?’
Giorgios’s face was flushed from his run up the flight of marble steps, and contorted with pain. ‘I followed the Imperial galley. I thought you might be on it.’ He did not need to remind her that he had been trying to see her for weeks, and that her servants and guards had rebuffed every attempt.
‘This is my villa,’ Maria said. She stood on the portico with her arms folded beneath her breasts, as if defending it. Behind her, the great cities on either shore of the Bosporus were framed by scudding rain clouds and metal-hued water; her villa was on the Asian side, to the north of Chrysopolis. ‘I don’t want you here.’
Giorgios’s brown eyes were wet with confusion and sincerity. ‘I can’t play this game any longer. I am useless without you. You must . . . please.’
Maria stepped towards him, her jaw tensed. ‘I know more amusing games. This is not love play, little boy. I have refused to see you because I do not want to see you.’
Giorgios swallowed as if preparing to attempt some athletic feat. ‘You said you loved me. The things we have done . . .’
‘Do you think you are the only man I have done those things with? You saw me do some of them with Alex. I despised him. It would make you sick if you knew some of the men I have been a whore to, and what I have asked them to do to me. And what I have done to them.’
Giorgios sprang forward, seized her arms, and shook her like a doll for a moment. When he stopped, his lower lip quivered. ‘Why did you ever say you loved me? You must despise me too.’
‘I did love you.’
‘Then why. . . ?’
‘Why do I no longer love you?’ she asked rhetorically. ‘You were only beautiful when I hurt you. You only had life when I caused you pain. I could no longer go on creating you anew each time.’ Maria’s eyes were cast down, and her tone was inexpressibly melancholy. ‘I realized I can only love a man whose pain I do not have to provide. A man bereaved in a way I cannot understand, so that I must enter him when he enters me and find the thorn that has impaled his soul. In you I could only find myself.’ Her pearl-like teeth nibbled at her wine-dark lower lip. ‘And I am empty. I am as cold and dark as the deepest abyss.’
‘There is another man?’ Giorgios sounded curiously hopeful, as if he could deal with that eventuality. It was the utter frigidity of her demeanour that baffled and frightened him.
‘There is no one. You were the last man in my bed. If I could both love you and be kind to you, I would love you still.’
Giorgios’s mouth trembled with anguish. He squeezed her shoulders gently, and when he closed his eyes, tears spilled to his cheeks. Clutching his forearms, she removed his hands from her shoulders. ‘Farewell, Giorgios.’
An awful, muffled keening came from Giorgios’s throat and he fell to his knees. The tip of his bronze scabbard clattered on the marble paving stones. He wrenched his sword free and with trembling arms held it to his own throat. ‘I want you to see the wound in my heart,’ he sobbed. ‘I want you to see the proof of my pain!’ His neck corded against the sheer, polished steel.
Maria’s eyes were uninterested, seemingly dulled by the baleful pigmentation of the Bosporus. ‘I am cold, Giorgios. I am going inside. Please go before I call for my guards.’
She walked swiftly past Giorgios and disappeared into the pillared entrance. After a moment Giorgios lowered his sword and sobbed quietly, still on his knees. He finally left an hour after dark.
Euthymius’s little army of mirth put the finishing touches on their courtyard theatre; the stage they had erected, with its gilded proscenium and brocaded curtains, was as splendid as the palace of a Norse king. Neither Haraldr nor any of his men could divine the use of the rest of the apparatus this ‘impresario’ had assembled, but the Varangians, who had already littered the courtyard with empty kegs, jars and wineskins, were loudly speculating on the possibilities offered by the dozens of variously costumed, lithe young women - all painted nearly as brightly as Euthymius himself- who scurried about, trilled brief notes, or performed agile exercises. Haraldr had nearly choked when Marmot-Man had first proposed Euthymius’s ‘expenses and honorarium - the rest of his costs are an offering, a veritable human sacrifice, to the Herculean demigod, the Slayer of Saracens, and his dauntless band of incorruptible Christian heroes.’ But now, even before this ‘amusement’ had begun, Haraldr knew that the gold spent would be more than recaptured in the heightened spirit of his men.
The performance opened with an explosion of two dozen male and female athletes, clad only in loincloths spangled with shiny, rainbow-coloured metal bits, who could spin like tops, roll like hoops, and whirl through the air like throwing axes; eventually they built a human tower crowned with the bare-breasted women. Then came dogs that dressed and walked as men; monkeys that raced into the audience and plucked coins from men’s purses, then danced in celebration; a lion whose roar seemed to shake the walls, then a lion with stripes; a striped horse with a neck so long, it seemed certain he would topple over; and finally an incredible beast with a back that reached to the second-storey balcony, legs shaped exactly like tree trunks, and most wondrous of all, a snout as long as a man was tall that could also pluck coins from the audience (leading Halldor to ask if there was any living creature in Constantinople that could
not
find a man’s purse).
Then came the truly extraordinary portion of the amusement, if indeed this was an amusement at all. It was well past midnight, the Varangians roaring with wine and lust, when a chorus trilled and the stage was momentarily screened. The brocade curtains parted, and the music, provided by a portable pipe organ, droned dramatically.
‘I’ll draw the curtain! You find Euthymius!’ Haraldr shouted to Halldor. Wearing purple brocade, a dark, full beard, and an elaborate sparkling diadem, the first actor was clearly a representation of the Emperor. Haraldr’s heart screamed with alarm as he rushed to the stage. Was this a plot to involve them in a treason? Clever, indeed!
‘Haraldr Nordbrikt! Haraldr Nordbrikt!’ shrieked Marmot-Man as he clung desperately to Haraldr’s thigh. ‘Haraldr Nordbrikt, you must stop! Please! If only for a moment!’
Haraldr finally gave up. He was not making much progress through the crowd - the Varangians kept clasping him gratefully - and the enactment was rapidly proceeding. The mock Emperor had already been followed onto the stage by a second, thinner actor, also dressed in mock Imperial raiment, and then three younger, purple-robed women: one beautiful, one less attractive, and one wearing a mask representing some sort of pox or skin disfigurement. These five characters burst into simultaneous action. The first Emperor mimed the defeat of numerous men, in rough brown tunics who streamed endlessly onto the stage; the thinner, purple-clad man drank from a wineskin and rolled dice; the beautiful woman primped and dabbed paint on her face; the plainer woman looked on enviously; and the ugly one retired to a corner and knelt in prayer.
‘Haraldr Nordbrikt!’ gasped the shaken Marmot-Man. ‘You must know that this is customary among the Romans. It is permitted to lampoon the Emperor even should he himself be seated among us. In fact, there has never been an Autocrator who did not himself witness at least one such performance at his expense. Believe me, Haraldr Nordbrikt. Euthymius says he has prepared this mime particularly for you!’
Haraldr understood. A Norse king would also permit a skald to jest with him. Of course, the skald who dared such jibes was like the man who hunted walrus alone in a small boat; if he was not extremely skilled, he was dead. Haraldr waved Halldor back, and they stood together to watch the show.
‘Basil the Bulgar-Slayer?’ asked Halldor as the first stage Emperor continued to bash various mock enemies.
‘I think so,’ said Haraldr. ‘Bulgars wear those brown tunics.’ Suddenly the Bulgar-Slayer slumped motionless to the floor, and the other actors indulged in great floor pounding and wailing. The Bulgar-Slayer’s crown was handed to the thinner man who after placing the diadem on his head paused and appraised the beautiful woman and the not-so-beautiful woman; the disfigured woman apparently had disappeared, though Haraldr had not noticed her departure from the stage. Another actor, a rather elderly man in a green robe, entered, and with elaborate comic motions the Emperor urged the not-so-beautiful woman to embrace this new character, but she merely turned her head and turned up her nose. Then the Emperor cajoled the beautiful woman, and after considerable reluctance she finally took the green-robed old man in her arms; the not-so-beautiful woman erupted into hysterical, mocking laughter. The Emperor threw up his arms in glee, promptly fell in a heap, and the beautiful woman picked up his crown and purple robe and gave them to her aged companion. Once crowned, this new Emperor piled bricks into little walls and sprinkled them with coins, to the accompaniment of long-haired men who threw pages torn from books in the air and shouted in a nonsense language.
Then something quite remarkable happened. The pace of the actors’ movements slowed, the music became funereal, and a towering black-frocked monk entered, mounted on a real horse, and pranced about the stage.
‘Not the black-frock you saw at Nicephorus Argyrus’s?’ asked Halldor.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps we have reached the present Emperor. This one is certainly portrayed as a buffoon.’
The black-frock paused for a moment to study the new Emperor and the beautiful woman, who had turned their backs to each other. The monk cantered offstage for a moment, and when he returned, another man, much younger than the Emperor and clad in a very plain yellow wool robe, rode behind him on the horse. Both men dismounted, and the monk took the yellow-robed man by the hand, pointed out to him the apparently feuding Imperial couple, gave him a pat and a kiss as one might to a young child, and shooed him over to the woman. The beautiful woman took the yellow-robed man’s hand, held it shyly for a moment, then devoured him with kisses, knocking him to the floor.