Haraldr scarcely noticed the clicking feet around him. The Topoteretes, one of the eunuchs who had attended the Emperor, and the black-frock interpreter had taken him completely across the palace grounds, past even the huge silver-domed cathedral. Now he looked up at the sheer, round tower that brooded over the entrance to the harbour, a doleful stone shadow against the shimmering harbour beyond. His mind was a tempest of suspicions and fears.
The entrance to the sinister turret was a steel door set into grim, cinereous granite. The Topoteretes spoke to Haraldr; for once John the frog-faced interpreter seemed eager to translate.
‘Do you know this place?’
Haraldr shook his head. The tower was a giant crypt; it even smelled of death.
‘It is called Neorion Tower. Pray to your god that you are never invited to stay the night here.’
Unseen machinery seemed to crank the steel door open. Gloom, wet and decay seeped into the sunlight. As the shadows engulfed him Haraldr felt that he was entering the dark world of spirits.
Two dozen Khazar guards armed with swords stood watch in a perfectly barren room that seemed even darker because of the flickering lamps that could only establish dirty brown penumbrae in the foul pall. A Roman officer approached and inspected passes. Machinery clanked again. Stairs fell from the ceiling.
The Topoteretes led Haraldr and John up the wooden steps and into a narrow, sooty shaft encasing stone stairs that spiralled endlessly up. Oil-lamps in the form of wolves sputtered greasily. At intervals dark steel doors waited next to narrow stone landings. Haraldr could only observe all of this with nightmare acuity; like a man in a dream, his fate was no longer subject to reason or even speculation. It was as if the ascent were actually a journey deep into the Underworld. What demons awaited?
The Topoteretes rapped on steel, and an almost obscured grate slid aside. The entire door wrenched open. At once Haraldr smelled the carrion the ravens would take from this place, and his weary stomach heaved. He coughed to disguise his retching.
They followed a guard down a long corridor; the dingy walls seemed to radiate cold, as if they were not blocks of stone but dirty ice. The darkness and the smell of death and spoil and new blood were suffocating. The walls closed like black jaws.
A grimy steel door groaned like the dead and took them in. Lights flickered. Enormous steel double doors faced Haraldr across what seemed to be the ante-chamber to a fair-sized hall. A man was seated at a small table to Haraldr’s right, his massive, dark shoulders hunched over as he studied papers by the light of a table lamp.
Haraldr knew the man, and his own fate, as soon as the monk’s huge head lifted to confront him. Joannes.
Joannes’s eyes were hot charcoal bits with a faint nimbus of red. What seemed a flat statement rumbled from the tomb of his breast.
‘You know him,’ said the interpreter.
Haraldr looked directly at Joannes and nodded. The monk’s voice pounded again.
‘Do you know this seal?’
Haraldr was startled. The monk’s curiously flattened fingertip pushed a small folded document, addressed with a few lines of Greek, across the tabletop; the attached lead seal was intact. Haraldr leaned forward, feeling as if he were coming too close to a dangerous wild beast. He recognized the tiny sword arm at once; it was identical to the wax fragment he had studied a thousand times. The complete figure was a man armoured like the typical Roman military officer. ‘Yes,’ Haraldr answered grimly. ‘I think it belongs to the murderer.’ And then he asked Joannes silently:
Are you the murderer? If you are, before I die - and take you with me to the spirit world
–
I must barter for the lives of my pledge-men.
Joannes glanced once at a paper before him; the document was covered with dozens of lengthy Roman numbers and haphazard lines of Greek writing. He settled back in his chair and looked at Haraldr carefully. Haraldr was aware of a faint sound, almost like a spirit moaning from the depths. His nerves were shards. The monk spoke.
‘You were the victim of a plot. The late Manglavite had a criminal associate, a middle-ranking Roman military officer, in the palace. This associate, deprived of his nefarious income by the death of the Manglavite, sought revenge against you and carried out his plot with professional stealth.’
Haraldr nodded, and relief began to fill him like a warm draught. This was more than plausible. He and Halldor and Ulfr had perhaps been overly impressed with their importance among these Romans; they had not considered that Hakon would have had friends, co-conspirators at court, lesser men who might have acted entirely without the knowledge of Mar or Joannes. But the monk now telling him this had a face no man could trust.
‘The murderer has already reaped the whirlwind of your Father’s implacable justice. Do you wish to see the vengeance God grants the Emperor of the Romans?’
The huge steel doors at the back of the ante-chamber slid open, and two men brought out a canvas-shrouded parcel on a pallet. The intestinal stench engulfed Haraldr like the breath of a howling carnivore. The pallet was set down and the shroud pulled away.
The lump of gristle, bowels, glistening organs and stacked appendages was surmounted by a helmet of flayed, featureless viscera; incredibly, the teeth still chattered.
‘Yes. This lives, for a moment still. You may finish him, or leave him to contemplate further the immutable virtue and implacable will of Roman justice.’
Haraldr turned away from the horrifying bundle. If this was the murderer, then the soul of Asbjorn Ingvarson had been avenged in kind.
Joannes spoke at length, then watched Haraldr keenly during the translation.
‘I understand that you saw our Father this very hour. Let me explain to you what occurred, to put your mind at ease. His Imperial Majesty enjoys the company of holy men like myself, some of whom are given, unlike myself, to convulsive visions that yield extraordinary prophecies. It was discerned by His Imperial Majesty that the monk you saw during your interview was about to experience one of these transports, and he did not want to trouble you with the monk’s outburst, for many things are said that would summon demons if they were heard by ears innocent of the knowledge to resist them.’
The interpreter paused and conversed with Joannes, apparently to straighten out something the monk had said, and then continued the translation. ‘Nordbrikt, I am aware that you have recently been exposed to the fantasies of naked chorus-girls and sotted actors, and perhaps you have mistaken these shameless libels as some accurate representation of my humble role in the vast scheme of Roman power. You must understand now that you and I merely serve the same master. I am friend of all who truly love the Emperor, unrelenting foe of those who would try to deceive or harm him.’
After this translation Joannes began again, and Haraldr focused on the face of the giant monk. True, the monk seemed to be the living face of evil. And yet when Joannes spoke of the Emperor, the passion in his countenance had transformed it; the love that had radiated from that monstrous visage was too fierce - as fierce, in its way, as the Rage - to have been feigned. Haraldr could trust nothing about this monk, except that Joannes truly loved the Emperor whom he served. And perhaps that was a common turf on which they could meet.
The translation began again. ‘You have been successful here, Nordbrikt, and yet you have held your arms out to death more times than is prudent even for a man who apparently sits in fortune’s lap. You are of no use to anyone if you continue to use your life as the vane to detect the direction of the winds of Roman power. You are a seafaring man, of some renown now, and you would not go into strange waters without a pilot. Just so, you need a guide to plot your course through the shoals of our Roman system. You need a patron who can see that opportunities, not deadly obstacles, are placed in your path.’
Again the interpreter paused for clarification, then quickly resumed the translation. ‘I would like to sponsor you. Not formally; certainly neither of us will have occasion to recall this conversation to others. But when your course needs proper steering, I will be there.’
Haraldr soberly considered the monk’s words. Olaf had once told him that the best tutor in games of power was the man other men feared and avoided, not the man who nightly drew the skalds to flatter him and heap him with praise. But a powerful instinct warned him that this monk’s lessons might well be fatal. Still, the faith they shared in one man was enough to tip the scales. And what would he gain by refusing?
‘I share your devotion to our Father,’ said Haraldr, searching for the correct tone; with the Romans, it was obvious one always had to speak as artificially and obsequiously as a skald. ‘I believe your offer to be the most generous gift I have received here, even more generous than the gift given me by the Saracen pirates I recently met. I am grateful, and in need of any assistance your offices might provide.’ As his response was translated and Joannes replied in Greek, Haraldr studied the monk’s distorted features and remembered his fleeting perceptions in the presence of the Emperor. Strange, he thought, and unlikely, but it would explain much. He abandoned the notion when the Norse translation began.
‘Good. I have a letter for you bearing my seal. It contains no threats or warnings. It is rather an introduction to my brother, the Strategus - that means the military governor - of Antioch, a city you will pass through on your Holy mission to Jerusalem. I want you to be known to my brother, and he to you. I also have a nephew there, about your age, though he sadly lacks your ambition. Perhaps he could learn from you.’
Joannes reviewed his own concerns during the translation. The assassin had died before he had revealed the truth; Joannes was certain of that. He looked again at the seal he had shown the hapless Nordbrikt. The Grand Domestic Bardas Dalassena was just arrogant and stupid enough to have put his personal seal on such a crude enterprise. Yes, this would have been his fashion, but the indisputable fact was that the by now demon-racing assassin had named the Grand Domestic far too early in the interrogation and had lingered far too painfully while insisting that he was telling the truth. Someone else was using the Grand Domestic to screen his own intentions. But who? Surely the Hetairarch Mar Hunrodarson did not know that Joannes had already moved to pre-empt the Hetairarch’s proposed expansion of the Varangian Guard.
Joannes refused to consider further the myriad possibilities. He tried to look composed as the obviously befuddled Varangian Nordbrikt was led away. He chided himself for the time wasted on this inconsequential project. Varangians, even the Hetairarch, were hardly worth the effort. Not now. Not when so much else was at stake.
Joannes lowered his head to the paper-strewn table and went home to Amastris, to the time when his being had split into the two persons who now so desperately struggled to achieve a single voice. He felt the hot dust on his lips and lay again on his back, the pain still in his testicles, his arms strapped to his sagging cot so that he would not loosen the ligature. Michael, dear little Michael, crawled, stumbled, shakily stood and gurgled beside him. The infant grabbed for his brother’s finger, caught hold and held, cooing with delight. And the love entered Joannes, and the pain vanished.
Back in the Neorion Tower, watched only by a corpse without eyes, the huge black-cloaked shoulders of the monk trembled with sobs. ‘Michael, Michael, dear little Michael,’ he murmured, choking with grief. ‘Now you are afflicted and is there nothing I can do to succour you?’
So you are not keeping company with either of those boys?’ As she waited for Maria’s answer the Augusta Theodora sipped from a goblet fashioned of embossed gold leaf pressed between clear glass. She was fond of elaborate table settings, but otherwise the apartments in her country palace were almost barren; the only decoration on the dull terre-verte marble walls of her dining chamber was a small enamelled icon of the Virgin, framed in gold.
‘No.’ Maria paused for a silver forkful of fish. ‘It was a mistake. They say that love is a flower that can only bloom once. If it withers without bearing fruit, there will never be another blossom. My first man was a mistake, and so all of the rest have been.’
‘I wish you could forget about that, darling. No one blames you.’ Maria took several silent bites while Theodora watched her expectantly. ‘I think you might be happier if you tried to remain chaste,’ Theodora finally said. ‘And as much as I am concerned about your journey, darling, I feel that this pilgrimage will be a salve to your soul. Allow the Christ to fill your heart. The Patriarch has helped me to see that when we love the Christ, we are never without love.’ Alexius, Patriarch of the One True Oecumenical, Orthodox and Catholic Faith had become Theodora’s spiritual adviser and personal friend during her exile.
Maria ran her tongue over her teeth. ‘Alexius is as determined as Joannes to keep you and your sister apart.’
‘My sister is determined to keep us apart. She will always blame me for Romanus. That I refused him and she was forced to marry him. I thought that it would all be buried in the same crypt as Romanus. But it will always be there.’
‘Joannes is responsible for this breach. He never could stand up to the two of you together. He told the Emperor lies about you, and the Emperor repeated them to Zoe. You believe anything from the mouth that drinks your soul.’
‘Emmanuel says that the Emperor has not taken that draught for some time. Perhaps on this pilgrimage she will have an opportunity to consider who truly loves her and who is merely using her.’ Theodora frowned like a troubled child.
‘I know how much she loves you. That is really the reason it was so easy to turn her against you.’ Maria tapped her goblet with her fingernail, a staccato pecking that went on for almost half a minute. ‘It is strange how thin the membrane of love is,’ she finally said, ‘and how precariously it withstands the pollutants of the soul. Sometimes when I am with a man I love, I feel that I can reach inside him and find only decay.’