‘Shall I have Ignatius Attalietes sent to you? He and I had a brief . . . misunderstanding, but I assure you that now his greatest delight is to do what I bid him.’
‘It will be sufficient for you to speak in his stead, Hetairarch. I am well aware of your reputation for thorough interrogation.’
Mar went on to describe the plot as revealed in an antechamber of the Numera by the virtually hysterical Ignatius; a few seconds of listening to the screams of some of the other guests had turned the Attalietes scion into a pop-eyed, desperately rambling geyser of information. Enough information to expose the handprints of Joannes all over the entire scheme.
Theodora absorbed Mar’s account impassively. When he had finished, she rose quickly and lithely. She walked half a circuit of her apartment’s bare, dull marble walls, then stopped to look out of an arched window towards the distant city; Constantinople was invisible in the mist. When she turned back to Mar, her faced seemed pinched, even smaller than usual. ‘How would you check Joannes, Hetairarch? You acknowledge his freshly wrought alliance with the Attalietes clique, but you did not mention that Joannes, now equipped with the resources of the Dhynatoi, is sponsoring a rival to you, the Tauro-Scythian who effected the rescue of my sister. This Haraldr whose name is on everyone’s lips. He has been named Manglavite, and the Middle Hetairia has been expanded to receive his band of cutthroats. Joannes has given him a palace near the Forum of Constantine.’ She looked at Mar piercingly. ‘As I told you, my servants have time for nothing but idle chatter.’ Theodora wondered again if the rumours she had received about Maria’s liaison with this Haraldr were true. Of course, it was only one of Maria’s caprices, but this one seemed more reckless than usual.
‘This Haraldr will soon turn on his patron, Majesty. At my command.’ Mar reflected the good fortune that had thwarted his own efforts to have Haraldr Sigurdarson eliminated. When he had learned that Joannes was Haraldr’s sponsor - the meeting in Neorion had left no doubt - he had considered the princeling to be far more of a liability than an asset. But in that impetuous decision, Mar now realized, he had behaved like a Norseman, which was not the way to deal with these Romans. Now he could see that Haraldr Sigurdarson was more useful than ever. Vastly so.
‘Indeed,’ said Theodora. ‘You have persuaded this Haraldr as you did Ignatius Attalietes? I would think one of your kind far more resistant to such blandishments than a pathetic Dhynatoi sodomite.’
‘Even the gods could not save Achilleus once his peculiar vulnerability became known.’
‘Well. Between your abilities and those of this new Tauro-Scythian Achilleus, whom you alone command, it would seem that we Romans are already as helpless as Isaac upon Abraham’s altar. Why offer an alliance to a scorned, indeed discarded, Augusta, when you fair-hairs have merely to let the sword fall? Do you pity me so much? Strange that I never suspected you of charity, Hetairarch.’ Theodora’s mouth worked in minute contractions, and her eyes glistened.
Mar ignored the taunts, as well aware as the purple-born Theodora of the power a Norseman could never acquire no matter how keen his blade or intellect; he would not insult either of them by mentioning it. Instead he would propose a more subtle form of patronage. ‘Would I be too bold to admit that I envy the friendship you share with the Patriarch of the One True Oecumenical, Orthodox and Catholic Faith?’
Theodora showed small, uneven teeth. ‘You have become so much more interesting than when I was previously acquainted with you, Hetairarch. You have become so much more . . . Roman.’ The corners of her eyes crinkled as she mused on the proposition. Fortunately the Hetairarch had been clever enough not to propose making an Empress of her; Theodora had no intention of challenging her sister, even if Joannes’s carefully seeded lies had convinced Zoe otherwise. But consider how profoundly the defence of the One True Faith might be enhanced if the Patriarch Alexius’s mighty spiritual sword were joined by the Hetairarch’s mighty secular sword.
Theodora signalled her eunuch, Emmanuel.
‘Keleusate,’
intoned the tall, important-looking chamberlain. Mar rose and Theodora walked directly up to him, her face vivid, almost girlish. ‘I shall ask our Patriarch to instruct you in the One True Oecumenical, Orthodox and Catholic Faith, Hetairarch. Strange that I had always thought you an irretrievable pagan.’
‘He is present,’ whispered the monk, Cosmas Tzintzuluces. ‘He is waiting for you in the ciborium.’
Michael, Lord of the Entire World, Emperor, Autocrator and Basileus of the Romans, stepped into the nave of the Church of St Demetrius in Thessalonica. From the aisle vaults the brilliant, frescoed presences of the saints, the Holy Virgin and the Pantocrator glimmered like welcoming friends. The Emperor was profoundly grateful for the familiar splendour of what was becoming if not his home, then his sanctuary. He did not come here for renewal - he never could expect that much - but for relief. It was a place of temporary sustenance, where he could arrest but not reverse the inexorable starvation of his immortal soul.
To the Emperor’s left, midway down the nave, stood the ciborium, a miniature hexagonal temple, sheathed entirely in beautiful chased silver, the canopy topped with a large silver sphere and cross. The Emperor proceeded towards the ciborium, the thickly bearded monk Cosmas Tzintzuluces gently at his arm; both men seemed to glide over the marble floor as if drawn by some supernatural force. The monk paused and opened the silver door to the little chamber.
The Emperor entered and fell to his knees before the small silver couch. He did not need to see the physical presence of St Demetrius to know that the holiest of martyrs and most potent of saints was spiritually present. St Demetrius’s
parreshia,
access to the Heavenly Father, was proven beyond all doubt. How many times had he saved Thessalonica from the Bulgars? How many torments of the flesh had he eased with his healing oil, how many carnal sins had he absolved with his cleansing waters?
Heal me, absolve me,
begged the Lord of the Entire World in silent, desperate prayer.
I know you have approached the Throne of Heaven so many times on my behalf, beloved Martyr. You have presented my case to the Divine Trinity with such graciousness and conviction that my heart bursts with gratitude for your Holy offices. And yet I still suffer. And yet I am not forgiven.
Tzintzuluces knelt beside the Emperor, crossed himself, and bowed deeply in prayer. He took the Emperor’s powerful hands in his own spindly fingers. He gently urged the Emperor’s hands towards the empty silver couch. ‘Let him touch you,’ whispered the monk. ‘His one hand has now taken that of Our Father Almighty. His other seeks your mortal grasp. Reach out to him.’
The Emperor’s hands trembled slightly as he reached out. He sighed; it was as if his fingers had vanished into a warm ether, and the pain - the terrible strangling torment - flowed from his entire body, through his fingers, into this all-accepting void. It flowed joyously, cathartically, for a moment, and then the pain was suddenly excruciating, as if his skull had turned to hot iron and crushed in upon his brain. The effluence of pain trickled and ceased, obstructed by a sin too great to pass through any medium.
The monk looked anxiously at this suffering human being next to him. Yes, Tzintzuluces reflected, he could, without blasphemy - indeed it redounded to the glory of God -consider the Autocrator a far more humble man, indeed a mere novitiate in a universal monastic order. For when Christ the King summoned him, the King of the World would have to appear before the Heavenly Tribunal as naked as any man.
And like any man, even the Pantocrator’s Viceregent on earth had to prepare for that time. For men, Tzintzuluces reminded himself, are like oxen whose life cannot last; they are like cattle whose time is short. ‘Let him guide you, whispered the monk.
The Emperor choked back the searing, vision-blackening pain. The Holy Martyr spoke, soothed, guided. His voice, transmitted through the spiritual ether within which he resided, seeped through the hard shell of pain that crushed upon the Emperor’s brain. ‘Confess,’ whispered St Demetrius in a wonderful melody that was more music than voice. ‘Confess.’
Dazed, the Emperor allowed Tzintzuluces to raise him to his feet and lead him to the vaulted crypt beside the altar, the very spot where St Demetrius had accepted Holy Martyrdom. They stopped before the sunken marble font; the saint’s holy oil shimmered, a fragrant, faintly golden pool. The Emperor fell to his knees again. When he looked up, two holy men stood before him. Both of these living saints were maned with voluminous beards and unshorn, lice-crawling hair but otherwise were as withered and desiccated as desert lizards; the taller of the pair wore a soiled loincloth, the other stood in a coarse, tattered tunic. If the Emperor noticed their unwashed stench, he gave no indication. Instead he turned to Tzintzuluces, hands clenched before his breast, the tears welling in his eyes. ‘These are new treasures,’ the Emperor whispered hoarsely, and began to weep.
‘Yes, yes,’ whispered Tzintzuluces, his own dark eyes glazed with adoration and rapture. ‘David and Symeon. The former a dendrite; the latter, as you have certainly heard, the stylite from Adrianopolis, the very Symeon whose fame has begun to spread throughout Christendom. They have left their perches to succour the holiest of all their brethren.’ Tzintzuluces looked aside briefly as a priest in silk vestments set a silver bucket, a sponge and a towel beside the Emperor.
The Emperor spread his arms wide and his eyes swept from one Holy Man to the other like a drunken reveller forced to choose between two equally desirable courtesans. Finally he settled on the shorter, cloaked man. David the dendrite’s tunic, hair and bare legs were soiled with the droppings of the birds that had shared his home of the last four years, a solitary tree on the outskirts of a small Anatolian village; already the dendrite’s virtuous self-denial had been credited with bringing widespread prosperity to the entire Charsianon theme. The Emperor reached almost reflexively for the pail and began to sponge the filth and bird excrement from the feet and legs of David the dendrite. He caressed the man’s rough brown ankles and worked the sponge in between gnarled toes. The Emperor’s eyes were stricken, tender, above all grateful.
After he had carefully towelled David’s feet the Emperor turned to Symeon. The stylite had lived atop a single stone column for thirteen years now - the Emperor reflected on the holiness of this number, that of the twelve apostles plus their Lord. That Symeon the stylite had blessed the world with healing grace was beyond any doubt; hundreds of miraculous cures had already been attributed to his touch. In exchange Symeon had surrendered his own flesh; his toes, eaten away by the maggots that lived in the filth - his own filth - at his feet, were raw nubs. Delirious with joy at beholding the evidence of this sacred act of mortification, racked with guilt over the crimes his own flesh had lured him to - yea, even to the very fires of perdition - the Emperor fell upon Symeon’s grotesque, filth-encrusted feet; he kissed these feet, he bathed them with his tears, he salved them with the golden oil of St Demetrius.
Finally the Emperor turned his tear-stained face to Tzintzuluces. He fought to control his sobs. ‘You know why the Pantocrator has struck me down with the lightning bolts of this madness that visits me, ever more frequently, do you not?’
‘Why, Brother?’ asked Tzintzuluces softly.
‘I engaged in adulterous intercourse with her, even as I served her husband Romanus, the same Romanus who preceded me beneath the Imperial Diadem, even as I served him in the capacity of servant and friend.’ The Emperor snorted and struggled for air. ‘Suspicious of the rumours that attended our flagrant and unlawful - yea, unholy - dalliance, her husband and my Emperor questioned me of these matters and’ - here the Emperor began to wail - ‘upon the Holy Relics I denied my crimes! If not damned before, there I threw my immortal soul into the fiery lake!’
Tzintzuluces crossed himself with a quick, frantic gesture.
‘There is more,’ said the Emperor, his eyes now fixed with an expression of utter horror, as if he saw before him the demons who attended the gates of Hell. ‘They murdered him. It was not my hands that forced his head beneath the waters of his bath, but those hands acted in my interest. I know now the foul crime upon which my throne was raised. I will never escape the torment of that knowing!’ The crypt echoed with the Emperor’s shattered voice, as if the gates of Hell had now opened and the damned shouted forth, begging for release.
Tzintzuluces’s face mirrored the terrible fear that racked his Imperial disciple. His lips parted with a curious slurping sound but he could say nothing. The Emperor stared at him, a drowning man who had just realized that his saviour on the shore had no rope, no bit of flotsam to throw to him. And then Symeon spoke. His voice was shockingly elegant, as if he were an actor rather than a self-mutilated hermit. ‘Because you have listened to your wife and eaten from the tree which I forbade you, accursed shall be the ground on your account.’
The Emperor, still on his knees, looked with shadowy, pleading eyes at Symeon. Symeon answered with barking syllables that echoed against the gleaming plaster vaults of the crypt. ‘And Cain sayeth to the Lord, “Thy punishment is heavier than I can bear; thou hast driven me today from the ground and banished me from thy presence. I shall be a vagrant and wanderer on the earth and anyone who meets me can kill me.” And the Lord answered: “No.” ‘ Here Symeon’s voice boomed mightily. ‘ “If anyone kills Cain, Cain shall be avenged sevenfold.” So the Lord put a mark on Cain.’
The Emperor pressed his hands into his eyes. ‘I bear the mark,’ he whispered, his horror barely audible.
Symeon torturously bent his withered, arthritic legs and dropped to his knees beside his Emperor. ‘Though your sins are scarlet, they may become white as snow; though they are dyed crimson, they may yet be like new wool.’ He finished in a low, wondrous tone.
Tzintzuluces gave silent praise to the Pantocrator for the wisdom of the stylite. ‘The sight of a woman is like the venom affixed to a poison arrow,’ he whispered to the Emperor. ‘The longer the venomed barb remains in the flesh, the greater the infection of the corruption it carries.’