The stench of filth and viscera was suddenly overwhelming. Haraldr was alone with ... it. It was a demonic, crimson mask of bloody, pulpy, flayed facial tissue, without nose, ears, scalp, or lips, only glaring, lidless eyes and clenched, exposed, blood-smeared teeth. Its crotch was a bloody gash, its belly a gaping, reeking, empty cavity where the bowels had been ripped out. Its legs, truncated at the ankles, twitched frantically, the veins gently pumping blood into pools on the floor. Most horrible of all, its spurting, handless wrists jerked up and down with conscious articulation, as if trying to recapture with phantom digits the life that had been carved away from it, piece by bloody piece. And then the rolling, blood-washed irises made contact, and Haraldr realized that there was still a man inside it, just as there had been that terrible night in the Studion. He unsheathed his sword and prepared a quick end to this long, ugly, yet noble death. He came close, forcing himself to look in the eyes, and he realized that this death, and the one in that fetid ally, stained him with blood far more deeply than the many lives he had taken in battle. Now there were two; how many more wretches could he slay out of compassion before he had to question the quality of his mercy? He could never give this man what he was owed, but he could give him what he could. He drew back his blade.
‘Wait . . .’ The voice stood on the threshold of the spirit world. Haraldr held his blade at the beginning of its merciful arc. The man looked at Haraldr with a bitter yet kindred defiance. ‘The . . . Blue . . . Star,’ he croaked, barely audibly. Then with the last fibre of his strength he lifted his head. ‘Now,’ he pleaded.
Haraldr brought his blade screaming through the man’s neck, his strength fuelled not by Odin but by the desperate hope that somehow this stroke would sever the head of the Imperial Eagle.
‘What will you do?’ asked the purple-born Augusta Theodora. Her pinched face and dull brown braids were unadorned; despite her gold-laced purple robe, she seemed as plain as a butcher’s wife.
‘I could refuse to crown this Caesar,’ answered Alexius, Patriarch of the One True Oecumenical, Orthodox and Catholic Faith. His small black eyes stalked like agile panthers above the craggy hump of his nose. ‘Imperial protocol dictates that the Caesar be crowned by the Emperor, and so I could refuse to sanction the ceremony simply on that basis. But of course the paradox of our Caesar is that we must have him because the Emperor is not well enough to crown him.’
‘You would be ... coerced if you refused to crown him.’
Alexius smiled. ‘I fear no coercion. If my jurisdiction were merely the Empire of Rome, then I would offer this Caesar nothing about his head but penitential ashes, and glorify the Pantocrator with my own martyrdom. But my Empire is that of all souls, and so my considerations are rather more complex.’ Alexius stroked the ornate rings on his left hand with the fingers of his right. ‘It is unfortunate that your sister Zoe has so warmly embraced her husband’s heir. Were the Empress opposed even mildly, I could take her reluctance to the people of the City, and before the three days that it took our Lord to be scourged, martyred and resurrected had passed, the people of this city would have hurled Joannes and his Dhynatoi accomplices into the abyss that spawned them. But now the fortunes of our secular Empire - and those of my beleaguered spiritual Empire - will go from bad to worse. Your sister’s husband has listened to the Christ with one ear, and the demon Joannes with the other, and that is the source of the torment that is destroying his body if not his immortal soul. I believe and pray that when this Emperor supplicates the Heavenly Tribunal, he will find expiation. But when this Caesar inherits the Imperial Diadem, he will hear only Joannes, and his soul will endure the fiery lakes of eternal woe.’
Theodora crossed herself. ‘Father, you cannot think that the Emperor is so close to his mortality. He will recover, certainly. He is an extremely . . .robust man.’
Alexius stroked his silvery beard. ‘If he recovers, it will not be soon, and during his illness he will have yielded that much more of his authority, and perhaps his soul, to Joannes. My child, your love for your sister is an example to Christian charity, and I, too, pray for her soul each morning and evening. But Joannes has used the objects of your sister’s lust to enslave her people. Whether we are to be ruled by Michael the present Emperor, or this new Michael, the Caesar, is of little consequence to the suffering folk of Rome, who know only that it is Joannes’s boot on their neck. Yet as long as your sister continues to place her carnal aspirations above the obligations of her purple-born sanction, her people will obediently suffer that scourge. But God will not suffer this outrage with infinite patience. He has already risen up the Bishop of Old Rome and his blasphemous
filioque,
to warn us of our transgressions.’
Alexius studied Theodora’s troubled face; she wore her almost child-like expression of grief. Finally the Patriarch gestured at the barren walls of Theodora’s apartment; his golden rings caught the light for an instant. ‘My child, your spiritual wealth has increased in this place of exile.’
‘Yes. I do not miss the palace. I prefer to dream of the Lord’s mansions.’
Alexius’s thin, elegant lips parted with genuine warmth, but his dark eyes still paced menacingly. ‘I am certain you will be well received in those mansions. In your devotion to our Lord you are similar to your sister, Eudocia, may the Pantocrator keep her soul in His Eternal Light, though she came to her faith too late to save her mortal being from the consequences of her sin.’ Theodora seemed startled by this; her face retained the innocence of regret, but her eyes were alert, wary, the prey observing the stalking beast.
‘Indeed,’ continued Alexius, ‘where the Christ’s steps have gone, I see yours following. And yet there is another path that the Christ has also charged you to follow, a charge he gave you from the moment of your soul’s conception, and now the Christ cautions us that you have strayed from this path.’ Alexius’s eyes no longer paced; they crouched. ‘I need not tell you that Christ the Pantocrator, crowned in heaven, was also crowned here on earth.’
Theodora’s pale blue eyes shifted. ‘Yes. The crown Pilate gave him. A crown of thorns.’
‘Our Lord accepted the crown of thorns because beneath that excruciating diadem He would lead mankind to the resurrection and eternal life.’ Alexius smiled sympathetically. ‘All worldly crowns are crowns of thorns, my child. Mine own bleeds me even now. The Christ was offered all the Kingdoms of the world if only he would fall on his knees before Satan. We who rule the world must turn away from like blandishments and take only the crown that earns us favour in the Kingdom of Heaven. And that crown is pain.’
‘I, too, have renounced the Kingdoms of the World. At last, Father, I have.’
Alexius’s eyes leapt forward. ‘No. You have renounced the crown that brings only blood and pain and death to your brow, and in so doing you have denied your people their hope of resurrection. You are the purple-born, child, chosen of God to do His will here in this valley of sorrows. What you have achieved here in your exile is a strengthening of your soul. But that soul must now assume the Holy Burden it is obligated to bear, or it will cease to quest for Eternal Glory. Soon our Lord will bid you rise up and bear your cross to Golgotha.’
Theodora’s features sharpened. ‘My Lord cannot mean that I should betray my purple-born sister.’
Alexius inclined his head slightly, his thin lips almost musing. ‘No. I am not asking you to initiate anything against your sister. But the day will come, and soon, when the people of this City will appeal to their Christ to deliver them even from the tormented bosom of their purple-born Mother. And for that day you must be prepared. Your line, the great house of Macedon founded by your uncle, Basil the Bulgar-Slayer, is, through its unyielding defence of the One True Faith, the very artery that nourishes every soul born unto life. And that artery must never be severed, or we are all damned.’
‘And how would my barren loins perpetuate the dynasty of Macedon? If ever I was fertile, I am now too withered to bear fruit.’
‘You are not the last of the Bulgar-Slayer’s line.’
Theodora’s eyes could not deny the shock of this jugular attack. ‘You . . . have known?’
‘Yes. For many years. I know the circumstances. Your sister, Eudocia, gave birth to the child at the convent on the Isle of Prote. I do not know the child, or even its sex. But I know that it was not stillborn.’
Theodora drew her tall, slender torso erect. Her pale eyes were steely and her tongue newly sharpened. ‘Then we will not discuss the child. I am in passing health, and when the Christ calls me to my Golgotha, I believe I can offer you ten good years of my life, years in which you can with all your resources wage your battle against the Bishop of Old Rome. Then if we are both still alive, we will discuss the child.’
Alexius inclined his head slightly and smiled; the bargain was acceptable.
Theodora flushed, aware of how easily the Father had led her to this precipice of fate but now far less concerned for the consequences of that leap than she ever could have imagined she would be. The child. The child had to be protected. And so, ultimately, did her sister; they were her family. ‘Father, do you intend to employ the Hetairarch Mar Hunrodarson to hasten the moment when the people of the city cry out for their deliverance from my sister’s lust? If so, I must have your assurance she will not be harmed.’
‘My child, I have not even met Mar Hunrodarson. What would I have had to discuss with him, until I knew your wishes in this matter? Now that I understand your requirements, I will accede to Mar Hunrodarson’s request for an audience and listen to what he has to offer. But first I must place a crown of thorns upon the head of our Caesar.’
Standards, observed the Parakoimomenos - Lord Chamberlain - of the Imperial Palace. What is missing today are standards. Rome has been built on the rigorous observance of protocol and the unwavering preservation of dignities. Today this is all changed. Today would long be remembered as the nadir of the Imperial dignity. But what was one to do? Abandon the legacy of Rome entirely to the whims of these lowborn parvenues? No. One held one’s head high and tried to preserve what one could.
The Parakoimomenos was a strikingly youthful-appearing man for his sixty years; castration had made him callow and plump for most of life, but his late maturity had finally brought out classic Thracian features. He had been born the same year the Bulgar-Slayer had ascended to the Imperial Dignity, had entered the Imperial household as a mere chamberlain-in-waiting when he was only sixteen years old, and his aptitude for the astonishing minutiae of Imperial protocol had advanced him inexorably through the various eunuch grades. Nine years ago he had realized his dream: Parakoimomenos, the highest of all eunuch offices, the official responsible for every aspect of public and private ceremony in the Imperial Palace, the man who presented the face of glorious Rome to an awestruck world. Then, three months after this apotheosis, Rome had fallen to the cruellest fate; the Pantocrator had asked the Bulgar-Slayer to set his throne beside those of the rulers of Heaven. At first the deterioration of standards had been gradual. The Bulgar-Slayer’s brother, Constantine, had been a profligate, a petty tyrant and a sloven, yet he had not simply discarded the prescribed Imperial protocols. His successor, Romanus, had been an even lesser man, but his efforts to transform his pygmy-like stature into a giant reputation had at least provided the solidi to maintain some semblance of Imperial dignity and decorum. But the lot who had purloined the throne from Romanus! The Emperor was a good man, in spite of everything, but utterly devoid of culture, as one might expect of the station from which he had risen. Still, he desired, in his simple, uninformed fashion, to observe proprieties. But the Orphanotrophus Joannes! There was the source of this veritable river of ignominy that now polluted the memory of glorious Rome!
The Parakoimomenos looked out from the arcade of the church of St Mary Chalkoprateia, confident that all was in order on the street. The facades of the buildings were cloaked with silk tapestries embroidered with the Imperial Eagles, and the enormous crowd, held at bay by the batons of the cursores, stood in their best wool-and-silk tunics, clutching armfuls of laurel, myrtle and olive branches. Two hundred Tauro-Scythians of the Grand Hetairia, gold helms and breastplates explosions of light in the sun, waited at rigid attention. Arrayed behind them was the sublime vision of the Court of Imperial Rome, ranked as the Pantocrator Himself commanded. The first two rows were Magisters, in their white silk tunics spotted with gold medallions, and behind them the Proconsular Patricians, also in shimmering white silk but without medallions, arms cradling the porphyry tablets that proclaimed their rank. And then the Patricians, in light rose-coloured robes, with their tablets of white ivory, and behind them the other fifteen ranks, each with its different colour silk and particular insignia of dignity. Behind the court were the bands; already a few booms of the kettledrums and blaring notes on the trumpets rose above the anticipatory murmuring of the crowd.
The Parakoimomenos noted that the ranks were in good order, that no witless Patrician had, in a desire to see what was going on, wandered up with the Proconsular Patricians. He turned and faced the bronze doors of St Mary Chalkoprateia. The Manglavite and Hetairarch flanked the portal of the ancient basilica. The Bulgar- Slayer would have been proud of the two Varangians, thought the Parakoimomenos, the Hetairarch with his axe motionless on his chest, red plumes rising from his gold helmet so that it seemed he would scrape the sky. The Manglavite was new, of course, but he learned quickly and had a noble bearing. Look how stately he holds the fasces, symbol of the centuries of Rome’s uninterrupted hegemony; hopefully he will not fall to his knees like some unwashed pilgrim when he sees the interior of the Mother Church for the first time.