Alexius looked again into the golden vault. ‘I had intended to convert you, and I see that instead you have begun to persuade me.’ Alexius turned away from the immense cavern of light. ‘God’s patience is infinite. But as He endlessly cautions us to observe, our time here is short.’
The centipede was as long as a man’s hand, and when it crawled over Michael Kalaphates’s thigh, it seemed to wrap his bare limb like a many-legged serpent. He began to scream hysterically and retreated to the corner of his cell, the slime wet and cold against his naked back. He could see nothing. He panted and tried to make his body pull in on itself, disappear, so that the beasts could not recognize him. But the screams reached in, sliding beneath the cracks in the door that even the light could not enter; he could see the screams, they were the only thing he could see, they were sharp, hot vines that curled around him and then grew huge red thorns that pierced right through his flesh.
On the fourth day the locusts came up from the shaft of the abyss, cloaked in armour and smoke. Their light was blinding. They flogged him with screams and led him into the abyss, driving him forward with thorns and brands. The fiery lakes burned on every side, and sulphur poisoned his lungs. The locusts would not let him retch the screams out of his intestines, where the thorns had planted their seed. And then they set him before the serpent, and the serpent spat thunder.
‘Nephew.’
The serpent touched him. It had the face of a man. The screams died and left only hard little pods that rattled in his bowels. Soon the warm liquid dissolved them.
‘Nephew, do you know where you are?’
Yes. Yes. I would tell you but man can no longer hear me. I talk to demons in their own language. Yes.
‘Neorion. Remember Neorion, Nephew.’
Then there were dreams, and in them the armies of Gog and Magog marched upon the earth. The Pantocrator spoke to him, from a mountain far away. He spread out his hands and revealed the kingdoms of the world, all little cities seen from a great distance. And then Michael slept, alone; the demons could not discover him beneath a cloud.
‘Nephew.’
He awoke with a start, the recognition like the sun on a hot sea. Neorion. I have been in Neorion. How long?
‘Do you know where you are, Nephew?’
Michael looked up and blinked. ‘Neorion.’
‘Yes. Five days. Your collapse was more complete than I had intended. ‘Joannes held out a silver goblet; Michael could smell the wine. He took a deep, desperate draught. ‘I am quite confounded as to what to do with you,’ Joannes said. ‘I had hoped you might make the acquaintance of some of your fellow guests, perhaps attend them in their time of travail among us.’ He waved his hand around the dimly lit, forbidding chamber, and the wine surged back up Michael’s gullet even though the racks and instruments Joannes indicated were not in use. ‘Now I feel that such a recourse would destroy your mind.’ Joannes picked up a pair of tongs and distractedly inspected them, clicking the jaws together. ‘You are so weak.’ He paused, as if this phrase were a matter of great philosophical interest to him. ‘You are so weak that I consider you too valuable to destroy. Yes. Consider it as I did. I am not unaware that the greatest prodigies of the sculptor are those in which the shape is first moulded in some malleable substance such as wax or clay, and then fixed in eternal bronze by the foundry master’s art. Because you can be shaped with such ease, you will be the substance in which I create works of astonishing complexity and endurance.’
‘I am certain you do not need my words to know how thorough my penitence is for my mad, utterly demonic, act against you.’
‘Yes. I observed your contrition.’ Joannes gestured to the goblet. ‘Drink, enjoy that. You have felt the lash. Now you have only to draw the cart.’
‘You know I will do whatever you bid, if only--’
‘Do not go on, Nephew. What I saw in your eyes yesterday was worth a lifetime of supplications from your lips.’ Joannes set the tongs back on the table with the rest of his instruments. ‘You were quite voluble before your isolation. I was intrigued by the depth of your friendship with our Blessed Mother. Having forced you to endure such an ordeal here, I would not like to deprive you now of the opportunity to seek the comfort of your Mother’s solicitous breast. I want you to go to her often, and seek her counsel about such matters as you have previously. I only ask that in exchange for your freedom you assiduously practise the mnemonic arts, and recite for me whatever Her Majesty has to say, however intimate or confidential. Should I discover that your recollection is less than complete, we will continue your instruction here in Neorion.’
Michael Kalaphates looked up at Joannes, his eyes rapt with gratitude, and whispered his thanks: ‘Uncle, yours is truly the voice of the angelic host.’
‘I hoped you would not look for me.’ Maria stood on the porch of her villa, facing a murky, malachite-green sea.
A Dark, steaming clouds rolled over the city to the west, and a broad shaft of rain advanced along the Golden Horn. She waved her hand as if throwing something onto the terraced lawns beneath her, but nothing left her clutched fist.
‘Why?’ Women are a mystery, thought Haraldr, hoping that this vague boyhood platitude might explain her unfathomable behaviour.
‘I wanted to be . . .away.’
‘Away from me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I will leave.’
‘Yes.’
Haraldr stood transfixed for a moment, then realized that she would not stop him. His hands trembled as he turned to walk down the steps to the jetty.
‘You are a liar.’ She did not look at him when she spoke.
Haraldr turned, grateful for any sort of reprieve.
‘Who are you?’ Her voice was so detached, it was almost as if she did not know she was asking a question. ‘You did not tell me the truth.’
Haraldr clenched his fists and jaw with the excruciation of his silence. He had sworn that secret to his brother, and to Jarl Rognvald, and so far had nothing but proof that their long-buried cautions had been anything but essential to his survival. And what Jarl Rognvald had told him about condemning other men had even kept him from telling Halldor and Ulfr, whom he trusted with his life. Even for Maria to know would be a threat to her. But none of those reasons were conclusive, even the soul-binding oaths to dead men. Only one reason truly held his tongue: he could not trust Maria. What Mar had said, what many men had said about her still haunted him. He was one of many, a caprice, as evanescent as those loves who had parted her legs before him. Two great fates warred for him now, Norway and Maria, but only Norway would always be constant. To surrender that lifelong fate to hers, and then to see it discarded like a necklace she no longer admired, would kill his soul before it ended his life.
‘Yes. I ... withheld the truth. I will tell you what I told you the first time you asked that question, then. I cannot tell you.’
‘Mar knows.’
The sensation of alarm seemed to lift Haraldr off his feet for a moment. He did not even know how to get at this. Mar would never risk their plans unless he had intended to betray them all along.
‘He would not tell me, either.’
Relief quickly spawned anger. ‘You endanger yourself, me, my five hundred pledge-men, and anyone you ask that question,’ Haraldr snapped. ‘We are not children playing some game.’
‘Yes. Your game is different.’ She whipped her head around and glared at him, her face distorted with anger and anguish. ‘You think that because people die in your games that they are somehow less trivial than a child’s.’ She jerked her chin up violently. ‘I know how it is to kill a man, Haraldr Nordbrikt, Slayer of Saracens and Seljuks. I killed my first lover.’
Haraldr was not surprised; he had known, almost for certain, when Mar had first suggested the possibility. It explained much. He would be patient with her. ‘I know,’ he told her softly, and he reached out for her.
Maria recoiled. ‘Get away. I asked you to leave, Manglavite. If there is a drop of civilized blood in your
barbaros
veins, you will oblige me.’ Haraldr placed his hands on her shoulders. ‘Yes, Manglavite,’ she said in her high, mocking voice, then grimaced. ‘Answer my question with your savage manhood. Make love to me and I will forget your lies. Rut the little bitch until her glassy eyes no longer question your great and mysterious purpose.’ Haraldr ignored her; he had heard these words before. He swept her in his arms and carried her into her villa, past her gawking servants, and laid her on her bed. She did not resist.
She lay mute, her eyes flat, the fire receded deep within. He kissed her neck, swooning with the taste of her, the softness of her skin. He now suspected one of her caprices; when would she erupt with manic passion, surprising him with something he could not even imagine? She maddened him with desire; he felt himself harden and pulled at the ties of her scaramangium. He reached up her robe and touched her thigh. She shuddered and pushed him away.
‘Stop.’ She sat up. ‘Do you care that I do not want to love you?’ Haraldr kissed her neck, and she slapped him. The sound seemed like a thunderclap. ‘I don’t want your touch. I don’t want your stinking
barbaroi
hands on me.’ With trembling fingers he touched her face, gently, barely brushing against her burning cheek. ‘Since the last time I was with you, I have made love to another man.’
Haraldr denied the knife in his gut. ‘You are lying.’
Maria loosened the collar of her scaramangium and pulled the fabric down to reveal her left breast. The bite was a livid bruise, the teeth marks evident. Her eyes were furious. ‘I begged him to bite me. I asked him to do things you have never heard of. I was his slut.’
Haraldr already had enough images of her with other men. ‘Who is your lover?’
She laughed wickedly, a laugh he had never heard before, not even in the passion of love. ‘Do you want to kill him?’
‘You were not forced. You are not my wife. No.’ He made his decision and stood up. He watched her self-consciously stroke her bruised breast. ‘You love me. That is why you are driven to hurt me. You are as transparent as an image cut in glass. But I will not beg you for a love that causes you pain.’
‘You are a vain fool.’
He turned and walked out. She went to the window and watched through the greenish-tinted glass as he descended the steps to the jetty. When he was well out to sea in the small skiff, she ran to the porch. She could still see him, the distant speck of his blue tunic. ‘I have undone what the stars commanded,’ she told him through the salty wind whipping off the Bosporus. ‘I have given you back your life.’ Then she prayed silently to the Virgin that once before he died - the death she blessedly could no longer bring him - he would understand that she had loved him.
‘Little boy.’ Zoe stroked the curls from Michael Kalaphates’s forehead. ‘You should have come to your mother more quickly. The weeks have been an agony for me.’ ‘It has been . . . difficult for me, my beloved.’ Michael reclined on the sitting couch, his head propped forward by a damask cushion.
‘Yes. That terrible place. It is appalling even to consider the things he must have shown you there.’ She looked at him with a wryly erotic, subtle puckering of her lips. ‘He performed no alterations on you, did he, precious little candle?’ She placed her hand behind his neck and let her silk-restrained breasts touch his shoulder.
‘I am still . . . frightened.’
‘Nonsense. Such plots are commonly initiated, almost as commonly forgiven. You will not spend the rest of your life dwelling under some cloud, little one. He will attribute your failed conspiracy to my antipathy, and soon overlook yours. You are too important to him now.’ Zoe looked away, lost in a reverie she would never dare to speak of. ‘In any event, I will involve you in no more plots. You are too dear to me. There are many brutes I can employ for assassinations. You alone can author my pleasure.’ She leaned forward and placed her dry, sweet lips just on his. He spasmed. Zoe observed his swelling crotch. ‘It seems I am the architect of your pleasure.’ She smirked regally. ‘I touch you and raise a column.’
‘I am so glad I am alive,’ he said almost deliriously.
Zoe stood and lifted his hand. ‘I have discovered an unguent that imparts an indescribable silkiness to my breasts and thighs. You must try to find words for it.’
After the caresses, the sweating passions, the grateful reunion of their flesh, Zoe held Michael’s head to her breast. ‘I will never let him hurt you again,’ she said. ‘I am now more determined than ever.’
He lifted his head in alarm and looked at her with doelike eyes. ‘No. It is too dangerous.’
She hushed him with kisses. ‘I know. That is why I have selected a man both fearless and . . .expendable.’
‘Who?’ Michael whispered, his eyes wider still.
Zoe pressed Michael’s head to her breasts again. ‘The Komes ... I mean, Manglavite, the Tauro-Scythian, Haraldr whatever.’ She felt the sudden stirring against her thigh and laughed gently. ‘Why, Nephew, I seem to have raised another column.’
‘It was not necessary to bring that.’ Mar pointed to the ceremonial fasces that Haraldr carried in his arms. ‘There is to be no procession.’
‘Yes, I understand,’ said Haraldr. ‘But I thought that once on the grounds--’
‘No.’ Mar was impatient and anxious. ‘In fact, you shouldn’t even have that out where it might be seen.’ Mar slipped his cloak off and wrapped the thick-shafted axe in it. He looked around and then whispered to Haraldr. ‘They are bringing him in a covered litter. With maybe a dozen Hyknatoi to guard him. They want to get him here without anyone taking notice. That’s why I am here, instead of with him.’
‘And they suspect something here? Is that why the Middle Hetairia has been summoned?’
Mar looked at his boots pensively. ‘I imagine so. You are the principal unit for dealing with riots.’ Mar leaned over and whispered even more softly. ‘I am not certain what is going on any more. You know how long it has been since I have even seen the Emperor.’ It had now been several months. ‘It is possible his recovery has been complete, and the purpose of this visit is to establish that he can indeed appear fit and able before his subjects.’