Joannes nodded soberly. ‘I am willing to address the grievances of the Studion.’ Joannes dipped his head for a moment, his eyes fading into deep shadows. ‘May I show you something, Hetairarch?’
‘I have seen as much of Neorion as I care to see, sir.’
Joannes sneered, apparently at himself. ‘I should have known a man of your intrepidness would not be persuaded by such displays. No, what I have in mind is a display that I feel will coerce your intellect, since your passions are clearly beyond my influence. Did you not say you Norsemen are curious? What I have to show you may explain the Roman Empire, and perhaps my own actions, more completely and convincingly than anything else you have seen in your time among us.’
Joannes collected two resined tapers and a small bronze oil lamp in the ante-chamber of his office. He led Haraldr down the long hall of the Magnara basement; the Orphanotrophus walked in enormous lunging steps that flung his black frock out behind like the billowing sail of some death-ship. He turned left at a small corridor, unlocked a small, very dirty bronze door at the end of the little hall, and led Haraldr through the usual maze of the Imperial Palace’s subterranean passageways. They emerged at a heavy, steel-banded door with two locks. Joannes lit the tapers from the oil lamp before they entered.
The light flickered up into a vault perhaps three storeys high but no wider than a man’s arm span. Without a word Joannes led Haraldr along what seemed a fairly steep decline. The vault curved noticeably as it descended, and soon Haraldr understood that this was some sort of enormous spiralling gallery, not unlike the chambers of a conch shell, that descended into the earth. On they went, to the accompaniment of dancing shadows and Joannes’s scraping boots. For a moment Haraldr fancied that they would find the Bulgar-Slayer down at the end of this gallery, sending up Imperial Chrysobulls to his still devoted people. Or perhaps the embalmed corpse of Constantine the Great, attended by ancient eunuchs. Haraldr’s imagination yielded to a sobering chill. What would he see? Was there a place more horrible than Neorion?
The ceiling lowered and the curves became tighter, until it seemed that the gallery could no longer turn in its own width. Finally the descent stopped at a wall. A bare, flat stone wall beneath a ceiling that now almost grazed Haraldr’s head. Joannes turned suddenly, his face a surface of deep, shadowed craters and smooth, jutting boulders. This is the secret of Rome, Hetairarch.’ His voice echoed like a demonic oracle. ‘Tell me what you see.’
Haraldr’s flesh crawled. Surely Joannes had not arranged for his confederates to follow them down; the Orphanotrophus would be the shield behind which he would fight his way up. ‘I did not come here to play at riddles.’
Joannes passed Haraldr silently and ascended until the roof of the spiral gallery became sufficiently elevated that he could thrust his taper up over his head. He turned again to Haraldr. This is the treasury built by the Autocrator Basil, called the Bulgar-Slayer. There was a time when what you see here was a glittering warehouse of the wealth the Bulgar-Slayer’s armies brought back from the ends of the earth. Chests stacked to the ceiling, full of gems, tableware, silken garments, Oriental carpets, heathen idols . . . Hetairarch, I do not have words to describe the wealth that was amassed here.’ Joannes shook his head. ‘Gone. Gone before my brother even lowered his head beneath the Imperial Diadem. What the Bulgar-Slayer’s brother Constantine did not gamble away, his successor Romanus squandered.’
Haraldr could not contain his wonder. ’But how? This . . .’ He gestured at the huge expanse they had explored. ‘How, even in a century of spendthrift--’
‘When an Emperor sends a fleet of
dhromons
to the pillars of Heracles because he desires a certain type of large fish to feast on, as Romanus did, when instead of exacting tribute from the Pechenegs, an Emperor pays them a ransom, when an Emperor supports whole establishments of monks in a fashion that a Magister of Rome would find profligate, then even a mountain of gold is not enough. You want to see where it went, Hetairarch? Look inside the churches and monasteries, look at the silver ciboria and gold icons revetted with gems, and the larders of the monks stuffed with pickled fish and black caviar from Rus; look inside the palaces of the Dhynatoi with their golden thrones and mosaic ceilings, look at the estates that the prostitutes of the Phanarion have purchased in Asia Minor because the powerful men of Rome are as generous with their favours as the harlot is with hers. But do not look here, Hetairarch; do not look about these empty vaults for the treasure of Rome. Because the people of Rome have stripped Rome bare.’
‘Your Dhynatoi accomplices and their attendant parasites have stripped her bare. I do not see the Bulgar-Slayer’s missing gold on the streets of the Studion.’
Joannes dropped his head wearily. ‘What would you have me do for the people of the Studion, Hetairarch? Do you think I can levy the Dhynatoi to provide a palace for every wretch in the Studion? You would be surprised how much of the Dhynatoi’s wealth is owed to merchants like your friend Nicephorus Argyrus, and how much of the wealth of merchants like Argyrus is owed to the Venetians and the Genoese. Rome used to seek her wealth throughout the entire world, from the pillars of Heracles in the west to the gates of Dionysus in the east. Now the rest of the world comes to Rome to leech our wealth. Rome has forgotten that her destiny is at the ends of the earth.’ Joannes waved his wing-like arms expansively, and the movement of the torch in his hand sent shadows racing through the empty galleries. ‘Hetairarch, do you think the walls of Constantinople can produce wealth, or can even protect that wealth without the attendant Empire? To conquer is to produce wealth. To rule is to produce wealth. To win the right to tax is to produce wealth. And that right, that power, is not won in the great houses along the Mese, or among the gardens of the Imperial Palace, or even beneath the golden dome of the Hagia Sophia. It is won at the ends of the world!’
Haraldr was taken aback by Joannes’s passion. In spite of his overweening authority, his virtual omniscience, Joannes had always seemed fundamentally limited, a glorified, fantastically efficient servant. To see that he had a vision of Rome was disturbing, like learning that a huge beast was capable of human reason. ‘Yes,’ Haraldr admitted. ‘A Norseman would agree with you. Wealth and power are won at the ends of the earth. If we Norsemen did not believe that, I would probably be some ignorant farmer dreaming of the land beyond the next hill, praying that men do not come in fast ships to burn my crop and steal my wife. If we were not willing to go to the ends of the earth in our open ships, our lands would scarcely give us even that much. But a Norseman does not go a-viking and think nothing of the family and people he has left behind. It would shame a Norseman to win gold in some distant land and come home to a village where even one man lived as the tens of thousands do in the Studion.’
Joannes studied Haraldr’s pensive face. ‘I need you, Hetairarch Haraldr. I have already confessed that. I do not ask you to trust me; I ask you not to condemn me until you know more of my policies. Let me offer this as a gesture of good faith, to you and to those wretches, to whose plaints I am not entirely immune. There is nothing here for me to give them.’ Joannes fanned his torch through the empty vault. ’However, I have resources of my own - acquired, I might add, by dint of unceasing labour compounded by unremitting frugality. From my own resources I will build a charity hospital in the Studion, the largest and the finest the world has yet seen. I ask that you do nothing in return save wait for me to make this gesture, and to render judgement on me when you know more of Rome and my policies. If then we are still enemies, I will consider you a worthy adversary.’
‘And I would consider you worthy of destroying as well, Orphanotrophus. The next time we speak, I will expect to hear of your remarkable progress in the construction of this hospital.’
Joannes nodded, the great hollows of his face suddenly seeming more like wells of weariness then pits of evil.
‘Monastery! Uncle, you know that the word alone is anathema to me! Look, my hands are trembling!’
Michael placed his palsied hands straight out and the beautiful dappled Arabian he had been examining whinnied as if verifying his master’s claim. ‘Oh, damn me, I have disturbed Phaethon.’ Michael turned and stroked the horse’s probing nose. ‘And I have shouted at you, my precious uncle!’ Michael clasped Constantine’s shoulders warmly. ‘I am certain your decision was judicious, Uncle. It is simply that with each week that passes, I feel my time in the world of ... of pleasure running out. I hate to think I will never see a horse run again unless it is some mangy mule sent to fetch one of my eremite brothers.’
‘Nephew, trust in me. Remember, I have managed the second city of the world and the affairs of a vast and prosperous theme. I can certainly manage to make a profit on the sale of this monastery’s property. In any event, I will not require a contribution from your purse. I have scraped together the requisite solidi and already settled with the former owner.’
‘Do you think your purchase will quite enrage Joannes?’
‘It may discomfit him more than that, Nephew. Constantine went on to describe the letters of Father Abbot Giorgios. Michael listened so raptly that he even batted Phaethon’s nose when the horse nudged him. When Constantine had finished, Michael embraced him. ‘Oh, Uncle, for the first time since our Emperor returned from the dead I have hope. When can we see the seraphim-sent correspondences of this Father Abbot Giorgios?’
‘I have already dispatched a ship and porters to pack and deliver the items. I warn you that many tedious weeks of sifting through these documents await us.’
‘Uncle, you must remember that I am also not without certain qualities of industry when the rewards are sufficient. Until we find the treasure we are seeking amid this abbot’s dross, I will display a dedication to the task that would make the stylite upon a column question the vehemence of his own commitment.’ Michael took Constantine’s arm and escorted him away from Phaethon’s stall without even a farewell to the neighing horse.
‘This is the oldest part of this garden,’ said Maria. She stepped through a bed of metallic-orange marigolds and entered a dark sycamore bower. The evaporation from the trees sprayed the baked, late-afternoon air with a sweet, cooling mist. ‘We can sit there.’ She pointed to an almost sarcophagus-like bench; the thick marble base was decorated with marble carvings partially visible through clutching tendrils of ivy. A statue of a woman, her body stiff and geometric but with a soft graceful face and long braids gently falling over her shoulders, faced the bench from the middle of a small pool rimmed with crumbling granite bricks.
The cold touch of the stone bench was refreshing. ‘It is not Greek,’ said Haraldr, meeting the eternal gaze of the statue. ‘But it is not in the fashion of Egypt, either.’
‘I think it is Greek, at a time when the sculptors of Athens borrowed from the ancients of Egypt. Before they learned to surpass them. I am not certain. Anna would know.’
‘Is Anna well?’
‘I think she will soon be betrothed. To an officer of the Scholae. He is a good man, both courageous and intelligent enough not to grovel before her father.’ Maria turned her head suddenly, as if just noticing something. ‘You are not sorry, are you?’
‘No, I am happy that she has found someone worthy of her.’ Haraldr frowned at the stone face. ‘But I feel that she has taken a part of me.’
‘And you have taken a part of her.’
‘Yes. That seems to be the way of life, endless partings where something is always taken and something is always left behind. I wonder if at the end of that long road anything remains of ourselves.’
‘Perhaps the soul we began with is not the soul we are destined to end with. The destiny of the soul is immutable, but the soul itself is constantly transformed.’
‘Or perhaps the same soul is destined to wear many disguises. That is the way Odin more than once tricked fate.’
‘Then it is important to know when the soul has been transformed, or when it merely masquerades.’
Haraldr fell silent and watched a mayfly skim over the surface of the pool. A shout floated distantly from the polo field. Had his soul merely deceived him, and her soul fooled her? That was the question that stood between them as they struggled to reach each other again.
At length Maria whispered into the rustling silence. ‘Perhaps that is the cruelty of fate, that until the end we do not know if our own soul was true, or merely lied to us from behind its mask.’
‘Might it not also be the cruelty of death that we will never know?’
Maria pulled her arms around her silken waist, as against a chill. ‘I pray to the Holy Mother that at death we will at least have the comfort of that revelation.’
‘I pray that when fate takes me, I will leave enough of my soul in another breast to know that I will live on until the day all souls are taken.’
‘You know that will be true. Look at the souls who already live in your breast.’
‘Yes. My father. My brother. Jarl Rognvald.’ He could not say the other name.
‘You are fortunate. One of the souls who lives in my breast only stabs at my heart.’ Haraldr sensed that he would be a fool to presume that he was the cause of her pain. He waited. Maria moved her white silk slipper gently over the tops of the tall, slightly wilted grass. A sulphur-yellow butterfly drifted erratically through the bower and out into the bright sunlight. The small crowd at the nearby polo field acclaimed some feat of horsemanship with a muffled applause.
‘Will you let me tell you about the first man who loved me?’ Maria’s question seemed directed to the statue. Haraldr touched her hand for a moment and let it go, then allowed her the silence to continue. ‘I was very young. Not even a woman. It was a time of great turmoil in the palace. The Emperor Constantine, who had been a very old man when he had inherited the Autocrator’s diadem from Basil the Bulgar-Slayer, acutely sensed his mortality. If he was to perpetuate the Macedonian dynasty, he knew he had to find a son-in-law for one of his purple-born daughters. Romanus was Prefect of the City, apparently of some ability at that level of government, although he was utterly incompetent as an Emperor. But he had the majestic speech and stature expected of an Emperor, and for a man - may the Theotokos forgive me - for a man as shallow as Constantine, that was enough. He became fixed on this man as his successor, even though Romanus was already married to a decent lady. That was no matter; the wife was forced to retire into a convent, the divorce granted, and Romanus was offered up to Theodora. She had the courage to refuse her father and has been punished for her denial ever since. Zoe could never resist her father, and ever since has paid the wages of her acceptance. But that is another tale. The object of this prelude is to say that the two women I had always relied upon for love and guidance were suddenly undone by this fate, their lives swept away for ever. And so I, who had always feared abandonment, was at last alone.’ Maria paused and worked at her lip with her pearl-white teeth. ‘A man came to me during this time, a man old enough to be my father, and at first he
was
my father. He was the father I had always dreamed of, a man of military accomplishments who had risen to high civil authority in the Senate, his hair still dark with youth, his hard blue eyes gleaming with knowledge.’