The priests simultaneously signed him with the cross and began a long, mournful, slowly rising and falling chant. When they had repeated the invocations of the Lord’s Sacrifice, they gently removed the Emperor’s purple robe and placed over him a rough woollen mantle. They removed the Imperial Diadem from his head and with scissors clipped away his hair and beard. Finally they signed the cross over him again and stood away. It was a miracle of sorts that the bloated corpse could continue to kneel without assistance. And yet as Haraldr watched the shorn face of the former Emperor, Autocrator and Basileus of the Romans, now a simple monk about to humble himself before the Pantocrator to whom all men must bow, he realized that the newly initiated Brother Michael’s eyes glowed with a happiness he had never before seen on the Emperor Michael’s face. ‘I am ... ready ... to begin my . . . journey,’ Michael said raspily, tears of profound joy streaming down his waxy, stubbled, hideously swollen cheeks.
Halldor came to Haraldr’s side; he alone seemed in command of his emotions. His cloak and armour were drenched from a renewed downpour. ‘You had better come,’ he whispered. Haraldr followed him outside into the courtyard.
The woman stood alone in the rain, her fur cape beaten down by the pelting cold drops. Haraldr did not recognize her tortured face until she spoke. ‘I must see him,’ said Zoe. ‘I must see him before--’ The Empress collapsed to her knees and pounded the sodden earth. ‘I must--’ Haraldr lifted Zoe to her feet and brought her beneath the shelter of the narthex arcade. He nodded at Halldor to take care of her while he went back inside the church.
Michael had been moved to a cot, and Haraldr was certain he had already completed his life’s journey. But his head rolled and his gleaming dark eyes opened into the light. ‘Hetairarch,’ he gasped. ‘The Pantocrator . . . asked you ... to give . . . me back . . . my life. Now he has accepted . . . that life. Bless you.’ Haraldr gripped Michael’s monstrous dropsied fingers. ‘Your wife,’ Haraldr whispered to him. ‘Your wife wishes to see you.’
The pain returned to Michael’s eyes and he shut them as if the light pierced them with awls. ‘Lord God, help me. I cannot . . . oh, Lord.’ He opened his eyes again. ‘She must remember me ... as I was. Tell her it is not her shame . . . but my own.’ Haraldr let go of Michael’s hand and rose from his knees. Let him die in peace, he decided, let her have the beauty of her memories. He turned and walked outside.
Haraldr took Zoe in his arms and whispered in her ear. ‘He says it is not your shame but his own. Can you understand why he cannot--’ Zoe slumped, her head fell back, and a terrible cry seemed to emerge from her distended neck rather than from her distorted mouth. Haraldr cupped her head and brought her face next to his. ‘Try to understand. Remember the man you loved.’ Zoe’s neck went limp and she collapsed. Haraldr left her in Halldor’s arms and rushed back into the church.
Joannes knelt at his brother’s cot, his huge head on Michael’s chest, his entire body heaving with sobs. Michael’s head lay to the side, motionless. The monk Cosmas Tzintzuluces turned to Haraldr, his dark eyes transformed with an ineffable joy.’ ‘Brother Michael has been accepted into the arms of the Pantocrator,’ whispered the monk.
The rainbow colours of the assembled dignitaries of the Imperial Court had been replaced by robes of black sackcloth. Even the vast octagonal dome of the Hall of Nineteen Couches, wreathed in golden vines, was dulled by a mourning sky that pounded the clerestory windows with cold rain. Only one man was privileged to wear colour at this ceremony. The Emperor, stretched out on a gilded bier, was for the last time attired in the purple-and-gold robes of the Autocrator, the gold-and-pearl Imperial Diadem on his head. Michael had lain in state for three days, and in the chill of the hall his features had settled into a pale, claret effigy of the man who had once held hegemony over the entire World. The Orphanotrophus Joannes kneeled beside the bier, as he had without motion, without sustenance, for the entire three days.
The Patriarch Alexius signed over the body and nodded to the Parakoimomenos. The Parakoimomenos lifted his shrouded face slowly, as if the gravity of his task had turned his head into a ponderous granite effigy. The rain tapped faintly at the windows far above, and the great, still hall seemed suddenly colder. The Parakoimomenos’s thundering voice rent the stillness with icy, knifing blows. ‘Arise, O King of the World, and obey the summons of the King of Kings!’ The Parakoimomenos’s words pealed through the huge dome and returned just as he began again. ‘Arise, O King of the World, and obey the summons of the King of Kings!’ After the third repetition of the grim summons it seemed as if the dome would split from the shattering force of the resounding commands.
As the Emperor had wished, the procession to his final resting place in the Church of the Anargyroi was a simple one. Michael was borne from his bier as the Christ had been from Calvary, in the arms of those who loved him and had served him. Haraldr stood between the entranced Orphanotrophus and the steely-eyed Grand Domestic Isaac Camytzes; the body, drained of fluid, seemed so light that Haraldr was not conscious of a burden.
The people waited along the Mese, silent, wet, a colourless mosaic of tens of thousands of pale, stunned faces against the light-consuming backdrop of their coarse black robes and capes. Yet as he passed, Haraldr felt and heard an unmistakable undercurrent, a murmuring like a cascade of snow from a distant peak, and he realized how dangerous Joannes’s immobilizing grief had become. Why had Joannes refused to allow the Caesar to appear in the procession? It was evident that the people who had come to bid their Emperor farewell were confused, even angry. And understandably so. Who would lead them? Did the Orphanotrophus now propose to have himself crowned against all laws of state, God and nature?
Cosmas Tzintzuiuces stood by the simple porphyry sarcophagus that waited to the left of the Church of the Anargyroi’s golden altar. The blazing candelabra proclaimed the resurrection. The pallbearers lowered the body into the crypt. The Parakoimomenos stepped forward again and called out, ‘Enter, King of the World, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords calls you!’ He paused until the church was still again, and even the candies could be heard sputtering beside the altar. ‘Remove your crown.’
The Patriarch Alexius stepped forward and removed the gold-and-pearl diadem from Michael’s head. He placed the helmet-like crown on a silk pillow presented by a priest and accepted a simple purple silk band from another pillow. He slipped the purple band around Michael’s brow and signed three times over the corpse’s chalky forehead. Then he stepped back and the marble lid was lowered. As soon as the face of the Emperor, Autocrator and Basileus of Rome had vanished for ever from the world he had once ruled, Joannes turned and fixed his dark, barely discernible gaze on the Imperial Diadem.
‘Better stay back, boy. If they see us together, they’ll want us to take them to the Chalke Gate tonight.’
The Blue Star tugged on Haraldr’s heavy woollen cloak, pulling him back into the narrow, refuse-glutted alley. Her towering, bearded son stood protectively behind her.
Haraldr moved back but stuck his head around the ragged brick corner of the tenement. At the street corner to his left a bonfire sputtered against the cold drizzle. A crowd of as many as several hundred, anonymous and virtually asexual in their tattered brown tunics, had gathered around the blaze, but not for warmth. The sound was a continuous murmur of discussion punctuated by periodic outbursts. They were asking themselves one question: who would rule them? And they were offering themselves the answer that had brought them into the streets: Joannes. The name was a staccato epithet spat forth in harsh punctuation to the general anxiety. Occasionally wooden staffs jutted into the air.
‘It’s building, boy,’ said the Blue Star. ‘Joannes bought himself three days’ grace with that hospital. But if another night goes by without the purple-born proclaiming her husband’s successor, these people are going to know that Joannes intends to keep the Imperial Diadem for himself. When they realize that, one hospital isn’t going to keep them from going up on those hills. And then it won’t be just the Studion that will burn.’
Haraldr drew his head back and turned to the Blue Star. He had seen at least two dozen street-corner gatherings like this on his way into the Studion; he wasn’t certain these people would wait until tomorrow night. His own internal debate continued. Why not let loose this collective rage, use his Grand Hetairia to hold the Imperial Taghmata in check, and purge Rome of Joannes and his Dhynatoi accomplices? But there were several reasons why not. Foremost, with the traitor Mar and his men in exile and the terrible attrition of his own pledge-men in the Bulgarian campaign, he had one third the strength he had been able to count on the last time he had considered this equation. And the last time he had not had an opportunity to see his ally mustered for battle. He looked at the pathetic wretches with their staves and stones and realized how many of these innocents would be slaughtered.
‘What will you do, boy?’
Haraldr gave fate a fool’s reply, but to honour the only answer he could. ‘If Joannes crowns himself Emperor, the Grand Hetairia under my command will besiege him in the Hagia Sophia and demand that he relinquish the Imperial Diadem. I think we will be joined by many factions of the Imperial administration.’ And we will eventually be defeated and massacred by the Imperial Taghmata, he silently concluded. ‘It is possible,’ he offered with more hope than proof, ‘that Joannes’s delay is due to genuine grief. I had never believed Joannes capable of any love except power, and yet I believe he truly loved his brother. In some strange way his brother seems to have been the repository of all the love and kindness that had otherwise been driven from Joannes’s breast.’
‘That love is now buried,’ said the Blue Star, her irony ominous. She made a smacking sound with her lips. ‘But it is possible he will offer this Caesar up to conceal his own ambitions. Will you swear your loyalty to this Caesar?’
‘Yes, presuming that the Empress will endorse him.’ That, too, was in doubt. Zoe herself had told Haraldr that she considered the Caesar to be too weak to challenge Joannes. ‘I think it is to the benefit of both Rome and the Studion to give this Caesar an opportunity to oppose his uncle, and to serve his purple-born Empress and her people. I have followed the Caesar’s rise more closely than many, and I see a much more capable man than others credit him.’ Haraldr again was struck by the parallel between himself and Michael Kalaphates, how they had both been accused of lacking ambition, and how fate had given them both an opportunity to prove otherwise.
‘Capable, perhaps. But capable of good or ill, boy?’
That was the question Haraldr had, with no little foreboding, just asked himself. What was it? That day on the ambo in the Hagia Sophia, when their eyes had met? ‘If he is capable of good, I will serve him until he can serve the people of the Studion. And then I will return to my people. If he is capable only of evil, I will consider him another account I must settle before I can leave Rome.’
The Blue Star nodded approvingly. ‘If Joannes crowns the Caesar, we will wait and see what he is prepared to render unto the Studion. But look for yourself, boy. Their patience is growing short.’ The Blue Star stuck her pudgy face round the corner. Her breathing fogged the cold, misty air. She turned back to Haraldr and looked up at him, her eyes gleaming with the power of the other Rome, the Rome that did not stroll silk-frocked through marble palaces. ‘These people have accounts to be settled, too, boy.’
‘This is not tolerable!’ shouted Michael Kalaphates, Caesar of Rome. ‘I am led to understand that the burial has already taken place and that my uncle and I have not even been granted the courtesy of viewing the mortal container of our relative and sovereign! I don’t think you understand the position you find yourself in, Chamberlain! You are inflaming the brow that will soon be illuminated by the Imperial Diadem!’ The chamberlain bowed smoothly. ‘I am to tell you that the Orphanotrophus Joannes will shortly join you. He is on his way.’ He crossed his hands over his breast and withdrew.
‘The Orphanotrophus will now deign to join us, now that he has concluded the affairs of state!’ Michael’s face was brilliant red, his eyes like glass. ‘Who is the heir here, Uncle? Who will soon receive the crown that rules over humankind?’
Constantine grasped Michael’s shoulders in his surprisingly powerful hands. ‘Nephew! Nephew! Master yourself!’ Michael seemed jolted by his uncle’s admonishment, and his eyes snapped back into focus as if he had just emerged from one of Abelas’s trances. ‘I am sorry, Uncle. I quite forgot myself.’
‘Listen to me, Nephew,’ said Constantine with a firmness and authority that his voice had never had before; it was as if the Imperial Diadem had in fact been passed from the late Emperor’s head to his. ‘We haven’t much time. Remember this when Joannes arrives:
he
is the Emperor now. If you let that thought leave your head, you will find your head leaving your body.’
‘But what of our secret, Uncle? Isn’t this the time--’
‘Right now our secret is but an ingot awaiting the goldsmith’s hammer. We have many laborious steps ahead of us before that lump of metal can be shaped to glorious effect. This is the first step in that process of transformation.’
Michael looked at his uncle, his face as stricken with confusion as that of a schoolboy who understands nothing of what his master has told him but who also knows that the lash will be at his back if he does not commit it to memory. ‘Yes, Uncle, I trust you. You know that I will follow in your steps as obediently as if the Christ himself were walking before me.’ He embraced Constantine. ‘Thank you for saving me, Uncle. I will find some way to reward you.’
The chamberlain arrived a moment later. ‘The Orphanotrophus,’ he announced. Joannes swept into the room, his distorted features inscrutable. Michael watched in rapt astonishment as Constantine dived to his knees before his brother and clutched his legs and smothered his thighs with kisses. He took the cue and himself fell to his knees and held out his hands to Joannes. The Orphanotrophus’s eyes seemed to devour this adulation; it was as if fires were slowly kindling within the dark sockets.