By the fifteenth lap the green team led the white by a length, and the blue of Epaphroditis was almost the entire length of the spina behind. Michael looked down at the Geneose Ambassador seated in the loggia to his right. The Ambassador, a noble-looking man with a high forehead, bowed to the Emperor, then held up his arm and plucked at the loose sleeve of his ceremonial white robe. ‘White! White, you say!’ shrieked Michael against both the noise of the crowd and the restraints of protocol. The Ambassador nodded.
On lap seventeen the white team overtook the green. The green fell back rapidly; the second horse seemed to have a troubled gait. The blues of Epaphroditis flew past into second position. Still, the white led by half the length of the spina.
On the eighteenth lap Epaphroditis made his move, bringing his whip savagely over the necks of his horses. A cyclone of dust trailed behind as the blues steadily gained on the whites. At the end of the eighteenth lap Epaphroditis came alongside the whites but could not pass before the turn. He dropped back slightly and then came alongside again on the next straight. But the whites held him off, and by the end of the nineteenth lap the blues had dropped off a length. One egg remained on the table, and the Genoese Ambassador looked up and waved at the Emperor. Michael glanced at him and again fixed his sharp, dark eyes on the track.
Epaphroditis’s blues made another thundering advance on the penultimate straight. The whip struck again and again, and the white supporters in the crowd jeered; Epaphroditis was leaving everything on the next to last stretch. White would win easily. But with a look over his shoulder, the white driver saw the blue horses literally snorting at his back, and he went to the whip as he rounded the last turn. His sudden acceleration forced the white chariot wide, and the wheels slid sideways, losing traction. Epaphroditis’s team hugged the spina, as if attached by rails, and suddenly squeezed through the opening provided by the centrifugal motion of the white team. Epaphroditis summoned the last resources from his team and lashed them on. The blues won by half a length.
‘Six Genoese merchantmen!’ shrieked Michael. He leapt from his throne and descended among the mere mortals to embrace his Uncle Constantine, who now exceeded all other dignitaries in the newly created rank of Nobilissimus. ‘Uncle! Epaphroditis has won me six Genoese merchantmen!’ The Emperor gasped with excitement. ‘You would have to send out a fleet of
dhromons
for an entire summer to do as well as I have with a team of four in a single morning! Six Genoese merchantmen! Epaphroditis will receive one, and you two, Uncle!’
Epaphroditis received his laurel crown from the Prefect of the City; somehow the scarcely animate old Prefect had survived another winter. Then three races ensued in like fashion. After the fourth race the crowd quieted, expecting the usual interval diversions - acrobats, trained animals, mock combats. Instead, Michael signed to the Grand Eunuch. The various starting and service gates clanked open, disgorging hundreds of eunuchs who carried enormous baskets of fruits, vegetables and cooked meats. Soon the base of the spina was almost entirely concealed by the food-laden baskets. The crowd cheered wildly. At another signal from the Emperor the cursores stood away from the marble parapet that separated the audience from the track. The spectators clambered over the wall, traversed the dry moat, and poured out onto the track. The stands were soon half emptied, and the spina was swarmed by a well-ordered mob; this was a heavily middle-class crowd of tradesmen and lesser merchants, and even the labourers in the audience were far from desperate for a meal - most had brought their own lunch - but were simply enthusiastic over the Emperor’s gesture. Their chant rose and quickly spread: ‘Michael! Michael!’
Michael nodded at the Grand Eunuch to signal the Hetairach. Haraldr leaned over the Emperor’s shoulder. ‘I want to go down there, Hetairarch!’ yelled the Emperor. ‘I want only you and a centurion to accompany me!’
Haraldr looked over at Ulfr in silent desperation. Madness.
Michael was overestimating his newly won popularity. It was hardly due to oversight that the Emperor who had long ago built this box had not provided any access between it and the crowd below; even the later underground passages were secret, circuitous and well guarded. Out of the many, there were certain to be malcontents - the Bogomils, who had no reverence whatsoever for the Imperial offices, were sure to have some adherents in the crowd. With only two guards among that mob, even a lone assassin could get close enough. ‘Majesty--’ began Haraldr.
‘Nonsense, Hetairach. My children adore me. And I feel Fortune smiling upon me today.’ Perhaps so, thought Haraldr as he listened to the chants. He shrugged at Ulfr, and together they guided the Emperor down the staircase and through the passageways.
The marshalling area beneath the stands was antic with acrobats, jugglers and buffoons waiting to begin the interval entertainment. The Emperor paused to poke his hands into the cage of two performing bears while the astonished performers and stadium officials watched. He growled at the beasts for a moment, then darted over and swiped at a juggler’s brightly painted wooden balls. He smiled down at an adolescent acrobat in a short tunic and chucked her under the chin.
‘Follow me out, Hetairarch.’ The bronze door opened and the Emperor strode out into the mob. As soon as he was recognized, the men around him fell to their faces in the sand. Michael navigated the prostrate bodies to the spina, found a half-empty basket of fruit, and began throwing oranges and citrons to the people as they rose to their feet. The chant resumed: ‘Michael! Michael!’ A starting gate opened, and Epaphroditis and his blue team wheeled out among the crowd as if by some prearrangement. Michael waved to the driver, and Epaphroditis guided his team to the Emperor’s side. The Emperor removed his heavily jewelled Imperial Pallium and handed it to Haraldr. Then he pulled his scaramangium over his head, to reveal a chariot driver’s tunic and leather skirt beneath his robes. He swung onto the back of Epaphroditis’s chariot, took the reins, waved Haraldr and Ulfr away, and began a slow procession round the track. The Imperial Diadem was still on his head. The din of approval exceeded that moment when the Bulgar Khan had kissed the boots of that other, now thoroughly forgotten, Michael.
‘Has he gone mad?’ asked Ulfr as he watched Michael steer the team around the spina.
Haraldr shook his head and shouted his reply in Ulfr’s ear as the acclaim crescendoed to a numbing roar. To this moment, he has obviously been anything but that! But what he is hearing now may indeed make him mad!’
‘Who is that man?’ Joannes held the door to his office antechamber open and pointed down the hall to a portly eunuch swathed in the robe of a Secretikoi in the offices of the Sacellarius.
‘Lebunes,’ said Joannes’s own eunuch secretary. ‘You asked for his assignment. He is studying the thematic tax ledgers of the Emperor Leo.’
‘Just so I know who is here,’ growled Joannes. Why hadn’t he remembered that?
‘Orphanotrophus, the man you sent for is waiting for you.’ The secretary paused, waiting for a response that came only in the form of a dark, distracted nod. ‘The man from Amastris.’
Joannes seemed almost jolted by his sudden recollection of the appointment. ‘Yes. Yes.’ He walked with heavy steps to his office, entered, and shut the door behind him.
The young man jerked to his feet when Joannes entered. He was about twenty, with a beard of sparsely woven fine, dark hairs, and wore the coarse woollen robe of a provincial tradesman. His large, dark, innocent eyes registered alarm and then surprise when Joannes stepped forward and clapped his bony shoulders. His forehead had a curious bulbous projection, almost as if there were a fist inside of his skull pushing out. A vein in his temple wriggled with anxiety.
‘Cousin,’ said Joannes in a rumbling effort at amiability, ‘please sit down.’ Joannes took his own simple chair behind his writing table and studied the entirely unprepossessing young man as if he were laying eyes on the incarnation of the Bulgar-Slayer. ‘So you are the grandson of my father’s brother, Nicetas. I’m sorry we haven’t been acquainted before. Do you know that the preoccupations of our Empire have prevented me from visiting Amastris since before you were born? It is a pity to lose touch with one’s family. So you are a wool carder in Amastris. And a member in good standing of your local guild.’ Joannes paused to allow the young man an opportunity to speak.
‘Yes, sir.’ The young man’s voice was fluty and tremulous. Joannes was satisfied with the silence that followed; apparently, he observed, this rube scarcely had the wits or initiative for other than monosyllabic replies.
‘Wool carding,’ said Joannes wondrously, as if he were describing some important office of state instead of the business of combing raw wool to prepare it for spinning, ‘an honest profession that affords a man a lifetime of steady earning and rewarding activity. Unless, of course, he runs afoul of his local Prefect.’ The young man’s eyes popped open like a sheep’s in the shearing pen. Joannes drummed the table for a moment, his crusty fingernails making a staccato sound like a marching tattoo. ‘I should like to free you from that anxiety,’ said Joannes at length. ‘That is why I asked that you undertake this long journey for me. I should like you to be my guest here in the Empress City. Forget the worries of your profession for a while. I will put my head to it and arrive at a more suitable employment for a young man of your abilities.’
The young man stared at Joannes as if he had just witnessed the Archangel descend before his eyes, bearing a message from the Pantocrator Himself. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Gregory!’ Haraldr stood and gestured for the little eunuch to join him and Maria at the table.
‘I cannot stay, Hetairarch, Mistress. The duties of the Grand Interpreter of the Varangians are manifold. I have come to you in my capacity as chief intelligence secretary in the offices of the Hetairarch.’ Gregory smiled and then composed himself. ‘This was sufficiently important to arrest your dining.’
‘At least sit while you tell us.’
Gregory allowed the serving eunuch to seat him to Haraldr’s right, and he looked for a moment at Maria, who sat opposite him. ‘I do not wish to jeopardize the Mistress with this,’ he said.
‘Don’t worry, my friend,’ said Haraldr. ‘I would have to tell her, anyway. I don’t know half of what she does of this palace and its curious machinations.’ He looked at Gregory quizzically. ‘This doesn’t sound like an ordinary intrigue.’
‘It may be nothing, Hetairarch, but as recent history has shown us, even the most insignificant seed can grow untended and eventually attack the great roots of an entire Empire.’ Gregory smoothed the embroidered tablecloth before him, almost as if he were going to write his information on it. ‘I have made the acquaintance of a Secretikoi in the office of the Sacellarius who has been assigned to the records bureau in the Magnara basement. I need not tell you of the importance of that location. This man has become friendly with the Orphanotrophus Joannes’s secretary, and of course is well placed to monitor the comings and goings in the Orphanotrophus’s office as it is. Yesterday he saw a young man - a young man whose only distinguishing characteristic seemed to be his utter mediocrity - visit the Orphanotrophus’s offices for a private interview. He inquired of Joannes’s secretary, and learned that the man was a young relative of Joannes’s from his home in Paphlagonia theme. My acquaintance also learned that Joannes has provided this young man a comfortable lodging outside the city. Quite ironically, these lodgings are the same as those occupied by our Emperor during the time when he was merely our Caesar.’
Haraldr looked at Maria and then back to Gregory. ‘An island going,’ he said in Norse.
‘Island going?’ asked Maria in her own increasingly fluent Norse. ‘I don’t know that kenning.’
‘Single combat,’ said Haraldr in Greek. ‘It sounds as if Joannes has obtained the shield he needs, and from what I have seen, our Emperor is honing the sword he intends to wield to a fine edge. I think it is only a matter of time before they challenge each other.’
Gregory stood and bowed. ‘That is my inference as well, Hetairarch. I will allow you to digest this information further while I return to my duties. And to the collection of more information on this matter.’
After Gregory had departed, Haraldr and Maria stared at each other for a long moment. Finally Haraldr sighed. ‘I guess we are going to have another argument.’
Maria’s blue eyes ignited. ‘Of course we are.’
‘Well, you do agree with my interpretation of this information, don’t you?’
Maria nodded. ‘Of course. It is obvious. Michael has not proved to be as malleable as Joannes had hoped, and now Joannes has begun to carve himself a new puppet.’ She signalled for the eunuch to remove her silver plate. ‘I don’t know why he has even troubled himself with that formality. He already fancies himself an Emperor, with his private guard now, and the Senate always following behind him like a herd of sheep with golden fleece.’
‘I think that is good,’ countered Haraldr. ‘It makes Joannes’s power evident to everyone. If he abuses the people, they will hold him accountable. He can no longer hide behind his monk’s habit or the Orphanotrophus’s office. And I think he knows that.’ Haraldr leaned forward earnestly. ‘He is making serious concessions now. Under Joannes’s auspices the Imperial Treasury has financed the reconstruction of twenty square blocks of the Studion. Food distribution in the Studion is now a regular state programme, vastly expanded beyond what I started. Joannes is even studying the thematic tax ledgers to find cheaters and absconders who are placing an unequal burden on their fellow villagers.’
‘And the Imperial Orphanotrophus can also reverse these reforms with several strokes of his pen.’
‘No. Once the people have received a lightening of their burden, they will be considerably more resistant to having that burden placed back on their shoulders. If Joannes wants to survive, he will have to continue his reforms.’
‘I think Michael is every bit as capable of managing these reforms,’ countered Maria. ‘Look at the Imperial Court judges he has removed, and those he has appointed. And what about his demotion of both that idiot Strategus and his corrupt Chartalarius in Opsikion theme.’