The Emperor Michael arrived a quarter of an hour later. He wore the scaramangium, pallium and diadem of his rank. When the Pecheneg interrogators had finished their prostrations, the Emperor signalled for them to leave. The huge steel doors slid and clanked. The prisoner breathed in even, shallow wheezes. Michael walked round the wheel for a moment; as he did, he placed his hands in front of his chest and touched the tips of his fingers together again and again in light, rapid movements. He closed his eyes and became very still and his entire head and torso inclined forward very slowly, as if he were a wax sculptor’s model gradually slumping in a fierce heat. Then his eyes popped open and his dark irises struck out at the bloodstained floor, as if the shafts of pure malevolence they projected were all that prevented his collapse. He stared for a long moment, and then his hand shot out and jerked the sack from the prisoner’s head. The prisoner’s eyes blinked in the lamplight. ‘Father,’ whispered the Emperor. ‘It is time for you to repent.’
Stephan Kalaphates, recently recalled Droungarios of the theme of Sicily, was a small, paunchy man; his belly, distended over the rack, quivered like an aspic. He was tightly gagged, but his dark eyes, writhing head, and gurgling throat conveyed the terror, outrage and astonishment of his strangled words.
Michael prodded his father’s bound hand with trembling fingers. ‘Look, Father, your hands are still dirty.’ Stephan stopped writhing and merely glared at his son in mute fury. ‘I remember how you used to take me down to the shipyards, as if to see you smear pitch on the sides of boats was some great marvel, like watching the Emperor in procession. I hated the pitch. I could not get the stink of it off no matter how I washed. Those men and you stank of it. Those men and you showed me the stinking vat of hot pitch and said I would burn in it because I touched myself. And then you tarred it! You tarred it!’ Michael’s face was livid, and he grabbed his crotch violently. ‘Because I did that! For doing that! I do it all the time, Father, and God has not punished me. I touch it all the time, Father! I touch it in God’s presence. I place the Pantocrator’s hand on it!’ Michael leered over his father like a drunken man, and Stephan’s head jerked up and down, cracking against the hard wooden wheel. ‘Mother touched it too. Mother cleansed me. Mother still touches it. And I still touch her.’
Michael ran his hands down his stiff, jewel-studded pallium, his fingertips grazing the raised gems as if they were women’s nipples. ‘I am a splendid Emperor, am I not, Father? My people love me. They do not call me, as they do you, “the pygmy playing Heracles” or “the ass costumed as a Droungarios”. They call me their father. Their beloved father. The light of their world.’ Michael stared into the oil lamps on the grim stone wall behind the rack. He cocked his head once to each side. The Pantocrator and I are together inside a light. Do you know that we have talked about our fathers, not the Holy Spirit who begat us, but our worldly fathers. His father was a tradesman, a good carpenter who loved his son and never fouled His mother. I told Him how you had scourged and mocked me and what you had done to my mother, and He told me what I should do so that you might repent and be cleansed. So that you will no longer stink of pitch.’
The Emperor exhaled deeply and closed his eyes. Stephan’s head resumed its grotesque protest, pounding the wheel with sickening thuds and hideous, thwarted cries. ‘Shut up, Father!’ Michael blinked his eyes in furious concentration. He turned away from the struggling figure on the rack. ‘I know he isn’t the only unclean father,’ he said to someone else. ‘I know that the other father tried to trick me. He tried to get me to tell him our secret. He thought he was so clever. He doesn’t want me to have my new mother.’ Michael leaned his head back and issued a strange, barking laugh. ‘He tried to tell me that you lied to me! He tried to tell me that you are Satan!’ The strange laugh again. ‘He is Satan! They are
all
Satan! They don’t want me to have my new mother! They are all going to have to be cleansed!’
Michael smiled as he listened to the echoes in the chamber of death. When he could no longer hear them, he tapped on the door to signal the interrogators. The steel doors opened and the two Pechenegs entered. Michael nodded at them and they removed the appropriate instruments from the table, walked to the rack, and ripped Stephan’s robe from the hem to the chest, leaving his spasming legs and pulsing, flaccid abdomen fully exposed. ‘I am going to see mother,’ Michael said. ‘I am going to tell her that you will never foul her again.’ Michael turned and left the interrogation chamber before the Pecheneg eunuchs began the incision around his father’s scrotum.
‘Keleusate.’
Haraldr rose and faced the throne beneath the golden vault of the Chrysotriklinos. The Grand Eunuch indicated that he could approach the Emperor and speak. The Nobilissimus Constantine sat impassively in a simple chair just to the right of the dais. Also in attendance were the usual white-robed secretaries, interpreters and the Emperor’s new astrologers.
‘Majesty.’
‘Hetairarch.’
‘Majesty, may I preface my request by remarking that Rome now enjoys a stability and unity that I have not seen before in my time here. I say without resort to flattery that no sovereign in my experience has ever enjoyed the love of his people to the extent that you do. I say with all honesty, as one who has been privileged to know you in times of both adverse and beneficent fortune, that I feel that the entire city has supplanted me in my office as Hetairarch, in that as I walk the streets behind you I know that any one of Rome’s citizens would lay down his life to protect your own as readily as could myself. Seeing that there is so little danger to your person, and that no foreign powers currently menace us, I believe that the time is now appropriate for me to take my leave of Rome. It is not without regret that I ask for leave, but I am bound by loyalties to my own family and people in Thule, and now I believe that they are in greater need of me than is Your Majesty. I humbly beg your permission to resign my office, and those offices held by the men of the Grand Hetairia, and be granted my leave as a devoted friend of the Roman Empire.’
Michael’s eyes were red-rimmed, no doubt from his always lengthy sessions in the Chrysotriklinos, and Haraldr worried that his speech had been too long. But he had learned that the Emperor was quite susceptible to well-intended cajolery and had reasoned that a show of respect would hasten him along.
Michael’s chest sagged somewhat, and Haraldr was now certain that the Emperor would implore him with desperate words to counter some new threat. ‘Well, Hetairarch, no sovereign, no matter how well loved, can afford to lose a servant and comrade in arms as dedicated as yourself. But then, no sovereign worthy of that love could deny one who has dedicated so much to him. You have my leave, my blessing, my gratitude. Rome will mourn your departure, of course. If I do not presume, can you tell me if you plan to take our beloved Empress’s Mistress of the Robes with you?’
‘Yes. Maria will become my wife in Thule.’
A strange flicker crossed Michael’s face, a brief, passing shadow. He does not like her, thought Haraldr. Or perhaps he is secretly smitten with her. ‘Does our Empress know this, Hetairarch?’
‘Majesty, I beg you to allow the Lady Maria and myself to plead our case to her directly. We do not intend to leave without her permission, either.’
‘Very well,’ said Michael. ‘My only reservations concerned her Majesty’s wishes in this matter. When that is settled between you, I will do everything I can to facilitate a prompt and safe return to your people.’ Michael was about to make the sign of the cross when he remembered something. ‘Counsel with me for a moment longer, Hetairarch. Indeed, as you say, I can confidently bask in the light of my people’s love, but who knows what external agents might wish to send clouds my way? I will need to replace your Varangians, and I am loath to summon your predecessor, Mar Hunrodarson, back from Italia. He is doing a far better job there than he did in protecting my late uncle, may the Pantocrator keep his soul. I have, however, recently purchased a contingent of Pecheneg eunuchs already educated in the Greek language, trained at arms, and even now performing well at various odd tasks for me. What is your estimate of their value as a temporary guard until I can obtain the services of loyal Varangians?’
‘Majesty, I believe that your perceptions of Mar Hunrodarson are characteristically acute.’ Haraldr did not add that he would be returning to Norway via Italia, and that Mar Hunrodarson would soon be unavailable for any sort of service. ‘As for the worth of Pechenegs, I have fought against them and have always felt that were they instructed in bathing, reading and military discipline, they would be the scourge of the earth. They are certainly fearless of death. These men should serve you well.’
Michael nodded and made the sign of the cross. As Haraldr departed with his hands over his breast, Michael and Constantine immediately found each other’s eyes.
‘Call me husband.’
Zoe laughed and rubbed the slick, sweet-smelling emollient over her bare white leg. Her scarlet silk robe was slit to the waist; she had spread the fabric out behind her like a peacock’s tail, and thus sat bare-bottomed on her silk sheets. ‘That is not the game I want to play tonight, precious one.’ She leaned forward and hissed through her gleaming white teeth. ‘I want to play bitch and hound.’
Michael blinked earnestly. ‘I really mean you must call me husband.’
‘Husband!’ Zoe leaned her head back and snorted regally. ‘My first husband was impotent, my second could only make love to me when we were adulterers upon my first, and you wish me to call you that.’ Zoe puffed her lips into a crimson pout. ‘I want you to stay my little boy.’
Michael thrust his hand between Zoe’s bare, succulent thighs. ‘It is quite important that you call me husband.’ His eyes glimmered brightly in the oil light.
Zoe removed his hand. ‘You have not asked me for that, precious.’
‘A husband does not ask.’
‘The wife of a fishmonger does not expect to be asked. I am the purple-born and you are my child. You will ask me.’
‘I am the Emperor and the beloved of my city.’
‘And you are my darling as well. But you must ask before you can open your mother’s pink-fleshed reliquary.’
‘My people would bid me have you whenever I wish.’
‘Your people give you only what your mother is willing to give you. You must not delude yourself that your people love you simply for yourself. You are loved because I have made you my child.’
Michael could not speak for some time, and there was a moment when his face hardened, until it seemed as if his skin was a porcelain that might shatter from the force of his grinding jawbones. ‘I am not asking for your troth again, as I did after your husband’s death,’ he finally said in a curious, quavering tone that caused Zoe’s blue eyes to widen. ‘I simply want you to pretend that I am your husband from now on. In your bed.’ He thrust his hand between her thighs again and moved it to her crotch. ‘In here.’
Zoe gripped his hand but he would not move it. ‘You are becoming quite your mother’s little man,’ she said slowly.
‘I am not a little man!’ Michael screamed, his face almost instantly livid. He stared at Zoe with murder in his eyes before he collapsed into sobs. She held him for a long while and let him smear his running nose over her silk-sheathed breasts.
‘Husband,’ said Zoe at length, her voice firm and inviting. ‘I am sorry that I did not recognize your dominion. I want you to rip my robe away and savage me with your manhood.’ She spread her bare legs wide, and Michael lifted his head to show her his burning eyes.
The people danced, twisting and swaying and whirling in mad circles. Inside their frantic ring, the two kings cast the lots of fate. One was tall and golden, the other black-bearded and cringing. The people began to chant as they danced, and the song they sang was Death. Over and over and over again they called down Death until their faces darkened with the wings overhead, and then they became the birds, fat, obsidian bellies glistening as they whirred in a cawing cyclone around the two kings. The raven appeared in the hand of the golden king, and the black king looked up at it, his eyes filled with unspeakable terror. The eyes of the raven glowed orange like burning embers, and the golden king brought the raven down into the face of the black king.
‘Haraldr!’ Maria bolted upright, her breasts heaving and her eyes burning into the dawn.
‘What did you dream?’ His arms were already around her. ‘I was awake. I watched your eyes.’
Maria shook her head numbly. ‘I dreamed . . .’ She paused and recalled the vision to herself. ‘I dreamed . . . that you killed the Emperor.’
‘I have no intention of doing that.’ He kissed her forehead. Maria described the entire vision, however, and he listened intently. When she had finished, he said, ‘I know that many of the details of your dreams are accurate, but the prophecies of life and death are not. My experience against the Bulgars proved that. Your dreams are warnings, not the decisions of fate. It seems more likely that they have the power to reverse fates.’
‘Perhaps. But perhaps the Emperor means to provoke you somehow into striking him. As they did with Joannes. I don’t want you to dine with him this evening.’
Haraldr’s gut knotted for a moment. He considered the matter. ‘I don’t think the circumstances will be as they were in your dream. You say there were many people present? An enormous crowd? But this will not be an official banquet. It is only the Emperor, the Nobilissimus and myself in the Imperial Apartments.’ Haraldr squeezed Maria tightly. ‘If the eunuchs start dancing in circles, I will leave.’
Maria did not see the humour. ‘No, this was outside ... a procession. You must not--’
‘I will no longer follow him in procession. I have resigned my office. My men are already lodged in St Mama’s Quarter, preparing our ships. The new Pecheneg guard led him through the city yesterday. There is no chance of that.’ Maria exhaled futilely, her fears exhausted. ‘You are apprehensive and I understand. And I think you and Zoe are going to miss each other more than you have imagined.’ Haraldr paused. ‘Has she said something to you since she gave us her permission to leave?’