The Belt of Gold

The Belt of Gold

A Novel of Byzantium

Cecelia Holland

1

She had kept silent until now, but when they brought a horse to her, saddled and bridled, the stirrups tied up neatly over the seat, Theophano said, “Shimon, I cannot ride.”

The big Jew yanked the saddlecloth straight and brought the stirrups down. “Theophano,” he said, “get on.”

“I cannot ride, Shimon.”

“It's only a little way. Would you approach him on foot? You must ride, as if you were an aristocrat.”

“I am an aristocrat,” she said. “Get me a chair. You said we had an hour—go into Chalcedon and hire me a chair.”

Shimon gave her a long meditative stare. He had the long sad face of his people, deeply graven with lines, and although he never raised his voice it made her quail a little to risk his anger. But if she was to gull Targa, and secure the precious list of names he was carrying, then she had to dominate the circumstances, and she meant to begin doing so now.

“The best chair you can find,” she said. “Now. Hurry; we have little time.”

Shimon stared at her a moment longer, expressionless. She made her face implacable. The Basileus had a look, when to argue or complain would rouse the Imperial wrath and make the very mountains quake, and Theophano put on such a look now, facing Shimon.

It succeeded. He turned away, shrugging, and beckoned to one of his men. Theophano throttled down a sigh of relief. No need to let him guess he might have refused her with impunity. She walked slowly away, down the road, her gaze sweeping the horizon.

There was little horizon here to sweep. Through the brown hills the road wound down in coils over the slopes; parts of it were visible for miles, but most of the roadcourse lay hidden in the folds and laps of the land. There was no water here. Even the burgeoning spring brought only the timidest haze of green to the rocky soil, slashed with gulleys as if by a great knife. The tough thorny brush that sprouted among the rocks was as colorless as the ground itself.

She walked up and down along the side of the road, kicking at pebbles with her embroidered slippers. How strange it was, to be outside Constantinople. She had spent her entire life in the City, and everyone had always told her that there was nothing of any interest elsewhere, but she had not believed it. Now she saw it was true.

Shimon brought her a clay flask of wine. “Will you need a cup?”

She laughed at him, at this new diffidence in his voice. “I think I can manage.” She took the flask, the clay still damp enough outside to cool the wine within, and lifted it to her lips. Carefully. She wore a white dress and it would not do to blazon it with a long red wine stain down the front.

As she drank, Shimon spoke to her in a low voice.

“Remember. Targa has seen you with John Cerulis, on the most intimate possible terms with him. You have the money with John Cerulis's seal on the purse. You must get him to give you the list quickly, before he can think it over.”

“I understand.”

“Targa's no fool. But he wants the money.”

“Yes, Shimon.”

The Jew sighed. His forehead was dappled with sweat. “Where is that chair?” He walked away, his arms swinging; he wore a long striped coat, like a Persian trader's; under the arms great wedges of sweat darkened the cloth.

At the trot, the chair arrived, elegant enough for a rented vehicle; six bearers carried it, but Shimon paid them off and sent them back to Chalcedon, and ordered some of his own men to strip down to their underclothes. Theophano pulled the curtains out and flapped them in the breeze to get rid of the smell of must. There weren't enough cushions even to cover the bare wood of the bottom. Laying her cloak down on the floor, she climbed in, piled what cushions there were behind her, and drew the curtains closed.

A moment later the chair rocked from side to side, as the inexperienced bearers got hold of the poles, and lurched up into the air. There was an explosive oath from behind her. She leaned back, the air already too close, the stale smell stuffing up her nose. Accompanied by the shuffling of the feet of her bearers and the escort, she jounced away down the road.

She thought again of what the Basileus had told her. The list that Targa was bringing, for which John Cerulis was prepared to pay well, must not reach his hands; she and Shimon were to do everything possible to divert the list to the Basileus. Everything possible. The Basileus had said those words with special force.

It was hot in the chair; her clothes were sticking to her. When she sat up and squirmed around, trying to get more comfortable, she unbalanced the load, and the bearers shouted, and one of them thumped the side of the chair in protest. She pulled the back of her dress away from her skin, feeling cooked lightly in her own juices.

“There.” Shimon stuck his face in the side of the curtain. “There he is. Are you ready?”

Her hands flew to her hair; suddenly she yearned for a looking glass. “I am ready.” Her heart raced. Quickly she felt under her cloak for the purse. She sat upright to keep from creasing her dress. The scent. She had forgotten it; she fumbled in her cloak and found the little vial of essence. She always wore this scent when she was with John Cerulis and the fragrance might be the perfect detail necessary to convince Targa.

Not foolish, Targa, as Shimon said. She wondered how much he would have given her to know what she knew, that John Cerulis was aware that Targa, his chief spy in Baghdad, took the money and orders also of the Caliph. She daubed the scent on her wrists and the insides of her elbows and over her throat.

“Targa!”

That was Shimon, outside, shouting. She sat rigid in the cushions, her backside numb and aching from the hard floor, while the unseen bearers took her into the middle of a great dusty thumping and tramping of hoofs: Targa's party. Putting her hand on the curtain, she pulled it back.

“Aha.” Directly before her, the Persian spy sat on a black horse. Seeing her, he split his beard with a white grin, and swept his arm down in an ebullient bow. “The glory of Christendom has come to attend me. I am blessed above all men.”

“Targa,” she said, and leaned on her elbow, reclining a little, showing him the opulent curves of her body. “John Cerulis has sent me here with urgent news for you. The Basileus has ordered out the Imperial Guard to watch for you on the road and to seize your person and all your goods and men when you reach Chrysopolis.” With a flourish she produced the forged letter and held it out to him.

Targa reached for it. The exuberant good humor that usually ruled his face was draining away; now he looked angry, his eyes sharp, and his cheeks sucked in. He glanced at the letter. “What is this?”

“The Patrician has sent me to warn you, and to exchange this—” She turned, fumbling around in her cloak for the money, and held out the purse to him. “For the list you are bringing to him.”

“He sent you? Why you?”

“Targa,” she said, “who better? Who would suspect me? Now, swiftly, give me the list, take your well-earned reward, and get you gone again to Baghdad, before the troops of the Basileus descend upon us.”

His eyebrows worked up and down. Behind him, his train clogged the dusty road, donkeys packed with goods, five or six drovers on horses. He made no move toward the heavy purse she was proffering. “Really. Is the matter so urgent? Often have I dreamed, Theophano, of a moment's dalliance with the loveliest of all the lovely women of Constantinople.”

“Targa,” she said, exasperated, “only a man would think of sex under these conditions. The list.”

He grunted. “Would that I understood the attractions of such as John Cerulis for such as you.” Gracelessly he took away the purse and from a bag on his horse's saddle removed a piece of paper.

“Now,” he said. “Here it is.” He waggled it at her, and his irrepressible smile was back, dividing his curly black beard with the stained white of his teeth. “One final payment, perhaps—a kiss from those ruby lips?”

“Hold!”

She jumped, startled, at the shout behind her. It was Shimon, now mounted on his mule, twisting to look behind him. He wheeled around again. His eyes were wild, his mouth open round and wide.

“Fly! Fly! Here they come—”

Targa jerked his head up. Shimon's mule reared up, spinning on its hind feet. Theophano stood in the chair, leaning out the side, and looked down the road.

In three orderly lines, fletched with rows of upright lances, a troop of soldiers was galloping down on them. Now the other men saw them, and Shimon, his mule under control, was gathering his own.

“Run—into the hills! Run—”

Targa said, “Those are John Cerulis's men. Why are you afraid of them?”

“They are after you,” Theophano shouted. She snatched the list from his fingers. “He knows you betrayed him to the Caliph. Hurry—escape!”

He blinked at her, his face fierce with suspicion. “Then why are you—”

Her bearers were taking her swiftly away down the road. She shouted, “Run!” Ducking back into the chair, she yanked the curtains closed again.

She could hear her bearers panting; the chair bounced and jiggled so that she had to hold on with one hand to the frame. “Stop,” she screamed. “Stop!”

They stopped. She slipped under the closed edge of the curtain and dropped into the road. Shimon on his mule lunged up before her.

“Here.” He put his hand down toward her, to pull her up behind him, but she leapt back.

“No—I have the list—you go! Take the chair, as if I am still inside— Lead them off!” She darted off the road, down into the ditch.

Shimon straightened up. His men were packed close around him, wild-eyed; they turned to look down the road, where the troop of soldiers was now hidden behind a curve of the hillside, and some of them yelled in fear and pushed on up the road after Targa and his donkeys and his men, who were now swiftly disappearing in the other direction. Shimon bellowed an order, and they moved off in a body after Targa, the chair jouncing and fluttering in their midst.

Theophano crouched down in the ditch, looking around her. There was nothing here to hide behind, and she stuffed the list into the bosom of her dress and scrambled up the steep bank on the opposite side from the road and ran through the brush toward a ravine a hundred yards away.

In the shelter of the yellow bank, she sank down as small as she could, her arms around her knees. Targa and Shimon and their men were hurrying away up the road in a disorderly mass. The chair, curtain closed, fluttered along in their midst, a gaudy fragile ship upon a stormy sea. She licked her lips. Somehow she had to get back to Constantinople, on foot, by herself, without being caught.

A low rumble reached her ears, and she shrank down against the crumbling alkaline earth. Around the curve swept the troop of horsemen at full gallop, thundering up the road.

Shimon and Targa and their men were still in sight, and seeing them, the ranks of soldiers yelled and spurred on, swinging down their lances to the level. A scream of despair went up from their victims. Theophano caught her breath. She knew Shimon and his eight men were armed only with belt knives; Targa, being a merchant, would carry little more than that. They were struggling away up the road but the horsemen were on them now.

The soldiers never faltered. They slammed into the disorderly little mass and trampled over them. The chair went down like a sinking ship in the midst of the bodies. Theophano jammed her list against her teeth, her heart hammering. She saw them dying and thought not of them but of their mothers, of their women, who would mourn them. The horsemen trampled right over the chair; their horses crowded around it, and she saw their lances jab and jab down through the filthy cotton curtains. Now they would know she was not there. Turning, she ran up the ravine.

“She's not here.”

Karros leaned out from his saddle, peering into the debris of the chair. “What do you mean? Where else can she be?” The scraps of wood and cloth and cushions that littered the road gave him no clues. He straightened up, yanking his horse's head around.

His butt hurt. He was a city-soldier, Karros, and riding on horses in the countryside did not amuse him. He kicked his mount forward, around the mess in the road, past the crumpled bodies of those of Targa's men foolish enough to have resisted, over to the tight-packed crowd of prisoners.

Targa saw him coming and pushed forward, his arms tied behind him, his face dark with anger.

“Karros! What in the hell are you doing?”

“Out of my way, traitor.” Karros kicked him in the face as he rode by.

The other prisoners faced him in a mass, their faces sullen and fearful. Karros looked among them and saw only male faces. How could she have gotten away? He twisted in his saddle again, looking all around him, first through the crowd on the road, his men and his prisoners, and then, slowly, methodically, scanning the bleak hillsides around them.

She had been here. She had been here when he and his troop set on them. Why else would they have brought a chair? He wheeled around again, back toward Targa.

The Arab merchant was lying on the road, his face split down the middle by the kick Karros had fetched him; he rolled over, groaning, and the blood dappled the soft dust under him. Karros crooked his finger at one of his men.

“Strip him. And find his horse. Turn out his wallet, everything.”

While his men did this he rode around the tight clump of prisoners, searching through them with his eyes. If they found the list here, then Theophano's escape meant nothing, a minor annoyance. But if the list were missing—

On the road now Targa squirmed naked, and the soldiers were laying out the contents of his clothing on the ground. Karros dismounted to pick through it; there were the usual incidentals a man might carry with him—a brass key, a hoofpick, some loose coins, and at the end of the line, a purse.

A purse heavy with money, and sealed with a familiar seal. Karros loosened the strings and spilled out a few coins and found them newly minted irenes, their edges still sharp. He swore.