Byzantium (103 page)

The priest, who wore the gold-embroidered shawl of a deacon of the Mother Church, emptied his purse with frail, trembling hands. Three more solidi spilled onto the table. The garrison commander grinned again. ‘Very well. But you don’t have much time. They have already gone to work on him.’ The priest and nun crossed themselves quickly.

A single Pecheneg led the priest and nun up the dismal, mysteriously cold, endless flights. The wolf-shaped oil lamps seemed to struggle against the damp and darkness, the flames pitiful and stunted. At the tenth landing the Pecheneg knocked on the steel door, the security grate slid, and finally the door screeched open and offered up the reek of death. The priest and the nun were admitted to an ante-chamber a short distance down the icy hall. The black steel double doors of the interrogation chamber faced them. The five Pecheneg guards played a game on the floor with knucklebones. The priest gave each Pecheneg a copper nomismata. Two of them got up and slid the immense double doors open.

The two interrogators were sharpening their blades again, having dulled them on their dinner. Haraldr lolled his head towards the new arrivals. A priest. His eyes teared with gratitude. The Pantocrator would also be with him in the end. Haraldr thought he had never seen anything more beautiful than the golden crosses embroidered on the priest’s shawl. The priest moved excruciatingly slowly. He gave coins to each of the interrogators and brandished his jewelled cross at them. They bowed and retreated; as part of their indoctrination they had been shown the Hagia Sophia, and subsequently they had no wish to offend any of the wizards who could bring the sun inside at night and bridge the sky with molten gold.

The old crone came forward, too, her veiled, crusted, hideous face lowered to spare her the sight of Haraldr’s bloodied head and filthy, almost naked body. The priest chanted and knelt at Haraldr’s feet. Haraldr could not understand why the priest was tugging on one of the thick hide ankle collars, looped through chains, that restrained his legs. He looked absently to his feet. The priest, now furiously chanting, clutched a dagger in his withered, corpselike hands. He was sawing away at the collars. Haraldr looked up in horror at the two Pechenegs. They busied themselves shining their new coins, then held them up to the oil lamps and played with the reflections. Who was this unlikely saviour? If he could just get his legs loose before the Pechenegs lost interest in their newfound wealth! The old crone was looking at him; she had forced her crusted eyes open. . . .

Holy Father. Just to see them again, even if he died now. They were two sapphires with fires behind them. He mouthed her name in spite of his swollen tongue. Maria’s shoulders heaved and her eyes teared, but she steadied herself. She looked over at the Pechenegs and came around Haraldr’s back. The priest had cut one of the collars loose. Haraldr’s wrists were bound but not chained, and Maria hacked at the ropes. One of the Pechenegs was distracted from his coin, focused his black eyes for a moment, and barked at his companion. They stepped forward, not yet alarmed, and peered curiously at the priest. Haraldr whipped his free leg up and cracked the short Pecheneg on the side of the head with his foot; the man fell like a drunk. The second interrogator ran for the steel doors, and Maria dashed after him and plunged her knife in his back; the Pecheneg’s arms shot out sideways and he turned and looked at her in amazement. He shouted as he fell. Haraldr pulled desperately and the bonds at his wrist loosened as the doors slid open. One of the guards looked in. Maria stabbed at him but her knife clattered off his breastplate. Haraldr pitched forward on his face as his wrist came loose; the priest, who had been working all the time on the second ankle collar, crumpled beneath him. The muscles in Haraldr’s shoulders seemed to rip as he pulled his arms free, but he had the strength of Odin now. He rolled to his feet and whacked the guard with his still-numb arm and sent him sprawling. The priest struggled to his feet and Haraldr realized he was Zoe’s eunuch, Symeon. Haraldr’s head roared with the howling winds of the spirit world. Another guard peered into the interrogation chamber and Haraldr slammed the steel doors shut on his head; the Pecheneg’s face seemed to blow up with blood, and his nose and eyes spurted. Haraldr let the limp body slump inside, removed the sword from the belt, threw the doors open, and faced the remaining four men; the guard in the hall had joined the three Pechenegs. Haraldr was not even conscious of how he killed them, but the strange sword sang to him in the same melody as his own.

Haraldr came back into the interrogation chamber and methodically slit the throats of the men he had left unconscious. He looked at Maria, who had retrieved her bloody knife, and with some removed consciousness contemplated the terrible spectacle of their reunion. Then he embraced her. ‘Father, I am glad I did not die before this moment,’ he told her.

‘Oh, Mother of God!’ she gasped cathartically. She broke down at last and tried to rub the blood off his face.

Haraldr turned gratefully to the determined-looking eunuch Symeon and wondered how courage had ever come to be associated with a man’s testicles. ‘Symeon, you and Maria must go down now, before someone discovers this.’

Maria looked up at him and sobbed. ‘How will you . . . escape?’

‘I cannot go down with you,’ said Haraldr. ‘There will be too many guards. They still think you are a priest and a nun. They know I am not supposed to be leaving.’ He looked around the room, studying the ropes and various paraphernalia of torture. ‘I have to go up.’ He let go of Maria and began gathering supplies. As he worked, Maria and Symeon told him of the incredible events that had ensued in his absence: the banishment of Zoe and the charges against the Patriarch; the rising of the city; the encampment of his Varangians and a citizen army in the Hippodrome.

When Haraldr had assembled his gear, he bagged it in one of the Pecheneg’s tunics. Then he led Maria and Symeon back into the stairwell. ‘Go now,’ he whispered. Maria hesitated. She threw her arms around him and clung fiercely. ‘We are taunting destiny with these farewells,’ she whispered harshly. ‘Fate will not always give you back to me; it cannot be that generous.’ Haraldr took her arms from him and looked into her blazing eyes. ‘The gods serve those who obey their summons. You have proved that by giving me back my life.’ His voice rose in the dismal shaft. ‘Go. Go.’ She turned, looked back at him again, and then Symeon gently urged her down the stairs. She was gone before the gods whispered that he might never see her again.

Haraldr ascended the last flight. As he had expected, the stairwell ended at a steel trapdoor. He crushed the padlock with the steel mallet he had found in the interrogation chamber. He climbed out onto the roof. The wind whistled and he immediately saw the conflagrations along the spine of the city. He paused for a moment, rapt with the spectacle. The palaces of the Dhynatoi were crumbling into gutted hulks. To the south, thousands of torchlights moved in and around the Hippodrome.

Haraldr looked over the low parapet that ringed the roof. The pavement was twelve storeys below; the intervening walls of Neorion were sheer grey rock articulated with only a single band of small windows on the lowest level. Haraldr used the mallet to drive a steel spike - one of the brands intended for his eyes - into the stone. He looped a length of rope over the spike and fastened the other end under his arms. He slung his gear over his back and crawled over the wall. Odin, Christ, he prayed. He let go of the parapet and allowed the rope to take all his weight. Iron and stone screeched faintly, like an insect dying.

Driving spikes as needed and reusing his short lengths of rope, Haraldr rappelled to within a dozen ells of the pavement before his spikes ran out. He jumped the rest of the way, landing hard. He heard shouts from the road to the west: Khazars, about a dozen. He did not wait to satisfy their curiosity. To his left was a small wooded area that ran south towards the Church of St Irene. The cool fragrance of the trees engulfed him. He heard shouts and realized that the Khazars had followed. He thrashed through several rows of shrubs and saw the huge, brightly lit apse windows at the eastern end of St Irene. He crossed the lawn that bordered the church; off to his left, the windows of the neighbouring Hagia Sophia glowed like golden studs set into the night. Shouts came from the walled courtyard on the south side of the church. He looked back; Khazars had followed him across the lawn. He heard more of them coming around the apse from the north. They seemed to be everywhere.

Haraldr leapt to the ledge beneath the towering apse windows. He kicked out glass panes and wooden lattice and jumped. He landed in the midst of a group of exclaiming, fervently praying priests; they had been seated, as was customary, in tiers just behind the altar. Haraldr clutched the robe of the first priest he could get his hands on. ‘Where is your underground!’ he bellowed at the dazed cleric; the entire palace complex was linked by a network of subterranean passageways.

‘If it is sanctuary--’ began a white-haired old priest.

‘Show me the passage!’ shouted Haraldr. A young priest rushed forward and pulled him to a small door set into the wall behind the altar. They ducked into the dark storeroom as the Khazars climbed through the shattered window. The priest threw open a wooden hatch set into the floor. ‘Bless you, Father!’ shouted Haraldr as he descended the steps into the darkness.

Haraldr navigated the abrupt turns of the damp-smelling passageway; he had to duck his head to keep from hitting it on the low ceiling. After a while he could see the slight illumination of his pursuers’ torches. The passage forked. Which way? He was uncertain now if he was pointed south or east. Or west? One fork led to the Hagia Sophia, he reasoned; the priests there, no doubt still led by their besieged Patriarch, would surely conceal him and show him a way out into the city. Fate instructed him and he took the left fork.

The passageway lowered and he had to crouch. He could hear the Khazars shout to one another. He scuttled along desperately through the claustrophobic tunnel. And on and on. He realized that the Mother Church was not this far from St Irene, but he was beyond turning back. He remembered the cul-de-sac in the Bulgar-Slayer’s galleries and wondered when he would encounter a similar dead end and have to turn and face the Khazars.

The floor became slick and he could smell the water. Not just seepage, but oppressive, cold, dank, a wetness that thickened the air like a wind off an icy lake. The passageway ended beneath an arcade. Flares a good bowshot away rippled in golden rivulets across an onyx-black underground lake, illuminating the hundreds of columns and brick vaults of the Cisterna Basilica. Haraldr gasped with involuntary wonder; he had heard of the great ‘sunken palace’ but had never before seen it. He could not appreciate the beauty of the intricately carved floral capitals that thrust up the honeycomb of groined vaults; the cistern seemed only like a vast stone forest rising from a Stygian swamp.

Haraldr sheathed his blade in his burlap loincloth and lowered himself into the icy water. The submersion of his chest left him gasping for breath. He stroked furiously. A third of the way across, he heard the shouts roll through the vaults and looked back to see the Khazar torches in the arcade from which he had embarked. As he approached the far end of the cistern he paused and treaded water while he studied the guards on the small landing ahead of him. Khazars. Four of them; they were obviously standing guard over an entry point from the city. A rowing-boat was tied up at one end of the wooden landing; Haraldr hoped that the Khazars would be foolish enough to paddle out after him. But the Khazars simply unsheathed their swords and waited for the inevitable finish of his swim.

Haraldr paddled to within fifty ells of the landing. He continued to tread water and taunted the Khazars in Greek. They responded with curses in their own language. One of them sheathed his sword, swung his bow off his back, pulled an arrow from his quiver, and took aim. Haraldr ducked under the water and swam forward. When he came up for air, he was only twenty ells away. Another Khazar aimed at him and he took two quick breaths and ducked under again.

The two other Khazars quickly sheathed their swords, strung their bows, and joined in the sport; all four of them crowded towards the edge of the landing and began wagering on who would hit the ‘big white fish’ first. They studied the surface intently, arrows drawn. Nothing. Then the water splashed right in front of them, and one of the guards pitched forward into the inky void, immediately disappeared, and a moment later bobbed up, his neck tilted unnaturally. The astonished bowmen shouted and fired aimlessly into the dark water. More thrashing at the end of the landing. They turned.

Haraldr was already on the dock. He decapitated the nearest Khazar and with a single swat sent another sprawling into the water. The third Khazar dropped his bow and went to his knees on his own accord. ‘You know who I am?’ Haraldr said in Greek. The trembling Khazar nodded. ‘I let you live.’ He pointed to the boat. ‘Go back to your unit and tell them that Haraldr Nordbrikt and his Varangians will come against them soon, and there will be no mercy for those who oppose us. But there will be amnesty for all who refuse to take arms against us and the Empress of Rome.’ The Khazar dipped his head to the wooden slats. Then, still crouched and looking back at Haraldr like a frightened cur, he crawled to the boat, tumbled in, and paddled back towards the palace.

‘I am ... inspired, Uncle,’ said Michael, flourishing his gem-encrusted pallium. His dark eyes flashed beneath the blazing candelabra of the Chrysotriklinos. ‘I am not a fool. The employment of Hunrodarson is merely expedient. I have no more intention of making him Basileus than I do of placing a dead fish on our glorious throne. Do you think the Pantocrator would continue to sanction me if I were that foolish? No, Mar Hunrodarson will serve his purpose and then join his former accomplice, Haraldr Nordbrikt, in the Neorion.’ Michael’s lips quivered and his teeth flashed momentarily. ‘I rather fancy that little girl he has abducted. She is so ... pristine. I quite see her as my mistress. My virgin Magdalen. “White Mary” is what her name means.’