Byzantium (67 page)

‘Nephew, I am ready to hear of this plot.’ Joannes settled himself into the long, rectangular marble tub. ‘This tub is not sufficiently deep,’ he said. ‘It was made for smaller men. You would find it comfortable.’

Yes. But I will not have need of your apartments, Uncle,
replied Michael in his own silent reverie.
I will sleep on the Imperial couch. With my mother.

‘Who is it that poses this threat to me?’

‘The conspirators were not named, Uncle. But the attempt is known in some detail. The Vlach cheese you are so fond of is to have a poison introduced. Indeed this may be a mere charade, but would it not be prudent to avoid this cheese until more is known? Our Holy Empire can hardly afford the loss of its most devoted servant because of tainted cheese.’

‘Yes,’ rumbled Joannes. He splashed water over his torso and then opened the lid of his soap box. ‘I think we affront Providence if we take lightly such warnings, even if only founded on hearsay. You have shown prudence, Nephew, a quality I had not thought previously to ascribe to you. Perhaps we should discuss enabling you to attend to some duties of state.’ Joannes removed the soap from the box and studied it for a moment.

‘The prospect lightens my heart,’ said Michael, his heart racing and his arms trembling beneath the water.

Joannes dipped the soap in the water and lathered the small, yellowish, tallowy brick in his hands. ‘This soap is my most sinful luxury. While I am certain that the Pantocrator has scourged my skin with this eczema to instruct me in Christ-like humility, I am tempted beyond redemption by the soothing properties of the emollient ingredient. A chemist skilled in pharmacology prepares this especially for me each day. This was just delivered this very night. I quite forget all cares when it relieves the torment of my affliction.’

Michael was so cold, he thought his teeth would chatter. Why does he go on so much, unless he knows? But why does he lather the soap if he knows it is a deadly poison? Joannes began salving the lather over the purple blotches on his left arm. Michael was astounded by the surge in his loins. In a moment he might ejaculate.

‘Yes, Nephew, one can grow dangerously complacent at the word
poison,
as one is constantly besieged by such threats, and as so many clumsy hands, so to speak, have sought to emulate the poisoner’s art.’

Ice spread from the nape of Michael’s neck down his back. Was it too late to stop it? What if the ingredient only made him ill? If he knew, how could he go on lathering? No. It would work. Caesar. Emperor. Basileus. Autocrator. Light of the World. His hand in that of the Pantocrator.

‘Yes, the science of toxicity, which has an undeniable social utility, has few truly learned practitioners. There is one specialist, however, who has advised me on the use of certain paralytics that are useful in interrogation. I consider him the one true artist in his field, though you would not find him aesthetically pleasing in his own right. He is an immensely fat man.’

There, in centuries-old baths where pagans gambolled in an ancient yellow glow, the Pantocrator spoke to Michael Kalaphates, as He had beneath the limitless golden dome of Hagia Sophia: ‘Save yourself. As I forgave from the excruciations upon My cross, so I shall ask the Father that you be forgiven.’

‘Uncle, Uncle, Uncle!’ Michael shrieked like a dying beast and thrashed from the pool and fell to his knees beside the marble tub, his naked back as wet and trembling as a newborn foal. ‘Save yourself! Oh, Theotokos, save yourself, the soap is poisoned!’ Michael seized the lathered lump from his uncle’s hands, clutched at it desperately, and lost it to the floor. ‘Oh, Uncle, Uncle, Uncle, I would sooner die myself - I will die myself! Oh, Theotokos, oh, Uncle!’ He wailed desperately, like a widow keening and, with his face to the opus-sectile pavement, shoved the soap into his mouth, his limbs mad, flailing, the tentacles of an octopus pulled from the depths to die on a rock. The scent of his urine mixed with the foul, fatal bitterness of the soap.

Joannes stood above him, terrible in his nakedness. He extended his distorted arms, a demon retrieving a soul from the very bosom of the Christ. He grasped his nephew’s hair and jerked back. Michael’s neck twisted and his terrified eyes rolled, to gaze into the face of death. Joannes snatched the soap from Michael’s foaming jaws and threw it into the pool. ‘The soap is not poisoned, Nephew. I will not be dead as soon as you would hope, nor, unfortunately, will you. Your soul will be taken piece by piece, according to the schedule I set, in the Neorion.’ Joannes wedged his knee into Michael’s back and pulled harder on his hair. ‘You might mercifully accelerate that schedule by telling me who is in this with you.’

Michael Kalaphates, Caesar of Rome, stared ahead into the darkness and saw the fading golden arms of the Pantocrator begin to reach out to him again. The slut!’ he screamed. The slut commanded me to do it!’

‘Let him see me now,’ said the woman’s voice. She was not the same woman he had spoken to in the crowd. This woman’s voice was calm, grandmotherly, but with a timbre of great authority. Haraldr’s hands ached but his head was clear. The blow had not concussed him, only blackened his vision for a few moments and brought him to his knees; the thugs had been able to tie his hands and feet and slip several cloth sacks over his head. Thrown into a cart of some sort, a blanket or carpet over him, he had jolted over the streets for half an hour. He had heard the faint whoosh of flames, some distant shouting, animal noises. The can had turned many times.

The sacks were slipped off his head and Haraldr blinked into the torchlight. He was seated on the floor in a small, neatly kept room. The woman was standing. She was short, white-haired, with the inflated features of a woman whose beauty had aged into plumpness. She wore a threadbare, but clean, sleeveless linen tunic; her substantial bosom pressed against the fabric. Beside her, in a simple wooden chair with a curving back, sat a man, even older than she was. His eyes were milk-white with cataracts. Behind the aged couple, looking down over their silvery heads, stood the Blue Star.

‘I am the Blue Star,’ said the old woman.

Haraldr blinked. ’You. . .’

The old woman reached back and snatched the ear of the big man and pulled him forward until his jutting beard seemed to perch on her shoulder. This rascal is my son. He uses my name; it protects me. Confused you? Confusion is my livelihood now, you might say. I must be known, and yet not known. This devil helps me with that.’ She released the ear and batted her son’s cheek. ‘That’s all he’s good for.’

The Blue Star dropped her hand to the head of the old man and caressed his wispy white hair. This is my husband. He doesn’t hear, either.’ She turned back to her towering son. ‘I let the boy know what I am about.’ She looked at her son sharply. ‘So he won’t blunder into something!’ She came around and studied the bindings of Haraldr’s hands. ‘Cut him loose,’ she ordered her son.

Haraldr rubbed his hands and ankles and looked up at her. ‘The Blue Star,’ she began, acknowledging his evident curiosity, ‘is the name that the people of the city once knew well. This . . .’ The woman, with some difficulty due to the tight fit, pulled her tunic down almost to the nipple of her left breast. The birthmark on her ruddy, fleshy breast was not blue but a faded brown that might have been deep purple once, and not a perfect star but indeed had five somewhat irregular points. ‘The Blue Star. They saw it - believe me, they all did, from the Bulgar-Slayer down to the porters. In the Hippodrome. I could do things on a galloping horse you couldn’t do on a gymnasium floor if you spent a lifetime trying. One foot, one hand, my leg up, leaps from one horse to the next. To start, to titillate them. Then swords and fire and what have you. I have seen two Emperors crowned. You have heard nothing like the way they acclaimed me in the Hippodrome.’ For a moment Haraldr saw the young athlete’s eyes, and he imagined the beauty she must have been, the spectacle of her. And then he saw Maria, her beauty, still alive, still vivid, and he realized he could not see her old like this, could not see a time when she would not be fresh and in his arms.

The Blue Star was an old woman again. ‘One day, during a practice stunt I had done a thousand times, I fell. I could not get up. I walk now but with pain and difficulty.’ Her head bobbed slightly. ‘Everything gone, the silks, the town house, snatched away by God. I came back here, where I had started. This man taught me that I had lost nothing.’ She bent and kissed the old man’s head.

‘These are my people, Varangian. Devils, whores, thieves, vagrants. They were his people too. The Bulgar-Slayer. He raised many of them out of the dirt, gave them reason to walk in the Christ’s path, proved that he would not let the Dhynatoi crush them if they even lifted their heads out of the offal in the streets. Then the Bulgar-Slayer was summoned by the King of Heaven and the Studion became a hell. But we survived.’ She fixed Haraldr with cold, brilliant eyes. ‘Now we are not to be permitted even to survive.’

‘Mistress--’ began Haraldr.

‘Don’t call me mistress, boy. I am not one of the courtesans you fair-hairs fawn over.’

‘I swear to you by all the gods sacred to me and to Rome that Varangians did not light these fires tonight. We tried to prevent them. That I came to you like this should prove that I have no wish to punish those who have suffered enough.’

‘I know that now.’ The Blue Star barked at her son, and he ran out for a moment. When he returned, he handed his mother a plain clay bowl. She held it down for Haraldr to see inside. He looked back at her grimly. The bowl was full of noses and ears. Freshly cut. ‘This is the record of our conversation with the arsonists. We have not gone back as far as we can go, or will go, but the trail of noses, and worse, will lead us to the Orphanotrophus Joannes. We have known for some time that he is the architect of our misery.’

Haraldr nodded. ‘You are correct. But you must understand that you are not alone against the Orphanotrophus. There are many working in this cause. I am certain that when the Emperor himself recovers--’

The Blue Star burst into a rich peal of laughter. ‘Boy, what use are you to me when you don’t know the simple truths? This Emperor is not a bad man, we know that. But he is dying. He will not see the next full moon. And then his evil brother, Joannes, will put his newly anointed puppet upon the throne and bleed the people of Rome to feed his own ambitions and nurture his Dhynatoi accomplices. He will create a Rome that only the few will love, and robbed of the devotion of her people. Rome herself will perish.’

‘We believe we have time,’ said Haraldr. ‘Rome is not a corpse yet. Those of us who share your hatred of the Orphanotrophus have decided to wait and see if the Emperor recovers before we act. But we will act soon enough. Do not doubt that.’

‘And if the Emperor does not recover? Will you support this . . . Caesar?’

I believe the Caesar has many good qualities, and I believe that he is not likely to follow his Uncle Joannes’s policies blindly, in fact, he is inclined to the contrary. He should be allowed to prove his sincere concern for the people of Rome. I would think it would be to your benefit to take the same position. Why hold your nose and throw the fish out before you have even smelled it?’

‘If he shows the respect due the purple-born and places his aegis over the smallest folk, then we will joyously acclaim this Caesar as our Emperor. If not,
we
will act. Do not doubt that. But I did not allow you here to speak of the future of Rome. It is the future of the Studion that I carry in my bosom. You say we are allied in a common cause, and the manner in which you have come among us tonight is a coin of good faith that I am too old and too clever not to accept. So answer me, boy, with the truth you have paid me so far. What will you Varangians do if the Orphanotrophus Joannes orders you to massacre the people of the Studion?’

Haraldr felt weak, cold, and sick in his gut. Would there be such an order? Likely there would. He rose from the floor and looked down at the Blue Star for a long moment. ‘If the Orphanotrophus Joannes gives that order, then I swear by all the oaths I have already pledged tonight that I will kill him myself.’

‘Why have you come?’ Maria’s face was bloodless with fright - ‘What has happened? I know that Studion is burning. We went to the roof and saw the fires. He is not . . .’ Maria lowered her head and her dark, loose hair tumbled over her shoulders. The candelabra in her bedchamber had been extinguished, and two oil lamps on long slender bronze stands sent strange shadows scurrying across the densely patterned pale blue Antioch carpet.

‘He is safe,’ said Mar. ‘I sent some of my own men to find out. As I had feared, Joannes attempted to bury him there. I warned him.’

Maria’s breasts heaved beneath her sheer silk cloak. She was like a corpse returning to life, her lips suddenly flushed a brilliant red. ‘Yes. But you did not come here to bring me comfort.’

Mar studied Maria warily. ‘No.’ He paused, wondering if his purposes were more clear to her than they were to himself. Why had he come? ‘Do you love him?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are going to get him killed.’

‘Yes.’ Maria folded her arms under her breasts and looked at Mar with cold azure eyes.

Mar shook his head incredulously. ‘If you have contrived some insane plot of your own, I warn you that anything that now involves Haraldr concerns me as well. He is a Norseman, and my friend, and I will not lie to you, an ally whom I need above all others. Destroy another man with your foolish schemes and mad passions. Because if there is further danger to my ally, I will destroy you.’ In the silence that followed Mar realised that he had not conveyed conviction. Her eyes were too clever, too weary.

She looked down, her lips curling slightly as if concealing an amused disdain. ‘You aren’t his friend. Perhaps you are his ally. Are we rivals?’

Mar stepped forward and slapped Maria perfunctorily, almost as if it were a ritual punishment. ‘That is a slander, bitch!’

Maria laughed and put her ringers to her bleeding lip. She dabbed and tasted the blood. ‘Yes. It was unfair of me to say that. I do not believe that you could not love me simply because you want to love men. I never knew why. Was I unattractive to you?’