Byzantium (84 page)
‘If he slips,’ said Zoe, leaning forward in her golden throne and pointing to the oil-glazed acrobat performing atop a pole balanced in the middle of the table, ‘then Lady Manganes will have a virtually naked man in her plate.’
‘Yes,’ said Maria. ‘I wonder if she will ask for some garos sauce to be ladled over him.’
Zoe laughed and lifted her fluted, scarlet-tinted wineglass. Haraldr felt both very sorry for her and very devoted to her. The pain of the continued separation from her husband showed in a kind of haunted darkness around her blue eyes; it was clear that she had hoped the Emperor might appear and surprise her. And yet in spite of how cruelly love had treated her, she obviously did not begrudge Maria and Haraldr their long, adoring looks. Instead she had played the gracious messenger of Aphrodite; she even had silenced the
voukaloi
and organs and made a toast to love, with an obvious inference to the couple sitting next to her.
‘Well,’ said Zoe, her disappointment a thin edge on a voice determined to provide others joy, ‘I have tipped everyone, toasted everyone who deserves to be toasted, sent enough bared acrobats’ breasts and buttocks among them to enact the forty martyrs of Sebaste’ - the martyrs in question had been forced to strip and stand in the snows of Rus until they perished - ‘shown them the latest beasts from the Indus, provided them with unremitting chorales, and have successfully commissioned a mime of the liaison of Ariadne and Theseus so explicit that I believe Lady Attalietes split her scaramangium in a combination of ecstasy and outrage. I believe that I can only exceed myself by ordering our illusionist to begin.’
Maria slid her arms across the table and leaned towards Haraldr. She was slightly taken by the wine but to charming effect. ‘You must tell me what you see,’ she said. ‘Some people will see nothing, some will see different things, many will see the same thing. It is interesting to compare.’
Zoe touched Haraldr’s arm. ‘Think of this as a waking dream. Do not be alarmed. The first time you see it, if you see it, you may think that angels - or demons - have taken hold of you, it is so wondrous.’ She smiled warmly and wistfully at him. Haraldr settled back, tense with anticipation despite the wine. He had considered much he had already seen in Rome magic. Now he would see what the Romans themselves considered magic.
The stage was a construction of gilded wood that had been erected at the east end of the courtyard, just behind the Empress’s table. It was a virtually freestanding building, with a high, vaulted ceiling from which three elaborate candelabra hung, providing the platform below with an intense golden light. At Zoe’s command the organs flourished and the tables full of diners hushed expectantly. An old, bowed workman of some sort shuffled out onto the platform. Inexplicably, the workman instantly vanished, and in his place was a much taller man, young and handsome, wearing a loose black scaramangium much like a monk’s frock. ‘Who am I?’ asked the man in a voice that carried like a herald’s and yet at the same time seemed conversational, as if he were sitting across the table.
‘Abelas!’ yelled some of the young men and women who apparently had seen the man perform before. Abelas listened for his name and then whirled like a cyclone, and when he was still again, his face was as white as a corpse and streaked with brilliant tendrils of fresh blood that ran down from his thick black hair. ‘Who am I!’ he shrieked, and whirled again. When he faced the audience this time, he was the old workman. He began to shuffle off the stage. Then a burst of light and a flock of white pigeons fluttered above the stage and carried Abelas away, leaving only a mist where he had been. It was incredible; Haraldr could see the birds, a dozen of them at least, transport Abelas over the roof of the villa and off into the night.
Haraldr heard murmuring among the crowd and looked back to the stage. A dwarf in a black robe stood where Abelas had been. ‘Who am I?’ asked the dwarf in a voice identical to Abelas’s. ‘Abelas!’ came the return chorus. The dwarf clapped his stubby hands as if applauding the audience for this feat of identification. ‘Who am I?’ The dwarf flew up into the air, his black robe trailing like a column of smoke, and then the smoke cleared and a woman stood there, naked except for a single leaf over her pubic triangle. The crowd tittered. ‘Who am I?’ asked the woman in Abelas’s voice. ‘Abelas!’ The woman bowed and skipped off the stage; two huge cranes rose up from where she had stood, flapped their wings, and flew off into the night. The crowd applauded wildly.
Haraldr took a deep draught of unmixed wine. Spectacular but explainable; he had recently been shown the complex hydraulic lifts that raised the Emperor’s throne and had held in his hand one of the clockwork birds that had once bewitched him. Abelas was a wizard, but a wizard at mechanical stunts and sleight of hand. Haraldr drank again, relieved. He had feared that Abelas might have access to the spirit world. Fortunately that was not the case.
The organs flourished briefly and Abelas emerged again, a plain-looking man, perhaps late in his third decade, in a loose white scaramangium. He held up his hands for the crowd’s acclaim and snakes coiled from his fingertips. He shook the snakes off and, in a prodigious, catlike leap, bounded to the Empress’s table, almost weightlessly dodging the litter of plates and goblets with his dancing feet. He planted himself in front of Lady Manganes and leaned his torso far over her, seemingly in defiance of both anatomy and gravity. His hair seemed darker and his black eyes burned in the candlelight. ‘Who are you?’ he asked her.
Lady Manganes, a fleshily attractive woman with a spark in her own eyes, smiled mischievously. ‘Anna Manganes,’ she said, a hint of invitation, and fear, in her voice. Abelas whirled his arms in front of her face and made a motion as if pulling her soul right out of her body. ‘Who are you?’
‘Salome,’ said Lady Manganes in a voice quite unlike her own. She seemed to listen for distant music, and rose, swaying, tapping imaginary cymbals with her hands. Then she leapt onto the table and began to whirl, faster and faster, and yet her feet never disturbed a single utensil. Abelas let her go on for a moment and then touched her head lightly, at which she stopped and climbed down to her seat. Abelas leaned over her again. ‘Who are you?’
‘Lady Manganes,’ she said, shrugging.
Abelas bounded across the table and stood in front of Haraldr, the fulfilment of a dread that everyone at the table had experienced. Haraldr glanced for a moment at Maria and saw her bite her lip; was it possible that she had engineered this trick? Haraldr vowed to resist whatever wizardry Abelas used to induce the trance; he had heard of old women from Biarmaland, seeresses who had similar powers to command other minds. ‘Who are you?’ asked Abelas. Haraldr met the furious eyes, as black and deadly as hot pitch. ‘Hetairarch,’ said Haraldr. The hands whirled and Haraldr saw the rings flashing around him like dozens of brilliant moths. It is the hands, the lights that compel, thought Haraldr. He focused on Abelas’s eyes and pulled his consciousness away from Abelas’s darting fingers. ‘Who are you?’ Haraldr’s eyes flashed knowingly at Abelas. ‘Hektor,’ he said, so as not to spoil the wizard’s show. He was trying to figure some stunt to perform when Abelas crouched over him and placed his hands on Haraldr’s shoulders. They both shuddered from the jolt. Abelas’s eyes retreated and then plunged like arrows into Haraldr’s soul.
This man knows me,
Haraldr told himself with utter certainty.
This man knows who I am. Not simply that, but everything, things that I do not even know.
Abelas nodded drunkenly, as if in affirmation of a truth so terrible, it made even him swoon. For a long moment Haraldr and Abelas remained locked in the dance of fate. Then the illusionist dipped his head as if to kiss Haraldr on the cheek. ‘We are both merchants of destiny,’ he whispered to Haraldr in a harsh, frightened voice. He danced away and leapt to the stage. ‘The Hetairarch has suggested a fitting climax to my vision,’ he declared to the entire crowd.
The candelabra above the stage began to spin, slowly at first, then so fast that it was dizzying to follow the lights. Abelas was gone. His voice seemed to come from above the tables. Slowly, in a mesmerizing cadence, he began the story of the Creation. A nearly naked man and woman came on the stage, and it was obvious that they were merely actors. The light was distracting, whirling. Creatures and foliage appeared around Adam and Eve, somehow mechanically propelled onto the stage. Then a fish flew through the air, out over the audience, too brilliant to be a bird in some sort of guise, or even a lantern; many people pointed and watched. The characters on the stage vanished in an instant of flickering light, but some of the images lingered, like ghosts, a moment longer.
The lights of the spinning candelabra were joined by other lights, and all were in motion. ‘Go to the end,’ said Abelas. Haraldr did not notice that a Senator’s wife had moaned and fainted only a few places down from him. Much of what followed was clearly a spectacular enactment of Revelations: the opening of the seven seals, the blowing of the seven trumpets, the horsemen of doom, the lamb and the beasts and the naked whore. Yet there were evanescent glimpses of less substantial things, great fires, and the star named Wormwood that glowed above the stage for what seemed a long while, perishing everything below.
Finally the stage cleared again and Abelas appeared alone. He reached up towards the spinning lights and began to describe the city of New Jerusalem. His arms and hands seemed to weave a tapestry-like image of the pearl gates and streets of translucent gold; the crowd gasped as if his hands were indeed building this marvellous city before their eyes. Haraldr saw only Abelas’s flashing rings. Then Abelas intoned, ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ and Haraldr could no longer blink away the fire in Abelas’s cupped hands; the flame grew, expanding into a great, golden, shimmering globe that seemed to engulf the courtyard; the voices around him exclaimed in a chorus and Haraldr knew that they all shared this vision. The light within the globe became brilliant, almost blinding, and Haraldr remembered what Abelas had whispered to him, not the thing that he had heard but the thing that had been whispered when he was unaware he was hearing. ‘Look for the dragon,’ the voice had said. A point of darkness, like a black star against a golden sky, grew until its huge wings spread over the globe of light like an obsidian dome, and he felt the cold gust of doom, and the brilliant light vanished.
Haraldr shook his head. The vision faded into the reality of candlelit tables and silken dignitaries. Where had he been? Had Abelas entranced him from the moment their eyes met? The stage was completely dark, and Abelas was gone. The crowd was in a frenzy of speculation about, and recapitulation of, the wonders the illusionist had shown to them. Husbands attended women who had fainted, two men were almost to blows over something, and many simply sat in drunken, bemused awe. Then Haraldr realized that Maria was crying.
Constantine rubbed his eyes. The oil-lamp cast spooky shadows over the rock walls of the scriptorium; were he the timid type, he probably should have begun to see demons crawling about the place. As it was, the demons were the doubts crawling about his mind. He closed the volume of archives he had just finished with; a poof of dust rose from between the wooden covers like a small djinn spiriting forth. He looked over the shelves, hoping against hope that he had missed something. No, he had been through all of them and found nothing. He wondered how late the hour was, and where he would go in the morning. This had seemed so promising: the looks in the monks’ eyes this afternoon. That was what was wrong. They had certainly heard of the man, and yet there was no record here. No, this was the place. He could hire soldiers in Caesarea and return and demand the monks’ cooperation. He could arrange a loan there, certainly, to pay the mercenaries. Suddenly the shadows did bother him. If the brothers had lied, it was not safe here. He remembered with a start that he had left his mule tethered to the ladder all this time.
Constantine picked his way nervously through the darkened galleries. At one point he reached a cul-de-sac and for a moment thought he would panic. Tombs. He hated being inside these rocks. He reached the chapel and was startled by the growl. No, snoring. The monks did slumber before the Lord’s sanctuary was complete, but they slept beside their work. Constantine crept outside and set the lamp on the ledge and gingerly descended the ladder into what seemed a well of darkness. When he reached the base of the spire, he looked up at the light on the rock balcony above him and decided he should go back up and risk climbing down with it; otherwise he was blind in this strange and now pitch-dark otherworld. Then he glanced around the base of the ladder and realized that his mule was gone.
Constantine climbed arduously back up the ladder and retrieved his lamp. But as he set out on foot he quickly regretted having gone back for it. The shadows that danced around him, in and out among the spires, were more terrifying than any stumbling in the dark could possibly be. Where was he going? Surely there was an inn somewhere, or some cenobites who remained awake; he would pay them to lodge him. If only he could see a light.
Cold water seemed to drain through Constantine’s bowels. Who was there? The same thieves who had stolen his mule? Constantine parried with the lamp as if it were a sword, thrusting it towards the craggy folds at the base of a cone. He saw red, feral eyes vanish into the night. Wild dogs, possibly more vicious even than thieves. He would have to get a loan in Caesarea now, simply to pay for his passage home, once he had reimbursed the mule’s owner.
The scraping again. Constantine looked about the ground for some good stones to throw at the dogs; why hadn’t he at least brought a staff? The black blur flashed from the shadows and punched the breath from him. His lamp spilled and burning oil washed over the rocks. Hands clutched at his cloak and probed for his purse. He rolled into the dust, gasping for air, the hands now pummelling his head. He forced himself to his knees and pounded back with his chubby fists, eliciting muffled groans from his assailant. The two men, entirely unknown and virtually unseen by each other, traded blows in the fading light of the spilled oil. Constantine’s chest and arms seared with fatigue but he still flailed with unexpected force. The assailant fled, a clattering shadow disappearing into the night.
