The Belt of Gold (10 page)

Ishmael straightened, his back tightening. “Someday.”

“You will never beat me.”

Affronted, Ishmael got to his feet; the stool scraped on the floor. Worse than losing was hearing about it all the time. He walked off a few steps and wheeled.

“Michael!”

The whole place fell quiet. Everybody looked around.

“
Prince
Michael,” said the man at the table, correcting him, calmly.

“That yellow rag, Prince, that you were wearing during the race, Prince—what did it mean?”

The other driver laughed. “A present. From a female friend.” His teeth were white against the cropped black beard. He drank his wine down and put the cup on the table.

Ishmael went to the door. On the way, he passed Karros, still sitting alone at the table by the wine tuns, and paused to speak to him. “There. You see?”

“He wouldn't say in front of everybody, would he,” Karros said.

“I yield,” Ishmael said. “There is no answer.” He walked out to the street.

Karros lingered on in the tavern as long as he could, which was most of the day, drinking and listening to gossip. He liked this kind of work; what he did not like was going back to his master without some definite word on the intentions of Prince Michael. He held his drink well, so that in midafternoon he was only slightly drunk when a street urchin ran in with a note for him on scented paper.

The scent was familiar to him. He knew who had written it even before he unfolded the paper and saw the firm strokes of her writing. When he read the words, he began to smile.

She was a meddler, the little bitch; now she thought she could meddle again. Swiftly he got up from his table, collected his cloak and the shoes he had kicked off under his chair, and went out the door into the street.

It was near nightfall. Outside the tavern, the whores were gathering, ready for the evening's work. Karros plowed through them without even a glance. He had promised himself, once, that when Theophano had lost the protection of the great, he would take her himself. Now she was asking for it again.

He went up past the public baths, to a little church on the slope there, surrounded by the tenements of the poor. A swarm of workmen and housewives were waiting in the churchyard for the mass to begin. Karros went by them and in through the front door.

The church smelled of stale incense. The priest's boys were running irreverently up and down under the dome, taking candles up to the altar, and on the way back playing some game, skidding over the smooth floor, and giggling. When Karros came in they pulled themselves up into an exaggerated sobriety of pace. He went around to one side, outside the ring of footed columns that supported the dome, to a bench where a woman was sitting, her face heavily veiled.

It was Theophano, pretending to pray. Karros sat down beside her. Her perfume excited him.

“Good evening, Theophano.” He licked the salty taste of sweat from his lips, remembering the last time he had seen her. “You are much more clothed than you were at the inn in Chrysopolis, my dear.”

She crossed herself, silent, as if she did not hear him. He could make out nothing of her face behind the veil.

He tried again; he said, “Lying down with sweaty unbathed barbarians these days?”

She seemed not to hear him at all, and for a moment, his stomach suddenly giddy, he wondered if she were the wrong woman—if he were making some horrible mistake. But then she sat back on the bench, lifted her veil, and faced him, her heart-shaped face perfectly framed by the mass of black gauze, her blue eyes guileless.

She said, “Tell me, Karros, is the Patrician discouraged with me?”

The fat man blinked at her, taken off-stride by this unexpected question. “You want to come back to him?”

Her eyelashes fluttered; new color bloomed in her cheeks. Karros cleared his throat. He knew he should talk her into thinking she would be welcome. John Cerulis would give much to have her within his power again.

He said, “I believe he loves you, my dear—he will forgive anything to one he loves.”

Impossible to get that through his lips without stumbling. He patted his mouth with his fingers, wishing he had not drunk so much.

She said, “Then you think he will have me back again?”

“I shall make the way straight for you.” He wondered why she was doing this. Certainly on orders of the Empress. But what difference did it make? Once within John Cerulis's grasp, she would never escape again.

She said, “I had to go with them, you know—I really do want to serve the Patrician, but Shimon dragged me off to meet Targa. And then those Franks—”

“Oh, yes, my dear. I saw how much you struggled against the Franks.”

Her eyes widened; in a voice that quivered with false feelings, she said, “I don't know how to thank you for that, Karros—had you not come in just then, I fear he would have raped me.”

Karros laughed out loud; people were filing into the church, now, and his boisterous mirth drew pointed looks. He settled himself. Up at the altar the boys were lighting the candles. Karros put his hand over his mouth.

“Those barbarians.” He remembered the man he had thought he had seen, on the top tier of the Hippodrome, a man he never wanted to see again. “You don't happen to know where they are now?”

“Well, as it happens—”

“Yes?”

“I don't, actually.” She smiled at him, sweet as a child. “Have you seen them since Chrysopolis?”

“I thought—” He frowned, watching her closely; did she really not know that one of them was dead? “I thought I saw the big one at the races the other day. Probably I was wrong.”

“I have seen neither of them since the inn,” she said. “I have no desire to do so, either, and nor should you—they were little more than common criminals, those two.” She gathered up the veil in both hands. “Tell the Patrician John Cerulis that I shall present myself to him soon, and hope to recover a place of grace with him.”

“It shall be my privilege.” Karros leered at her, delighted; this news would quite make up for his failure to learn anything about Prince Michael. “If you were to bring him the list, he would certainly welcome you with every honor.”

“The list is gone,” she said. “Think no more of that.” She lowered the veil over her face. Karros got up, expecting her to leave the bench past him, so that he could brush up against her, let her feel his body, but she backed up to the other side and went out that way. Disappointed, he tramped off through the mob toward the door.

10

The Empress had a map of the world, woven of silk threads with an emerald to mark Constantinople, and a great white pearl to mark Jerusalem; the sea was the blue of lapis lazuli, the Empire was of gold, and the rimlands of earthen brown and green. Nicephoros, coming early into the council room, saw this beautiful work displayed and went up to the wall where it hung to admire it.

He was of Syrian blood, the Treasurer of the Empire, born near Damascus; he had been brought to Constantinople as a baby, when his parents fled the oppression of the Caliph, but the authority of his blood still marked him, in the dark hue of his skin, his great hook of a nose, and his passion for numbers. As a boy, sitting cross-legged on a terrace before his tutor and his tutor's cane, he had suffered through Homer and Pindar, struggled with geography and astronomy, and gloried in the work of numbers. In their abstractions he found a peace beyond controversy, and their clues to the fundamental relationships between apparently disparate things seemed to him revelations of the order of the cosmos.

What that order was, he had never come to grasp; it was enough, usually, to know that an order existed. Especially in the administration of the Empire, it was a necessary belief that beneath all chaos there was pattern, even if comprehension of it were beyond the reach of men.

He stood before the map, seeing in the arrangement of the colors a problem in geometry; the door behind him opened, and he wheeled, ready to prostrate himself. But it was only the Parakoimomenos.

The tall eunuch advanced through the room with stately pace. His skin was white and smooth as goat's cheese. “Nicephoros,” he said. “Perusing the book of the world, are you?”

Nicephoros greeted his colleague with a bow. “I am assured we are here today to discuss matters of war and barbarian government. I wished to refresh my understanding of the details of the earthly frame.” He sniffed. The Parakoimomenos wore a subtle fragrance he could not identify, disturbingly feminine. It suited the council room, its cushiony gold and white luxury.

“The Basileus may not appear today,” he said. His voice vibrated musically in the bellows of his chest.

“Oh?” Nicephoros raised his eyebrows.

“I understand she passed the night very poorly.” One long pale finger reached out and picked at the pearl of Jerusalem. His fingernail was perfectly oval, the color of a moonstone. In a hushed voice, the Grand Domestic said, “You know she is unwell.”

“I know no such thing,” said Nicephoros, and glanced over his shoulder.

The eunuch laughed richly at this response. “Oh, but she is. Perhaps it is a passing thing, a mere indigestion, or a touch of female troubles—in spite of all, we must remember that she is still a woman—”

He sniffed; his black eyes glowed hotly a moment. Nicephoros said nothing. It was never wise to trade confidences with a eunuch, or with a complete man, for that matter.

“She has never named an heir,” said the Parakoimomenos. “Perhaps the moment is upon us when that must be done.”

Nicephoros said, “She will never name an heir,” and promptly clamped his lips shut, vexed with himself for letting out such a revealing comment.

“Oh? Why ever do you say that?”

The Treasurer shrugged, turning away. “Merely a passing thought, my dear fellow. Think no more of it.”

“No, no.” The Parakoimomenos pursued him sedately back across the room. The piles of carpet silenced their steps, as if they walked on clouds. “Your opinion in such matters is ever acute and edifying, Nicephoros—please, amplify your remarks.”

Nicephoros bowed to him, hands pressed palm to palm. “I would not take your precious time with my ignorant daydreams, my dear Parakoimomenos.”

“Oh, but—”

The door swung inward again, and several more of the Imperial staff swarmed into the room; the Parakoimomenos, thwarted, stood back from Nicephoros, and went to greet them, and Nicephoros sat down, much relieved. He pinched the bridge of his enormous bony nose between thumb and forefinger.

The Empress would never name an heir, because to associate anyone else with her in the Imperial dignity would give her enemies one more angle of attack. He raised his head, facing the map again, his hands in his lap. For that reason also, if she were ill, she would do all necessary to conceal it. For that reason, to suspect her of illness, even rightly, or to pressure her to name an heir would be to provoke her suspicions; Nicephoros had no desire to find himself the target of his Empress's suspicions.

The Parakoimomenos knew all this as well as anyone. Why then was he muttering into men's ears? Nicephoros glanced across the room at the eunuch, who in the midst of the crowd of officers went from one to the next, pressing hands, talking in his melodious voice. Eunuchs were not supposed to have ambitions for themselves. But then neither were women.

Now she was here, among them as suddenly as if she had dropped from Heaven. Nicephoros sprang to his feet and at once went to his knees. She strode into their midst, her coat of gold and pearls all asparkle in the lamplight, and turned in the center of the room, and Nicephoros lay down on his face at her feet.

“Hail, Basileus, Augustus, Chosen of God!”

Some of the others had not even seen her; gaping, they were caught on their feet as in a great rustle of their clothes the men sank to the floor and raised their voices to her. Lifting his head, Nicephoros saw her smiling down at him.

Had she set the Parakoimomenos on him to test him? Perhaps that was it.

“You may rise,” she said, in her cool voice. She walked restlessly around the middle of the room, her garments swishing and swaying around her. If she were ill, it lay lightly on her; she was full of energy, her face bright with life, her eyes snapping. Nicephoros and the others rose and arranged themselves around the room according to rank, the Parakoimomenos foremost. She went along the rank and spoke or smiled to each one, and put out her hand, and each man bowed and touched her hand—this was a little private ceremony of hers; she did it always. A womanish thing: she trusted her sense of touch to find out falsehood. Nicephoros pressed his fingers to her fingers and her smile fell on him like a lover's look. He lifted his head, his spirits suddenly high.

“Excellent,” she said, when she had seen them all. “Now. What is the news from Europe? Drungarius?”

The Grand Drungarius stepped forward and flexed his arm in a military salute. “Basileus, from Stauriakos comes word that he is steadily recapturing those villages along the coast of the Adriatic that were lost three winters ago. The Bulgars are fleeing back toward their mountain strongholds. But it is piecemeal work, Basileus.”

“Ah. Bit by bit we shall recover what is ours,” she said. “Very good. You may write to our general Stauriakos and tell him we are pleased.”

“He needs money, Basileus.”

“I shall take that under consideration.”

“Basileus, Stauriakos is a brilliant general—if we sent him more men and more money he might drive the Bulgars completely out of the Empire in a matter of months! I—”

“No,” she said, and turned her back; she went to the map on the wall and laid her hand on the hand-shaped landmass of Greece. “He does well. Bit by bit, this is how to win wars. That way, we always know what it is that we have won, and if we lose, we lose only a little. Let Stauriakos do as he can with what he has.”

Also, Nicephoros thought, to concentrate so much power in the hands of one man would make him a rival for her throne. She distrusted armies and always had. Soldiers would not obey a woman, they would always seek to put a man in her place; she had no choice but to stand alone.

“Now,” she said. “Nicephoros, you have some report on the finances of the Empire?”

He cleared his throat; he felt all eyes turn on him. Stepping forward, he faced the Empress and said, “Basileus, the most diligent of the tax-collectors have not been able to make their quotas this year. Besides the poor harvest, the plague has broken out in Paphlagonia and Chaldia again and people are fleeing from the villages there.”

Behind him the others murmured at the mention of the plague, and the Empress glanced around the room and came a step toward Nicephoros.

“The bearer of bad tidings, Nicephoros. The more galling is it that we must somehow amass the tribute for the Caliph, whose emissary is to arrive here in a little while to receive it.”

Nicephoros saw no reason to speak on this matter. He knew there would be very little money for the Caliph, but he knew also that the Basileus meant to do rather more than give the Arabs money. He backed up, returning to the protective company of the other men.

“The Caliph is sending us the Emir Abdul-Hassan ibn-Ziad,” she said, “whom many of you will remember from the last embassy here from Baghdad, a genial man, a son of the Barmakids, that industrious and farsighted family that does the Caliph's practical work for him. While he is here—” She turned smoothly toward the map again, and putting out one red-painted fingertip directed their attention to Baghdad. “I intend to seduce him.”

Some fool behind Nicephoros actually gasped. Nicephoros laughed; some of the others hushed the fool in a barrage of hisses, and the Empress wheeled, her clothes a dance of fiery glitter as she moved.

“What! Bardas Therias, do you not believe I am capable of it? No, my good fellow, I meant it as a figure merely.” She paced forward, her hands before her, a smile curving her lips. “He has been here before, he speaks our language—somewhat—and he has learned a little of our ways. This time, we shall show him what a man's life may be like. Let him see what it is to be Roman, and he will not want to be anything else.”

Around Nicephoros, the men murmured their rote praises of her. Nicephoros glanced behind him, looking among the ranks of officials for the Prefect of the City, whose task it was to manage the affairs of the City of Constantinople itself; the Prefect had not yet appeared, although his report would be called for next. The Empress was facing her map again, her mind still fixed on her plans for the Barmakid ambassador.

“They have wealth, in Baghdad,” she said, and put her hand out toward the blue of the twin rivers. “Mere wealth will not bend his mind toward us. In his own country he may have anything he wishes, anything he can conceive of. It is our superior uses of our wealth that will infect him with that disease most useful to our purposes—civilization. Nicephoros.”

The Treasurer bowed, spreading out his hands in gestures of submission. “Basileus.”

“You have travelled to Baghdad—you know what in our City will compare most favorably with his own. You will escort ibn-Ziad about Constantinople.”

“Basileus,” Nicephoros said, alarmed; his duties already consumed every daylight hour. The Parakoimomenos was bending forward also, urgent, intent.

“You may speak,” the Basileus said to him.

“Basileus, Augustus, Chosen of God—” The eunuch's flexible tall shape bent in several bows as elegantly as a palm tree yielding to the blast of the wind; in the course of his obeisance he advanced himself several feet closer to the Empress.

“Basileus, the most noble and glorious Nicephoros is already much involved in the problems of the taxes and the money difficulties of the Empire—am I audacious in suggesting that this largely ceremonial duty of escorting the Arab visitor be lifted from his shoulders and placed on one with more idle moments at the disposal of his Augustus?”

She smiled at him; her smile extended to include Nicephoros, now caught in a painful conflict: dealing with ibn-Ziad was a chore he wanted neither for himself nor for the Parakoimomenos. The Empress's eyes sparkled. Surely she enjoyed making rivals of these two men.

“You shall share the task,” she said. “Nicephoros shall bring his experience, the Parakoimomenos his own resources; in no way then can our objective confute our efforts. So be it.”

The officers chorused, “So be it,” and many patted their hands together in a polite applause. Nicephoros bowed, accepting the task, hiding his expression. The Parakoimomenos should never have thrust himself forward; yet that was a trifling lapse of decorum compared with her allowing him to dictate his will. She had slighted Nicephoros, giving him an important duty and then taking it away, even if he had not wanted it. His guts churned. He hated the Parakoimomenos, and it was wicked of her to force him into company with the eunuch. And where was the City Prefect?

Not here. Nor did she expect him here, because she was now moving on to some other problem of the government, eliding smoothly over the gap where the report on the affairs of the City should have been.

Nicephoros straightened. He was a servant of the Empire; he wore the belt of service to the Basileus, and whatever the Basileus wanted was the will of God. He had no right to these poisonous sentiments against the Parakoimomenos. The eunuch was another of the belted men, his colleague, his helpmate. Besides, he had no testicles. Nicephoros folded his hands together before him, pressing subtly against the front of his coat, reassuring himself with the witnesses of his manhood. He lifted his head. The Empress needed him. He would serve, as he always had, with no thought for himself.

After the meeting in the council chamber, Nicephoros went out to the courtyard called the Phiale of the Greens, a spacious terrace in the Palace grounds, where a fountain of fanciful shape showered the air with its cooling moisture. It was the first true summer day of the year, and the heavy, windless heat oppressed the spirit and laid waste to the body's resources of strength and energy; the walk down to the terrace left Nicephoros damp under the arms and down the back. The cool of the fountain was a benediction. He sat down on a stone bench at the side of the terrace and prepared to eat his midday meal.

The terrace was paved in rounds of grey stone, with the spaces between filled in with red and green and blue pebbles. Doves and pigeons in busy swarms hurried over this ground; over the low wall that surrounded the area grew a profusion of wild roses. Looking on it was a tonic to Nicephoros's spirits, and he sat a moment, his hands on his knees, smiling at this pure and unaffected beauty.