The Belt of Gold (18 page)

“Not your arms against mine, but your team against mine. I am told the race to which I am invited pits against one another two splendid teams, one Christian, the other Arab. I shall place my wager with you on the team from Caesarea, if you will take up your end of the ribbon, and wager with me on Mauros-Ishmael.”

“Done,” she said, and put out her hand to him.

He took her hand, and bent over it in a flirtatious sort of bow. “Charming opponent.” He pressed a kiss to her fingers.

“Excellent.” The whole idea was delightful to her; she told herself to give some present to the Parakoimomenos, for putting the seed into ibn-Ziad's mind that had grown into such a pleasing flower. A combat: a challenge.

He was going; he cast one last look over the rail, down into the City and the fires, and with another bow backed himself out the door to the Kathismus stairs. Irene swung forward again, to watch the fires. Her hands struck the marble rail with an ebullient emphasis. The one problem with being a woman was that there were few such moments as this, a single combat. And it was a single combat, even if by surrogates. She leaned against the rail, yearning for race day.

16

In the morning the City still seemed to be trembling. The streets were full of people, standing in clumps, talking, their eyes whining with excitement and fear; every church was packed with prayermongers. Hagen rode past one of the places that had burned: the space between one street and the next lay in a heap of fire-blackened trash, a masonry corner still erect, a pile of bricks, some roofing tiles, stinking of smoke. A dozen people were picking through the ruin, some looking for loot, some for dead friends. There was a sheet on the side of the mess, with some bodies on it.

Hagen imagined that the ground beneath Constantinople had opened, and flames from Hell shot up to the surface. He shivered at the vision.

He passed by John Cerulis's palace and saw the courtyard clogged with wagons, some already loaded, others being piled up with boxes and jars. Swiftly he went away up the Mesê toward the Sacred Palace.

Nothing here had toppled. No sign of fire here. The precinct of the Empress, perched on its hilltop above the sea, was as inviolate as a piece of Heaven. He went inside, feeling safer there, and set out to find the Basileus.

The morning room was finished, the candles in the ceiling light all lit. Irene walked around beneath them, frowning up at the hanging lamp. It had seemed more interesting in the planning than it looked now.

“Well, I think it's charming,” said Helena. “And at last the room is clean.”

Irene paced up and down the carpet, restless and dissatisfied. “I'm hungry. Send for wine and cakes, Ida. And I want some music. Oh.”

She had forgotten that Theophano was gone, who played the lute. Disappointed, she sank down on the sofa and drew little Philomela into her lap to be caressed; the child beamed at her.

“Were you afraid when the earth shook, my dear one?”

“Oh, no, mama,” said the little girl proudly. “I never even woke up.”

All the women laughed.

“And you've done your lessons for today?” The Empress stroked her face over the child's shining hair.

“I have finished the whole of Homer now.”

“And your music?”

At that the warm flesh against her own stiffened and drew back. A cloud passed over the child's expression, and she burrowed her head into Irene's shoulder.

“I cannot play the lute, mama, I cannot!”

Helena swooped down on her, hands out like pincers. “Don't do that! Naughty girl, you wrinkled her dress, and see—” She pulled the child away and leaned down to smooth the disturbances in Irene's silk stola.

“That white-haired man is here,” she said, under her breath.

“He is?” Irene sat bolt upright. “Very good. Send him in. There, Ida.” The serving woman was bringing her a small plate of Cathayan ware, a slice of apple cake on it. Irene's mouth watered.

The big Frank came into the room. Somewhere he had acquired a Roman tunic, under which he still wore his barbarian leggings and boots. He looked curiously around the room a moment before he went down on one knee before Irene.

“John Cerulis is leaving the City,” he said, without preamble. “Oh? When?”

“Very soon. I was there last night when he announced it. He will surely be gone before the day of the next horse-race.”

Irene cleared her throat. It was preferable that few people know all her thoughts, especially in the matter of John Cerulis. Beside her, Ida knelt, feeding her the cake bite by bite with a spoon, and Irene turned to the woman and took the dish from her hands. “Thank you, I will do that. You may go for a while. Take Philomela in and listen to her practice the lute.” She swept the room with her gaze, and the other women stiffened, poised for her commands.

“Helena, to the looms, if you please, you know how important that is. Zoe, you may have the afternoon to yourself, to spend with your child.”

“Thank you, mistress.” Murmuring, they came one by one to kiss her hand and cheek and one by one they left, their feet silent on the dense carpets. Left alone with the big Frank, Irene held out the dish to him.

“Here. Eat this, it is too sweet for my tastes.”

He took the plate and with his fingers broke off a corner of the cake. “Did you send Esad to him to command him to the races? That was funny.”

“He is a fastidious man. I thought to have a little joke at his expense.”

“You went too far—he is leaving Constantinople because of it.”

“Is he. Yes, perhaps you are right, I went too far. Where is he going?”

“To find that holy man they are all talking of. Daniel, his name is.”

“I know about Daniel.” He was eating the cake; crumbs lay on his pale beard.

“Do you know this? That woman of yours is with him.”

“My woman? You mean Theophano?”

“Yes.”

Irene lay back in the heap of cushions behind her, curling a tress of her hair around her forefinger. “And what do you make of that?”

“I don't know. She was sitting beside him at dinner—” His gaze broke away from her; swiftly he consumed the remainder of the cake, and held the little dish in his hand, staring at it, not seeing it, frowning. He muttered, “He was holding her hand.”

“You believe that she has betrayed me?”

“I told you, I don't know,” he said, growing angry.

“Now, now, my man, I will remind you that I am Basileus.”

Unimpressed by that, he grunted at her. He set the dish down on the floor beside him.

“Well, then, Hagen,” she said, amused by his spirit, “if you will not honor me out of good manners, consider that at a word from me, you would be publicly eviscerated in the Hippodrome, and all your splendid strength and courage would go for nothing.”

He brushed the crumbs off his beard. “Yes, I know that, Augustus. What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing, for now. But I will know where John goes, and what he does when he gets there, and as for Theophano—”

She wound the tress around and around her finger, watching him, wondering how much he needed to know. She said, “Theophano is in my service, even when she seems to betray me, as now.”

“Oh?” Still on one knee, he laid his forearms over his upraised thigh and stared at her. “Or is she in his service, even when she seems to betray him?”

“Yes, there is a certain classic symmetry to the problem. In either case, it is essential that she be returned to me, when her work with him is done, whether she wishes to come or no.”

“How will I know when her work is done?”

“If she is honest, then she will tell you herself. If she is not—” Irene pressed her lips together, considering the possibility that Theophano might indeed have betrayed her. The Frank believed she had. Or feared it: they had shared a bed once, perhaps the feeling between them ran stronger than a simple tumble. She said, “If she is to be numbered among my enemies, I shall know of it. If she refuses to be saved, take her anyway.”

“Yes, Augustus.”

That title came more easily to his lips with each use. In time, she knew, he would kiss the floor at her feet.

She said, “When she first encountered you, my Hagen, Theophano was in possession of a certain list of names, which concerns me deeply. She lost it in the course of her escape from John Cerulis. It may be that she is now attempting to recover that list.”

As she spoke, she saw in his face a flash of understanding, of hidden knowledge, and she thought, excited, Oh, yes, he does have it. At once she had the sweet sense of the roundness, the fullness of truth; God measured everything, lost nothing, intended all, and everything was going as Irene wanted, now, with very little effort on her part, a proof of the correctness of her course.

“And here,” she said. She took the garnet ring from her thumb and held it out to him. “You have served me well, with no thought of reward; I find you an honorable man, and am most grateful for it. Let this token show your Basileus's estimate of you.”

He slid the ring onto each finger of his left hand until it fit one. “Augustus,” he said. He did not seem grateful, just satisfied. That was how to handle him, ornaments and praises of the simplest sort. And he had not denied that he was her man. She nodded to him.

“You may go.”

Ishmael drove two blacks and two greys, not by choice but by accident, since he had picked the horses out not for their color but for their physical skill and strength and speed. The inside wheeler was black, the inside flanker a dapple grey, the outside flanker a darker grey, the outside wheeler black. They were nearly of a height, and when they stood together in their harness, the chariot at their heels, their manes tossing like a sea wave from their necks, they were as beautiful as the horses of Achilles, that wept over Patroclus.

The two grooms held the ribbon before them. They were practicing starts on the outside of the track, since Ishmael anticipated winning the first heat.

“Hoo!”

Their great hoofs slammed into the sand, showering the car and the driver with sharp little particles, and bolted forward down the track. The outside wheeler, the fastest of them, got out a little ahead of the others but a touch of the rein brought him back into team. Ishmael let them run the length of the track before he gathered them in, and then they did not want to slow; they fought the bits, their heads thrashing from side to side, and the full glossy manes all spilling together in a welter of silver and black. He wrestled them to a walk and at a sedate pace took them once around the track, their necks bent to the bit, their feet dancing.

In the first row of the Hippodrome seats, directly below the Imperial box, Prince Michael sat, watching, his hands fisted together and resting on the rail before him. Ishmael tried to ignore him. Yet he could not but lift himself up straight, his shoulders square, as he drove past.

At the stable gate, he stopped his team, and the grooms came up to hold their heads. Ishmael got down out of the car. “Leo—” He held out the reins, and the apprentice took them and climbed into the car. He would take the horses at a canter around the track until they were tired. Ishmael stepped back, watching them, unlacing the leather cuffs on his wrists.

He was standing near the rail in front of the seats, and after a few moments Michael appeared in the row of benches behind him, moving casually down through the grandstand toward him. Ishmael kept his back to the Prince, but he was aware of the presence of his rival as if Michael's approach were preceded by a marching troop of drums and horns.

The Prince leaned up against the rail beside him. “When does this new team from Caesarea get here?”

“I don't know,” Ishmael said. He wiped his hands and face on a clean towel and tossed it to one of his grooms. The horses galloped by; the two drivers watched, their heads turning in unison.

“They look good,” Michael said. “That outside wheel has muscled up very nicely.”

“He's a strong goer,” Ishmael said.

“He didn't look like much of anything when you bought him,” Michael said. “Just a big rack of bones. You've got a nice eye for a horse.”

Down the track, walking the wrong way of it, came the big Frank. Ishmael watched him, prizing what Prince Michael had just told him; had any other man praised him, Ishmael would have suspected some hidden motive in it, but Michael always said exactly what he thought.

The Frank moved over to the rail, to get out of the way of the horses, and watched them gallop by him. Ishmael nodded toward him. “There is that—what's his name? Hagen. Has he had any more trouble with Esad?”

“The impression I get is that Esad has trouble with him.”

“Have you talked to him at all?”

“He's a barbarian.” Michael laid his forearms on the rail, his eyebrows down over the bridge of his nose. “What would I have to say to a barbarian?”

Ishmael said nothing to that; Michael cared about nobody who did not race, in any case. Hagen was coming toward them, obviously meaning to speak to them.

He walked straight past Michael, came up to Ishmael, and said, with no amenities, “I need your help, if you don't mind.”

Ishmael straightened up. “If I can, certainly. What's your trouble?”

Now Hagen looked at Michael, a look full of hostility. The Prince put his head back, staring down his long patrician nose at the Frank, which was less easy than usual for Michael, Hagen being taller than he was.

“Your little doings are of no concern to me. Good day, Ishmael.” Michael turned, leaving, and as he went he snapped his fingers in Hagen's face. “And an excellent good day to you, too, barbarian.” He sauntered off, his arms swinging at his sides, and a strut in every step.

“Toy hero,” Hagen said, under his breath.

“You're wrong about that,” Ishmael said. “You're dead wrong about him, all ways.”

Hagen murmured something that Ishmael did not hear; perhaps it was in his own language. Ishmael tried to see Michael from this big rough-talking outlander's point of view—was it the Prince's manners? his fine clothes, his title? what annoyed Hagen? He wondered, suddenly, what the big Frank's home was like, what other Franks were like.

The white-haired man was digging a piece of paper out of his shirt. “Can you read?” He laid the paper down on top of the stone railing.

Ishmael smoothed it down with his fingers. The paper was much used, ripped in the creases, and the ink smudged. He read quickly down the names listed on it. “Nothing but the names of various men of the Empire.” He tapped a name midway down the paper. “This is the Prefect of the City, who pays me.”

“You mean, they are officers of the court here?”

“Some of them.”

Hagen was frowning, his wooly white eyebrows pulled together, his hard blue eyes focussed on empty space. “Hunh.” He held the list in his hand and stared at it as if he could force the letters to speak to him.

Ishmael thought, What a trick it is, to read. He is a clever man in his way, yet this piece of paper converts him into a brute.