The Golden Horn (17 page)

The tumult had died to a mild uproar. Mourtzouphlos beckoned;
a torchbearer moved closer, raising his brand high. Its light flashed upon the
regalia of an emperor. Save the crown.

That, Mourtzouphlos held in his hands, raising it for all to
see. Another shout rose, hushed when he lowered the crown and handed it to his
elegant young chamberlain.

A thin wind ruffled his hair, struggling to lift his heavy
mantle. He set his hands on the cold stone of the balustrade and raised his
voice. Though rasping-harsh, it had power; it carried easily. “People of
the City,” he said. “Romans. You know me.”

He paused to let them bellow their assent, and continued. “You
know me,” he repeated. “I have served the empire for all the years
of my manhood, and the emperors to the best of my ability. In this past grim
year, I have done all that I may to protect the City from her enemies. I have
fought in her battles; I have strengthened her walls. I have counseled her
rulers and shown them the enemy where they looked for friends.”

The mob began to seethe again. “The Latins! The filthy
Latins!”

Mourtzouphlos raised his hands but not his voice. “Yes,
the Latins. The wolves are at the gate, the fire in the field. I have shown
Their Majesties what their allies are. I have beseeched them to cast the
barbarians out; I have implored them to destroy this plague before it destroys
us all. And yet—” His voice thickened with emotion; he fought to
clear it. “And yet, while they pretended to listen—while they smiled
and promised to take thought for their imperiled people—all the while,
they were betraying us.”

This was a lion’s roar, deafening and deadly. Scarlet
flared in torchlight, the ranks of the Guard swaying under a sudden assault.
But it wavered and dissipated before the threat of the Varangians’ axes.

“This very day,” Mourtzouphlos said, “the
Emperor Alexios sent a message to the Frankish camp.” He had won silence,
a multitude of ears straining to catch what he could tell. “He has struggled
in recent days to make us forget who set him upon his throne. Yet the City has
never forgotten. We, loyal to the City and the empire, have never let ourselves
forget. And today, with our remembrance clear for him to see, he revealed his
true allegiance. He sent to the Latins to ask their aid. Against the City and
the empire he asked it. As surety” —Mourtzouphlos choked on the
words he had to say— “As surety, he offered two things: this
palace, home of emperors since the great days of the Komnenoi; and our Church.
Not only our city but our very souls would lie in thrall to—”

What more he would have said was drowned in the people’s
rage. It rose to a crescendo, so powerful and so prolonged that Mourtzouphlos
began to be afraid. If this mob escaped his tenuous control—

He set his teeth. He held it. It raged, but it did not surge
forward to overwhelm the Guard and the palace.

When at last he could be heard, he spoke again, hoarse with the
effort of carrying his voice over that multitude. “I have served the
emperors as best I can. But when service to the ruler becomes betrayal of the
empire, then must that service end. You, people of the City, have seen this for
long and long. I, blinded by my loyalty, have looked only now to the full
truth. The Latins gave us their puppet and called him our Emperor. His father,
once our rightful lord, has lost his wits with his eyes. And I have come at
last to the end of my devotion. What have the Angeloi gained us? A hostile army
outside of our walls, and half the City within destroyed by fire, and grief for
all our people. It is time we remembered who we are. We are Romans, the sons of
Augustus, of Constantine, of Justinian; rightful heirs to the empire of the
world. Shall we permit a stinking rabble, a pack of unwashed barbarians, to
trample us into the dust? Shall we bow to the Doge, whose eyes we took for his spying
and his treason, and acknowledge him our master? Shall we surrender even our
ancient faith to worship at the altar of the schismatic and the heretic, to
yield our will to the Pope who tyrannizes over ruined Rome? Tell me, people of
Constantinopolis! Must we do these things?”

“
No
!” they
thundered back in one voice.

“No!” he echoed them. “No, and no, and no.
The empire is firm, yet it needs a head. Those lords who are both loyal and wise
have beseeched me to place mine beneath the crown. I know I am not worthy. But
I am willing to take up the burden for the empire’s sake and with your
consent. And I vow to you, whatever you choose, whomever you set up as your Emperor,
I shall labor ever and with all that is in me to rid us of the scourge across
the Horn. The Latins shall fall; the City shall be free again, so help me God!”

He had them. Aye, he had them. “Mourtzouphlos!”
they roared. And in counterpoint that slowly overwhelmed the rest, the
acclamation of the Emperor: “Long life! Long life! Long life to His
Sacred Majesty!”

Slowly, carefully, and with great satisfaction,
Mourtzouphlos set the crown upon his head.

“It’s done now.”

Alf did not glance back at Thea, who walked behind him still
along the lighted ridge of the Middle Way. She had spoken in her own voice; a
long stride brought her level with him and revealed her as herself, glaring
fiercely at him. “The City has a new Emperor,” she said with more
than a touch of sharpness.

“I know. The storm has broken; I can think again.”
Alf halted and set Nikki down. The child stood unmoving, great-eyed with the
wonder and the terror of all he had seen that night; as a wagon rattled past he
started, reaching instinctively for Alf’s hand.

It shakes
, he said in
his mind.
It hits the bottoms of my feet
.

Safe in Alf’s grip, he surveyed this new and frightening
world.

How ever did you manage to follow Alf so far?

He looked up at Thea. She frightened him no more than Alf
did, for all her pretense of fierceness.
I was
busy
, he answered her.
I was following. I
had to keep him from feeling me. But the people got to be too many and too—too
pushing
.

It’s a miracle you didn’t get trampled.

He shook his head. Not that kind of pushing. That wasn’t
hard to get out of at all. But they were thinking so much. So many and so much
and in so many places at once.

Thinking? Alf dropped to his knees, heedless of any who passed,
and searched Nikki’s face with eyes gone slightly wild.
You heard them thinking?

“That’s not the worst of it,” Thea broke
in upon Nikki’s assent. “Humans can do that easily enough if they
have to. It’s the least of our powers. But how did a human child manage
to shield his mind from you for as long as he did?”

“I was preoccupied,” Alf said.

Thea made a sound that was neither delicate nor feminine.
“You’re not a tenth as inept with your power as you want me to think,
little Brother. He shielded from you. Which is something even I was far from
skilled at when I was five years old.”

Nikki watched their faces. He could follow the thoughts behind
their words, but he could not understand what they meant. They were excited and
angry and puzzled and perhaps a little afraid, staring at him with eyes that
were like no one else’s and looking up to glare at one another.

He reached for Thea’s hand. It was cold and tense.
Carefully, covering up his thought with not-thinking, he brought their two
hands together. They had clasped before they knew it, the glares turned to
frank amazement.

“He did it again,” Thea said. “But he’s
not one of us!”

“Are you sure of that?” demanded Alf.

“He’s human,” she said with certainty. “Do
you realize what this means?”

Alf rose abruptly, letting go her hand as if it burned him. “I
realize that we are in the middle of the main thoroughfare of Constantinople.
And it’s begun to rain. Come, Nikephoros.”

Thea drew breath to snap at him. But Nikki shivered and sneezed.
She took the hand Alf had not seized, and spread her cloak over the small cold
body. Alf moved to do the same. They checked, eye flashing to meet eye; and
relaxed all at once, advancing in step with Nikki warmly content between them.

o0o

Nikki accepted his punishment with new-won fortitude: abrupt
separation from the two who had brought him home, a bath at Corinna’s
hands, a bite or two to eat, and confinement to bed under her grim eye.

His mother, whose eye had been grimmer still, sank into a chair
when he was gone and covered her face for a moment with her hands. When she
lowered them, she was calm but pale. “I thought we’d lost him,”
she said.

Alf paused in nibbling at the supper she had set before him,
and touched her hand. “Before God, Sophia, I’m most sorry. If only
I’d known sooner that he was following me—”

“How could you have known? It’s not your fault.
lf it’s anybody’s it’s mine, for not realizing that he’d
do such a thing. He’s not a baby any more, to hide in my skirts. And he’s
not an idiot or a monster that I should keep him locked up out of sight.”

“He is certainly not either of those.”

She looked down at her hands. Without knowing it she had
taken a bit of bread and reduced it to crumbs in her lap.

Carefully, fighting to keep her fingers steady, she brushed
the remnants into a napkin, folded it, and laid it on the table in front of her.

Alf stopped even pretending to eat. “Sophia,” he
said, “you have no cause to grieve for him. Or to blame yourself for anything
he is or does.”

“He’s my son.”

“And one to be proud of.”

Her eyes blazed with sudden, uncontrollable anger. “Stop
it, will you? Just stop it! I may be a weak and foolish woman, but I know the
truth when it slaps me in the face. My son is a deafmute. A deafmute he was
born, and a deafmute he will always be. And no amount of weaseling words can
ever change it.”

“Maybe not.” His quiet voice shocked her into
stillness. “But he is also a human being. I know it. I can talk to him; I
can speak so that he can understand.”

“But not so that
I
can—” She broke off. “No. You said…of course. Being
what you are, how can you not? And—can he—”

“Yes.”

That was hope, that frail battered creature which staggered
to its feet and began feebly to crow. She had taught herself to forget hope. A
morning of early autumn; three children with their teacher in the garden, and
letters on a tablet. “All this time,” she said slowly, “and
you never told me. You never even hinted.”

“It had to find its time.”

“Now?”

Alf nodded.

She had to take it in little by little. It was too much,
losing her son and then finding him again, and learning that he had walked
unprotected through a raging mob, and now this. “You aren’t telling
me of a miracle. ‘The eyes of the blind shall see, and the ears of the
deaf shall hear’—that’s not what you can offer. This is…plain…magic.”

“Power, we call it. Mind-seeing. For Nikki it’s
speech.”

“But it’s
not
speech!” Her vehemence brought her to her feet. “It’s not
speech. He’ll never talk as other people talk.”

“Maybe not.” Alf poured a cup of wine warmed
with spices and set it in her hand. “He’s learning to read and to
write. He knows what words are, and why people’s lips move so often and so
strangely. He’s not the young animal all your wise men proclaimed him to
be. He’s a boy who one day will be a man. A good man, if his promise
fulfills itself. Can you ask for any more?”

“Can I—” She was perilously close to
breaking. “Why can’t you make him whole? Really whole?”

Alf’s face was white and still. “I am neither a
god nor a saint.”

“Then what are you?”

“I don’t know,” he said wearily. “I
really don’t know.”

His words calmed her as no proper answer could have done. With
calm came awareness of what she had said, of what wounds she had dealt him. He
watched her with pale tired eyes, and waited for her to strike again, making no
move to defend himself.

Sophia sat with care and drank deep of the wine. Its warmth gave
her strength to speak. “Whenever you bare your soul to me, I trample it
under my feet. How do you keep from hating me?”

“Why would I want to?”

“Oh, you are a saint!” She drained the cup and
set it down. “I have to think. Will you pardon me if I go away to do it?”

“You needn’t. I can—”

“Don’t be noble. You’ve been ill and you’re
still wobbling on your feet, and you have a supper to finish.” Once more
she stood. She tried to smile. “When all of this has sunk in, I expect to
be deliriously happy. Or absolutely terrified.”

“Of me?” he asked very low.

“Of this whole mad world. I used to think I understood
it, you see. I was very young then.” She leaned over the table and kissed
his cheek. “Good night, Alfred.”

o0o

He was still there when Thea found him, the wine cold in his
hand and the food untouched. His face did not change as she took Sophia’s
chair and began to fill a plate, although he passed the bread to her before she
could ask for it.

“Thank you,” she said, biting into the loaf. “Ye
gods, I’m hungry. I can’t remember the last time I ate.”

There was no stiffness in her voice or manner, no hint of coldness.
He gathered himself to leave her, noting meanwhile that she had bathed and
washed her hair, and that she had put on a robe that precisely matched her
eyes. Bronze shot with gold, that in certain lights seemed all gold.

Strange how very beautiful she was to look on, and yet how utterly
of earth she seemed when she spoke. Such beauty should never speak, or should
give utterance only to the sweetest of words.

“How unspeakably dull.” Thea filled a bowl with
stew. “On the other hand,” she added as she reached for a spoon, “it
would suit you to perfection. Mystic stillness alternating with verses even
more mystic in the fashion of the Delphic Oracle…in no time at all you’d
have people pouring libations to you.”