The Mosaic of Shadows (24 page)

A boy came and took our horses, while a guard led us up a steep stair to a high terrace, where two sets of bronze doors brought us into a high-vaulted room. There was neither ornament nor decoration on the walls, and the marble floors were of the simple, modern style. But the view at the end was breathtaking, a row of full-length, arched windows looking out to the dark sprawl of the barbarian camp. The room must be built atop the great walls themselves, I thought, on the outermost line of our defences. It would take a confident man to stand by those windows, and I noticed that neither of those present chose to risk it.

‘Count Hugh. What success?’ It was Krysaphios, interrupted in his conversation with the Sebastokrator Isaak.

‘None.’ Hugh crossed to a finely wrought chair, inlaid with gold, and slumped into it. ‘They are impossible, my countrymen, full of false pride and toothless threats. They have no love of nobility, no respect for their betters. I cannot talk to them.’

‘Threats?’ Isaak looked at him keenly. ‘What threats?’

‘None that would trouble a man of your power. They say they want only boats to cross the straits, and then they will depart. But they will not swear the oath the Emperor demands.’

‘With boats they could attack the sea walls, divert our strength.’ Isaak paced the room in agitation. ‘What exactly did they threaten?’

Hugh wiped an ornate sleeve across his brow. It came away smeared with grime. ‘They said they were merely the vanguard of a greater army – this is as I told you it would be – and that the Emperor could not defy them when all their host was assembled. They said . . . I cannot recall what precisely. Your secretaries recorded it all, I think.’

Isaak and Krysaphios looked at me.

‘Well, my spying secretary, what did you discover?’ the eunuch asked.

‘Little enough,’ I admitted. ‘They were rarely minded to give answers. There were two of them, Duke Godfrey and his brother Baldwin. Godfrey, I think, is an honest man, though stubborn: he will not be swayed from his path. Baldwin is more dangerous. He has nothing to lose and a fortune to gain, and he burns with pride and envy. I think he means to find a kingdom for himself, and from where he does not care.’

‘And do you think he would go so far as to murder the Emperor to get it?’ Krysaphios’ voice was sharp. ‘Is he in league with the monk?’

I pondered this. ‘I think not. He did not seem a subtle man.’

‘So a subtle man would have you believe.’

‘He said also that they were here at the Emperor’s invitation. Is that true?’

‘Hah.’ Isaak stopped his pacing and looked at me. ‘Two years ago we sent emissaries to their church to request a company of mercenaries. We did not ask for an army in its ten-thousands, commanded by our ancient enemies and bent on their own ends. They have used our need as a pretext, Demetrios, for it is well known they wish to overthrow our power and install themselves as masters of the east.’

‘I must protest, My Lord,’ said Hugh. ‘I cannot speak for all my countrymen, but certainly for most. We came from noble motives, to free the Holy Land and the great city Jerusalem from the yoke of the Turk, so that all Christians would be free to follow in the steps of our Lord Jesus Christ. Do not let the ambitions of a base few obscure the virtue of the many.’

‘An army bent on liberating Jerusalem avails little when the Sultan holds court in Nicaea,’ Isaak observed. ‘And even less camped outside the walls of Constantinople. If they truly desire to pray by the Holy Sepulchre, then they should swear the oath and be on their way, not bandy threats against the Emperor.

Hugh wrung his hands together. ‘I know that, Lord Isaak. You know that had my army not perished in storm and shipwreck, I would even now be in Jerusalem. But these men are unreasonable, and they suspect the wiles of the Greeks. They will twist sinister meanings even out of your generosity, which I know well to be true Christian charity.’

‘If they will not accept our gifts, then they can do without them until they find their senses,’ said Krysaphios. ‘Send orders to the Eparch that their grain supply is to be reduced. We will see how long they endure empty bellies and the winter rains. And prepare to have them moved across the Horn to Galata. They will be further from mischief, there, and easier to contain.’

‘And what of my responsibility?’ I began tentatively. ‘How do you wish me to proceed?’

Krysaphios glared at me. ‘As you see fit, Demetrios, as you see fit. Whether the barbarian captain would overthrow us or not, I do not doubt that he would seize upon any disruption to work as much evil as he could. So whoever wants the Emperor dead, you had best find him quickly. Now go.’

I returned home in haste, for it was less than a week after midwinter and the days were still short. I could no longer afford to flout the curfew, having lost my Varangian escort when I sent Thomas back to Anna’s monastery, to learn our tongue and our customs, and to keep him away from my daughters. Helena, in particular, had not forgiven me for it, nor for the scolding she had received for her immoderate conduct that morning when I found Thomas in her room. She had persuaded me that nothing more reprehensible than talk had passed between them, and Zoe, unusually, had supported her story, but it had done little to placate me. Nor deterred me from sending the boy away.

It still rankled with Helena. ‘After he was kidnapped and enslaved by that wicked monk, how could you lock him away in a monastery? He’ll go mad.’

‘I doubt the monks of Saint Andrew’s will force a bow into his hands and make him shoot it at the Emperor. And why is there no meat in this stew? The fast ended three days ago.’

‘The fast will continue until the barbarian armies go. At least, that is the rumour. Few drive their beasts to market for fear that they will be seized by a mob of Franks and Kelts, while the animals which do come are bought by the imperial commissary and taken to feed our enemies. So we go hungry.’

‘“If your enemy hungers, give him bread to eat; if he thirsts, then water to drink, for you will heap up coals of fire on his head and the Lord will reward you,”’ I told her. ‘I met the King of the Franks’ brother today.’

‘Was he fat?’

‘He was wearing an enormous, ill-fitting robe. It was hard to tell. Nor did he have coals on his head.’

‘Did he say when they would be leaving?’ asked Zoe quietly. She was at an age when the slightest change in her mood could make her seem almost a woman, or scarcely a child. Now she just looked afraid.

‘The decision is not his to make. They need permission from the Emperor.’

‘Then he should give it to them and let them go.’ Her voice was rising, the words tumbling out, and she was twisting her hair round her finger as she had not done for many years.

I tried to speak gently. ‘Why? Are you hungry, Zoe? The Emperor cannot simply let a horde of barbarians pass through his empire. He must ensure that they are kept from causing injury.’

‘Well he should send them away. The streets are filled with strangers, and there’s no food, and soon it will be the feast of Saint Basil and we won’t be able to celebrate it properly, and all the time there are a thousand Franks at our gates armed for war. I hate it. I want the barbarians to go, and the city to be normal again.’

‘So do I.’ I put my arm around her shoulder and drew her in to my chest. ‘Doubtless the Emperor will order it that they are gone as soon as is possible.’

He did not. Through a long, wet January the barbarians stayed camped by the head of the Golden Horn, while I searched with ever-mounting frustration for any sign of the monk, whether he even lived or not, and if so whether he was in consort with the Frankish army. I found nothing. After a fortnight I began to doubt myself, to wonder whether he had indeed perished in that freezing cistern. I would have trawled it again, but I no longer commanded any urgency in the palace: with every fruitless day which passed, my meetings with Krysaphios became less frequent, the hours I waited in crowded corridors ever longer.

January passed: the day of the Heirarch Basil, then the Epiphany, and even the feast of Gregory the Theologian, and still – so far as I could see – the barbarians would not demur. Every day brought new rumours: of other great armies at Thessalonika, Heraklea or even Selymbria; of villages raided or livestock stolen; of barbarians stealing through windows in the night. As my business still took me, occasionally, into the palace, I perhaps heard more tales than most, though the gossip in the gilded halls seemed no more reliable than that in the market. And still we went hungry, still the streets teemed with those who had sought refuge, still it seemed that the barbarians were as much our besiegers as our allies.

One evening, a few days before the onset of February, a messenger came to my house, dressed in the livery of the palace.

‘I am come from my master, the Emperor,’ he announced. Water dripped from the hem of his cloak onto my floor.

‘Indeed?’ I had expected this moment for some days now, the news that my services were no longer required. I could not say I would have done otherwise in his position.

‘The barbarian captains have agreed to send ambassadors to meet with the Emperor and discuss his demands; the Emperor fears that the monk may try to slip into the palace disguised among their retinue. As you are the only Roman who has seen the man and lived to tell of it, he asks that you attend.’

It was comforting to know that the monk still lived in the thoughts of the palace at all. ‘I will be there,’ I said. It would not do to have the Emperor cut down before the barbarian envoys, and it would be interesting to hear what they had to say, after the defiance I had witnessed in their camp. At the very least, it promised to be a spectacle.

ι ζ

Cymbals clashed, and a thousand guardsmen stamped their feet as one. A lone trumpet sounded its mournful note and the choir began again, their voices rising a half-tone with each repetition. The light of countless candles glittered off the ranks of axes, the scaled armour, the gold and silver of the courtiers’ robes and the emeralds, sapphires, rubies and amethysts that bedecked them, a mosaic of coloured light.

The imperial acclamation resounded through the hall.

A dozen priests stood at the front of the room, swirls of incense rising from the censers which swung in their hands. They chanted their own contrapuntal hymn, matching the rhythm to perfection so that the tunes flowed together like water. An Egyptian pounded on a pair of goatskin drums, rising to a climax at the end of each verse until, with a single breath, every man in the room bellowed out: ‘Hail!’

‘You’d think with all that cheering the Emperor would show some gratitude,’ said Aelric, next to me.

We were in a gallery above the main hall, peering down from behind a curtained arch. Below us, on a throne mounted on a marble pedestal, the Emperor himself sat like a statue. A resplendently jewelled lorum covered his chest and shoulders, overlaying a dalmatica of shimmering purple silk: only as it caught the light could you see the subtlety of the patterns which curved through it. The constellated pearls and gems of the imperial diadem covered his head, and a pair of bronze lions lay like sentinels at his feet. To his right, on a lower dais, sat the Sebastokrator Isaak, regaled in finery which eclipsed all but his brother’s, while on his left stood the eunuch Krysaphios. Beyond them a galaxy of lesser nobles and bishops vied among themselves for the opulence of their dress.

The choirs of priests fell silent, leaving only the drummer striking his staccato beat. It rose through the silence like thunder, sounding from the walls and columns; it seemed to fade from beneath us, yet the echo at the far end of the room grew ever louder, until I realised it had become a pounding on the golden door which faced me.

Krysaphios lifted a hand and the doors flew apart, thrown open by the hands of a half-dressed giant who lumbered in like some latter-day Polyphemos. He stood at least a head taller than Sigurd, and his skin gleamed with oil; he led an octet of eunuchs bearing silver biers on their shoulders. Seated atop them, seeming at once in awe and discomforted, were two barbarians. Their garments were dull and drab, with neither the artistry nor the ornament of our people; they seemed, if it were possible, to suck the radiance from the air they inhabited. Neither of them were men I recognised.

The eunuchs set them down on the floor before the Emperor, bowed low and left. They seemed unsure whether to stand or sit: one made to stand, but even as he did so the pair of bronze lions by the Emperor’s feet sprang into life. Their jaws rose up and down; their manes flared, and their tails thudded against the floor. The barbarians watched open mouthed, as if afraid they would be devoured by these mechanical toys.

‘Welcome to the court of the prince of peace,’ Krysaphios intoned. ‘He bids you offer your petition.’