proclaimed I was exactly three miles from the Milion.
‘Are you well?’
I opened my eyes, which had drifted shut for a second. I was sitting at the edge of the Via Egnatia, my back supported by the milestone, with the boy’s head resting in my arms. His face seemed peaceful — more peaceful than the rest of his ravaged body, at least — but pale, and clammy. When I touched a hand to his cheek it was fearfully cold.
‘Are you well?’
I looked up to meet the insistent voice. It was a drayman, his face shaded by a broad-brimmed hat, standing before a cart loaded with clay pots. He spoke in a kindly voice which, after a moment’s confusion, I answered.
‘Well enough. But the boy is in a perilous state. He needs a doctor.’
The drayman nodded. ‘There is a doctor at the monastery of Saint Andrew. I can carry your boy there on my cart — my journey passes it. I am going to the cemetery.’
‘I’m trying my best to avoid the cemetery,’ I said with feeling. ‘But I would be grateful to go as far as the monastery.’
We lifted the boy carefully onto the cart, laying him over the jars of incense and unguents, and set off, travelling as quickly as we dared without aggravating his wounds on the rutted road.
‘What are your perfumes for?’ I asked the drayman, thinking the least I could do was reward his help with conversation.
‘For the dead,’ he said solemnly. ‘The embalmers use them.’
We walked the rest of the way in silence, though mercifully it was a short enough journey. The drayman pulled his cart through the low arch of the monastery gate into a cloistered, whitewashed courtyard, and we laid the boy out on the flagstones. I gave the man two obols for his aid; then he left me.
A monk appeared and stared at me disapprovingly.
‘We are at prayer,’ he told me. ‘Petitioners are heard at the tenth hour.’
‘My petition may not wait that long.’ Too exhausted to argue more decisively, I merely jerked my thumb to where the boy was lying. ‘If the Lord will not hear my plea until then, perhaps your doctor will.’
It may have been a blasphemous suggestion, but I was past caring. The monk tutted, and hurried away.
The tinny bell in the dome of the church struck eight, and monks began streaming out of the chapel in front of me. All ignored me. I watched them pass with ever-mounting fury, until I thought I would roar out my opinion of their Christian charity to their self-regarding faces. But just then a new figure appeared, a servant girl in an unadorned green dress, with a silken cord tied around her waist. I was surprised to see her, for I would have thought the novices could do whatever chores she performed, but she seemed to have noticed me and for that I was grateful.
‘You asked for a doctor?’ she said, looking down on me with none of the humility or reserve expected of her sex and her station. I did not care.
‘I did. Can you find me one?’ I forsook the usual forms of courtesy. ‘This boy is dying.’
‘So I see.’ She knelt beside him to put two fingers to his wrist, and laid her palm against his forehead. Her hands, I noticed, were very clean for a servant’s. ‘Has he lost much blood?’
‘All you can see.’ One entire leg was cased in crusted blood. ‘And more. But fetch me a doctor — he will know what to do.’
‘He will indeed.’ She spoke as immodestly as her apparel, this girl, for she wore no palla to wrap her head and shoulders. Though truly, she could not be called a girl, I realised, for her uncovered face and bright eyes held a wisdom and a knowledge that only age can inscribe. Yet she wore her black hair long, tied behind her with a green ribbon like a child’s. And like a child, I saw, she showed no sign of obeying me, but continued to stare with the tactless fascination of the young.
‘Fetch me the doctor,’ I insisted. ‘Every minute brings him closer to death.’
At last my words showed some effect: the woman stood and looked towards an open doorway. But instead of hurrying away she turned, and with astonishing termerity began to upbraid me.
‘Make haste,’ she commanded. ‘You’ve carried him this far, you can carry him these last few paces. The monks here are afraid to touch the dying — they think it pollutes them. Bring him inside where we can wash his wounds and get some warmth into him.’
I was almost dumb with surprise. ‘Surely only the doctor will know if it’s safe to move him.’
She put her hands on her waist and stared at me in exasperation. ‘She will, and it is,’ she said curtly. ‘I am the doctor, and I say bring the boy inside so I can clean and bind his wounds before he slips beyond us.’ Her dark eyes flashed with impatience. ‘Now will you do as I say?’
With the colour of shame rising under the bruises on my face, I humbly obeyed. Then, when that was done, I fled to the palace.
6
I had never seen the dungeons of the palace before, and I would not hurry to see them again. A guard led me down a twisting stair, deep underground, to a chamber lit only by torchlight. Massive brick piers rose out of the floor and arched overhead like the ribs of a great sea-beast, while on the walls between them hung scores of cruelly shaped instruments. In the middle of the room were a roughly hewn table and benches, where a group of Varangians sat and diced. Even seated, they had to take care to keep their heads from cracking on the black lamps above them.
Sigurd threw a handful of coins onto the table and looked up. ‘You’re here,’ he grunted. ‘Finished playing the Samaritan, have you?’
‘The boy’s with a doctor,’ I answered coolly. ‘Where’s the Bulgar?’
Sigurd tossed his head towards a low archway behind him. ‘In there. Strung up by his arms. We haven’t touched him yet.’
‘You shouldn’t have waited for me. His knowledge may be urgent.’
Sigurd’s face stiffened. ‘I thought the eunuch paid you by the day. Anyway, we didn’t wait for you — we waited for the interpreter. Unless, of course,
I shrugged my surrender, though Sigurd had already turned back to his game. He did not invite me to join it, and after a moment of awkward pause I retreated out of the lamplight into a dim corner. There I kept silent, and tried not to hear the dismal sounds drifting into the guardroom.
You could not measure time in that mournful place, but I must have spent almost an hour watching Sigurd’s humour rise and fall in balance with the number of coins in the pile before him. Then there came a sound from above, and I peered up the curling stair to see a constellation of tiny flames descending, dozens of lamps processing down like a swarm of fireflies. Slaves in silken robes held them aloft, unwavering despite the uneven ground beneath: they filed along the periphery of the vault until they were like an inner wall of shimmering silk and fire around us. At their tail came two who did not carry lamps, one in the crimson mantle of a priest; the other in a rich gown of blazing gold threads: Krysaphios.
All the Varangians were on their feet, the silver and dice swept invisibly into their pouches.
‘My Lord,’ said Sigurd with a bow. He wore humility clumsily, I thought.
‘Captain,’ answered Krysaphios. ‘Where is the prisoner?’
‘In the next room. Contemplating his wickedness alone. We need an interpreter.’
‘Brother Gregorias has devoted his life to the Bulgar tongue.’ Krysaphios indicated the priest beside him. ‘He has transcribed the lives of no fewer than three hundred saints for their edification.’ That, I thought, should give him the requisite vocabulary of torment. ‘If your prisoner has anything to say, he will decipher it.’
‘The prisoner will talk,’ said Sigurd grimly. ‘Once I’m done with him.’
We left the eunuch’s silent retinue in the main chamber, and stooping passed through a low tunnel into the adjoining cell. I followed Sigurd, Krysaphios and the priest Gregorias in. Here the air was closer and more unpleasant; but more uncomfortable still, I suspected, was the prisoner. His arms were hung on thick hooks above him in the ceiling, so that only his toes touched the floor: he swayed a little backwards and forwards, and moaned gently. His clothes had been torn away, leaving only a narrow strip of linen around his hips, and his wrists bled
