man into her bed. He remembered the way Zoe had looked at Michael Kalaphates in Antioch, and reflected that this Empress had no doubt already entertained her husband’s successor; Maria had told him several times that she shared the same suspicion. Haraldr himself had had to consider a succession to the Emperor: the man he had fully expected to deal with Joannes and right the wrongs of the Studion was a grotesque, moribund impostor. Everything had changed. Mar had been right; they would have to take the initiative against Joannes. But how?
When the fish course had been served, Zoe peered from beneath her fine, paint-darkened lashes and blithely asked, ‘Are you in love with Maria?’
‘Yes.’ If it is a single combat you wish, Purple-Born, then the King of Norway will oblige you.
‘Are you aware that I have opposed her liaison with you?’
‘No. But I am not surprised. She is a lady of the highest rank. I am merely a
‘So you are angry with her.’
‘I am pained by her. But I am a Norseman. We do not curse the sun when it sets.’
Zoe set her chin on her exquisite hands. ‘How candid you are. Your heart is great enough to confess the pain that it carries. I am sorry I have not importuned you about romantic matters before. Your outlook interests me.’
Zoe ate her fish in silence, occasionally idly prodding the sauce-laden fillet with a slender, two-pronged fork. When she had finished, she stared at Haraldr for a while, and he held her gaze, in equal parts defiant and mesmerized. ‘Do you think I love my husband?’ she finally asked.
‘I would not presume to know your heart, Majesty.’
‘I love him. I will never see him again. I will ask, but it will not be permitted.’
Haraidr fell into the sadness of her amethyst eyes; he perceived that she did love her husband, even if she had taken a lover in his absence.
‘Any moment we have with someone we love is time stolen from destiny. I had my interlude with the sun in my arms. Like you, I do not curse the sun when it embraces the night.’ Zoe paused while the meat course, a roast kid, was sliced by a eunuch. When the servant had moved away from the table, she leaned slightly towards him, her lips glistening in the
candlelight. ‘I have heard that you keep, or have kept, several women. Have you gone back to them?’
‘Only to the whore I purchased from Anatellon. It is a hollow joy.’
‘Yes. But most of our pleasures are small. And the great joys in life almost always turn on us and bring us pain.’
Unwatered wine accompanied the desert. Zoe talked gaily for a long while, regaling him with stories of the Bulgar-Slayer, ancient gods and scandalous romances. When she called the priest to say the closing grace, Haraldr was greatly disappointed. He had hoped to hear her husky voice long into the night, and forget Maria for a few hours.
He stood as protocol dictated and crossed his hands over his breast. Her pale eyebrow twitched slightly. ‘It is the first night it has been warm enough to sit on my balcony. Come and talk with me.’
Zoe’s balcony was a large arcade opening off her apartments. The multicoloured constellation of the palace complex sloped to the sea beneath them. Chrysopolis blazed across the water to the east. Haraldr remembered the other balcony across the water, and what he had felt as he stood by Maria and watched the Great City in the night. Now his soul faced a different meridian.
Zoe stood close to him and put her hand on his neck, and the touch thrilled him as if a mosaic Virgin had reached out to him. She pulled his head down and whispered next to his ear. ‘Speak softly and the wind will carry our words away. It is said that you and the Hetairarch intend to strike at the Orphanotrophus.’
Haraldr stiffened. But at least she had used her charm and not her sex; she had allowed him that much dignity. ‘We have intentions but no plans,’ he said honestly; he would not have told her if they did.
‘You cannot wait,’ she said. ‘My husband could die at any time now. . . .’
‘If Your Majesty will forgive me, when that does happen, we must give the Caesar time to gather strength. If he could join us against Joannes, our chances of success would be immeasurably improved.’ Haraldr did not add that he and Mar disagreed on this point.
Zoe shook her head vehemently. ‘My nephew is a dear boy, but he is weak. He has been entirely subjugated by Joannes. When Alexius prepares to anoint him with the Imperial Diadem, I would not be surprised to see Joannes snatch the crown from the Patriarch’s hands and set it upon his own grotesque head. He will certainly occupy the throne. My husband has restrained him. Under the next Michael, Joannes will unleash a terror on my people such as you have never even dreamed.’
‘You are suggesting that I personally swat down Joannes? Remember that you have asked me to butcher that particular bird once before. And you have heard my answer.’
‘You were an innocent then. You still are. But the next revelation may cost you your life.’
Haraldr looked down on her intense, questing face. She was beautiful in this role as well. And yet there was truth to what she said. He had been taken totally unawares by the Emperor’s condition; he could not afford many more revelations like that. Mar had become increasingly unreliable, if not treacherous; Haraldr had begun to suspect that Mar’s goals extended well beyond the death of Joannes, and he had no idea how he and his men would then fit into Mar’s plans. And now the Caesar could not even earn his lover’s approbation. But what did this ally offer? ‘You did not summon me here to save my life, Mistress. What price do you offer me to save your own?’
Zoe smiled and tapped a perfect white tooth with a fingernail. ‘Indeed. Let me be candid. I must find a champion. In spite of our . . . estrangement, my husband would never let his brother harm me. If my husband were dead, and my people broken to Joannes’s bit, I would be in great jeopardy.’ Her jaw set firmly, with true Hellenic nobility. ‘I am not afraid to die, Manglavite. I am afraid to let Joannes live.’
‘Yes. I saw the Studion burn.’ Haraldr once again felt fate gaming with him, forcing him to play. This wager would be huge. ‘Once I had severed the head of this black-frocked eagle, how could you ensure that the Imperial Taghmata would not obey their Dhynatoi masters and massacre my men in reprisal? They would certainly not miss Joannes, but they would welcome the pretext to eliminate every Varangian in Rome.’
‘I would go to my people and ask them to rise up against the Taghmata. That would alter the equation in your favour, would it not?’
Haraldr ran through the myriad contingencies he and Mar had batted around for months. Yes. She was right; with the distraction of a civil uprising, the Taghmata could be defeated. Then he admonished himself to deal with Zoe, as one sovereign to another. He was no longer a mere servant of Rome. ‘Yes, I believe you can guarantee that my men would not be punished. But what would be my reward?’
‘Rome.’
What monstrous guile. Madness had seized Rome. The good were perishing and the rest lived in the vast structures of their lies. ‘Indeed, my Mother.’ Haraldr did not attempt to conceal the taunt in his voice. ‘You would adopt me, as you did the Caesar, and name me after some Emperor of ancient Rome, I presume. Or perhaps an invention more grand. King of Macedon, in honour of Alexander.’
Zoe moved away from him and looked out over the pattern of brilliant lights and inky water. ‘I would anoint you myself. I would bestow on you the only real power that remains in Rome. The anointment in the Hagia Sophia is an empty ritual without the coronation that can only take place between my legs.’
Haraldr imagined himself captured by a whirlwind, swept up in the madness of Rome. To think of her naked, waiting, was intoxication enough; to think of the power that penetration would endow was to leave the middle realm and gambol among the gods. But it was fantasy. A boast on her part. She played the woman but in her loins was only power. And she would guard that power with empty promises. ‘Indeed,’ he said, his momentary madness
