Byzantium

horse.

‘This is the oldest part of this garden,’ said Maria. She stepped through a bed of metallic-orange marigolds and entered a dark sycamore bower. The evaporation from the trees sprayed the baked, late-afternoon air with a sweet, cooling mist. ‘We can sit there.’ She pointed to an almost sarcophagus-like bench; the thick marble base was decorated with marble carvings partially visible through clutching tendrils of ivy. A statue of a woman, her body stiff and geometric but with a soft graceful face and long braids gently falling over her shoulders, faced the bench from the middle of a small pool rimmed with crumbling granite bricks.

The cold touch of the stone bench was refreshing. ‘It is not Greek,’ said Haraldr, meeting the eternal gaze of the statue. ‘But it is not in the fashion of Egypt, either.’

‘I think it is Greek, at a time when the sculptors of Athens borrowed from the ancients of Egypt. Before they learned to surpass them. I am not certain. Anna would know.’

‘Is Anna well?’

‘I think she will soon be betrothed. To an officer of the Scholae. He is a good man, both courageous and intelligent enough not to grovel before her father.’ Maria turned her head suddenly, as if just noticing something. ‘You are not sorry, are you?’

‘No, I am happy that she has found someone worthy of her.’ Haraldr frowned at the stone face. ‘But I feel that she has taken a part of me.’

‘And you have taken a part of her.’

‘Yes. That seems to be the way of life, endless partings where something is always taken and something is always left behind. I wonder if at the end of that long road anything remains of ourselves.’

‘Perhaps the soul we began with is not the soul we are destined to end with. The destiny of the soul is immutable, but the soul itself is constantly transformed.’

‘Or perhaps the same soul is destined to wear many disguises. That is the way Odin more than once tricked fate.’

‘Then it is important to know when the soul has been transformed, or when it merely masquerades.’

Haraldr fell silent and watched a mayfly skim over the surface of the pool. A shout floated distantly from the polo field. Had his soul merely deceived him, and her soul fooled her? That was the question that stood between them as they struggled to reach each other again.

At length Maria whispered into the rustling silence. ‘Perhaps that is the cruelty of fate, that until the end we do not know if our own soul was true, or merely lied to us from behind its mask.’

‘Might it not also be the cruelty of death that we will never know?’

Maria pulled her arms around her silken waist, as against a chill. ‘I pray to the Holy Mother that at death we will at least have the comfort of that revelation.’

‘I pray that when fate takes me, I will leave enough of my soul in another breast to know that I will live on until the day all souls are taken.’

‘You know that will be true. Look at the souls who already live in your breast.’

‘Yes. My father. My brother. Jarl Rognvald.’ He could not say the other name.

‘You are fortunate. One of the souls who lives in my breast only stabs at my heart.’ Haraldr sensed that he would be a fool to presume that he was the cause of her pain. He waited. Maria moved her white silk slipper gently over the tops of the tall, slightly wilted grass. A sulphur-yellow butterfly drifted erratically through the bower and out into the bright sunlight. The small crowd at the nearby polo field acclaimed some feat of horsemanship with a muffled applause.

‘Will you let me tell you about the first man who loved me?’ Maria’s question seemed directed to the statue. Haraldr touched her hand for a moment and let it go, then allowed her the silence to continue. ‘I was very young. Not even a woman. It was a time of great turmoil in the palace. The Emperor Constantine, who had been a very old man when he had inherited the Autocrator’s diadem from Basil the Bulgar-Slayer, acutely sensed his mortality. If he was to perpetuate the Macedonian dynasty, he knew he had to find a son-in-law for one of his purple-born daughters. Romanus was Prefect of the City, apparently of some ability at that level of government, although he was utterly incompetent as an Emperor. But he had the majestic speech and stature expected of an Emperor, and for a man – may the Theotokos forgive me – for a man as shallow as Constantine, that was enough. He became fixed on this man as his successor, even though Romanus was already married to a decent lady. That was no matter; the wife was forced to retire into a convent, the divorce granted, and Romanus was offered up to Theodora. She had the courage to refuse her father and has been punished for her denial ever since. Zoe could never resist her father, and ever since has paid the wages of her acceptance. But that is another tale. The object of this prelude is to say that the two women I had always relied upon for love and guidance were suddenly undone by this fate, their lives swept away for ever. And so I, who had always feared abandonment, was at last alone.’ Maria paused and worked at her lip with her pearl-white teeth. ‘A man came to me during this time, a man old enough to be my father, and at first he was my father. He was the father I had always dreamed of, a man of military accomplishments who had risen to high civil authority in the Senate, his hair still dark with youth, his hard blue eyes gleaming with knowledge.’

Haraldr looked at Maria’s elegant profile and realized that she still loved this man.

‘He bought me books of romances with the most beautiful illuminations, talked to me of Iberia or Alexandria or anywhere I dreamed of going, told me wonderful secrets about the lofty dignitaries who surrounded me.’ Maria’s lashes fluttered, as if she were viewing some beauty too dazzling for vision. ‘Shortly after Constantine died and circumstances made both Zoe and Theodora even more distant from me, I began to become a woman. My menses had begun to flow, my innocent breasts were now tender and swollen. Drunk with the wine of that first womanhood, I began to seek the love between men and women. And of course I fixed upon the most immediate object of desire. I embarrassed us both at first, and yet I almost immediately sensed a power I had of course never known I possessed, even though I had always been thought a beautiful child. It was gradual, as delicate as the rain that slowly wells out of a mist, but our relationship became no longer that of father and daughter but of. . .’ Maria stroked her silk-sheathed knees. ‘We became like husband and wife.’

Maria stood, her arms folded under her breasts, and studied the grass as she trampled it in short, somewhat pawing steps. ‘I honestly do not remember much of what that love was like. It seems so long ago. I only remember a kind of silver nimbus around it, an innocence that seems incredible to me now. But we held each other and made love like husband and wife, so I thought, and I believed that we had indeed pledged a troth. I begged him to marry me before this sin profaned my soul. He kept deferring, disclaiming about my age.’ The blue flames of Maria’s irises began to glow. ‘Apparently I was old enough for his arms to wrap my naked loins but not old enough for a wedding belt to girdle my waist. But in my innocence I waited. And then one day I learned the reason for my waiting. I remember that like yesterday. A slut who hovered about the court, waiting for whatever dignity might fancy to dip into her, came skipping to my apartments where I was learning Homer, as a girl my age is bound to do. She announced as gaily as her own betrothal the engagement of my lover to Anna Ducas, an arrogant Dhynatoi bitch who had already inflamed my jealousy with little intrigues that had seemed great at the time, and apparently were. I did not wait. I raced to confront him at his apartments and caught him in a position with the bitch that even the most skilful of lies could not extricate him from. She had the effrontery to seize a knife and threaten me with it. I kicked and punched the sin out of her and sent her fleeing, and the knife clattered to the floor. I saw it, and I saw him, too speechless with shame even to lie. I would have accepted anything except his beaten-dog shame!’ Maria’s teeth flashed between brilliant, grimacing lips. It was as if the knife had been set there by some greater hand than mine.’

Even now Maria was rigid, coiled, as if responding to the grip of that great hand. ‘I seized the knife and, in my fury, plunged it into his astonished breast. I still see his eyes. . . . And the feeling … the feeling of entering him with that knife was as it had been when he had first entered me and stabbed me with love.’ Her eyes glowed but her cadence faltered. ‘Ever . . . ever since then . . . love and hate have been . . . inseparable in my . . . soul.’

Haraldr stared at the statue for a moment; its whimsical stone features seemed for a moment sad, as if stone, like flesh, were also a prison. He looked at Maria, still standing, her arms clutched as if her stomach ached, her eyes feverish with pain. He reached out and extricated one of her hands and pulled her down beside him. ‘I understand your pain,’ he told her as he clutched her cold, stiff hand. ‘I tried to become a man too soon, as I think you tried to become a woman too soon. I cannot be as honest as you and tell you everything that happened. But there was a battle, and everything I knew and loved was taken from me that day. Even my pride and honour. It was as if fate stripped me and broke me and ground me into the offal of my own fear. I remained screaming,