Byzantium

That was the question Haraldr had, with no little foreboding, just asked himself. What was it? That day on the ambo in the Hagia Sophia, when their eyes had met? ‘If he is capable of good, I will serve him until he can serve the people of the Studion. And then I will return to my people. If he is capable only of evil, I will consider him another account I must settle before I can leave Rome.’

The Blue Star nodded approvingly. ‘If Joannes crowns the Caesar, we will wait and see what he is prepared to render unto the Studion. But look for yourself, boy. Their patience is growing short.’ The Blue Star stuck her pudgy face round the corner. Her breathing fogged the cold, misty air. She turned back to Haraldr and looked up at him, her eyes gleaming with the power of the other Rome, the Rome that did not stroll silk-frocked through marble palaces. ‘These people have accounts to be settled, too, boy.’

‘This is not tolerable!’ shouted Michael Kalaphates, Caesar of Rome. ‘I am led to understand that the burial has already taken place and that my uncle and I have not even been granted the courtesy of viewing the mortal container of our relative and sovereign! I don’t think you understand the position you find yourself in, Chamberlain! You are inflaming the brow that will soon be illuminated by the Imperial Diadem!’ The chamberlain bowed smoothly. ‘I am to tell you that the Orphanotrophus Joannes will shortly join you. He is on his way.’ He crossed his hands over his breast and withdrew.

‘The Orphanotrophus will now deign to join us, now that he has concluded the affairs of state!’ Michael’s face was brilliant red, his eyes like glass. ‘Who is the heir here, Uncle? Who will soon receive the crown that rules over humankind?’

Constantine grasped Michael’s shoulders in his surprisingly powerful hands. ‘Nephew! Nephew! Master yourself!’ Michael seemed jolted by his uncle’s admonishment, and his eyes snapped back into focus as if he had just emerged from one of Abelas’s trances. ‘I am sorry, Uncle. I quite forgot myself.’

‘Listen to me, Nephew,’ said Constantine with a firmness and authority that his voice had never had before; it was as if the Imperial Diadem had in fact been passed from the late Emperor’s head to his. ‘We haven’t much time. Remember this when Joannes arrives: he is the Emperor now. If you let that thought leave your head, you will find your head leaving your body.’

‘But what of our secret, Uncle? Isn’t this the time--’

‘Right now our secret is but an ingot awaiting the goldsmith’s hammer. We have many laborious steps ahead of us before that lump of metal can be shaped to glorious effect. This is the first step in that process of transformation.’

Michael looked at his uncle, his face as stricken with confusion as that of a schoolboy who understands nothing of what his master has told him but who also knows that the lash will be at his back if he does not commit it to memory. ‘Yes, Uncle, I trust you. You know that I will follow in your steps as obediently as if the Christ himself were walking before me.’ He embraced Constantine. ‘Thank you for saving me, Uncle. I will find some way to reward you.’

The chamberlain arrived a moment later. ‘The Orphanotrophus,’ he announced. Joannes swept into the room, his distorted features inscrutable. Michael watched in rapt astonishment as Constantine dived to his knees before his brother and clutched his legs and smothered his thighs with kisses. He took the cue and himself fell to his knees and held out his hands to Joannes. The Orphanotrophus’s eyes seemed to devour this adulation; it was as if fires were slowly kindling within the dark sockets.

‘Brother. Nephew.’ Joannes gestured for them to rise.

‘Rome is now vested in our hands, and yet we cannot rule her without the generous endowment of our bereaved purple-born Empress.’ He turned to Michael. ‘Nephew, go to her, succour her in her grief. Remind her of the pledges she has made to her adoptive son, and pledge yourself to her again with your hand upon the Holy Relics. Beg her to sponsor you in your coronation as Emperor. And ask her to proclaim immediately her sponsorship to her people.’

Constantine cleared his throat. ‘My esteemed brother, am I to understand that there is a threat of rebellion in the streets?’

Joannes glared at Constantine and did not answer. He turned to Michael. ‘Nephew, you must console our purple-born Mother before grief overcomes her. And the proclamation must be delivered before the people can gather tomorrow.’

‘Yes, my master,’ said Michael without even a hint of irony. He bowed and departed on his errand.

‘Keleusate.’ The eunuch, cloaked in black, bowed and withdrew as Michael rose to his feet. He hardly recognized Zoe. Her face was swathed in a black veil; only her eyes and the few rudely shorn strands of blonde hair that fell onto her forehead were visible. And the eyes were those of an ancient woman. Michael had known that she was perhaps old enough to be his mother; now her eyes might be those of his grandmother. He had never been shocked at the notion of bedding his uncle’s wife, but now he could not imagine how he had slept with this crone.

‘My little boy,’ Zoe croaked in a voice as weary as her visible soul. Michael wanted to cringe as she came towards him. He watched her black-gloved hands reach out and for a fleeting instant wondered if the hands beneath them had become dry, cracked, spotted with age. And then he could only think, Better these hands than those that would handle me in the Neorion. To his enormous relief Zoe only maternally stroked the hair at his temples. ‘My little boy,’ she said again.

Zoe indicated for Michael to sit on the couch opposite hers; again he was flooded with relief. ‘I know what you have come for, my child.’ Now her eyes seemed powerful, alert, even slightly sensual. ‘Of course you will have my endorsement as our new Emperor. You are, after all, my son – if not of my loins, then of my heart.’

Michael steeled himself for the proposal he knew he had to make. ‘I know it is monstrously audacious for me to presume, and an inexcusable transgression upon the sanctity of your grief, but my soul begs me to ask. Will you take me as your husband?’

Zoe’s laugh, coming from behind her veil, was gentle and yet also slightly evil. ‘I would soon weary of the role of Jocasta to your Oedipus, my son.’ Zoe clasped her gloved hands and set them in her lap. ‘No, I do not want you as my husband. But I will endorse your Imperial pretensions, for a price that carries no carnal obligations. What I must have from you in exchange for my endorsement is a guarantee.’ Michael nodded, ready to offer anything in return for her somewhat unexpected and wholly welcome refusal of his offer. ‘You must promise to shield me from even the slightest hint of a threat from Joannes. Remember, you will not be protected by the status of husband to the purple-born. Remember that I have my own considerable resources in this court. If I even suspect an intrigue involving the Orphanotrophus, I will withdraw my acquiescence in your sovereignty and unleash the fury of my people upon you.’

Michael was jolted by his sudden realization of what her refusal of his troth had cost him, even if only temporarily. Damn! She was still not one to challenge. But it was as Constantine had said. There were many steps to their goal. ‘You have my guarantee, and the devotion that even a son could not offer you, my Mistress, my Mother.’

‘Very well, my little boy. Now kiss your Mother’s hand and leave her. The Empress must compose a proclamation to the people of her city.’

‘I grieve for her,’ said the purple-born Augusta Theodora. She seemed more thoughtful than mournful, her blue eyes focused on the ice-slick marble floor. Theodora wore a purple silk cape lined with sable; the single brazier in her apartment provided little heat. Except in extreme cold, she rarely fired the huge hypocaust furnaces that circulated warm air under the floor. ‘I cannot grieve for him. Not after the pain he caused her.’

‘He will be judged at the tribunal at which all souls are judged, my child.’ Alexius, Patriarch of the One True Oecumenical, Orthodox and Catholic Faith, waved his beringed, lithely powerful fingers as if absolving the dead Emperor himself. He sat on a silk couch and was swaddled in a huge ermine cloak dotted with gold velour crucifixes. ‘I pray that in death the Pantocrator who has sat at his side will take him to His bosom. He was a good man, used to bad ends.’

‘To what ends will his successor be used, Father?’

Alexius smiled wryly. ‘I am pleased to see that your contemplation of the Lord’s Mansions has not deterred you from occasionally giving thought to the Imperial Palace.’

Theodora’s eyes snapped up from the floor. For that moment they seemed every bit as quick and potentially lethal as the Patriarch’s prowling irises. ‘From time to time I remember the cross we have discussed, Father. However, I do not think it is time for me to carry that burden to my Golgotha.’

‘Nor do I, child. It might surprise you to know that when I crown this Caesar for the second time tomorrow, I