intend to do so with vastly more enthusiasm than I was able to summon on the previous occasion.’
‘That you are crowning him is no surprise, Father,’ said Theodora, a taunt in her inflection. She had become comfortable enough with Alexius, and had seen his own temporal needs clearly enough, that she no longer restrained the sharp tongue with which she dissected almost everyone else. ‘Your eagerness to do so does surprise me.’
Alexius’s thin lips compressed with a virtual smirk of self-satisfaction, as if he not only approved of Theodora’s impudence but credited himself for it. His rich tenor also betrayed his good spirits. ‘It will be quite an unusual ceremony. I wish you could be there to see it, my child. But I believe it will hasten the day when you will see the same ceremony from the ambo of the Mother Church. Tomorrow Joannes will leash an Emperor in front of all Rome, but I do not believe that his creation will suffer that collar blithely. The master and his pet will soon be at each other’s throats. The master will of course prevail, but his wounds may render him quite vulnerable to an attack from another quarter.’
Theodora’s eyes were as hard as sapphires. ‘And what then, Father? It occurs to me that the beast we had hoped to set upon Joannes is now sojourning in Italia, and it is not likely he will return to Rome for some time.’
Alexius smiled amiably. ‘Mar Hunrodarson is gone from Rome, my child, but he has not left our heart. I still say a prayer each day for his heathen soul.’
The transition of power was completed three days later in the Hagia Sophia. The day was so dark that the bronze lamps and rings of candelabra suspended from the dome had to be lit; the lights hovered in the vast space like clusters of stars. After Michael Kalaphates received the Imperial Diadem from the Patriarch Alexius and was acclaimed as Emperor, Autocrator and Basileus of Rome, he was escorted from the silver-sheathed ambo to a throne set on a porphyry platform at the far end of the church. The new Emperor seemed numbed, distant, like a victim walking away from some great catastrophe. When he reached the throne, he motioned to the Parakoimomenos, who seemed to have aged ten years since the burial of the previous Emperor. The Parakoimomenos nodded at his own staff of eunuchs. The great church echoed with a murmur of astonishment as the eunuchs brought forth two portable thrones and set them on either side of the Emperor’s broad, canopied throne. The Emperor gestured, and Zoe, dressed in her widow’s veiled black, seated herself on the left-hand throne. ‘I am your servant,’ said Michael very clearly, and then he took his seat beside the purple-born Empress. One dignitary far back among the vestitores muttered aloud when Joannes, dressed in his monk’s habit, then appeared and sat on the throne to the right of the Emperor, but the protest was lost amid the rising surge of more carefully whispered asides. ‘My master,’ said Michael in acknowledgement of Joannes, his homage spoken clearly enough to be heard over the speculation of his subjects.
After this curious beginning the ceremony of adoration proceeded in the prescribed fashion. One by one the dignitaries of the Roman Empire prostrated themselves before the new Lord of the Entire World and then crawled forward to embrace his knees. Haraldr’s place in the adoration, as prescribed by protocol, was after the Disputers.
And thus was the power and glory of Imperial Rome passed on, as it had been for more than a thousand years.
VIII
The Protostator completed his inspection, navigated the underground galleries that led from the Hippodrome stables to the spiral staircase, and ascended to the Emperor’s box. He blinked away the bright spring sunlight and listened for a moment to the anticipatory fervour of the crowd. To his right and left, the Magisters and Proconsular Patricians, along with the ambassadorial delegation from Genoa, had already taken their seats in the loggias on either side of the Imperial Box. On the flat, roof-like terrace behind the Imperial Box, the Emperor waited, surrounded by Varangians of the Grand Hetairia. Michael Kalaphates wore the Imperial Diadem on his head; the train of his jewelled pallium was drawn up over his left arm, and he gripped the sapphire-and ruby-studded sceptre of his office in his right hand. The eagles embroidered on his pallium phosphoresced in the sunlight; it seemed as if the wings of gold thread were actually fluttering with motion.
The Protostator pressed his leathery face to the carpet upon which his sovereign stood. ‘Majesty,’ he said when he rose up, ‘we await Your light.’ With a slight motion of his hand Michael beckoned the Protostator to come close. The Protostator leaned forward until his lips almost touched the pearl-and-diamond lappets that covered the Emperor’s ears and streamed down his cheeks like jewelled tears. ‘Epaphroditis has drawn the first race,’ whispered the Protostator. ‘He will start in the second position.’ Michael nodded and the Protostator backed away respectfully. Michael nodded again and the Grand Eunuch, the same sad-eyed man who had served the previous Michael, came forward and bowed.
‘Approach the Genoese Ambassador,’ Michael told the Grand Eunuch. ‘Tell him that the Autocrator of Rome offers him a wager. I claim Epaphroditis, representing the blue colours, as winner in the first race. Offer him the team and driver of his choice, his choice to be made after fifteen circuits of the race are complete. I will put my galley full of Syrian silk, still under seals in the Bucoleon Harbour, against those six Genoese merchant craft that await unloading at the Neorion Harbour.’ The Grand Eunuch bowed and shuffled off and Michael winked at his Protostator. ‘He will be quite unable to refuse the opportunity to select a winner after the race is three-quarters complete, when I have committed myself from the outset.’
The Parakoimomenos nodded to the Emperor. Michael moved quickly into the arcaded box, his gold- armoured Varangians fanning out beside him as he ascended the porphyry steps to his throne. The crowd hushed reverently. Michael made the sign of the cross to the crowd beneath and opposite him, then turned to his right and left and repeated the blessing. Organ music flourished and the crowd erupted into the prescribed chants of greeting. The Emperor seemed impatient with the adulation, and he shifted his weight from one purple boot to the other. Finally the chants were completed and the music stopped and the vast arena became entirely silent except for the crisp snapping of the ceremonial banners. Michael handed his sceptre to a waiting eunuch and took the ceremonial mappa offered by the Parakoimomenos. He gravely lifted this swatch of white silk and watched it flutter against the glorious blue sky. Then he released it.
Four bronze gates clanked open at the north end of the stadium, initiating a rising fury from the crowd. In an explosion of gleaming horseflesh, gilded fittings and multicoloured caparisons, the four teams of four appeared, the anxious horses’ hoofs chewing up the neatly raked sand of the track. The drivers, dressed in leather skirts with leather corsets strapped over tunics in the colours of their teams, leaned over the open backs of their light, two- wheeled chariots, the reins taut in their hands. They brought their head-flinging teams slowly forward to the triangular bronze start-and-finish pylon at the north end of the spina. As soon as all four teams were even with the finishing line, the riders slackened their reins, brought their long-handled leather whips snapping over the necks of their horses, and the teams charged off, tossing clouds of sand behind them.
The crowd went into immediate hysterics; virtually every man seemed to rise from his seat and wave a towel with the colours of his team on it over his head; even the Emperor whirled his right arm above his head, as if this motion could somehow propel the teams more quickly round the track. On the spina, an elegantly robed attendant stood by a table on which twenty gilded ostrich eggs had been set in neat rows, and as the teams thundered past the finish pylon, he removed the first of the eggs.
As the race progressed, the spectators seemed to equal the fury of the foaming horses; here and there brief fist-fights erupted in the stands. On the seventh circuit the red team clipped the south end of the spina and flipped out of control, and Michael grimaced and balled his fists as Epaphroditis and his blue team – which was actually three black horses and one dapple on the outside – swerved wildly to miss the careening red chariot. The red driver somehow survived the tumble and scrambled to the railing on the outside of the track. On the tenth
