know that.’
The yacht’s deck swayed in a scarcely perceptible motion. The lights of the city blazed off the starboard railing. A eunuch walked forward from the stern-castle, his white silk like some phosphorescent sea creature. ‘You will miss it,’ said Haraldr.
Maria’s hands gripped the railing tightly. ‘Of course I will. It will probably make me melancholy. You will find me unendurable.’
‘I will find you seductive,’ said Haraldr, recalling an earlier conversation.
Maria put her hand to his face, but her melancholy seemed genuine. She turned to him suddenly. ‘No. I could not leave quickly enough. I am serious, my darling. I have a foreboding.’
‘You have not dreamed again?’
‘No. This is . . . I do not like the Emperor.’
‘I don’t understand. He has proved himself just and capable beyond my imagining. Consider. He has not executed a single man for the treason against him and has imprisoned but a few. His reforms have so encouraged the people that he cannot enter the city on even a secret visit without them spontaneously flocking to throw flowers and carpets on the streets before him. Believe me, I have seen this, and it is not a case of the cursores rousting people out of their homes. He is truly loved. And most importantly, he is deeply devoted to the Empress. Anyone can see his love for her.’ Haraldr shrugged. ‘I believe he is somewhat deficient in the area of military preparation, but his first challenge will bring out the warrior in him. You, yourself, saw him fight once.’
‘Yes. But I also saw him cringe once. That morning when Joannes sailed into the harbour. Ever since then he has looked at me as if he fears I will reveal his secret shame.’
‘I know that he harbours guilt about that day. I see it in his eyes as well. But I have also in my life suffered from that guilt, and I understand how it can rend a man’s soul. He will outgrow it.’
‘I don’t trust him.’
Haraldr realized he had pursued his argument to outpace some of the same doubts. But then there were few men in Rome one could not doubt in some fashion. ‘Most of the men I have talked to at court feel that Michael may be the most able Emperor since the Bulgar-Slayer. He is clearly dedicated to the Empire above all else; he dismissed his own father, the Droungarios Stephan Kalaphates, as commander in Sicily, and the man he appointed in his father’s stead, Maniakes, has dramatically improved the situation. He is Zoe’s lover again, I am almost certain, so he obviously has her interests at heart. And while Rome enjoys this good fortune, Norway now suffers under the boot of King Knut’s son, Sven. It is Norway, not Rome, that I am now concerned about.’
‘I am aware of that.’
Haraldr looked south to open water, as if the city that was clearly his rival offended his sight. He had forgotten that a woman could love her too. ‘This is your fashion of refusing me, is it not? I understand if you are frightened of the journey north. I am frightened myself, and certainly I fear for you. But you must refuse me in your own words, from your own breast.’
‘You are an enormous pig, Prince-King Haraldr!’ Maria pounded the railing with her fists. ‘I said I wanted to leave as quickly as it can be arranged!’
‘And leave your mother with this man you cannot trust.’
‘She is not my mother, pig head!’ Tears glimmered on Maria’s lashes.
Leave her to her anger, thought Haraldr. The scar from a deep wound takes many years to heal. Haraldr stepped away, having learned that intimacies only fanned the flames at these times. ‘Very well, Maria. I am going to ask to see the Empress tomorrow. I am going to discuss with her in terms of greatest candour her dealings with Michael, suggest the possibility that he may pose some threat to her, and discuss any fears or even intimations she may have. But if she assures me that she has no reservations concerning the Emperor – and I believe she is in a far better position to divine his intentions than you or I – then I am going to the Emperor and make arrangements for my leave-taking. It is not necessary for me to say that my heart cannot leave without you. But it is necessary for me to tell you that I am going to leave, and I will leave with my heart torn from my breast if that is how it must be.’
Maria did not answer, and her blue eyes blazed back at the City.
‘You are certain I cannot interest you in breakfast?’ Alexius, Patriarch of the One True Oecumenical, Orthodox and Catholic Faith, gestured towards the silver double doors of his private dining chamber.
‘No, Father,’ replied the Emperor Michael. ‘I am more in need of spiritual nourishment. Might we walk together in the Mother Church?’
Alexius’s dark eyes sparkled. ‘Indeed we might, Majesty. I completed the morning Mass only an hour ago, and yet I already long for her. And unlike physical nourishment, which when consumed in excess can encumber the flesh with corpulence and corruption, each spiritual repast lightens our burden and cleanses our souls.’
Alexius escorted Michael through the various ante-chambers and sitting rooms of his personal apartments, through the Patriarchal offices, across the carpeted causeway to the second-floor gallery of the Hagia Sophia, and then down the stairs at the south-east corner of the enormous cathedral. They walked out into the nave. In the morning light the central dome shimmered as if it would break loose and float into the heavens. Polyphonies drifted gently through the light-filled ether; the white robes of the chanting priests could be glimpsed behind the two-storey latticed screens of green Thessalian marble that shielded the altar. The two most powerful men in the world were a strange and marvellous sight as they strolled side by side, both of them swathed from chin to ankle in layers of metallic silk; the Patriarch predominantly in white, with embroideries of gold crosses; the Emperor in vivid claret purple sprinkled with golden eagles. In the golden light of the Mother Church they seemed more akin to the glittering mosaic deities floating high above them than to human figures.
Alexius took Michael’s arm. ‘Our Lord transformed His Word into the light of the world, yet here in our Mother Church, I often feel that the primordial light is transmuted back in the Word. Does that sound strange to Your Majesty?’
Michael’s face twitched curiously, first the lips and then the eyebrows. ‘That fascinates me, Father. Do you refer to the hosannas and holy sacraments with which our church is even now redolent?’
‘That, certainly, Majesty. But also the Word of Our Lord without the intervening medium of human voices. When I am here, I often have private, intimate conversation with the Pantocrator.’
Michael skipped forward a step, as if seized by some irrepressible impulse. ‘Father, is … is it possible that the Pantocrator would speak to me in that fashion?’
‘But most certainly. You are his Vice-Regent on Earth. I would be disturbed to know that Our Lord had not communicated His wishes to you.’
‘He has communicated His wishes, Father. He spoke to me for the first time on the ambo when you crowned me Caesar. Now we converse frequently. Even in my own chambers.’
Alexius squeezed Michael’s arm in a gesture of encouragement. ‘And what are the Pantocrator’s wishes, Majesty?’
Michael’s eyebrows twitched quite noticeably. ‘He has asked me to go forth and multiply.’
Alexius’s eyes paced rapidly. ‘Indeed. Is it our Empress He has asked you to wed so that you may bring forth this fruit?’
Michael tilted his face slightly upward, as if basking in the light from the dome. ‘No. That lovely blossom has not borne fruit all these years, and it most certainly will not now.’
‘You are correct in that assumption, Majesty. While our Empress has preserved the exquisite bloom of her youth, she has passed the age of fertility. However, Majesty, you must know that while you are the adopted son of the Empress, you are in the eyes of her people her consort. You might compromise that relationship if you were to take a bride.’
‘But if my bride were also purple-born?’
It was as if Alexius could scarcely restrain his eyes from leaping out of his head. ‘I am afraid the Augusta Theodora is no more likely to bear fruit than is her sister, Majesty.’
‘I have heard an interesting rumour, Father. That the purple-born Eudocia gave birth to a daughter in a convent somewhere. It is presumed that the child died. But what if the child had been adopted and lived somewhere, unaware of her noble Macedonian lineage? She would be of childbearing age now.’
Alexius hoped his pounding breast would not give him away. ‘I have heard those rumours, too, and think there is some truth to them, at least where the birth is concerned. But we cannot presume that the child was born alive, or, if it was, is still alive. And if that Imperial progeny were alive, how can we presume that it is of the
