Byzantium

female gender?’

‘But if Eudocia’s child could be found, and if it were a woman in good health, would you object to this marriage, Father?’

Alexius commanded his arm not to tremble. The lineage of the child would be suspect, Majesty. She would not have been born in the porphyry chamber of the Imperial Palace, so she would not be a true purple-born. And of course the child was born outside the sacrament of marriage.’

‘But if the Patriarch of the One True Faith, knowing of the legitimacy of the Macedonian blood in those veins regardless of the circumstances of birth, were to assure his people that the necessary conditions for purple-born status had been met, the lineage would no longer be suspect.’

Alexius’s shoulders arched from the burden of self-control. ‘But I could not give my people those assurances of my own volition. I would have to wait and receive the Pantocrator’s instructions on such a vital matter. But of course this is all speculation, and most likely will remain so.’

Michael seemed to listen to someone else for a moment. ‘Yes. Quite. Father, let me ask you to speculate on another subject. Let us presume that when the Christ lived on earth as a man--’

‘You mean when the Holy Spirit took on the form of the Christ. You must not become careless and lapse into the Latin error by denying the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son. If you do so, you deny Christ the Pantocrator His divinity. And you know what a scourge that heresy has become.’

Michael nodded impatiently. ‘When the Holy Spirit occupied the body of the Christ, He had an earthly father: Joseph. Now this Joseph was a virtuous man. But let us assume for the purpose of speculation that Joseph was in fact an evil man. Let us assume that he mocked the Christ as did Caiaphas, that he scourged Him as did the soldiers of Pilate. Let us assume that he brought shame to the Holy Family. Let us assume that he fouled the Mother of God with his lust and corrupted Her virtue.’

Alexius raised both wiry eyebrows. ‘Do not let speculation lead you into blasphemy, Majesty. You must remember that the Fallen Archangel can often speak to us in the guise of the Pantocrator, and convince the unwary that Satan’s beguilements are the words of the Christ.’

Michael’s entire body went rigid, and his eyes darted for a moment. Then he almost convulsively relaxed; Alexius could feel the tremor. ‘But let us assume that these crimes did take place. Who would be the agent of retribution in this case? Would it be the Holy Spirit in the form of the Father, or of the Son?’

‘Christ the Pantocrator would offer this corrupt Joseph the opportunity to repent and earn forgiveness. And then this corrupt Joseph would be judged at the Heavenly Tribunal alongside all souls, and held accountable for any sins of which he had not been cleansed. And at that Tribunal the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit will all three preside.’

Michael pondered this information for a moment. ‘I must return to the duties with which Christ the Pantocrator has charged me, Father. But I feel a remarkable spiritual satiation after your wise and loving counsel. Indeed, I felt that even as you spoke, the Christ was whispering in my ear.’

The Patriarch Alexius greeted the Augusta Theodora by signing the cross on her forehead. She had been got out of bed and now wore a plain purple robe; her lustreless brown hair was set in a single braid.

‘It is time, my child,’ said Alexius.

Theodora calmly showed Alexius to a couch and signalled her eunuch to offer him wine. ‘What has happened, Father?’

‘I had an extraordinary conversation with our Emperor this morning. I am certain that madness is the will of Divine Providence, and is given us either to scourge us or to allow us to enter into a state where we can more closely know God. Yet I also think madness is sometimes passed in the blood, from generation to generation of the same family. The Emperor’s uncles were both mad, though in one case it was a demonic possession, while the other was a fury of true repentance. But this Emperor is quite the maddest of all. And the most adept at concealing his madness behind the masks of reason, intellect and dissimulation. Quite extraordinary. He has embraced the most profound heresies. Even the Bishop of Rome would consider our Emperor a heretic. The Emperor insisted in the Mother Church that Joseph might have attempted carnal congress with the Mother of God.’

‘But you did not awaken me in the middle of the night to tell me of this heresy, did you, Father?’

‘No, child. Today our Emperor revealed to me that the child born to your sister Eudocia on Porte was a daughter.’

Theodora leaned forward so abruptly that it seemed she was going to leap at Alexius. ‘He knows?’

Alexius smiled thinly. ‘I think he does. He pretended to know only the rumours of the birth. But he posited that the child was a daughter, and now you have confirmed it.’

Theodora flushed with anger and embarrassment; Alexius was maddeningly clever. ‘Perhaps he was only playing the same guessing game that you are, Father.’

‘Perhaps. We had better hope that he is. It is clear that he intends to marry the last Macedonian and bring forth his own dynasty, something his equally mad relatives were unable to do.’ Theodora was so pale, her face seemed tinted with blue. ‘Yes, my child, I think that you will soon have to shoulder your cross. And while I do not think it is time for your climb to Golgotha to begin, I think it is time that we prepare for your entry into Jerusalem.’

The dhromon of the Thematic Fleet of Sicily approached the harbour boom in the moonless night. The captain ordered the oars shipped, and the huge vessel drifted sideways and thudded against the log bumpers. The prisoner, chained and gagged, a black sack over his head, was loaded into a skiff along with an escort of six thematic marines. The small boat was lowered on the other side of the boom. With four of the marines at the oars, the skiff moved away towards Neorion Harbour. It came alongside a small dock just inside the boom; the dhromons of the Imperial Fleet were dark silhouettes off to the right of the little-used stone jetty. Four Khazar guards waiting on the quay communicated the correct password and hoisted the passive body up onto the dock. The prisoner, still attired in the now-fouled silk tunic of his rank, resisted briefly when the Khazar guards slipped a large leather bag over his entire body and carried him off on their shoulders. The four Khazars carried their package quickly through the streets that angled among the military warehouses of the Neorion district. Twice the escort was confronted, then passed along by sentries. The Khazars came around the back of Neorion Tower and halted before the black steel gates. Their pass was accepted and they moved their prisoner up the dank, reeking stairs to the interrogation rooms on the tenth level. The prisoner was tied face up on a wheel-like wooden rack, and the Khazar guards left the prisoner with the interrogators, two smooth-faced Pechenegs who worked-silently over their instruments at an adjacent table, honing blades and setting out leather straps.

The Emperor Michael arrived a quarter of an hour later. He wore the scaramangium, pallium and diadem of his rank. When the Pecheneg interrogators had finished their prostrations, the Emperor signalled for them to leave. The huge steel doors slid and clanked. The prisoner breathed in even, shallow wheezes. Michael walked round the wheel for a moment; as he did, he placed his hands in front of his chest and touched the tips of his fingers together again and again in light, rapid movements. He closed his eyes and became very still and his entire head and torso inclined forward very slowly, as if he were a wax sculptor’s model gradually slumping in a fierce heat. Then his eyes popped open and his dark irises struck out at the bloodstained floor, as if the shafts of pure malevolence they projected were all that prevented his collapse. He stared for a long moment, and then his hand shot out and jerked the sack from the prisoner’s head. The prisoner’s eyes blinked in the lamplight. ‘Father,’ whispered the Emperor. ‘It is time for you to repent.’

Stephan Kalaphates, recently recalled Droungarios of the theme of Sicily, was a small, paunchy man; his belly, distended over the rack, quivered like an aspic. He was tightly gagged, but his dark eyes, writhing head, and gurgling throat conveyed the terror, outrage and astonishment of his strangled words.

Michael prodded his father’s bound hand with trembling fingers. ‘Look, Father, your hands are still dirty.’ Stephan stopped writhing and merely glared at his son in mute fury. ‘I remember how you used to take me down to the shipyards, as if to see you smear pitch on the sides of boats was some great marvel, like watching the Emperor in procession. I hated the pitch. I could not get the stink of it off no matter how I washed. Those men and you stank of it. Those men and you showed me the stinking vat of hot pitch and said I would burn in it because I touched myself. And then you tarred it! You tarred it!’ Michael’s face was livid, and he grabbed his crotch violently. ‘Because I did that! For doing that! I do it all the time, Father, and God has not punished me. I touch it all the time, Father! I touch it in God’s presence. I place the Pantocrator’s hand on it!’ Michael leered over his father like a drunken man, and Stephan’s head jerked up and down, cracking against the hard wooden wheel. ‘Mother touched