Gynaeceum, and were quickly admitted. Michael ascended the stairs with a small escort. At the door to the Empress’s ante-chambers he told the new captain of his Pecheneg guard, a Roman officer, to wait outside. He shooed away the eunuchs with fluttering, whisking motions and walked in unannounced.
Zoe was working over her perfumes and unguents when she looked up and saw Michael. She signed at her two ladies-in-waiting, who were grinding with mortars at a long table jammed with glass, clay and silver containers; the women bowed and hurried out. ‘You are early,’ she said, smoothing her unornamented blonde hair back. Her nipples were vague, dark spots beneath her thin silk scaramangium. ‘But then you have been very eager lately.’
Michael looked at the paraphernalia on the tables. ‘Are you working on your poisons, bitch?’
Zoe’s hands froze on the stone container she was sealing. She did not look up. ‘I have quite forgotten that art, my child,’ she said softly. Then she slowly lifted her head and hard blue eyes. ‘It is vulgar of you to mention it,’ she snapped. ‘What I started with Romanus I have been punished for. What I tried to help you do to Joannes, you have now been rewarded for. If you are going to be vulgar, leave me, child.’
‘So you admit that you poisoned an Emperor, and my uncle the Orphanotrophus!’ shrieked Michael. He swiped his arm across the nearest table and the vials and beakers and ewers went flying with a tremendous crash. ‘I have the proof here!’ He waved the documents. ‘I have proof you tried to poison my uncle the Nobilissimus! You poisoned my uncle the Emperor!’ Michael’s screams rasped painfully and his face was gorged with blood. ‘You have tried to poison me, bitch!’
‘You are not well, child.’ Zoe’s calm betrayed a hint of fear. ‘Perhaps I have gone too far in indulging your newfound . . . virility.’
‘You have been charged with treason! Answer the charges, bitch!’
‘You are mad. If you do not leave and return to apologize to me tomorrow, I may ask my people to consider a new consort for me. A mature man who might serve as my husband and Emperor.’
Michael flipped the long table onto its side and screamed incoherently above the racket of breaking vessels. He walked forward and seized Zoe’s arms and shook her furiously. ‘You treasonous bitch, you cannot take my people away from me! They love me! They no longer love you! I am their only love! The only one!’
‘You are about to discover how easily that love is lost when I am not beside you to permit it.’
Michael let go of Zoe and walked around the wreckage of the perfume factory, kicking at metal bowls and crunching broken glass. When he spoke, he was more composed. ‘We are going to find out if they love you or if they love me.’ His voice became very mild, as if he were afraid of offending someone in the room. ‘I am sending you away. You are going to become a nun at the convent on Principio.’
Zoe emitted a mocking, chiming laugh. ‘And you will play the naughty priest and visit me in my cell.’
Michael’s voice was chillingly earnest. ‘I am through with our games. I am sending you away.’
Zoe laughed again. ‘Do you think I will simply order my yacht to transport me to Principio?’
‘I have a ship waiting for you.’
‘I will decline your hospitality.’
‘You will accept. Or I will kill your sister’s child.’ Zoe’s eyes widened and she wavered, as if his words were a hammer that had struck her on the forehead. Michael nodded, his eyes black and cold. ‘She is my prisoner.’
‘Her betrothed will not allow you to--’
‘He is dead.’
Zoe crossed herself and her skin seemed utterly bloodless; even her lips became a pale lilac. ‘Swear to me you will not harm her,’ she whispered.
Michael nodded. ‘Does she know?’
‘No.’ Zoe’s answer was scarcely audible.
‘Good. That will make it easier.’
‘What do you intend to do to her?’ asked Zoe desperately.
‘I promised you I would not harm her.’ Michael smiled. ‘Now it is time for you to repent your treason, Mother. Your ship is waiting.’
‘Of course I remember you, boy. Halldor the Varangian. The ladies on our streets still speak of you.’ The Blue Star had received Halldor in her neatly swept two-room cottage. Her ancient husband sat beside her and his sightless, milky eyes seemed to search for Halldor’s presence. Halldor proceeded to tell the silver-haired woman about his suspicions concerning Haraldr’s disappearance.
The Blue Star’s massive bosom surged as she pondered the matter for a moment. ‘I never liked that boy Emperor, no matter what our friend Haraldr thought of him. He turned the heads of the tradesmen and their ilk, but we in the Studion have learned to distrust promises made in the Hippodrome. He’s a clever schemer to have bested the Orphanotrophus. Capable of anything, I think that one is.’ The Blue Star stroked her husband’s parchment-like forehead. ‘When will all your men be in the city?’
‘Tomorrow morning,’ answered Halldor.
‘That’s good enough. We’ll need to move carefully. Without the tradesmen behind us, we can’t expect to stand up right in front of the Imperial Taghmata and announce ourselves. The tradesmen have most of the weapons.’
Halldor didn’t like the sound of this. ‘I fear we are running out of time.’
‘We in the Studion love your Haraldr as much as you do, boy. But he’s either alive or dead now, and your fears or mine won’t change that. I can have an answer for you by tomorrow’s meridian. That’s as soon as you could do anything. And by then I will have a hostage against his life.’
‘A hostage?’
‘Yes. His uncle the Nobilissimus has a palace in the city.’
Halldor shook his head wearily. ‘And a considerable private guard, and the Imperial Taghmata only a quarter of an hour away from his summons. Even my Varangians could not storm the place in that time. The very confrontation we both agree would be suicidal would ensue.’
The Blue Star girded her imposing breadth with her arms; her meaty hands and forearms still had the firmness of the athlete she once was. ‘The Taghmata will be powerless against the army I am sending against them. Now you get some rest, boy.’
‘You do not prostrate yourself before your Emperor?’ Michael had removed the Imperial Diadem but otherwise wore the full robes of his office. His eyes swept round the ornate antechamber as if looking for witnesses to this affront.
‘You do not have the graciousness of an Emperor.’ Maria’s eyes hurled fire at Michael. ‘Why should I show you respect in return? I presume it is you who have confined me here these hours. I have asked about my betrothed and about my Mother Zoe and have received only the snarling contempt of these castrated nomads you now employ.’
Michael looked at Maria with a lightly cocked head and the bemused expression of a man contemplating a great vision. ‘You are the most beautiful woman in the world. I lie awake on my Imperial Couch and think what it would be like to see your white breasts and legs and hips in front of me. I touch myself and think of your touch. I think of you and that golden brute of yours and I imagine how . . . graceful you must be to absorb his … thrusts. There are also other men who say they have slept with you. They say your skin is like molten silver, so hot and smooth. You quite burn them up. They say you make a torch of the heart.’
Maria listened entirely impassively. ‘I am pleased to think I amuse Your Majesty during the moments he is unattended.’
Michael’s face reddened. ‘You will attend me.’ His lips moved wordlessly for a moment. Then he screamed: ‘You will attend me, bitch! You will take me inside and marry your raging fire to my golden light and call me husband! Husband! Husband! Husband!’
Maria smiled. ‘There is only one man I will ever call husband. And he is not the little King of Rome.’
Michael bounded forward and stood a step away from Maria. He looked at her with demonic, dark eyes and a hideous grimace that bared his teeth and left his purple lips and livid cheeks trembling. ‘Then you call a corpse husband, bitch!’ He screamed so loud that it seemed he would vomit his throat up. ‘I have killed him! I have poisoned him!’ Michael’s grimace became gleeful and he danced in little circles in front of Maria, his legs and arms jerking up like a marionette’s.
Maria fought against the horrible stillness, the huge, cold hand of fate that grasped her heart and brutally crushed it. No. He is not dead. I would know. I would know anywhere in the world. And yet her heart felt the real
