pain, the icy grip. No. She mastered her voice. ‘You are a liar.’
Michael let his hands drop. ‘Indeed. You, yourself, have expressed concern about him. And your mother.’
‘Yes. Where is your mother? I wish to ask her--’
Michael clapped his hands. ‘That is my gift to you, my little bride. I have sent her away. You are my . . . m-mother now.’ He lifted her hands gently. ‘You will sleep with me every night and call me husband.’ He dropped her hands and erupted into his dance. ‘You will be my whore! My unrepentant Magdalen!’ He stopped and looked breathlessly at Maria. ‘Do you know that He knew the Magdalen? It’s not written in the Holy Scriptures but He did. He has told me about her. Her hot skin, a whore like you.’
Maria stared at Michael for a moment. ‘I want to feel your lance now, Husband,’ she whispered. ‘Unlace me.’ Michael’s jaw dropped. ‘Unlace me. Did they not tell you that in the heat of lust I abandon all reason?’ She turned her back to expose the ties of her scaramangium. ‘How can I burn your heart out unless you can press it to my naked, flaming breast?’
Michael reached out with trembling fingers and began to fumble at the fine silk loops. ‘Kiss my neck,’ whispered Maria. Michael hesitated for a long moment, as if he actually believed her skin were on fire. Finally he leaned closer. Maria reached inside her loose sleeve. Then she whirled and kneed Michael in the crotch and threw her entire weight against him and brought them both down. She came to rest on top of Michael and thrust the point of her dagger into his neck. He howled with pain and his blood trickled onto the opus-sectile floor. ‘He isn’t dead!’ she screamed in Michael’s face. ‘He isn’t dead! Where is he? Tell me where he is!’ The guards battered the door and she could see the motion of their entry, and she thrust the dagger more deeply into Michael’s rigid, corded neck.
‘He is in Neorion!’ screamed Michael. At the same moment the Pecheneg guards tackled Maria and sent her sprawling. ‘Don’t kill her!’ bellowed the Emperor. He staggered to his feet, his hand on his wounded neck. Blood ran out from beneath his palm and trickled off the golden eagles on his shoulders. ‘You must never kill my wife, my queen,’ he told the guards numbly. ‘She is our mother.’ He took a step back from Maria. She knelt, her braids uncoiled, glaring at Michael and his four guards. ‘I did not lie to you, my love,’ said Michael. ‘The fair-hair brute who tried to abduct you from my arms is now in Neorion. But he will never be able to see you, touch you, speak to you, or force his filthy manhood upon you again.’
Maria collapsed to the floor, and her quenched eyes rolled into her head. Only a sliver of blue iris remained visible.
The enormous statue of Constantine the Great stood over the Forum, vainly awaiting the first rays on its bronze head; the day would likely remain cloudy, threatening rain. Good, thought the new Prefect of the City, Stephanus Anastasius, as he entered the vast column-ringed oval. He noticed with satisfaction that the crowd was sparse, in anticipation of the weather. The pharmacological vendors, their wooden boxes full of vials and jars, already had queues, as people who had become ill during the night were wont to come here early. The shopkeepers in the arcades had begun to arrange their displays; bright piece goods flashed here and there behind the columns. The indigent scholars sat beside their books, waiting for pupils or, more likely, a good argument with which to while away their day. Fortunately none of the usual rabble-rousers were about; they would generally begin their harangues later in the morning. Two Venetian sailors in short tunics walked round the great column, staring up and gawking.
The Prefect spurred his white horse to a quick canter across the paved Forum. He reined to a halt beneath the statue; his horse was dwarfed by the massive pyramidal stone base. The seven porphyry drums lifted the colossal bronze figure of the long-dead Emperor far overhead. The Prefect dismounted and quickly unrolled his purple-tinted text. A group of labourers heading for the docks pointed and hurried over. Two meat vendors in stained tunics left an apothecary’s queue and walked across the plaza. The Prefect looked around at the timeless audience, the statues that stood atop the arcade roof all around the Forum. They were always listening, he thought. He decided he must begin.
‘Children of Rome, your Emperor, Autocrator and Basileus greets you. He asks that you acknowledge a new triumph which the Pantocrator has enabled him to achieve. A treacherous endeavour to deny the authority of the Pantocrator and usurp His Vice-Regent, indeed cleave from His Eternal Body His hand on Earth, has been crushed by the diligence of your Father and his beloved children. The two traitors have been identified, yet with Christ-like forbearance they have been spared a punishment in kind for the crimes they intended to visit upon your Father. Instead they have been mercifully relieved of their offices and invited to repent at the Lord’s bosom. The names of the two traitors are Alexius, Patriarch of Constantinople, and the Empress and Augusta Zoe.’
The four labourers looked at one another in disbelief. One of the meat vendors flushed deeply. The Prefect quickly mounted, thanked the Heavenly Father for having created the swift-footed horse, and galloped out of the Forum, heading east towards the palace gates.
Michael sat on his throne in the Senate chamber. His purple boots jittered slightly on the gold-embroidered stool; his fingers tapped against the gilded armrests. Did Scylitzes ever close his mouth? The Emperor realized with immense satisfaction, however, that he could no longer hear Scylitzes’s words, only see his lips move. Michael continued his private conversation with the Pantocrator.
The Senators sat in tiers on either side of their Majesty, Magisters in their white-and-gold tunics, Proconsular Patricians with the purple porphyry diptychs of their dignity propped in their laps. Patricians displaying their inscribed ivory tablets. The white heat of the Dhynatoi nodded in senescent delight as Scylitzes’s intricate encomiums climaxed a morning of slavish approbation for their master’s bold stroke. They had lived to see the last legacy of the Bulgar-Slayer trodden into the dust. Both purple-born whores cast out in one daring venture: Zoe in exile; and the Patriarch Alexius, the only man who could bring Theodora back into the Imperial Palace, now besieged in the Mother Church, would soon be forced to give up his office, his church and his ambitions for his client. ‘Who could deny,’ concluded Scylitzes with pallium-pumping grandiloquence, ‘that this paragon of infinite virtue, this treasury of unsurpassed merit, this avatar of boundless magnanimity, now leaves the chronologies of the great Emperors, the Constantines and Justinians, to emblazon the earth far below his soaring majesty, and now ensconces the manifestations of his ever-endeavouring imperium in the exalted vaults of the firmament, to set his splendid throne among the deities!’
Michael nodded, indicating that he had received the Senate’s blessing with pleasure, and that the Senators should now come forward to kiss his knees. As the procession of supplicants went on to the shuffling of slippers and the rustling of silk, Michael and the Pantocrator discussed their mothers.
Michael noticed that the Senators were leaving en masse, their hands crossed over their breasts. He nodded them out of the vast doors at the end of the chamber. When he was finally alone with his eunuchs, his seraphim and cherubim, he rose from his throne, descended from the dais, and danced in little circles on the floor.
Mar Hunrodarson was awakened two hours after sunrise by his second in command Gris Knutson, who had replaced Thorvald Ostenson while Ostenson conducted crucial business in Rus. Mar arose and slipped the ceremonial tunic of Droungarios over his head. Bianca Maria, the twelve-year-old virgin with whom Mar had chastely spent many of the nights of his exile in Italia, stirred in the bed and looked up at him with wondering dark eyes. The trip from Italia had held many astonishments for her. And yesterday afternoon she had stood atop this villa just off the Via Ignatium and seen the distant but clearly distinguishable wall of the great city.
‘Droungarios,’ said Knutson, extending a rolled and sealed document. ‘I thought you should read this right away. It bears the seal of the Patriarch Alexius.’ Knutson bowed and turned to leave. ‘No, Turmarch,’ commanded Mar. ‘You need to hear this. Soon you will have many more responsibilities than simply dealing with queries from a priest of Rome.’ Mar opened the seal and read quickly. He looked up at Knutson. This is most interesting, Turmarch. The Patriarch Alexius has been deposed and the Empress Zoe has been banished. The Patriarch is besieged in the Hagia Sophia. He says his client Theodora is secured somewhere in the city. The wily old fox does not say where. He begs us to relieve him, and then he will lead us to the new Empress.’
‘Isn’t that entirely to our purpose?’ asked Knutson, his grey Danish eyes thoughtful. ‘With the Empress Zoe
