might also have reason to kill him?’
‘The matter of your . . . betrothed? I think he has been too busy with other worries to have harmed her.’
‘And if he has?’
‘As I say, it would be better for our Christian nation not to be tainted with the blood of the Pantocrator’s Vice-Regent on Earth. And of course the boy’s death might unduly prejudice Zoe against our cause, though the Empress has displayed a remarkable capacity to embrace life again after the deaths of her previous lovers.’ Alexius paused and then uncaged his menacing black eyes. ‘Let me offer you this, King Haraldr, if I may call you that. It is not unknown for the sentence of blinding to wound a man so severely that he dies shortly afterwards, sometimes within the very hour. But in that case the sentence of death would have been pronounced and executed by the Heavenly Tribunal, and not by this corrupt flesh here below.’
The first shadows of twilight painted the Mese a melancholy purple tint. Clouds in neat, cobbled formations crept across the sky from the north. Cold gusts stinging with dust ripped along the filthy side streets and swirled to meet the horsemen head on as they turned south-east towards the Golden Gate.
Haraldr had taken only Halldor and Ulfr on this ugly journey. Whether one believed that kings were descended from gods or were simply endowed on earth with the sanction of God, the killing of a king was a challenge to the gods.
The horsemen passed four men and a woman running south; their coarse tunics were whipped by the wind. The citizens cheered the Varangians as they galloped past. ‘Michael! Michael! Upside down . . .’ they shouted, their words fading behind the flying horses.
‘At least you offer him mercy!’ Halldor shouted into the wind. ‘The citizens want to chain him upside down to a column and take him apart piece by piece!’
‘Let us hope they have not already!’ shouted Haraldr. ‘We confront the gods in this. Let us not profane them as well!’ The avenue quarter-turned to the east, and the three Varangians rode between ageing but clean tenements. People stood on the balconies and cheered as they passed; it was almost as if they were waiting for the Emperor in procession. And perhaps they were.
The groups on the street increased in size as the Varangians approached the Sigma, a marginal district on the borders of the festering Studion. Well-kept tenements rose next to gutted wooden shells. Some of the shuttered shops and inns had signs with bright new paint, while other arcades gaped dark and empty and drew packs of dogs. Vegetable gardens grew in the cleared lots. The rushing crowds had new verses to their ditty, recounting their successful assault of the palace. One group still carried their spears and hollered, ‘Haraldr! Haraldr! Emperor slayer . . .’
Near the west end of the Sigma, the Mese ran directly through a broad, poorly kept park. Noxious grit howling up from the Studion filled the air with a dull, sandy haze and obscured the spring verdancy of the vast lawn. Haraldr called for Halldor and Ulfr to slow; he lowered his head to blink away the scouring grit. When he had cleared his eyes, he squinted obliquely into the wind. An enormous crowd was spilling into the park from the west end. The vanguard of this throng, their individual features blurred by the haze, danced in rough circles and chanted raucous ditties.
The crowd surged forward and soon surrounded the three Varangians. They cheered the Norsemen furiously and sang a fractured verse about Haraldr sending the hated Mar off as a messenger pigeon to his Emperor, but that this bird had failed to take wing. The prostitutes who had fought in the morning had painted their faces again and came forward and kissed the Varangians’ legs and offered them a lifetime of gratis pleasures. The cutpurses and petty thieves had exchanged their spears for wine bags and sang and hopped about with flushed faces and wine-stained teeth and chins. A chorus of preening thugs battled forward for an impromptu performance. ‘Michael stuck it in Zoe, he stuck it in us, now we’ll stick it in his mouth!’ they shouted with appropriately obscene gestures. Haraldr wished the Blue Star was not back at the Hagia Sophia. Her people had become a mob now, as intoxicated with their power as Michael had been with his.
Haraldr pushed on towards the vortex of the celebration. He was relieved to find that the centre of this storm was relatively calm; more responsible men, wearing the threadbare but clean linen tunics of the labourers who worked honestly to rise above the squalor of the Studion, moved along with controlled malice in their eyes. They paused when they saw Haraldr, as if awaiting his authority in whatever matter they were about, and stood respectfully away from his horse. A young man in an official silk robe got through and anxiously confronted the Varangians. Haraldr recognized him: Michael Psellus, a young Hellenistic scholar and Imperial secretary who had not had a hand in Michael’s crimes. ‘Sir,’ called up Psellus, ‘the mob has driven them from the Holy Studite Monastery! They mean to rip their very limbs apart!’ Psellus, unlike such presumptuous Hellenes as Senator Scylitzes, was a man of true learning, but panic had clearly overcome his usually carefully considered Attic eloquence.
The Varangians dismounted. ‘Where is the Emperor, Psellus?’ asked Haraldr. The labourers stepped aside as Psellus preceded the Varangians into their midst. Masses of men, women and children continued to flood into the park, and already the crowd was so enormous that the distant outer perimeter was masked in choking ochre dust.
Haraldr was rendered numb by the apparitions at the very epicentre of the whirlwind. He recognized Constantine, though the Nobilissimus had exchanged his purple robes for the sackcloth of a monk. Constantine looked defiantly at Haraldr, his care-hollowed countenance so much like his brother Joannes’s that Haraldr was momentarily startled into thinking that some monstrous transmutation had taken place.
There was nothing left of the Emperor, Autocrator and Basileus of the Romans. The boy who stood next to Constantine was beardless, his dark curls shorn like a novitiate’s. Michael’s head bowed, his shoulders trembled, and he whimpered like a wounded dog. His entire body seemed drawn in, as if fear had eaten away his internal organs.
‘They have petitioned to take the vows,’ said Psellus. ‘Can you appeal to the crowd to spare them and allow them to return to their sanctuary?’
Haraldr looked at the young scholar and realized that for all his classical erudition, there were things that Psellus could learn from even the sotted derelicts of the Studion. ‘And how long would Michael and Constantine wait to discard these monastic robes and take up their former purple when this danger has passed?’
Psellus collected himself and nodded. ‘Of course. It is simply that to see the power of our glorious Empire degraded in this way moves me to compassion. And such spectacles can only inflame a lust for rebellion among the people. What are your orders?’ Haraldr showed Psellus the order, signed by Theodora, commanding him to blind both Michael and Constantine. ‘I think that sentence will assuage their lust,’ said Psellus. ‘I also think you had better show that order to them.’ Psellus gestured to the crowding labourers.
Haraldr nodded, his estimate of Psellus’s wisdom rapidly rising. He passed the order among the labourers. As the purple-tinted document circulated, they began to voice agreement. ‘Yes, that is just. Theodora is right in this.’
Michael’s head lifted. ‘I will carry my cross.’ Haraldr looked into the eyes he had been sent to destroy. ‘He suffered these scourges as well. He wants me to carry my cross as he did. What? What?’ Michael’s words were barely distinguishable above the clamour of the mob.
He is completely mad, thought Haraldr. Will he even remember Maria? ‘Majesty,’ said Haraldr evenly, afraid that a stern tone might precipitate a hysteria from which no answers would be forthcoming, ‘where is Maria?’
Michael stared into the void only he occupied. ‘With my Marys.’ He cocked his head. ‘They don’t like her. Even the Magdalen repented. No, I have rather decided that White Mary will be my mother.’
Haraldr was chilled almost beyond hope. The nature of the sentence Theodora had pronounced sizzled through the crowd like liquid fire. Evidently few in the outer circles approved of the new Empress’s leniency. ‘Michael, Michael, upside down!’ came the thundering chants. ‘Death to the tyrant!’ ‘Skin him!’ ‘Crown his arse!’
Michael clutched Haraldr with claw-like hands. ‘Nordbrikt! What can the bitches offer you that I cannot?’ His eyes were suddenly brilliant and aware. ‘Together we will conquer the earth from the Pillars of Heracles to the Gates of Dionysus. They will call you the Macedonian, after Alexander. You will have a hundred tributary kingdoms and a thousand Marys. You have proved yourself worthy. I have tested you, Nordbrikt, and you alone are the man who can bring these victories to Rome. Rule with me, Nordbrikt. You the Autocrator, I the Caesar. My Father in Heaven sanctions it.’
