length of that lifetime.’
Maria pulled loose and took his hand again and led him to the steps on the sunny southern porch, which afforded them a panorama of the glitter-sprinkled cities to the south-west and the vineyards and cypress groves to the east. She sat beside him and looped her arm in his. ‘Tell me what concerns you,’ she said. ‘Leave nothing out.’
Haraldr watched a
‘I know things are different with her. And I have not been able to … I don’t know. I have forgiven you for sleeping with her, which is the least I can offer, since you have forgiven me … Mar. But I cannot … I knew she was opposed to you, and I thought I understood. But for her to then take you to her bed, when she knew that I still loved you. And she knew that you still loved me. I cannot forgive … I know it is wrong, and I know I will one day understand. But it is hard for me now.’ Maria found his hand and twined her fingers in his. ‘It is of no consequence. You will obtain her leave, and if you do not, I will. I persuaded her to embrace her sister, and they are still as thick as thieves, particularly now that the insatiable Monomach has found a new amusement. I can certainly persuade her to release me.’ Maria kissed Haraldr’s temple. ‘So I am confident that we will soon begin our lifetime. Why do you worry that our time together will be brief?’ She asked the question matter-of-factly, almost gaily.
Haraldr hung his head and looked at his boots. ‘I have made the east-journey. I grant you that our return will not be as dangerous as our coming, since the Pecheneg horde will not expect us, and our ships will be light and few enough that we can more easily avoid the cataracts. But it is still an enormously dangerous journey.’
Maria jabbed Haraldr in the ribs. ‘I am worried about encountering your little love, the Princess Elisevett, when we arrive safely in Kiev. She is probably not so little any more. She might try to poison me. And you might be smitten by her again.’
‘That was a boy’s love.’
‘Well, hers was not a girl’s trick. You still don’t believe that she was really a virgin? When I was fifteen, I could play the false virgin very well myself.’
‘I don’t think she was playing.’
‘I can see you are still smitten with her. So that is what I am worried about. What else?’
The grin fled from Haraldr’s face. The sun seemed strangely cold, as if the white fire had turned to ice. ‘My enemies in Norway are very powerful. I have to overcome them before our lifetime can begin.’
‘Look what you have overcome here in Rome,’ said Maria with high-pitched incredulity. ‘You are a legend here. Here? Throughout the world. These men will flee when they hear your name. And don’t tell me that these foes won’t be daunted, simply because they are Norsemen. Mar and his men were Norsemen, the most feared in the world.’ Maria threw her hands up in exasperation.
‘That is here. Norway is where I lost … I lost my strength. I am afraid I will lose it again. Even Olaf could not defeat these men.’
Maria nodded slowly, knowingly. ‘Olaf,’ she said softly. She paused for a moment, considering her words. ‘Haraldr, have you ever considered that perhaps you might be a greater man than Olaf? That perhaps Olaf, however brave and heroic he was, might have had neither your wits nor your strength. That perhaps Olaf blundered at Stiklestad and lost everything, and that you had no part in it except to be a brave boy trying to be a man. You did not lose that battle or your throne. Your brother Olaf did!’
‘Perhaps that is what troubles me. That I will be a greater king than Olaf, and yet someday will also blunder more gravely, and cost many people everything. Perhaps cost your sons their lives.’
‘At least you admit that we will probably survive long enough to have sons.’
Haraldr smiled ruefully. ‘I have never told you this. That night at Zoe’s, when Abelas performed, he called me a “merchant of destiny”. I feel the power of my fate to command the collective fate, and it has begun to frighten me.’
‘I felt your fate the first time I looked into your eyes. Do you remember? At Nicephorus Argyrus’s palace. That look we exchanged at the table. It chilled me and excited me at once. That was when I decided I had to make love to you.’ For a moment Maria sounded like the old Maria, wild and spooky. ‘I thought you would bring me a new, all-engulfing darkness, a more excruciating prison in which I could conceal my soul. Instead your destiny brought me to the light. Your star is a bright and joyful one. That is what your destiny brings.’
Haraldr stood up, still unsatisfied, unable to resist her persuasion while he sat next to her. He could not face her eyes. ‘What if I were killed trying to reclaim my throne? You would be alone, in a strange and distant place. I cannot bear to think of it.’
‘I would marry Halldor!’ Maria laughed out loud.
Haraldr turned, a look of relief on his face. ‘I would want you to,’ he said eagerly. ‘I am serious. To think of you alone … I would come back from the dead to prevent that.’
‘If I were to die at the hands of your Pechenegs or to be flung into the Dnieper, who would you marry? Elisevett?’
Haraldr’s face immediately furrowed with pain. ‘I would marry no one! I would mourn you for the rest of my life. I would wither and die. I would suffer every time I looked at a woman.’
‘So I would be condemned to an eternity of looking down from Paradise and knowing the unhappiness in your breast?’ Maria’s lips twitched with amusement.
Haraldr shook his head, as if that terrible fate were virtually imminent. ‘How could I ever replace you?’ he asked plaintively. ‘It would profane your memory. I would never let someone else displace you from my soul.’
Maria shot to her feet, her eyes on fire. She grabbed Haraldr’s arm and turned him to face her. ‘Do you think anyone could ever remove you from my soul?’ she shouted angrily. ‘Even after a lifetime? Even after a thousand men had had me?’ She shook her fist at him. ‘How can you imply that one woman could take me from your breast? I will always be inside you. Even if I never touch you again, I will touch everyone you touch for the rest of your life.’
Tears ran down Haraldr’s cheeks. ‘I did not mean that. I only mean that it would be unbearably painful to live a lifetime with someone else, when I would always remember that our time was so short.’
Maria brushed at his tears with her lithe white fingers and put her arms around him. ‘Time?’ she murmured. ‘There is no time. There are only the moments when we are together. That is all the time there ever was, and ever will be. How can you measure that much time?’
That night Maria dreamed it all: the ravens and the fire and the king beyond the creek and the beardless king vanquishing the bearded king. When she awoke, however, she remembered only the last. It was still dark, and she slid next to Haraldr and pressed her naked flesh so tightly to his that he finally roused from his own dreams. ‘Darling,’ she whispered, still partially entranced by drowsiness, ‘I remembered the name of the beardless king. It is William.’ She kissed him on his shoulders and neck. ‘But it will happen after we are both dead. And we will be together then, in the purest golden light.’
Haraldr was fully awake. He smelled her hair and whispered in her soft, warm ear. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I dreamed that we were always together, and that the light you have lit in my soul was never quenched.’ Their lips almost touched, and they paused and felt each other’s warm, moist breath. ‘I have never loved you more than I love you at this instant,’ said Haraldr.
Symeon raised a hoary eyebrow. ‘Hetairarch,’ he said in his imperturbably decorous voice, ‘if you do not have a handkerchief, might I offer you one? Or several.’ Haraldr looked at Symeon with curiosity, decided that the old chamberlain was anything but senile, and accepted three of the soft, embroidered linen handkerchiefs from Symeon’s translucent hands. Without further preliminaries Symeon nodded at the doorkeepers, and they slid open the bronze doors to Zoe’s apartments.
Haraldr immediately understood Symeon’s strange consideration. The ante-chamber was like a dry steam bath; there was even a mist of intensely pungent smoke in the air, as if every form of incense known to the Orient were being burned. The large adjoining reception chamber was the obvious generator of this atmosphere. Half a dozen servants worked at three large tables, tending rows of smoking braziers, heating flasks, grinding herbs and sealing bottles. The heat from the braziers would have brought a camel to its knees. Zoe was once again in the business of perfume and unguent manufacture, which according to Maria was her habit when she was neglected in love.
