Byzantium

Church of the Holy Apostles, through the colonnaded arcade that fronted the barrel-vaulted cells of the monks, and entered the lovely cypress grove that carried the procession of the arcade out along the wooded green spine of the little island. He walked swiftly, savouring the rich sea air, his step lifted by the conviction that he had acted both decisively and prudently. If the Sisters of Theotokos in Protovestiary were not overly apprehensive – and he had never known them to be so – then the purple-born Eudocia would soon escape the miseries and blandishments of the flesh and take her place at the feet of Christ the Pantocrator. And then who would prevent Prote’s generous typicon from being redrafted by the new Emperor? Unless, of course, there was an heir to whom the rights to the Holy Establishment at Prote might be transferred.

The tiny convent at Prote lay just beneath the point where the verdant spine of the island again dipped a rocky flank into the sea. The chapel had three small domes, and the cells, refectory and larder were wrapped round the landward-pointing apse like a bent elbow. The mouldy stone complex was deserted, having been occupied only once, for less than a year, and that seventeen years ago. Father Katalakon had been on Prote then, though he had only been cellarer at that time. As such, he had not been privileged to visit the little convent. Still, he had heard the play of promiscuous lips among some of the Brethren.

Father Katalakon descended to the flagstone path in front of the stark, empty cells. The plaster had begun to chip from the walls, and here and there weeds prised apart the underlying courses of bricks. The wind came from the north; in the woods behind the empty convent, leaves rattled. The wooden doors to the cells were rotting and the Father Abbot decided not to open one.

I am certain it was the purple-born Eudocia who resided here, thought Father Katalakon. As to the rumours of the child born here, I am certain of that as well, and I expect Brother Symeon to provide me proof. But that will not be enough to save our establishment. What Brother Symeon must uncover are the names. Who was the father? And yet more important – vastly so – where is the child?

The wind gusted and eddied, swirling leaves against the doors of the cells. Father Katalakon looked north, towards the unseen but profoundly felt presence of mighty Constantinople. He shuddered despite the dazzling silver light on the heaving sea. Having taken this step, he now had to admit to himself that it was not simply the fate of their Holy Enterprise on Prote that was at stake. If Father Katalakon succeeded in finding this child, the fate of the Empire was in his hands.

I

Kiev, Rus Land, AD 1034

‘I am condemned to spend my life looking out of windows.’ Elisevett sighed, trying to sound as weary of life as possible for a fifteen-year-old virgin. She settled into the embroidered cushion she had placed in the deeply recessed window seat; her scarlet silk robe was varnished with the candlelight diffusing from the adjacent clerestory. She pressed the tip of her long-bridged nose to the glass and looked out into the night, past the dim outlines of the domed and peaked palace roofs and down the pine-shrouded bluffs of the Citadel of Kiev. The Dnieper River looked like ink striated with gold, the shimmering reflections of the hundreds of torches that flared along the sandy beaches. The pounding of the shipwrights’ hammers and the shouted commands to the porters were a muffled, distant din. If she were the merest fur-trader or strug- poler, Elisevett reflected, or even a reeking Tork slave girl, she would be able to journey down that river. But of course the Princess of Rus would not be permitted to go. No. She would spend her life in terems and churches, first waiting upon her father’s bidding, then upon whomever he chose for her. Elisevett thought of her mother, so dry and wasted, like a tree with the sap drained. That would be her fate as well, to look out of windows while the life ran out of her.

But on this night she would escape that fate. On this night she would journey, go away for ever, right here in the very cathedral where they had so often paraded her, dressed like a jewelled, silk-wrapped little rusalka doll, for every gaping miuzhi and liudi in the entire world to stare at in slack-jawed wonder. No, tonight would not be at all like that. Tonight she would kill the little doll.

‘Come here’ she said. ‘You can see the lights by the river.’ She turned. ‘Come here.’

Haraldr looked back through the low, arched entrance of the tiny storage room on the third floor of the Church of the Tithe, praying that the cathedral was indeed empty. He squeezed awkwardly into the window seat. He had never been this close to her before. Her sandy hair, pulled back and tightly coiled on either side of her head in the Greek fashion, seemed streaked with gold. He could smell her rose-water scent and hear her breathe. He tried to suck air into his constricting lungs. He could not imagine what the touch of her would do.

‘Look at them.’

Haraldr watched the points of light swirl like fireflies as the workers moved among the blunt prows of the beached river ships. The dark forests beyond the left bank of the Dnieper stretched off to an eerily orange-fringed horizon, the corona of thousands of camp-fires. Haraldr shuddered. The Pechenegs were on the land.

‘Jarl Rognvald told my father you are not going down the river with him. My father was not pleased. Why are you staying?’ Elisevett leaned away from Haraldr and ran her fingers over the luminous pearls that studded her high silk collar, taunting her earnest Nordic swain to answer the question she knew he would not. While she observed his torment she considered how extraordinary it was that Christ – she doubted that the Lord’s sinless Mother would have interceded on her behalf in this matter – had answered her prayers by providing the hapless detskii, Haraldr Nordbrikt. He was a suitable vision, of course, tall and silky golden and so broad in the chest and shoulders, with those dazzling blue eyes and that interesting scar that pulled his right eyebrow up slightly. But then rakish Nordic giants were a plague in Rus these days, due to her father’s relentless ambitions. No, what was truly wonderful and extraordinary was the manner in which Haraldr Nordbrikt affected her mother and father. She saw the way her father glared and gasped; if this mere detskii in his Lesser Druzhina offended him so much, why didn’t the Great Prince just send him off against the Pechenegs and be done with him, instead of keeping him around Kiev to collect tolls? And her mother. She all but reached out and caressed Haraldr with her eyes, not in a leering fashion as an older woman might but with this strange glimmering ember deep within. But if Haraldr were her mother’s lover, then her father would also send him off against the Pechenegs. Or could he? How mysterious. And how wonderful it would be if Haraldr Nordbrikt were her mother’s lover.

Elisevett lowered her thick, dark, resin-coated lashes, an utterly feigned expression of modesty. ‘I think you are staying because of me.’

Haraldr wanted to clutch desperately at this great secret that had just been wrenched from his breast, and yet its leaving also filled him with immense joy and relief. Nothing will ever take me from you! his head sang triumphantly. But dry chalk seemed to fill his throat, and he had to strangle a pathetic, creaking whimper.

Elisevett silently acknowledged this initial milestone on her journey and forged ahead. She removed a tiny folded parchment from the sleeve of her tunic. When Haraldr recognised the scrap, he became vertiginous with panic, and for a moment he imagined himself pitching forward through the window and plunging to his death. Elisevett squinted over the awkward Slavic script. ‘What is “gold-wreathed goddess”?’ she asked.

Haraldr raised his hand in the feeble gesture of a dying man and finally forced a syllable out. ‘Your . . .’ His palm fluttered near the ornate gold bracelets that twined her arm. ‘Arm rings. You are wreathed in gold.’

‘I did not say for you to point at me as if I were a serving maid.’ Elisevett snapped ‘My father could have you flogged in the Podol Square if he knew you sent verses to me.’ She lowered her head for a long moment and wondered what she would see when she arrived at her destination. It did not matter, as long as it was not this. She wondered if he would be fearless – and foolish – enough to follow.

Elisevett looked up at Haraldr again, her smoky-blue eyes wide. ‘The embassies have come since I was four months old. Three weeks ago the Prince of Hungaria. Last autumn a king of Langobardia. I am the third daughter of the Great Prince, to be auctioned off like some shackled kholopy in the Podol market in order to bear the swinish brood of some petty tyrant with filthy habits. The gifts they have sent my father already fill a chamber.’ Her voice lowered to a mysterious, wistful sigh. ‘You are the first to send me something forbidden.’