Byzantium

either woman, but he already knew. His heart pounded his ribs with huge, hollow thumps and he was certain his voice would quaver. This was worse than any battle. Helpless, sinking, he gave himself up to the god who had suffered unspeakable torment to give men the beauty of verse. Let this torture make him as eloquent in the face of her beauty. Maria.

The voice was throaty, almost mesmerizing, flowing forth like a thick fragrant syrup. Haraldr could only distantly observe that it was not Maria who spoke. ‘Your Mother the Empress greets you and thanks you for the assurance your offices have given her on this most arduous yet joyous pilgrimage.’ Gregory, seated to Haraldr’s left, translated with considerable fortitude. Haraldr forced himself to concentrate.

When the translation was finished, Haraldr knew he should look upon the Empress. Kristr! Which of the two was lovelier? The Empress was like a living statue, a beauty so ideal that it could exist only in the imagination. Or upon the face next to her. In fact, they looked almost as alike as sisters. The same pearl-laced coils framing the same exquisitely contoured, slightly rouged cheeks; the glistening, deftly sculpted lips. But the eyes of the Empress were ash-tinted with a sorrow that showed even in the surrounding flesh, in minute creases that shadowed the corners of her eyes. Maria’s eyes, almost amethyst in this light, challenged him; they were as hard as the gem they resembled. It was as if she knew of the liberties he had taken with her in his fantasies. He was shamed, a boy confronted by his secret love.

The Empress said something to Maria about ‘gold’ or ‘golden’, and ‘hair’, and Haraldr’s wealth; it was an aside that Gregory was not invited to translate. Maria’s gemstone eyes remained obdurate, fixed on a point somewhere to Haraldr’s left and considerably behind him. The Empress laughed, showing perfect, small teeth; for the first time Haraldr registered that her coiled tresses were as stunningly golden as Maria’s were raven-black. An uneasy silence followed. The Empress looked at Haraldr steadily, forcing him to lower his eyes. His head buzzed with tension. Was this acute coyness his fantasy lover’s fashion? Hadn’t Maria haunted him with her eyes on their previous meeting? Hadn’t she hoped to see his fair hair again? Oh, no. What a fool, he suddenly realized in the pit of his stomach. That declaration had only been manufactured by Mar to his purpose.

Maria spoke an aside to the Empress, her tone like a knife’s blade. ‘Tongue’ and ‘oxen’; something to the effect that one should not expect a beast set to the plough to regale one with wit. Haraldr felt as if hot irons had been placed to the backs of his ears. He knew his forehead visibly flamed. Why would not Odin release his tongue? The weight on his chest was crushing.

The Empress spoke again and Gregory translated. ‘The lady Maria says she has dined with you on a previous occasion and that your tongue was, shall we say, charmingly . . . audacious. It would distress your Mother so to think that the honours and wealth you have won since then have made you reticent among us.’

Maria’s lips flickered with the barest discernible taunt. Haraldr wondered if his chest would explode with excitement. She remembered him! Her demeanour now was the ruse. Haraldr closed his eyes as an ancient wind swept his mind. Odin was ready to speak.

‘Forgive my insolent silence, my Blessed Mother. I can only say that since coming among the Romans I have seen many wonders that have brought comment spontaneously to my tongue. Your Imperial Majesty is the first such wonder to deprive me entirely of the faculty for speech.’

The Empress’s wine-red lips parted and her pearl teeth sparkled in a display of glee. She sat up and pulled her arms about her knees; her long, elegant white fingers stroked the raised golden-eagle medallions on her silk robe. Maria shifted to place her elbow on a thick maroon cushion. She cast her eyes down.

Zoe signalled with the merest nod, and a white-robed eunuch passed among the couches with silver goblets on a silver tray. The wine was strong and aromatic and seemed to change flavours in Haraldr’s mouth, ending its passage with a faint sweetness that dissolved on his tongue. A drink for the gods, he thought. He was seduced by the heady vapours and the down and silk that wrapped him up.

‘What place in Thule do you come from . . . Har-aldr?’ Zoe successfully feigned interest in her own question.

‘Norway.’

Zoe nodded. ‘Nor-way. And before you earned honour among the Romans, what were you?’

Haraldr was instantly cold, but almost as quickly he realised that the Empress was asking one question only to get to another. ‘I was a land man at the court of the Great Prince Yaroslav.’

Maria’s laugh was as harsh as breaking glass. She spoke several sentences to Zoe; Haraldr made out the word servant three times. He was thought a servant’s servant; apparently the Roman’s were not impressed with the Great Prince, and certainly not with his former toll collector. The blood pounded in Haraldr’s ears.

More wine was served. Zoe spoke between sips. ‘I have heard such tales of you Tauro-Scythians. Is it true that one man may have many wives?’

Haraldr flushed with wine and embarrassment. He tried to shift his body but the downy cushioning gave way, trapping him as if he were struggling in a spider’s web. ‘Not for those who believe in Kris--Christ. Pagans, perhaps.’

Zoe’s eyes bored away with insistent insincerity. ‘Yes. I have seen some of you who wear amulets dedicated to a heathen god. He is a bull?’

Haraldr was confused for a moment. Then he understood. Many Norse pagans wore the hammer of Thor, while the Greek word for bull was the similar-sounding tauros. He explained to the Empress.

Zoe tired of these preliminaries. She lowered her voice to a gentle growl. ‘So. I have heard that followers of this Thor-god will take a woman and have intercourse with her before an entire multitude. A man will spread his harlot’s haunches atop him even as he sits playing dice with his friends.’

Haraldr’s face was singed with embarrassment. Was the Empress testing his modesty? Then he remembered the scene in the play, how she had rolled on the floor with her lover. And Hakon had called her a ‘bitch-whore’.

Maria again directed an aside to Zoe. Haraldr could tell she made an obscene jibe; he did not know many of the words except donkey. He looked sharply at Maria. Who was she but a presumptuous lady-in-waiting, while he was rightful King of Norway. Odin filled his throat with a fate-tempting voice; hadn’t the Empress asked for audacity? ‘I am certain, your Imperial Majesty, that were a Roman to observe our love-making, he would not find it different from the habits he is accustomed to. Unless, of course, his own practices were as curious as those you have described.’

Zoe looked slyly at Maria, whose cheeks became slightly tinted. The barbaros had a certain deftness, Zoe observed to herself; by making his hypothetical Roman a man, he had avoided a direct aspersion to the Imperial Dignity. In the manner one should treat a lover found more skilled than one had expected, it was time to lead this Haraldr on to more . . . intriguing postures. ‘Maria says you are a harbinger of our destruction. I have often wondered why so many of my children have an inordinate fear of you fair-hairs. Of course, your role in casting us into the abyss has long been chronicled in The Life of St Andrew the Fool, and in our time this sagacious oracle seems to be present at every meeting of the Sacrum Consistorum – though God accepted the saint’s worthy soul half a millennium ago. However, since you are of the fair-haired race and St Andrew was not, might we know if you are an agent of such sabotage?’

Haraldr’s heart seemed to constrict involuntarily at this line of questioning, but he was certain that his identity was not what the Empress wanted to know. What was she getting at? He cautioned himself that this Imperial beauty was a thorn-girt rose; her question had ridiculed both him and Maria and apparently also disparaged the policies of Imperial officials, all to an end that was no more discernible than a headland lost in a fog.

Answer soberly, Haraldr instructed himself; you have permitted yourself enough recklessness for the evening. ‘It is true. If the Empire of the Romans turned against my Father the Emperor and my Empress Mother, I would be the agent of the Romans’ destruction.’

Maria spoke to Zoe, waving her hand dismissively; Haraldr recognized the words serpent and flatterer. Haraldr felt as if she had physically slapped him; his bed and his heart would be empty tonight. It saddened him to think that his fantasy love had been inspired by such an astringent reality.

Zoe sipped with both hands on her goblet, as if she were a priest consuming the blood of Christ. ‘I