Joannes stepped forward and enveloped the Butcher’s powerful shoulders in his grotesque fingers. ‘I prayed all afternoon to the Holy Veil, begging the Holy Mother for the strength to convey my sorrow to my friends in the city, who should know first of this calamitous event.’ Joannes stroked the Butcher’s shoulder paternally and lowered his voice to an awkward, rasping whisper. ‘Our purple-born Mother has been raped by the Saracens.’
The Butcher’s bleary eyes froze with shock and then thawed with flowing tears. Theotokos, Theotokos, Theotokos,’ he wailed frantically, ‘oh, beseech we, Holy Mother, spare our Mother, spare our Mother. . . . Oh, Theotokos, Theotokos … my Mother, my Mother.’ The Butcher thundered his chest with his rock-hard fists, slumped to his knees, and began to rip the front of his tunic to shreds. Joannes watched, incredulous as always at the devotion of the rabble to the painted harlot they called their Mother. In Zoe’s case it was not simply the centuries-old association of the Empress of the Romans and the Mother of her people with the Empress of Heaven and the Mother of God; Zoe also had the legacy of the Bulgar-Slayer dyed into the weft of her purple-born being, the Bulgar-Slayer who had diligently and, when necessary, ruthlessly protected the people of his city and his empire from the merciless depredations of the Dhynatoi. Seeing the wailing Butcher before him, Joannes again reminded himself that the Macedonian Dynasty would have to be excised from the hearts of the clamouring mob with the greatest of surgical precision.
Joannes knelt beside the slobbering Butcher and cradled the greasy rough-fleshed head. ‘Brother, Brother,’ he said in a low rumble, like a distant shaking of the earth. ‘Fear not for our Mother. I have already dispatched the Grand Domestic and our Imperial Taghmata to effect the rescue of her sacred person.’ The brutish eyes turned to Joannes gratefully. ‘Yes, Brother. Let us now think to transform our tears into a righteous vengeance. There has been fault here.’ The Butcher stiffened. ‘Yes. It was the Dhynatoi Meletius Attalietes who cravenly abandoned our Blessed Mother to the unclean heretics. That vile recreant is beyond our reach now, but the father, the demon-sire who engineered this plot against our Mother, is well within your grasp.’
The Butcher bolted to his feet, his fingers strangling the air. His chest heaved with rage.
‘There!’ boomed Joannes. ‘Do you see him!’ Joannes extended his vast arm span to a dark corner of the antechamber. ‘The Archangel Michael! He appears to lead you in vengeance against those who, having deprived you of everything save the love of your Mother, now wish to deprive you of your Empress! Go to your friends in the City and tell them what the Archangel has commanded you to do!’
‘Archangel Michael, messenger of God!’ roared the Butcher, his rapt eyes fixed on the empty corner.
The Augusta Theodora wrapped her long arms around her slender torso, her limbs tense and her expression pained, as if she were trying to crush her own ribs. Her eyes welled with tears; for some reason grief made her look much younger, almost boyish. ‘Thank you for telling me yourself, Father. You know your guidance is the balm for all my disquietudes.’
Alexius, Patriarch of the One True Oecumenical, Orthodox and Catholic Faith, smiled gently. He had come to Theodora’s country palace as soon as his informants in the Magnara had brought him the news of her sister’s abduction. The Patriarch showed no sign of fatigue from his long night on the road. He had a powerful yet elegant face; his nose was long and jutting, with a craglike tip poised above thin, almost feminine lips. His heavy, somewhat brutish eyebrows were streaked with black, and they ended at his temples in wiry tufts; his beard was like an extrusion of fine, pure silver wires. His small black eyes were fierce but controlled, like leashed hunting cats.
‘I was frightened for her,’ said Theodora. ‘May the Pantocrator forgive me for not setting my pride aside and going to her with my fears. I will never forgive myself.’
‘There was no reason to be apprehensive about this pilgrimage, at least within the Saracen territories. I myself made inquiries.’ Alexius’s voice was a heavy tenor; like his eyes, seemingly capable of vastly more powerful effects than the Patriarch cared to display at this moment. ‘I will probably be unable to confirm my suspicions. But I believe this abduction to be the work of heretics who call themselves Christians, and not the Sons of Hagar.’
Theodora immediately understood to whom Alexius was referring. ‘Father, I cannot believe that even Joannes could consider this. Father, he could not keep his brother on the throne without my sister. Why?’
‘If it is he, he would not be acting against your sister, and indeed I believe she will not be harmed. I suspect some fashion of manoeuvre against the Dhynatoi. Your sister is merely in a jeopardy we all share. In his demonic pursuit of his personal ambitions, in his persistent and diabolical attacks upon my person and the One True Faith under my stewardship, Joannes threatens every soul born into the world from now until the trumpet of judgement sounds. It is not Joannes the murderer of men I fear. It is Joannes the murderer of souls. Do you understand the true seriousness of his crimes, my child?’
Theodora stared thoughtfully at the floor. ‘I know that he is trying to redraft the
Alexius placed his long, elegant fingers together just beneath his chin; his golden rings caught the light from the single brass candelabrum. He wore a thickly embroidered white robe and a white shawl emblazoned with gold crosses. His eyes were unleashed now, stalking a prey. ‘Joannes weakens the One True Faith at the moment that it requires every resource to combat a far more malignant infection. The Bishop of Old Rome is a wily servant of the fallen Archangel, and what Satan himself could not accomplish, these so-called Roman pontiffs may succeed in achieving with this
Theodora crossed herself. ‘I have always despised Joannes. But before tonight I had not fully understood the urgency of opposing him. I will help you in any way I can, Father.’
Alexius looked away and his eyes finally pounced on some invisible quarry. ‘Yes, my child. I am certain you will.’
‘I order a halt,’ said the Strategus Constantine.
The Domestic Nicon Blymmedes turned to him; Blymmedes seemed to have aged a decade in a single night.
‘This pursuit is useless self-excoriation,’ continued Constantine. ‘We will be too exhausted to fight when we get there. And that presumes that we are even taking the proper route. After all, your so-called intelligence is responsible for this catastrophe, that and the foolishness of Attalietes, may the Pantocrator have mercy on his soul. Had I known we were dealing with Seljuks, I certainly would have stayed with the Empress and taken command myself. This never would have happened.’
Haraldr listened, already hating that name. Seljuks. They were believers in Maumet, or Muhammad as he was known to the Romans, who was either the son of, or wizard to, a god named Allah. The Seljuks had many of the characteristics of the Pechenegs: they migrated in great hordes on veritable herds of fast horses, which they rode expertly; they were heedless of their lives in combat; and they even had the same beetle faces. But the Seljuks were wealthier and more organized than the Pechenegs, because they already had begun to conquer less warlike Saracens in a rich place far to the northeast called Persia. Blymmedes said that the Seljuks had never been this far west before, and that this was probably a renegade tribe hired out to the Emir of Aleppo. However, the Domestic had also told Haraldr that he considered the Seljuks a ‘plague’ that would someday spread west and make the Romans forget all other foes.
But right now these Seljuks were retreating east at an astonishing pace, and despite the gut-jarring evening and night in the saddle, the swift, light cavalry units of the Imperial Excubitores and the thematic army of Antioch – there were virtually no surviving horses or men from the thematic army of Cilicia – could not bring them in sight. The pursuit through the plains of the Orontes River Valley had been especially brutal for the Varangians, who simply couldn’t ride with the Romans but had maintained the pace through sheer endurance and tenacity. And now
