over Mele’s corpse. And now this. Oh, the black-frocked excrement’s slimy hands are all over this, certainly. Damn fool, Attalietes thought, admonishing himself. I should have withdrawn to Arcadiopolis or Nicomedia when I heard of the whore’s abduction. But there was so much to do here, what with the plunging value of land in Cilicia and Teluch and Lycandus. My God, even Armenikoi has shown some downward trends. Too much to do, too much possible still. God is so cruel. When Nicon Attalietes had been young and vigorous, Basil the Bulgar-Slayer had limited the universe of the Dhynatoi to polo and banquets and hunts. Those luxuries had cost the Dhynatoi more of their vitality than if they had rebelled and had been cast into the Numera or Neorion. But now, when there was so much to be taken, so much simply waiting to be plucked, there were only feeble old men without the strength to grasp it, and callow youths without the courage to reach for it. Perhaps Mele would have been the one to extend the Dhynatoi’s grasp again, Attalietes silently lamented. But Mele is dead and the mob is at the door.

‘Manganes.’ Isaac Manganes, a short, Asiatic-featured man who glowed like an icon in his robe of Hellas silk, came to the window. A former middle-level military commander from Armenikoi who had been denied promotion by less competent superiors, Manganes had begun working for Attalietes as manager of several estates in Armenikoi. He had proved himself so much more able than the network of cousins, nephews, and – yes, sons – who supervised most of Attalietes’s properties that he had soon risen to overseer of all the Asiatic estates. When the position of Strategus of Cilicia had been purchased for Meletius, Manganes had been summoned to the Empress City to become the elder Attalietes’s next-in-command, with responsibility for the enormous body of day- to-day details the old man didn’t like to bother with. That is the plight of the Dhynatoi now, thought Attalietes as Manganes came to his side. To have to depend on the lowborn for our survival. Well, at least Manganes appreciated the luxuries to which he had become accustomed.

‘I have to tell you, the situation is hopeless.’ Manganes knew his patron preferred blunt talk to the florid dissimulations one heard at court. That, less than health concerns, was why the old warrior had not entered the Chalke Gate to the Imperial Palace for perhaps five years. Besides, as Attalietes always said, ‘Why should I go to his palace and endure his strutting capons and branded felons when I have a dozen of my own palaces?’ Unfortunately, considered Manganes as he watched the mob surge against the gates of Attalietes’s vast hilltop residence, this palace is about to be sacked and burned by the unclean horde. Unless . . . Well, the old man will have to suggest it first. There are some things a hireling from Armenikoi can never say.

‘You’ve considered . . . everything?’ Attalietes’s black-streaked white eyebrows quivered as he faced Manganes.

‘Senator, it has been well conceived. The . . . duping of Meletius, the abduction of the Empress, the dispatch of the Grand Domestic and the rest of the Imperial Taghmata to recover the purple-born. You’ll recall that I cautioned against the reduction in your personal guard even though we were all convinced that under the Grand Domestic Bardas Dalassena the Imperial Taghmata had become our personal guard. This is just the sort of eventuality I was concerned about. As long as the Taghmata is under the authority of the Emperor, our assurances of its protection cannot be absolute.’

‘All right, Manganes, you’ve made enough noise shutting the gate I left open.’ Attalietes wheezed irritably. ‘Why can’t we buy off the mob’s leaders? Surely the walking dung heap has not paid this stinking herd so well?’

‘Senator, the Orphanotrophus Joannes has a unique system of inducements. In his one hand he offers the carrot; his orphanages and charity hospitals. Entirely inadequate for the demands on them but sufficient to offer hope. In the other hand Joannes carries his whip. Neorion. And of course, in this matter an even more powerful force is at work.’

Attalietes nodded slightly. The purple-born harlot. His legacy. Attalietes could still see the Bulgar-Slayer strutting before the Sacrum Consistorum, hands thrust against his hips, pausing to twirl his black beard as he pondered the next advance of Rome’s borders. The arrogance of his simplicity! Throwing away his purple robes and rings and diadems to receive his supplicants bareheaded in a tunic the colour of ashes. Always surrounded by his barbaroi goons, as if he could not trust his own courtiers; it was he who had invited the fair-hair menace to the very bedchamber of Roman power. His lifelong hatred for the Dhynatoi was evident in every rough, clipped utterance, in every brutal, larcenous action. His vicious Novel No. 29, forcibly returning estates of the Dhynatoi to the dull-witted slovens who had not maintained them in the first place! Why hadn’t the Bulgar-Slayer seen the true glory the highborn would have afforded him if only he had included them in his vision of Rome. Instead of the glowering, ruthlessly simple despot had raised his throne on the offal of peasants and labourers.

‘No one can buy their devotion from the purple-born,’ emphasized Manganes. He coughed deliberately and dared to prompt the inevitable. ‘Still, even the purple-born has her enemies. We have ample proof of that in this conspiracy in which we have become pawns.’

Attalietes turned slowly from the window and with laborious motions and rasping breath returned to his gilt-and-velvet chair. His brilliantly robed retinue faced him from a respectful distance: two elderly senators; his useless nephew, Manuel; four glorified accountants with what seemed to the old man almost uniformly pinched, narrow faces and squinting, myopic eyes; his eunuch chamberlain; and the obligatory staff of three additional fluttering capons. If any sight could compel the unprecedented step he was about to take, they were such an epiphany. Yes, their faces told him what he had long suspected but until now would not admit. The Dhynatoi could no longer stand alone. They would have to make an alliance. An alliance with the Devil. But which Devil?

Attalietes rattled the phlegm in his throat. ‘Well,’ he said, exhaling, ‘you have read all the proposals from the two extortionists who have offered to save us from the mob. What do you think, if that is not asking the impossible?’

Manganes surveyed the numb faces and coughed again. ‘Senator, we know the Hetairarch has the lesser ambition.’

‘I know the Hetairarch,’ offered Ignatius with a sudden brightening. ‘We have spoken about horses three or four times. He is very civilized.’

‘Yes.’ Fools, thought Attalietes. Manganes is too young to have seen the Varangian victories at Scutari and Abydos, the victories that had saved the throne of the Bulgar-Slayer. What dung! He had been no Bulgar-Slayer, just a Varangian payer. And now this barbaroi Hetairarch who was far too civilized for anyone’s good. Fools.

The white-haired, immaculately groomed Senator and Magister Romanus Scylitzes spoke up. Owner of huge chunks of the themes Thessalonica and Dyrrachium, his speech reeked with presumed Hellenistic elegance. ‘My esteemed colleague, virtuous mentor and indefatigable paramount. Might I offer a deduction of my own? I declare the Orphanotrophus the inferior source of jeopardy, offering these substantiations. The Orphanotrophus and his egregiously purple-clad sibling suffer from the dilute blood of the plebeian classes. Because they are not conditioned to the obligations required by their station, they will rapidly weary of their lofty occupations. Suffering from languishment and irresolutions due to these exhaustions, the midnight-cloaked will be forced to gesture forth with his own hand, not in augur of our own despoliation, but suppliantly, in reciprocation of the gesture he would have us perform today, though vastly exacerbated against restraint.’ Insufferable, turd-spewing windbag. Joannes hardly needs an hour’s sleep each night and his brother has the endurance of a pack mule. As usual, it was pointless to counsel with these parasites. An old man would decide the way an old man best decides. With his ancient, ulcerous churning gut. And that decision has already been made. ‘Chamberlain. Send my secretary.’ Attalietes raised and shook his bloated fist. ‘The rest of you, get out.’

Children hid behind their mothers’ rough wool tunics. Men stared with wooden fright and then lowered their gaze to the littered paving stones as the man on the black horse came close enough for his swollen, immense face to reach out and mark them. Joannes was on the streets.

The clamouring died in inevitable sequence as the black-cloaked monk ascended the rise to the palace of the Senator and Magister Nicon Attalietes. The great, hollow stillness that preceded the Orphanotrophus Joannes like some force of nature was neither sullen nor reverent but profoundly respectful. Who did not have a friend or neighbour or relative who had received free treatment in one of the Orphanotrophus’s hospitals? And who did not know of someone who had vanished in the night?

As was his custom, Joannes rode alone. He dismounted in front of the brass-ornamented oak gate of the Attalietes palace. Rough hands came tremulously forward to hold gently the halter of Joannes’s horse and stroke the animal’s quivering obsidian flanks, as if in assuaging this great beast they could somehow gain favour with the

Вы читаете Byzantium
Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату