stood and held Haraldr’s hand in the darkness for several minutes. He could hear her breathe occasionally, but the silence was otherwise absolute. It was as if they were alone in the vastness of Asia Minor. Her touch seemed to fill him with a warm liquor that quickly dissolved his bones.
She dropped his hand, and he could see the motion and hear the sigh of silk as she removed her coat. He could sense that she was naked. Her vague form vanished and the quilts were ruffled by a breeze. From the bed she said, ‘Come to me like Heracles.’
Haraldr stripped as naked as the statue and found his way to the bed. He lay down carefully, unwilling to break the strange spell she was casting. After a few minutes she took his hand again. She sighed, or perhaps it was a muffled, tiny sob. Then she began to explore his arm.
Time became suspended. She traced every vein, every indentation, the outline of every muscle, and he in turn claimed the same territory from her. How long did they float through black oblivion before she stroked his nipple and pressed her satin palm against his huge pectoral? How long before her fingers crept to his belly and his to her wet fur? And then the ritual repeated, this time with lips instead of fingers. They had long ago passed the stars; there was no heat except their own. Finally she held over him, just as she had in Hecate, but this time she lowered her nose to his, the fine-tipped nose he now knew like his own flesh. Perhaps it was a freak of the shadows, perhaps not, but her eyes seemed to light from within and he could see the lapis gleam. ‘You are my angel,’ she whispered. ‘My avenger and my destroyer. I love you.’ Then she settled and brought him inside her.
How long they rocked on that warm, impossibly brilliant sea, he also did not know. This time it was slow, endless, a complete dissolution of the flesh. At the end they shuddered only slightly but in perfect concert, and ceased to be. They were utterly exhausted.
‘Who are you?’
Haraldr started: he must have dozed off. Had it been a dream?
‘Who are you? You are no land man from Rus.’
Haraldr felt her eyes on him, and reality reconstituting his body, if only because for a moment he had actually considered telling her everything, not merely the cryptic affinity he had offered Serah. But the oaths he had taken to that secret were too strong, the risk too great even for love. And then he realized a stunning new truth, that this new love, Maria, also commanded his silence: in Maria’s arms he wanted to remain Haraldr Nordbrikt. In her arms he wanted to end the flight that he had begun at Stiklestad, to stay here among the Romans, to become civilized, to serve his Mother and Father. And to love her, here, for ever. He knew that he could not indefinitely share both these loves, Norway and Maria, yet he would lose them both if he told her now. So for now he would offer her the only truth he could. ‘I cannot tell you who I am.’
She wrapped her arms tightly around his back and pressed her lips softly to his neck. He nuzzled her lustrous hair and whispered in her ear. ‘Who are you?’
Maria kissed Haraldr on the lips and then released him and rolled away from his body. ‘I do not know,’ she said.
Her voice was so plaintive that Haraldr reached out for her with pain in his heart. What sorrow was hidden so deeply? But Maria sat on the edge of her bed and draped her coat over her shoulders. ‘It is almost time to prepare for our day’s journey,’ she said wearily. ‘You must leave.’ She turned to face him. ‘My last question is for our Mother. To it you can reply only yes or no.’
Haraldr sat up and stroked the raven’s plumage. She threw her arms around him and kissed him fiercely, as if it were her last. And then she pushed him away and stood up, her arms wrapped against some inner cold. ‘Our Mother asks if you will, when she commands, sever the head of the Imperial Eagle.’
IV
‘Hetairarch.’ Theodora held her arms out and extended her long pale fingers towards the Hetairarch’s shoulders, as if she were a conjurer commanding him to rise. Again the eyes flashed, droll and challenging. Theodora turned swiftly and reclined on her couch.
‘You are accompanying our Father to Thessalonica?’ Theodora’s question was rhetorical. ‘How unseemly that he did not greet my sister or her rescuers on their return, leaving their reception to the offices of his brother, Joannes. I understand that he has not even sent her a message of welcome. And now it seems that my sister embarrasses his piety to such a degree that he must flee to the arms of his saint before he can even look upon her again.’
‘St Demetrius has issued our Father an urgent summons,’ said Mar. He tried to imagine the pain and frustration cloaked behind Theodora’s chalky, impassive features. With her reddish-blonde hair drawn back into a single tight braid, the Augusta not only looked older than her sister but also, curiously, more innocent; the rumour, widely bandied about by the satirists and street gossips, was that Theodora was still a virgin.
‘And while he obeys the summons of his patron he permits his Hetairarch to make his own pilgrimages.’ Her inflection was acid. ‘Perhaps customs have changed since I … left the palace. I had always assumed that the Hetairarch kept a relentless vigil at His Majesty’s side.’
‘I will rejoin the Imperial procession this evening,’ said Mar without a hint of apology. ‘It is often my habit to depute the care of his Imperial Majesty to my lieutenants.’
‘I see.’ Theodora’s grim lips pursed as they resisted a mocking grin. ‘You are so often occupied with more important errands.’ The Augusta looked straight at Mar and then laughed, the throaty, masculine laugh of a woman too clever really to care about her sexuality. ‘Such an ambitious man. Indeed, haven’t I heard of your ambitions . . . somewhere . . . wherever? You know I do not go out much.’ She fluttered her hand in a gesture of mock femininity. The voice that followed cut like a newly honed blade. ‘Why do you think I would wish to further your desires?’
Mar composed himself, determined to meet this notoriously direct woman with his own candour. ‘Because I believe your Majesty and I share a common enemy.’
Theodora smiled at Mar as if she were indulging a small child in some elaborate masquerade. ‘But of course you must know that out here I have no enemies. Only water bugs. And servants who prefer gossip to work.’
Mar leaned forward slightly. ‘Have your tongue-wagging servants told you of the Orphanotrophus Joannes’s most recent success?’
Theodora snapped back: ‘What do you mean, Hetairarch?’
‘I know that Joannes engineered the abduction of your sister.’
‘There are many of us who suspect that.’
‘I can offer proof.’
Theodora considered what use such proof might be to her sister or her mentor, Alexius. Very little, without command of the Imperial Taghmata. But any knowledge of Joannes was a potentially deadly weapon. ‘Can you produce this evidence?’
‘Shall I have Ignatius Attalietes sent to you? He and I had a brief . . . misunderstanding, but I assure you that now his greatest delight is to do what I bid him.’
‘It will be sufficient for you to speak in his stead, Hetairarch. I am well aware of your reputation for thorough interrogation.’
Mar went on to describe the plot as revealed in an antechamber of the Numera by the virtually hysterical Ignatius; a few seconds of listening to the screams of some of the other guests had turned the Attalietes scion into a pop-eyed, desperately rambling geyser of information. Enough information to expose the handprints of Joannes all over the entire scheme.
