Theodora absorbed Mar’s account impassively. When he had finished, she rose quickly and lithely. She walked half a circuit of her apartment’s bare, dull marble walls, then stopped to look out of an arched window towards the distant city; Constantinople was invisible in the mist. When she turned back to Mar, her faced seemed pinched, even smaller than usual. ‘How would you check Joannes, Hetairarch? You acknowledge his freshly wrought alliance with the Attalietes clique, but you did not mention that Joannes, now equipped with the resources of the Dhynatoi, is sponsoring a rival to you, the Tauro-Scythian who effected the rescue of my sister. This Haraldr whose name is on everyone’s lips. He has been named Manglavite, and the Middle Hetairia has been expanded to receive his band of cutthroats. Joannes has given him a palace near the Forum of Constantine.’ She looked at Mar piercingly. ‘As I told you, my servants have time for nothing but idle chatter.’ Theodora wondered again if the rumours she had received about Maria’s liaison with this Haraldr were true. Of course, it was only one of Maria’s caprices, but this one seemed more reckless than usual.
‘This Haraldr will soon turn on his patron, Majesty. At my command.’ Mar reflected the good fortune that had thwarted his own efforts to have Haraldr Sigurdarson eliminated. When he had learned that Joannes was Haraldr’s sponsor – the meeting in Neorion had left no doubt – he had considered the princeling to be far more of a liability than an asset. But in that impetuous decision, Mar now realized, he had behaved like a Norseman, which was not the way to deal with these Romans. Now he could see that Haraldr Sigurdarson was more useful than ever. Vastly so.
‘Indeed,’ said Theodora. ‘You have persuaded this Haraldr as you did Ignatius Attalietes? I would think one of your kind far more resistant to such blandishments than a pathetic Dhynatoi sodomite.’
‘Even the gods could not save Achilleus once his peculiar vulnerability became known.’
‘Well. Between your abilities and those of this new Tauro-Scythian Achilleus, whom you alone command, it would seem that we Romans are already as helpless as Isaac upon Abraham’s altar. Why offer an alliance to a scorned, indeed discarded, Augusta, when you fair-hairs have merely to let the sword fall? Do you pity me so much? Strange that I never suspected you of charity, Hetairarch.’ Theodora’s mouth worked in minute contractions, and her eyes glistened.
Mar ignored the taunts, as well aware as the purple-born Theodora of the power a Norseman could never acquire no matter how keen his blade or intellect; he would not insult either of them by mentioning it. Instead he would propose a more subtle form of patronage. ‘Would I be too bold to admit that I envy the friendship you share with the Patriarch of the One True Oecumenical, Orthodox and Catholic Faith?’
Theodora showed small, uneven teeth. ‘You have become so much more interesting than when I was previously acquainted with you, Hetairarch. You have become so much more . . . Roman.’ The corners of her eyes crinkled as she mused on the proposition. Fortunately the Hetairarch had been clever enough not to propose making an Empress of her; Theodora had no intention of challenging her sister, even if Joannes’s carefully seeded lies had convinced Zoe otherwise. But consider how profoundly the defence of the One True Faith might be enhanced if the Patriarch Alexius’s mighty spiritual sword were joined by the Hetairarch’s mighty secular sword.
Theodora signalled her eunuch, Emmanuel.
‘He is present,’ whispered the monk, Cosmas Tzintzuluces. ‘He is waiting for you in the ciborium.’
Michael, Lord of the Entire World, Emperor, Autocrator and Basileus of the Romans, stepped into the nave of the Church of St Demetrius in Thessalonica. From the aisle vaults the brilliant, frescoed presences of the saints, the Holy Virgin and the Pantocrator glimmered like welcoming friends. The Emperor was profoundly grateful for the familiar splendour of what was becoming if not his home, then his sanctuary. He did not come here for renewal – he never could expect that much – but for relief. It was a place of temporary sustenance, where he could arrest but not reverse the inexorable starvation of his immortal soul.
To the Emperor’s left, midway down the nave, stood the ciborium, a miniature hexagonal temple, sheathed entirely in beautiful chased silver, the canopy topped with a large silver sphere and cross. The Emperor proceeded towards the ciborium, the thickly bearded monk Cosmas Tzintzuluces gently at his arm; both men seemed to glide over the marble floor as if drawn by some supernatural force. The monk paused and opened the silver door to the little chamber.
The Emperor entered and fell to his knees before the small silver couch. He did not need to see the physical presence of St Demetrius to know that the holiest of martyrs and most potent of saints was spiritually present. St Demetrius’s
Tzintzuluces knelt beside the Emperor, crossed himself, and bowed deeply in prayer. He took the Emperor’s powerful hands in his own spindly fingers. He gently urged the Emperor’s hands towards the empty silver couch. ‘Let him touch you,’ whispered the monk. ‘His one hand has now taken that of Our Father Almighty. His other seeks your mortal grasp. Reach out to him.’
The Emperor’s hands trembled slightly as he reached out. He sighed; it was as if his fingers had vanished into a warm ether, and the pain – the terrible strangling torment – flowed from his entire body, through his fingers, into this all-accepting void. It flowed joyously, cathartically, for a moment, and then the pain was suddenly excruciating, as if his skull had turned to hot iron and crushed in upon his brain. The effluence of pain trickled and ceased, obstructed by a sin too great to pass through any medium.
The monk looked anxiously at this suffering human being next to him. Yes, Tzintzuluces reflected, he could, without blasphemy – indeed it redounded to the glory of God -consider the Autocrator a far more humble man, indeed a mere novitiate in a universal monastic order. For when Christ the King summoned him, the King of the World would have to appear before the Heavenly Tribunal as naked as any man.
And like any man, even the Pantocrator’s Viceregent on earth had to prepare for that time. For men, Tzintzuluces reminded himself, are like oxen whose life cannot last; they are like cattle whose time is short. ‘Let him guide you, whispered the monk.
The Emperor choked back the searing, vision-blackening pain. The Holy Martyr spoke, soothed, guided. His voice, transmitted through the spiritual ether within which he resided, seeped through the hard shell of pain that crushed upon the Emperor’s brain. ‘Confess,’ whispered St Demetrius in a wonderful melody that was more music than voice. ‘Confess.’
Dazed, the Emperor allowed Tzintzuluces to raise him to his feet and lead him to the vaulted crypt beside the altar, the very spot where St Demetrius had accepted Holy Martyrdom. They stopped before the sunken marble font; the saint’s holy oil shimmered, a fragrant, faintly golden pool. The Emperor fell to his knees again. When he looked up, two holy men stood before him. Both of these living saints were maned with voluminous beards and unshorn, lice-crawling hair but otherwise were as withered and desiccated as desert lizards; the taller of the pair wore a soiled loincloth, the other stood in a coarse, tattered tunic. If the Emperor noticed their unwashed stench, he gave no indication. Instead he turned to Tzintzuluces, hands clenched before his breast, the tears welling in his eyes. ‘These are new treasures,’ the Emperor whispered hoarsely, and began to weep.
‘Yes, yes,’ whispered Tzintzuluces, his own dark eyes glazed with adoration and rapture. ‘David and Symeon. The former a dendrite; the latter, as you have certainly heard, the stylite from Adrianopolis, the very Symeon whose fame has begun to spread throughout Christendom. They have left their perches to succour the holiest of all their brethren.’ Tzintzuluces looked aside briefly as a priest in silk vestments set a silver bucket, a sponge and a towel beside the Emperor.
The Emperor spread his arms wide and his eyes swept from one Holy Man to the other like a drunken reveller forced to choose between two equally desirable courtesans. Finally he settled on the shorter, cloaked man. David the dendrite’s tunic, hair and bare legs were soiled with the droppings of the birds that had shared his home of the last four years, a solitary tree on the outskirts of a small Anatolian village; already the dendrite’s virtuous self-denial had been credited with bringing widespread prosperity to the entire Charsianon theme. The
