into the depths. The pain of her betrayal was almost suffocating. Every word, every thought, was a struggle.
‘Manglavite,’ said Gabras; he looked anxiously at the large bronze water clock near Haraldr’s writing table. ‘Might I suggest that Eustratius inform your groom that one of your horses be saddled? You have a meeting at the third hour, in the palace, with the Grand Eunuch. Do you have a preference as to the horse, or perhaps merely the colour? And would you--’
A shout came from downstairs. Gabras turned towards the door and pursed his lips in alarm. Surely the servants aren’t quarrelling, thought Haraldr distantly; Gabras has already got them working together as smoothly as the gears of this water clock. The shouts ascended the stairs and became an angry chorus, then a moment later crescendoed. In a blur of colours and cacophony of rattling armour, a lean, ruddy-faced blond in the full gold-and-red ceremonial regalia of the Grand Hetairia lurched into Haraldr’s office; he shook off Eustratius and two of his eunuch assistants like a wrathful bear shedding hunting dogs. Gabras’s scarcely whiskered little chin dropped. Haraldr rose to his feet, stunned, uncertain whether to defend himself or to submit meekly to this emissary of the Emperor’s justice.
‘Manglavite Haraldr,’ said the Norseman apologetically. He made no effort to advance; instead he threw back his red satin cape and smoothed it behind his leather-kilted hips. His next words were in Norse with a slightly rustic Icelandic inflection, but with the perfect diction of a man who could read and write the runes as well as a skald. ‘I am Thorvald Ostenson, Centurion of the Grand Hetairia. I beg you not to regard the manner of my coming before you as an insult. I petitioned to see you in the accepted fashion, and your servant’ – he gestured at Eustratius, who still glared at the Norseman with small black eyes – ‘simply placed my request with all the rest, even though I assured him that life and death were at stake in this matter.’ Ostenson held out a small rolled and sealed document. ‘The Hetairarch Mar Hunrodarson asked me to make certain that you have read and destroyed this message.’
Haraldr broke the seal and unrolled the paper. The message was in runic symbols, a hand he had not seen before. ‘Sir,’ it read, ‘heed the warning of one Norseman to another. You are in grave danger in that house. You must meet me tonight at the Forum of Constantine at the seventh hour. I will wait for you beside the great statue. Make certain you are not followed. Your life depends on that.’
‘You understand?’ asked Ostenson when Haraldr finally lifted his eyes from the message. Haraldr nodded, almost relieved at the simplicity of this ending. If Mar was in the city, then the Emperor had returned, and his mighty sword was now already poised above the necks of the traitors. The Forum of Constantine was to be the place of Haraldr’s execution. Haraldr looked grimly into Ostenson’s acute, cold blue eyes. Is it that simple? he asked himself. Is Mar acting as the Emperor’s agent, or to his own ends?
Ostenson removed the paper from Haraldr’s fingers and looked up at the ring-shaped candelabra that bathed the room in soft golden light; the grey and foreboding sky, visible through the three arched windows, offered little natural illumination. Ostenson placed the message against one of the flames, then turned the paper until it had been consumed to a brittle, curled leaf. He crushed the hot ashes in his hands and let the remains fall to the floor. The centurion bowed deeply to Haraldr and turned quickly. Before he left the room, he paused and caught Gabras’s eye. Gabras turned away immediately, faced Haraldr, and pulled on his sleeves.
‘I thought you would never come to me again,’ she told him, and he kissed the tears on her cheeks. ‘I love you,’ she said, his tenderness like a weight on her aching heart, forcing her to think. ‘I loved you for love of her,’ she explained very slowly, each word tearing out a fibre of her heart, ‘but our love was greater.’ The grief came over her like a wave, and she cried until it seemed she were actually screaming under water, unable to make herself heard, choking. But he held her and touched her hair, his fingers stroking her as if they were made of light. When he entered her, the light flowed through her veins and she arched her neck and cried. It was difficult to tell how long they made love. When he had finished, he rose above her and the light from the window made a halo around his golden hair. He smiled at her and then turned slightly, and his neck gushed blood. Once, twice, then spurting with every pulse, spilling down his shoulders and chest, she watched dumbly as tiny droplets bounced crazily against the silk sheets, and when she looked at his face again, the flesh had fallen away from it, rotting before her eyes, and his bare white teeth parted and he laughed. ‘I’m dead,’ he said matter-of-factly, laughing after the terrible, words. ‘You have killed me.’
‘Away, away, oh, wicked thing,’ murmured Zoe, cradling Maria’s head and brushing at the tears that coursed down her cheeks. Maria’s eyes shot open, startled, sapphire blue against her flushed face. ‘You have gone through an entire life on that couch, little daughter. Remorse, a most . . . profound ecstasy, and then a horror that chilled me as if death--’ Zoe broke off, having conjured an image she did not want to see.
Maria suddenly remembered the nightmare she was awakening to and she sat straight up. She quickly emptied the silver goblet she had left on a small ivory table beside her couch; she hoped that the wine would wash the taste from her mouth, a bitter bouquet of fear and death. She looked at Zoe. ‘Is there news?’
Zoe nodded, her blue eyes as hot and unrelenting as a midsummer sky.
‘It is over, then,’ said Maria, clutching at her silk-sheathed shoulders.
‘It has begun!’ snapped Zoe, her blood-red lips cruel and scowling. ‘Because you did not persuade your Komes Haraldr to kill for you does not mean that he has betrayed our intent!’
‘We have been made captives.’ Maria pressed her hands to her thighs. The tips of her fingers trembled.
‘A relative condition,’ said Zoe; her eyes shot about her apartment as if she were a general surveying a battlefield. ‘We are not allowed to go out. Otherwise we are at our liberty. We may summon whom ever we please and send them out again with whatever we please. My husband is loath to see me because of his own guilt, which has clearly become a chronic disorder in our absence. He has no need to aggrandise that guilt, or contribute to the already unsteady tilt of the Imperial Diadem upon his head, by punishing me further.’ Zoe sliced the air with her delicate hand. ‘I believe the Komes Haraldr, or rather the Manglavite Haraldr, as he has now been so generously designated, is still considering our request.’
Maria pressed her chin towards her snowy neck like a frightened swan. ‘I will not ask him to dance that closely with death again, Mother,’ she said in a small girlish voice. ‘You did not see the look of horror in his eyes, the betrayal, the wound, the outrage.’
Zoe stared at Maria for a moment. ‘Oh, I am quite cognizant of your feelings,’ she said bitingly. ‘Our peril has somehow made this giant from Thule as precious to you as a little pet. I only hope you will not besiege me with your tears when I endeavour to slip my collar about his neck.’ Zoe narrowed her pitiless eyes. ‘I think your little pet can yet be goaded into devouring some of the palace vermin.’
‘But, Mother,’ pleaded Maria, ‘you have heard of the honours Joannes has showered on him. The wealth, the palace, the servants. Even if he was not Joannes’s property before, surely his price has now been met.’
‘It only means that he is in a position to consider wages of vastly greater currency.’
Zoe’s menacing tone silenced Maria. The air seemed to become heavy and stifling, as if filled with a deadly miasma. The double doors at the far end of the room slid open and Symeon floated towards the Empress and Maria. ‘Away!’ Zoe snarled.
‘Mistress,’ said Symeon softly, his ethereal progress undeterred, his words seeming to draw him forward into the room. ‘I thought you should know.’ Zoe nodded viciously. ‘Your husband has ordered that no one be admitted to your Imperial apartments without the approval of the offices of the Orphanotrophus Joannes. I have just spoken to the commander of the Khazar guard commissioned to enforce this directive.’ Symeon bowed apologetically.
The heavy silence resumed. Maria pressed her palms together tightly and her nails scored the milky back of her hand. ‘Very good, Symeon,’ said Zoe evenly, and the eunuch drifted away as he had come. Zoe pulled her legs up on the couch and began inspecting her pearl-studded red silk slippers. ‘Then I must be certain,’ she finally said in a curiously buoyant voice, ‘only to entertain guests who enjoy the favour of the Orphanotrophus Joannes.’
The snow fell fitfully in dry, coarse flakes. The wind blew the sparse accumulation into thin, vaporous tendrils that swirled briefly above the darkened pavement and vanished into the night. Haraldr pulled his sable- lined cloak more tightly around his shoulders; perhaps his time in the hot southern realms had thinned his blood. The buildings to either side of him rose like shadowed cliffs; half-way down the block and three storeys above him a single undraped window, lit by an oil lamp, seemed glazed with gold glass. He resumed his eastward progress up the side-street. After another block he reached an intersection with a fairly large avenue. He looked round the
