his arm.
Mar turned left. A dwarf directed singing by three pretty, sad girls in clean white tunics; a large crowd joined in choruses and coins showered onto the filthy street before the poignant little songbirds. After a right turn the street ended against a cluster of wooden buildings wedged round a tenement with a crumbling, vine-laced facade. ‘Big man, big, big man . . .’ The coarsely seductive woman’s voice came from a shallow porch in front of one of the wooden buildings. Mar ignored the disembodied invitation and slipped into an alley next to the brick tenement. Finally they stopped at a thick wooden door at the rear of a large, newly plastered, three-storey building. A viewing grate in the door slid aside at Mar’s knock. The door opened. Inside was a storeroom that smelled of sharp fish sauce and flour. Another door and they were into the light.
‘Hetairarch!’ A short, bald man in a sparkling blue silk tunic clasped Mar’s arms. His crooked teeth flashed in an open smile. He had a clipped, dark, wiry beard. ‘Welcome! Welcome!’
Mar turned to Haraldr. ‘This is Anatellon the charioteer. He won seven races in the Hippodrome. The Emperor Constantine had a bronze bust made of him.’
‘Of course the Emperor also made a full-size bronze statue of my best horse!’ said Anatellon. He threw his arms wide and emitted a curiously high-pitched giggle. He looked at Haraldr. ‘And you need no introduction, Har- eld, Slayer of Saracens and Seljuks, and now Manglavite of Rome.’ Anatellon extended his arms; his forearms were as thick as the forelegs of an elk and so hard that they seemed carved of marble. After clasping Haraldr’s arms, Anatellon suddenly raised his hands over his head. ‘So you hacked him right in two!’ he exclaimed, bringing his arms down in a huge motion. He giggled. ‘I like that!’
Haraldr looked around. They stood in a bright antechamber next to a heavy wooden spiral staircase. Whirling music and frivolous voices came from a larger room beyond; Haraldr could see only glimpses of bright silk through a wooden screen carved with intricate leafy patterns. Anatellon led the two Norsemen up the staircase to a dimly lit hallway punctuated with curtained openings every half dozen ells. A woman went past them like a wraith, her face as lovely and pale as a porcelain mask, her white limbs and large breasts seeming to fluoresce beneath a gauzy robe. Her glistening dark hair was coiled in the fashion of the court and sprinkled with gems. ‘She’s an Alan,’ whispered Anatellon to his guests. ‘Too good for this place. I won’t give her to just anyone, even if they can meet the price. I’ve already got a few highly placed gentlemen who want to take her into the palace and make a lady of her.’ He winked at Haraldr. ‘You could afford her.’
The hallway ended at bronze double doors chased with images of four rearing horses. The doors slid open and a young eunuch with a sweet, cherubic face bowed. The principal furnishing of the room was a large canopied bed. Anatellon gestured to three silk-cushioned backless chairs with thick ivory armrests. The eunuch quickly brought wine; he served the glass goblets with overly elaborate gestures, an unintended parody of the polished elegance of the Imperial Chamberlains. Mar motioned with his head at the eunuch, and Anatellon nodded. The boy left the room and slid the doors shut behind him.
‘I haven’t told the Manglavite Haraldr any of the details because I wanted to hear the story myself,’ said Mar to Anatellon. ‘What, exactly, did you see?’
Anatellon bent forward and tensed his bulging forearms. ‘Three nights ago a man came to my establishment and sat downstairs. I recognized him immediately as Nicetas Gabras--’
‘What?’ blurted Haraldr. ‘Not my chamberlain, Nicetas Gabras?’
‘Believe me, Manglavite, it would be most unhealthy for a man in my business not to know the faces of men owned by the Orphanotrophus Joannes.’ Mar nodded, apparently vouching for Anatellon’s reliability. ‘Anyway, I made it my business to keep a sharp eye on Gabras. To no end, it seemed. He drank a few cups, then called for a girl. He wasn’t with her more than a quarter of an hour. Then he left, but as he walked out he passed a man who had been sitting by himself all night, the kind who find melancholy at the bottom of a cup. Anyway, I was watching Gabras very closely, and as he passed this man he held his right arm by his side like this’ -Anatellon let his arm fall straight to the floor – ‘and showed three fingers like this. A gesture you wouldn’t notice unless you were looking for something. Anyway, Gabras leaves, and this fellow stays and drinks for another two hours, perhaps. Then he calls for the same girl Gabras was with and, well, you should hear it from her.’
Anatellon got up and slid the doors open; he spoke briefly to the eunuch waiting in the hall. By the time he returned to his seat, a young woman had entered the room. She was not much taller than a girl but fully developed in the breasts and hips; she had heavy, sensual lips and a slight dusk to her skin.
‘Tell these eminences what happened, Flower.’
‘Yes.’ Flower looked at the carpet; there was a soft green tint to her eyes. Her wavy hair, streaked with light and dark brown tufts, hung freely over her shoulders. ‘You see, I had intended to take this man to another booth, Daria’s, because the previous guest had disturbed mine.’ Flower made a comical churning motion with her arms to indicate that the ‘guest’ had apparently vomited. ‘This man insisted that I take him to my booth. The third booth on the right.’ Flower shrugged. ‘Why not? I decided. Men make strange requests. So. I removed the filthy bedding and he reclined himself on the bare mattress. I had begun to unveil myself in the manner most men find provocative when he told me to turn away. So. I uncovered myself and found him still fully clothed, with his arm reaching beneath the mattress. “Turn away,” he said quickly, “modesty commands me to ask you to turn away until I have become accustomed to my nakedness.” ‘ Flower narrowed her eyes. ‘What? I have never heard this before. This is all becoming more curious than I can bear. So. I pretended to hide my eyes, but I looked at him through my hair like this, and as I spied, I saw him reach beneath the mattress again, and this time I discovered the cause of his modesty. From beneath the mattress he miraculously produced a great fat wallet. I could see it sag from the weight of the coins. He concealed it within his clothing, which he then removed. Then, of course, he asked me to join him and proceeded in the manner of men.’
Haraldr shook his head. Gabras, the milk-mouthed little swine. ‘Do you have any idea who this excessively modest . . . guest was?’
‘Yes, Manglavite,’ said Anatellon. ‘Having been advised by Flower of these further coincidences, I made inquiries among my clientele. The man is called the Physician. Not because he dispenses palliatives, purgatives, and healing draughts, but because he can so quickly alleviate all of the pain and suffering that this life brings upon us.’ Anatellon made a slashing motion across his throat.
‘Where would two ailing Norsemen find this apothecary?’ asked Mar.
‘Studion,’ said Anatellon ominously.
‘Studion.’ Mar’s inflection was the opposite of Anatellon’s. He said the word as if it were some sort of rare gem.
The oil lamps cast a yellowish light over the stacks of documents, making them seem ancient, archival. Joannes rubbed the deep sockets of his eyes, wishing that these papers did indeed reflect the great flow of history and not merely the fragile aspirations of a single man whose life span would be so evanescent, so insignificant against the great firmament of time. Unless. Yes. Here, surrounding him, in these figures, this legislation, these tax codifications, were the dimensions of his immortality. Yes. Just as the builders of the great Hagia Sophia had proceeded from mere wooden models to an edifice that would reign through the millennia until the Last Trumpet blew, then so these papers were the architect’s vision of the great edifice to his memory. And yet like the ever- remembered architects of the Mother Church, he needed a builder, a back to hoist the bricks and place them within the exacting strictures of his schemata. Yes, he had thought he had selected his builder well, a back broad and noble. But now that back was bowed, afflicted; each day it carried fewer and fewer bricks to the Heaven- scraping vaults. Each day his builder fell behind the schedule that had to be kept,
Joannes looked at papers on his writing table, Brilliant. This series of novels – a novel was a new law mandated by the Emperor – would generate enough tax revenues to again fill even the great Bulgar-Slayer’s vast underground treasuries, revenues enough to send armies and fleets to the Pillars of Heracles again, to regain Alexandria and Aleppo and bring Venice and Genoa to their knees, to again reap the wealth of the Tigris and the Euphrates, to humble the caliphates and the Bulgars and exterminate the Scyths from the face of the earth. The world as the Pantocrator had enjoined them it should be. And it was already here, in this beautiful paper construction! The numbers could not lie! Let the Sophists in their impotent bureaux invoke their mincing reservations about ‘an overburdened collection apparatus’, let the hand-wringing Strategi protest about ‘the difficulties of enforcement’. It would work! The numbers would become solidi, and the power those solidi could buy would reach out into the world; the numbers would increase and the power of Rome would be restored.
But it took the force of an Emperor to place such a sweeping reform before the people, for in truth wasn’t the Emperor and Autocrator really the master builder who himself could not build without the hundreds of
