distinguish between those who are vain and those who are lustful.’
Ice clotted Haraldr’s veins. She a hostage to him? He had not thought of that when he had so blithely taunted Joannes. Christ. Odin. The flame of rage collapsed into mocking embers.
Joannes turned back to his artwork, satisfied that he had made a useful point. Strange, he thought, how these huge Varangian brutes could be moved by tiny, chattering creatures like women. ‘Our talk has been most useful, Manglavite. It gives our creation an opportunity to reflect on his own reticence. Let him now praise the Pantocrator.’
But the Pantocrator was only praised in the dignity of the wretch, a man who, Haraldr reflected, was probably innocent, and if not, then guilty only of righteous outrage. Haraldr was exhausted, brutalized, pained by his own agony in watching Joannes’s methodical deft dismemberment of this once human being; he could not imagine the courage and strength of the simple man who was mutely accepting this terrible attrition of his mortality. Finally, after the Armenian had filled his bucket, Joannes pronounced his creation a disappointment, if only because the clay was of too poor a grade to be moulded into any object of value. He turned away from his failed creation for the last time. ‘Manglavite Haraldr Nordbrikt,’ he rumbled, ‘I have been musing, as I often do when I am at my ease in my workshop, and one of the subjects I have entertained while I have worked today is how to best employ your abilities. It comes to my mind that you are currently in complete disuse -in fact, one might claim, disutility – in your office of Manglavite. I have thought of a more useful vocation for you and your Varangian fellows until our Father resumes his customary protocol. Since our Christian community is increasingly plagued by this rabble in the Studion, an example of which we have before us, you and your men will be assigned to duty as cursores in that district until such time as I am convinced that these precautions are no longer necessary.’ Joannes walked to the forbidding steel double doors; he waited until his assistants had opened them and left the chamber with their bloody towels and buckets of viscera. Then he looked back at Haraldr with a grin like death. ‘I leave you today’s legacy of my art, perhaps flawed, but one you might yet learn from.’ Joannes slammed the huge doors shut behind him.
The stench of filth and viscera was suddenly overwhelming. Haraldr was alone with … it. It was a demonic, crimson mask of bloody, pulpy, flayed facial tissue, without nose, ears, scalp, or lips, only glaring, lidless eyes and clenched, exposed, blood-smeared teeth. Its crotch was a bloody gash, its belly a gaping, reeking, empty cavity where the bowels had been ripped out. Its legs, truncated at the ankles, twitched frantically, the veins gently pumping blood into pools on the floor. Most horrible of all, its spurting, handless wrists jerked up and down with conscious articulation, as if trying to recapture with phantom digits the life that had been carved away from it, piece by bloody piece. And then the rolling, blood-washed irises made contact, and Haraldr realized that there was still a man inside it, just as there had been that terrible night in the Studion. He unsheathed his sword and prepared a quick end to this long, ugly, yet noble death. He came close, forcing himself to look in the eyes, and he realized that this death, and the one in that fetid ally, stained him with blood far more deeply than the many lives he had taken in battle. Now there were two; how many more wretches could he slay out of compassion before he had to question the quality of his mercy? He could never give this man what he was owed, but he could give him what he could. He drew back his blade.
‘Wait . . .’ The voice stood on the threshold of the spirit world. Haraldr held his blade at the beginning of its merciful arc. The man looked at Haraldr with a bitter yet kindred defiance. ‘The . . . Blue . . . Star,’ he croaked, barely audibly. Then with the last fibre of his strength he lifted his head. ‘Now,’ he pleaded.
Haraldr brought his blade screaming through the man’s neck, his strength fuelled not by Odin but by the desperate hope that somehow this stroke would sever the head of the Imperial Eagle.
‘What will you do?’ asked the purple-born Augusta Theodora. Her pinched face and dull brown braids were unadorned; despite her gold-laced purple robe, she seemed as plain as a butcher’s wife.
‘I could refuse to crown this Caesar,’ answered Alexius, Patriarch of the One True Oecumenical, Orthodox and Catholic Faith. His small black eyes stalked like agile panthers above the craggy hump of his nose. ‘Imperial protocol dictates that the Caesar be crowned by the Emperor, and so I could refuse to sanction the ceremony simply on that basis. But of course the paradox of our Caesar is that we must have him because the Emperor is not well enough to crown him.’
‘You would be … coerced if you refused to crown him.’
Alexius smiled. ‘I fear no coercion. If my jurisdiction were merely the Empire of Rome, then I would offer this Caesar nothing about his head but penitential ashes, and glorify the Pantocrator with my own martyrdom. But my Empire is that of all souls, and so my considerations are rather more complex.’ Alexius stroked the ornate rings on his left hand with the fingers of his right. ‘It is unfortunate that your sister Zoe has so warmly embraced her husband’s heir. Were the Empress opposed even mildly, I could take her reluctance to the people of the City, and before the three days that it took our Lord to be scourged, martyred and resurrected had passed, the people of this city would have hurled Joannes and his Dhynatoi accomplices into the abyss that spawned them. But now the fortunes of our secular Empire – and those of my beleaguered spiritual Empire – will go from bad to worse. Your sister’s husband has listened to the Christ with one ear, and the demon Joannes with the other, and that is the source of the torment that is destroying his body if not his immortal soul. I believe and pray that when this Emperor supplicates the Heavenly Tribunal, he will find expiation. But when this Caesar inherits the Imperial Diadem, he will hear only Joannes, and his soul will endure the fiery lakes of eternal woe.’
Theodora crossed herself. ‘Father, you cannot think that the Emperor is so close to his mortality. He will recover, certainly. He is an extremely . . .robust man.’
Alexius stroked his silvery beard. ‘If he recovers, it will not be soon, and during his illness he will have yielded that much more of his authority, and perhaps his soul, to Joannes. My child, your love for your sister is an example to Christian charity, and I, too, pray for her soul each morning and evening. But Joannes has used the objects of your sister’s lust to enslave her people. Whether we are to be ruled by Michael the present Emperor, or this new Michael, the Caesar, is of little consequence to the suffering folk of Rome, who know only that it is Joannes’s boot on their neck. Yet as long as your sister continues to place her carnal aspirations above the obligations of her purple-born sanction, her people will obediently suffer that scourge. But God will not suffer this outrage with infinite patience. He has already risen up the Bishop of Old Rome and his blasphemous
Alexius studied Theodora’s troubled face; she wore her almost child-like expression of grief. Finally the Patriarch gestured at the barren walls of Theodora’s apartment; his golden rings caught the light for an instant. ‘My child, your spiritual wealth has increased in this place of exile.’
‘Yes. I do not miss the palace. I prefer to dream of the Lord’s mansions.’
Alexius’s thin, elegant lips parted with genuine warmth, but his dark eyes still paced menacingly. ‘I am certain you will be well received in those mansions. In your devotion to our Lord you are similar to your sister, Eudocia, may the Pantocrator keep her soul in His Eternal Light, though she came to her faith too late to save her mortal being from the consequences of her sin.’ Theodora seemed startled by this; her face retained the innocence of regret, but her eyes were alert, wary, the prey observing the stalking beast.
‘Indeed,’ continued Alexius, ‘where the Christ’s steps have gone, I see yours following. And yet there is another path that the Christ has also charged you to follow, a charge he gave you from the moment of your soul’s conception, and now the Christ cautions us that you have strayed from this path.’ Alexius’s eyes no longer paced; they crouched. ‘I need not tell you that Christ the Pantocrator, crowned in heaven, was also crowned here on earth.’
Theodora’s pale blue eyes shifted. ‘Yes. The crown Pilate gave him. A crown of thorns.’
‘Our Lord accepted the crown of thorns because beneath that excruciating diadem He would lead mankind to the resurrection and eternal life.’ Alexius smiled sympathetically. ‘All worldly crowns are crowns of thorns, my child. Mine own bleeds me even now. The Christ was offered all the Kingdoms of the world if only he would fall on his knees before Satan. We who rule the world must turn away from like blandishments and take only the crown that earns us favour in the Kingdom of Heaven. And that crown is pain.’
‘I, too, have renounced the Kingdoms of the World. At last, Father, I have.’
Alexius’s eyes leapt forward. ‘No. You have renounced the crown that brings only blood and pain and death to your brow, and in so doing you have denied your people their hope of resurrection. You are the purple-born, child, chosen of God to do His will here in this valley of sorrows. What you have achieved here in your exile is a strengthening of your soul. But that soul must now assume the Holy Burden it is obligated to bear, or it will cease to quest for Eternal Glory. Soon our Lord will bid you rise up and bear your cross to Golgotha.’
