None of this made sense to me. No matter how I thought about it, God always came out seeming churlish and small, and wholly unworthy of my devotion. I had been willing to give-indeed, had given to the utmost of my ability-heart and mind and soul to him. I had dedicated the whole of my life to God, and he had not so much as acknowledged the gift. Far from it! He had ignored it completely.
This thought made me feel more alone than ever I had been in my life up to now. I was a lost man-the more since I had formerly consoled myself thinking that I was about some holy purpose, and that God cared for me. Truth, they say, is a cold and bitter draught; few drink it undiluted. Sure, I drained the cup this time.
I had once imagined myself a vessel made for destruction. I knew now that the destruction I feared was complete. I was undone. Even the bleak hope of a martyr's death was denied me. I had been willing to die, and to suffer the Red Martyrdom would have been a noble and godly thing. But no more. All holiness, all consolation of faith, all grace was refused me. In desperation I ran my hands through my hair, which had grown long now; my tonsure was gone. I looked down at my clothes-little more than rags. My transformation was finished: I looked like Scop!
In the bitterness of this hateful realization, I heard again the old Truth-Sayer's words-hateful words, mocking words, but true: 'God has abandoned me, my friend, and now, Aidan the Innocent, he has abandoned you!'
This, finally, was the cause of my despair: God had abandoned me among strangers and barbarians. When I ceased to be of use to him, he had cast me aside. Despite the glorious promises of the holy text-how he would never leave nor forsake his people, how those who worshipped him would be saved, how he cared for his children and answered their prayers, how he raised up those who honoured him and cast down the evil-doers…and all the rest-he had forsaken me.
The grand promises of Holy Scripture were empty words, mere sounds in the wind. Worse, they were lies. Evildoers prospered; the prayers of the righteous went unanswered; the God-fearing man was humiliated before the world; no one was saved even the smallest torment: good people were made to suffer injustice, disease, violence, and death. No heavenly power ever intervened, nor so much as mitigated the distress; the people of God cried to heaven for deliverance, but heaven might as well have been a tomb.
Oh, I saw it all clearly now. I saw, stretching out before me as wide and empty as the sea, the same stark desolation Scop had seen. Bitterness and confusion looped serpent coils around me; joy and hope turned to ashes in my heart. Had I lavished my devotion on a lord unworthy of veneration? If that was true, I did not see how I could live. Nor indeed, why I should want to continue drawing breath in a world ruled by such a God.
If only I had met my death in Constantinople, I would have been spared the agony of the torment I now felt. I might have died an ignorant man, but I would at least have died a happy one.
The Danes could not understand my distress. When duty permitted, Gunnar, and sometimes Tolar and Thorkel, came to sit with me at the prow. We talked and they tried to cheer me, but the black rot had taken hold of my soul and nothing any of them said could ease the pain. The rest of the barbarians took no interest in my plight whatsoever. Harald and his karlar were delighted with their new and highly-paid prominence as defenders of the empire. Accordingly, the Sea Wolves remained continually wary, for they had it in mind to seize any ships that tried to attack, hoping to augment their pay with plunder. But, aside from a swift-disappearing flash of sailcloth on the seaward horizon, we saw no marauders. All eleven ships arrived safely in port sixteen days after leaving Constantinople.
As the rock-cragged hills above Trebizond came into view, I turned with great reluctance and resignation to the task set before me, and determined that if the emperor required a spy, a spy I would become. Since I was no priest any more, I might at least try to earn the freedom promised me. All things considered, this seemed the most sensible course, though I little knew how or where I should begin, nor less yet how to insinuate myself into the proceedings.
Feeling as I did-alone and forsaken in a godless world-I decided simply to let fate fall as it would. Sure, it was all one to me. Accordingly, the moment the planks touched the long stone quay, the emperor's envoy sent word to King Harald that his presence was required. He was to bring with him twenty of his fiercest and most loyal warriors; the emperor's emissaries desired a bodyguard-to enhance their prestige, no doubt. The rest of the Danes would remain at the harbour to provide protection for the merchant ships. Apparently, the more brazen Arab pirates operated from the very quay, looting full-laden ships before they even left the harbour.
The Danes quickly established the watch, ranging themselves along the quayside in guard groups of three or more. Meanwhile, in response to our command, we assembled on the quay beside the envoy's vessel-twenty warriors, Jarl Harald, and myself-to receive our instructions from the imperial envoy, a tall, thin-shanked old man with huge ears and a face like a goat's, complete with a small, wispy white chin beard. The envoy's name was Nicephorus, and he served as eparch-which, as I was informed with elaborate disdain, happened to be a particular variety of very senior court official, eighteenth in rank to the emperor.
As we stood on the quay, waiting to conduct the eparch and the members of his company to the place of meeting, I was startled and dismayed to see the Komes Nikos emerge from the eparch's ship. He walked directly to where Harald stood, glanced at me and gave a slight-but-perceptible nod of recognition before addressing himself to the king.
'The eparch sends his greetings,' Nikos said coldly. 'It is expected that you will place yourselves under his command while we remain in this city. The eparch's desires will most often be delivered through me. Is that agreeable to you?' Although he asked the question, his manner implied that it would be this way whether Harald thought it agreeable or not.
I relayed these words to my master, who nodded and grunted his rough approval. 'Heya,' he said.
'Then you will follow me,' Nikos said imperiously. 'We will escort Eparch Nicephorus to his residence.'
We left the quay, walking slowly so that the merchants and dignitaries behind us were not left too far behind. In this way we entered the city, moving in stately procession along a narrow central street.
From the sea, the city had seemed little more than an overgrown fishing village, which is how it had begun. And though it apparently boasted some of the most varied and important markets in the empire, it still possessed something of its old nature in the small, tidy, and quiet streets lined with simple, lime-white houses of the square Greek kind we had been seeing ever since entering the Black Sea.
To my inexperienced eye, the city appeared compact, confined as it was to the low hills between the rough crags rising behind, and the sea spreading before. There was a handsome colonnaded forum, a wide house-lined central street, a basilica, two public baths, a small colosseum, a theatre, numerous wells, a taberna, and three fine churches-one formerly a temple to Aphrodite. The whole was surrounded by a low wall and deep ditch of Roman construction.
As I came to know the place, I discovered a feature which charmed me more than anything else I saw, and these were pools which threw water into the air for the sheer delight of the sight and sound alone. These fountains, I was to discover, the city possessed in profusion-sometimes with carved marble statuary, sometimes merely with unshapen stones for the water to play over, but almost always in the midst of a small, carefully-tended green or garden, where people might sit on stone benches beside these pools, talking to one another, or simply enjoying a moment's peace in their daily activities.
On the day of our arrival, Eparch Nicephorus was received in the forum by the magister and spatharius, who stood at the head of a small group of lesser officials, extending their hands in friendship and greeting.
'On behalf of Exarch Honorius and citizens of Trebizond, I welcome you,' said the magister, a short, stock- legged man with a round face and a black beard. 'His eminence the governor sends his greetings, and wishes you a fruitful stay in our city. He regrets that he is unavoidably detained in Sebastea, but assures me that he will endeavour to join you before your business here is completed. In the meantime, we have prepared a house for the envoy's use. You will be taken there in due course, but first we thought you might like some refreshment after your long journey.
'I am Sergius, and I am at your service during your sojourn here.' The magister spoke politely enough; indeed, wonderfully so, in precise and polished Greek. But the man lacked genuine warmth, I thought; there was no light of friendliness in his eye, nor enthusiasm in his voice. He was a tired musician, performing his old song with little liking for those he was meant to entertain.
The spatharius, on the other hand, more than made up for his superior's lack of zeal with an overabundance of good will. A young man, but with many grey hairs in his dark hair and beard and a fleshy paunch beneath his cloak, he all but quivered in his desire to please. His name, he told us, was Marcian; and he proceeded to fawn over the eparch in an oily, obsequious way that put me in mind of a pup overanxious for its master's favour.
