among themselves for supremacy. They also provided those seeking their counsel with close-studied readings of the starcourses and other celestial signs, by which many set great store. Apparently, one solitary consultation was enough to produce a reliable reading of an individual's future.
This fascinated me, I freely confess, for my own dreams have shown me that there are ways of knowing and seeing which are beyond the common abilities of most people. Also, I was curious to know what another might make of my circumstance. Condemned to a death I did not die, slave to a barbarian king, and a spy for the emperor, could my life be ordained by heaven and written in the stars?
When curiosity overcame better judgement, I plucked up my courage and entered into one of these consultations with a wizened old Arab named Amet, whose face was so wrinkled and dark it looked like a dried fig. He was, he said, a Magus of the Umayids who had learned his craft after long and arduous tutelage in Baghdat and Athens.
'All praise to Allah, and to his Glorious Prophet also,' he said in lilting Greek. 'I have faithfully served two amirs and a khalifa. Sit with me, my friend. I tell you the truth: I alone have devised a means by which the future is revealed in utmost clarity. You may rely upon my observation-you see! I do not use the word prediction as so many do; for to describe what has been written for anyone to see is not prediction, is not foretelling; it is reading merely-you may rely on my scrutiny with complete confidence. Now you must tell me everything you wish to know.'
We sat down together on cushions in the tent-like stall he had erected beside a column on the forum's eastern side. I told him I had reason to inquire after my future-not from any desire for personal gain, or even happiness, but from a sense of duty.
'Why duty?' he asked, tilting his head to one side. 'You say duty, which implies obedience? Why do you use this word?'
His question caught me up. 'I do not know.' After a moment's thought, I said, 'I suppose it is because I have always sought to be an obedient servant.'
'A servant must have a master; who is your master?'
'I am a slave to a king of the Danemen.'
The old Arab dismissed my reply with an impatient gesture. 'He is not your master, I believe. He is your excuse merely.'
'Excuse?' I thought his use of the word inept, but was intrigued nonetheless. 'I do not understand.'
Amet smiled mysteriously. 'You see? I already know a great deal about you and we have only begun speaking to one another. Now perhaps you will tell me the day of your birth.'
I told him, and he asked, 'The time of day, what was it? Be as precise as possible; it may be important.'
'But I do not know the precise moment,' I replied.
He clucked his tongue and shook his head at my ignorance of a detail of such momentous significance. 'Give me your hand,' he said, and I complied. After a cursory glance at the palm, he turned it over and then released it. 'Morning,' he said. 'Near dawn, I believe, for the sun had not yet risen.'
'The time-between-times!' I said, as memory came singing back to me over the years. 'My mother always said that I was born in the time-between-times-when night had finished, but day had not yet begun.'
'Yes,' replied Amet, 'that would be the hour. The day we have established already.' He raised a bony finger towards the roof of his tent. 'Now we will look to the heavens.'
Though he did not move from his cushion, he nevertheless bestirred himself to great activity. Producing a beaded cloth pouch which he wore on a rope around his neck, the old magus withdrew a disk-like object of shining brass, passed his hand over it reverently, and then, pushing here and lifting there, erected two additional appendages which he deftly adjusted. Raising the object with the aid of a small brass loop, he put his eye to a hole in one of the arms, performed some small, inexplicable manoeuvres, and turned his face to the sky outside the tent.
'It is called an astrolabos,' he told me, lowering the disk, folding the arms and replacing it in the pouch. 'To him who knows its secrets, this device reveals wonders. What is your name?'
'I am Aidan,' I told him. 'Has your device revealed any wonders about me?'
Placing a fingertip to his lips, he turned to a squat earthen jar employed to hold a number of scrolls. Selecting one of these, he unrolled it and held it before him for a moment. He glanced at me, frowned, threw the scroll aside and selected another. 'Aedan,' he said, pronouncing my name like a Greek.
The second scroll apparently met with his approval, for he smiled and said, 'You did not tell me you were a seer, Aedan.'
'But I am not a seer!' I protested. Even so, the shock of recognition coursed through me.
'The stars never lie,' he scolded. 'Perhaps you are a seer, but have not yet discovered this gift.' Retrieving the first scroll, he studied it once more, only to discard it again in favour of a third which he withdrew from the baked earth jar. 'Strange,' he said, 'to find a lord who is also a slave. Wisdom leads me to doubt this, but experience has taught me that truth does often run contrary to wisdom.'
'I was a prince of my tribe,' I told him, 'but I put aside nobility long ago to become a servant of God. I was a priest for many years.'
'Ah, I see! A servant of the Most High, Allah be praised! Servant and slave, yes. This is important.' He lay aside the scroll and folded his hands in his lap. 'Now I must meditate on this matter. Farewell, my friend.'
'I am to leave?'
'Leave me now, yes. But return tomorrow and we will talk again, God willing.'
'Very well,' I agreed, rising to my feet. 'Good day to you, Amet.'
'God go with you, Aedan, my friend.' He touched his forehead with his fingertips and, closing his eyes, arranged himself in an attitude of meditation, legs crossed, hands resting on his knees.
I left him like that, a small island of calm in the midst of the swirling eddies of the busy market. On my way back to the eparch's residence, however, I debated within myself whether to go back to him, for I had begun to doubt whether any good could come of knowing whatever Amet might tell me. By the time I reached the eparch's door, I had decided that my own premonitions of the future were confusing enough; it would be better for me not to know any more than I knew already.
This I told myself a hundred times over, and resolved to stay away. But the heart is desperately wicked, and men often fail to do what is best for them. Alas! My once solid resolve had dwindled to such a weak, enfeebled thing, that the next day I crept from the eparch's house and hurried with hasty steps to the magus's stall.
41
The Bishop of Trebizond did not approve of the fair; indeed, he abhorred it entirely, by reason of the fact that it led God's most vulnerable children into doubt and error. He particularly disliked the potion sellers who preyed on the childless, the crippled, and the easily confused. 'Worse than poison!' was his judgement on the concoctions they dispensed. 'Dogs' piss and vinegar would do a body more good,' he concluded, 'and that you can get for nothing! They sell their vile concoctions at exorbitant rates to those least able to afford them, and then give their poor victims pernicious lies to swallow along with their foul elixirs. Soothsayers! Diviners! Magicians! I condemn them all.'
Despite the bishop's censure, the people flocked to the fair, and most seemed to enjoy it-especially the farmers and village folk, many of whom brought their animals to the city for sale and trade. I respectfully submitted to the bishop that they could hardly be held to blame who had no priests to teach them or offer a better example.
'I have no qualm or sympathy for the pagani,' Bishop Arius asserted with some vigour. He had come to the eparch's residence to pay his respects to the imperial envoy and, seeing that I was a monk-for so he perceived me- inquired after me while waiting for Nicephorus to receive him. We fell into discussion of the crowded conditions in the city, and one subject led onto another, as they will. 'Unbelievers are none of my concern; they can do what they please. But Christians should not be seen supporting such confabulations. The wickedness proceeding from these fairs cannot be exaggerated.'
