‘I know him,’ said Beatrice.
‘Very likely. He worked the fields around your father’s hall. Though he is a scholar. His toil was a symbol of dedication rather than a full-time occupation.’
‘Fine ladies do not look too long at such men.’ She smiled, trying to keep her manner light. ‘Or so the Frankish maid my father bought to teach me manners told me.’
‘They do in my experience.’
‘Of course they do. That is not where I have seen him.’
‘Where have you seen him?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Beatrice, but she did. From the place where the moon made a silver road of the river, by the edge of the wood where unseen shapes snuffled and blundered, from the little wall that bore tiny lights upon it, lights that seemed so easily blown out, so in need of shielding and protection. He had come from her nightmares.
31
Snake in the Eye left the palace, picking up his sword at the Room of Nineteen Couches. He walked down the steps and around the Numera towards the towering church of Hagia Sophia.
His debt to Mauger could wait. He felt very odd, half drunk, and had the great desire to test his sword arm. Figures moved through the gloom ahead of him. This was the time to see if the scholar had truly removed his curse. He felt no different. His aggression was still like a lump stuck in his throat, something he needed to vomit forth.
He would try, he thought. An alley curled through some houses at the end of the Middle Way. It seemed a good place to wait for a discreet kill — dark as a cellar. His victim would provide the light. He had no lamp to guide him so he went in trailing one hand on the wall, the other in front of his face in case he walked into something. Nothing. Then a light.
Someone came down the alley carrying a lamp. Two boys, around ten years old, slaves of some sort by their dress.
‘Foul night,’ said one, nodding as he came by.
Snake in the Eye nodded back. When the boys had their backs to him he put his hand to his sword. No, he couldn’t draw it. The light they carried shrank. Snake in the Eye was at the rear of some warehouses which supplied the markets. There were no doors and the place stank of piss, shit and rubbish blown in from the Bull Market. Four paces to his right was an even tighter alley between two buildings — not even an alley. The warehouses leaned and sagged so much even a relatively small person like Snake in the Eye had to wriggle his way in. He did so.
After ten minutes another lamp. This time a soldier. He set the lamp on the ground not six paces from where Snake in the Eye was hiding and took a heavy piss. Snake in the Eye’s hand tightened on the sword. Relax, relax. He remembered what the warriors at Birka had told him when he asked for tips.
He loosened his grip on the weapon and reapplied his hand. He brought the sword free.
‘Who’s there?’
The Greek let down his soldier’s skirt and wheeled around.
This was what Snake in the Eye had dreamed of.
‘Only me.’
He stepped forward, his sword catching the glow of the lamp.
‘You’ve picked the wrong man to rob, kid,’ said the Greek. His speech was slurred and it was clear he was slightly drunk. ‘You’ve-’
Snake in the Eye was on him, swinging his sword high and hard towards the soldier’s head.
The man caught Snake in the Eye’s sword arm at the wrist and drove a kick into his guts. The boy crashed back into a wall, his sword flying from his hand. The man drew his own sword and smacked Snake in the Eye hard on the head with the flat of his blade.
‘You’re lucky you find me in a good mood, you little shit,’ he said. ‘If you were a man I’d have put this through you by now.’ He sank another heavy kick into Snake in the Eye’s balls. The boy rolled forward into the dirt, coughing and retching. ‘Take that as a lesson,’ the soldier said, ‘and I’ll take your weapon as a forfeit.’ He walked across to pick up Snake in the Eye’s sword.
The boy lay on the ground feeling very peculiar. His agony seemed to take him to a very strange place. He saw himself by a river, walking. He had walked by the river before, he thought, though he could not recall exactly when. A penny moon hung in the branches of the trees and made the water a shining path.
He said a name under his breath.
‘Bifrost.’ Was he there — in front of the shimmering bridge that led the way to Asgard, the home of the gods?
The remains of a wall were by the river, a broken-down overgrown thing, almost hidden by ivy. There was a niche in the wall and inside it something glowed. What was it? A candle or a tiny lamp? A flame of some sort. He couldn’t quite see it clearly. He had a powerful urge to extinguish it. In his vision he spat on his fingers and put his hand forward to snuff it out. He seemed to fall into darkness, his eyes closing, consciousness fading.
Another lamp was by him. He sat upright to inspect it. It was the same lamp the soldier in the alley had carried. Ten paces from Snake in the Eye lay the body of the man, still holding Snake in the Eye’s sword. No one else was nearby, no one at all. Snake in the Eye remembered the flame in the garden of his mind and laughed. The scholar had been as good as his word. Snake in the Eye had accepted Christ and the snake in his heart was free. He went to the body and touched it. It was freezing cold.
Snake in the Eye giggled. He was cured, more than cured. He had killed his opponent without touching him. He took up his sword. It would have been preferable to kill him with a weapon. He hacked at the body a couple of times. Then he had an idea. He rolled the man onto his front and straightened his neck, took a pace back and leaped at him, swinging the sword down at his neck. He missed his aim slightly, catching the back of the skull. He was fascinated to see how the sword stuck. He put his foot on the head and levered the sword free. Then he tried again. Another miss, this time hacking into the flesh of the shoulder. The third time Snake in the Eye was more accurate. He made a good wound in the neck. Two or three more cuts and the head would come away. He hacked and hacked again. Finally the head fell from the shoulders.
Snake in the Eye sheathed his weapon and picked the head up by the hair.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘not so sure of yourself now. Am I still a boy to be laughed at and scorned? Wag your little tongue.’
He put his fingers into the mouth and padded at the tongue. He did not throw the head aside but carried it with him proudly, a trophy that proved his battle prowess. He had done as the scholar said and surrendered the stone and reaped a marvellous reward. He must follow through on the rest of the advice.
He headed up the alley to Hagia Sophia, which rose above him like one of the monsters of the Greeks, gazing down with its many fiery eyes. Around him the people of the city sped with their lamps through the cold wet streets. No one paid him any notice, and even if they had, they could scarcely have seen him in the gloom. He sensed their living souls. He inhabited two realities, one in the black Byzantine night, the other somewhere stranger, where he moved on a river past a broken-down wall, watching lights flicker and gutter in the moonlight, knowing he only had to snuff out a flame to snuff out a life.
He reached the entrance to the church, and ran up under its great arch. The door was open for prayer. Snake in the Eye went within. The night church burned to the light of a thousand tiny candles, hummed to the muttered prayers of worshippers. His thoughts seemed things of light, mingling with light, the candles of the church’s interior and the candles of his mind almost indistinguishable. So many people in the church, so many candles. And he, what was he? A wind to them.
The priest in his great beard sang out a prayer.
‘What night falls on me, what dark and moonless madness of wild desire, this lust for sin?
Take my spring of tears thou who drawest water from the clouds, bend to me, to the sighing of my
