Loys told himself to calm down. Such imaginings swept the common people occasionally, when a storm or a flood would have them crying that the time of tribulation had started, that Christ was coming back to his kingdom. The abbot had always counselled folk not to read too much into natural things. Every famine, pestilence or drought could not presage the end of the world. Loys had to stick to the task at hand. If Christ was returning, what better way for the Lord to find him than engaged in the pursuit of demons?
The same clear head needed to be applied to his assessment of the chamberlain. Could he really suspect him? Yes, he had seemed flustered, desperate almost but very likely the emperor would want answers as to why his people were collapsing in the aisles of his greatest church, and if the chamberlain couldn’t provide them, he was as vulnerable as anyone. And then there was Styliane. She opposed her brother and she had told Loys quite clearly the chamberlain had employed diabolical forces to secure his position. But could she be trusted?
Loys reached the hospital and went inside. It was busy as a marketplace, full to bursting. The patients had heard what had happened at the church and they wept and wailed. He found a doctor and enquired about the survivor. The man didn’t know what Loys was talking about but directed him to the admissions clerk, who found the doctor he needed.
‘What did he look like?’
‘A Varangian. He was a boy,’ said the doctor.
Loys recalled the boy who had come to see him. Not him, surely? He had told him to go to the church to seek baptism. Hagia Sophia was the nearest church to the palace.
‘Did he say anything to you?’
‘Just that he wanted his sword and he wanted to be baptised,’ said the doctor.
That did sound like the youth.
‘Did he speak to anyone else?’
‘We put him in a separate room. There were only two other patients in it.’
‘I need to speak to them.’
‘It’s the middle of the night.’
‘I need to speak to them.’
The doctor shrugged and led Loys through the hospital, stepping around whole families who were huddled together as if sheltering from a storm. They went down a corridor to a closed door. The doctor knocked and, receiving no reply, went in.
A young man lay across a bed, an older man face up on his, a towel over his head.
‘Rouse them,’ said Loys.
‘I-’
‘I am the chamberlain’s man and we are on business vital to the state. Rouse them.’
The doctor bent and shook the young man by the shoulder. ‘Sir, could you…’ He stopped, wet his finger and put it beneath the young man’s nose. He crossed himself. ‘He’s dead!’
Loys crouched to examine the body. He touched its hand. Freezing cold, like the corpses in the church.
The doctor went to the older man. ‘Dead too! My God, that boy’s of a very powerful family, they’ll have my blood, oh my God!’
‘The boy who was here,’ said Loys, ‘what did he look like? I need more detail.’
The doctor paced back and forth. ‘I don’t know, a Varangian. Still a child, though dressed in war gear. We have a hospital full of sick and those who imagine themselves sick under this sky. I have my doctors trying to establish what killed the people in Hagia Sophia. I cannot recall what one child among hundreds who come here looks like! What are we going to do about these two bodies? I’m not taking the blame, that’s for sure.’ A commotion sounded in the corridor, cries for help, people urging others to hurry.
‘What?’ The doctor went out of the room to see what was happening. When he returned he looked very troubled.
‘More trouble on the Middle Way. More dead,’ he said.
‘The soothsayers?’ said Loys.
‘Yes, but Hetaerian guards too. There are a hundred dead down there.’
Loys ran out of the hospital and hard back down the hill, almost tumbling he ran so fast. He needed to find the strange boy. The boy had been going to the church; he had been at the hospital; he could tell him what had happened.
Panic gripped the streets. Lamps cut bright lines across the dark. Families on carts pulled by donkeys rolled by, wailing and screaming. Some ran, others carried the weak and the sick. The Middle Way was strewn with corpses. Dogs had caught the people’s fear and bayed into the black night.
Loys saw soldiers joining the rout to the gates. He ran back towards the palace, breathless, shoving through the fleeing crowds. In the unnatural night, carrying their lamps or torches, they reminded Loys of that smaller procession that had climbed the hill outside the walls to sacrifice its lambs to the city’s old goddess. Was this her doing? Was this the light-hating demon who had been worshipped here for years, come to reap its payment of blood? Hecate, burst from hell to torment the people for their sins?
Loys needed to speak to the wolfman, whatever the chamberlain said. The emperor himself had wanted him interviewed. The wolfman had said his death could end the trouble and the emperor had not believed him. Loys had to get down into the tunnels beneath the Numera but he couldn’t go alone. The Varangians had helped him before; he could seek their help again. He couldn’t reach their camp by the main gate along the Middle Way — too many people were pressing to get out that way.
The military gates, though, would be easier — they were habitually barred and not open to the public. He could bluff his way through. Loys strode up the hill towards the great Theodesian Wall. Away from the Middle Way the city was quieter. Not everyone had decided to flee — perhaps only those who had seen the horror or who had been frightened by the attack on the soothsayers. Others remained inside, doors bolted, some houses quite dark, others lit — people not knowing which to fear the most, the dark or the attention a lamp might bring. The light was very dim and Loys realised he would need a lamp of his own before long.
Reaching the wall, he ran alongside it until he arrived at the gatehouse. The inner gates were closed — strong wooden doors confronting him as he approached. A few frightened-looking poor families huddled by the gate, waiting for their chance to get out. Loys guessed the rich had too much to lose to flee, demon or no demon.
‘Chamberlain’s man! Chamberlain’s man!’ he shouted up at the towers.
A man appeared at the battlements. ‘What do you want?’
‘I need to get outside the walls.’
‘No one leaves tonight. Orders. Not until the sorcery has been defeated.’
‘That’s what I’m trying to do. Mark my robes and shoes. I am Quaestor Loys and I demand you open this gate.’
There was silence for a while and then the little door set into the gates opened.
Three men came through, spears levelled. ‘No one but the quaestor!’ shouted a burly soldier, and Loys went inside. The people begged and pleaded but no one pushed forward to test the soldiers’ resolve.
A soldier led Loys by lamplight to the outer gates, which had no small door and were locked.
‘Is all this security necessary?’ said Loys.
‘With the Varangians camped where they are we’re taking no chances,’ said the soldier. Still, the gates were secured with only one relatively small bar of wood — the great trunks that would hold them shut in a siege lay to one side, ropes around them ready to be swung into position should they be needed. The gates were immensely thick, and Loys knew no enemy had managed to breach the city’s walls for years. Some of the watchtowers had supplies for three years and their own water sources. The city would not fall easily, if at all.
The soldier pulled the heavy gate back a fraction and gestured to Loys to go through.
‘Your lamp,’ said Loys.
‘Well bring it back; we’ve only got a few,’ said the soldier.
‘I will.’
The gate let him out at the top of the Varangian camp. He could afford to waste no time and he plunged straight in, calling out as he did in Norse, ‘The emperor Basileios seeks good men to help his servant! The emperor Basileios seeks good men to help his servant!’
He approached a fire and men stood to greet him.
‘I am the scholar Michael and I seek help from the Varangians as I did some nights ago.’ Loys thought it best
