Tom Harper - The mosaic of shadows

‘Saved you from yourself,’ muttered Sigurd. ‘Carrying a mace doesn’t make you a Varangian, Demetrios. You were a fool to charge in.’

A groan from within the fountain reminded me what had prompted my impulse; I crossed to where the Bulgar had stood on its lip and peered down. The figure I had seen was still there, and I doubt he had moved an inch since I joined the battle, for his bare limbs and white tunic were covered in blood, and there were deep gashes in his leg. He lay with his knees pulled into his chest and his arms clasped about his head, making not the least sound.

‘I saved someone in my turn, at least.’ I stepped into the fountain and knelt beside him, lifting one shoulder as tenderly as I could to glimpse his face. He whimpered as I prised his hand from his eyes, but as it came away I almost lost my grip so great was my shock. This creature, this man whom the Bulgar warrior had been dismembering when I attacked, was not a man at all, but a mere boy whose hollow cheeks still bore the downy hairs of the first beard. He was solidly built for his years, but those must have been fewer even than the girl Ephrosene’s.

‘A child,’ I murmured, astounded. ‘The Bulgar was trying to kill a child.’

‘Maybe he tried to pick his pocket,’ said Sigurd. ‘There’s a purse on the ground over here.’ He stooped to pick up the leather bag and hooked it onto his belt. ‘Not that the whoreson will be needing it now. Maybe the boy fucked his sister. Who cares.’

I was about to argue the point, but Sigurd had already forgotten the boy in the fountain and stepped back to regard his captive.

‘Get him to his feet,’ he ordered. ‘And bind his arms behind his back. I’m going to march you all the way to the palace with my axe at your neck,’ he told the Bulgar. ‘If you so much as stumble your head will lose the company of its shoulders.’

‘What about the boy?’ I asked. ‘He needs help — he’ll bleed to death otherwise.’

‘What about the boy?’ Sigurd shrugged. ‘I’ve already detached one of my men trying to redeem a petty whore, and had that pimp Vassos escape from me. I’ll see this Bulgar at the palace in chains whether he’s the man who tried to kill the Emperor or a pilgrim who got lost on his way to the shrine. I won’t lose him by using my men as stretcher-bearers for a pickpocket who chose his target poorly. And you,’ he added, stabbing a finger into my chest, ‘should clean that blood off your face and come with us, if you want the eunuch to think he spends his gold wisely.’

‘I’ll come to the palace in my own time,’ I said fiercely, taking a step backwards. ‘And that will be when I’ve found this boy a clean bed and a doctor. On my own, if I have to.’

‘On your own, then. If you go south down that street, you should meet the Mesi.’ Sigurd picked his mace out of the dust, scowling to see the gash in its handle, and returned it to his belt before prodding the prisoner forward. With his lieutenants flanking the captive, he marched away, and I was alone in the square.

My head was wracked with pain, and my right arm still numb, but I somehow managed to lift the boy into my arms and carry him out of the basin where he lay. My steps were awkward and faltering; I feared that at any moment I would topple forward and do the child yet worse injury, but with frequent recourse to the support of the surrounding walls I made some headway out of the square and down the hill. Now I could see a sliver of the main road at the end of the alley, and I hurried as best I could to reach it. Although it was a cool day and I was still in the shade of the buildings, sweat began to sting my eyes and trickle down my nose; my beard itched unbearably. My arms and back too demanded that I pause, that I sit down and rest them if only for a minute, but I suspected that once the boy was on the ground I would never raise him up again. I cursed Sigurd and his heartlessness; I cursed Vassos and his Bulgarian thug, and I cursed myself for risking my commission with the palace just to carry a dying boy a hundred paces closer to death.

In a haze of pain and fury, I reached the road. There I succumbed, and collapsed against a stone which proclaimed I was exactly three miles from the Milion.

‘Are you well?’

I opened my eyes, which had drifted shut for a second. I was sitting at the edge of the Via Egnatia, my back supported by the milestone, with the boy’s head resting in my arms. His face seemed peaceful — more peaceful than the rest of his ravaged body, at least — but pale, and clammy. When I touched a hand to his cheek it was fearfully cold.

‘Are you well?’

I looked up to meet the insistent voice. It was a drayman, his face shaded by a broad-brimmed hat, standing before a cart loaded with clay pots. He spoke in a kindly voice which, after a moment’s confusion, I answered.

‘Well enough. But the boy is in a perilous state. He needs a doctor.’

The drayman nodded. ‘There is a doctor at the monastery of Saint Andrew. I can carry your boy there on my cart — my journey passes it. I am going to the cemetery.’

‘I’m trying my best to avoid the cemetery,’ I said with feeling. ‘But I would be grateful to go as far as the monastery.’

We lifted the boy carefully onto the cart, laying him over the jars of incense and unguents, and set off, travelling as quickly as we dared without aggravating his wounds on the rutted road.

‘What are your perfumes for?’ I asked the drayman, thinking the least I could do was reward his help with conversation.

‘For the dead,’ he said solemnly. ‘The embalmers use them.’

We walked the rest of the way in silence, though mercifully it was a short enough journey. The drayman pulled his cart through the low arch of the monastery gate into a cloistered, whitewashed courtyard, and we laid the boy out on the flagstones. I gave the man two obols for his aid; then he left me.

A monk appeared and stared at me disapprovingly.

‘We are at prayer,’ he told me. ‘Petitioners are heard at the tenth hour.’

‘My petition may not wait that long.’ Too exhausted to argue more decisively, I merely jerked my thumb to where the boy was lying. ‘If the Lord will not hear my plea until then, perhaps your doctor will.’

It may have been a blasphemous suggestion, but I was past caring. The monk tutted, and hurried away.

The tinny bell in the dome of the church struck eight, and monks began streaming out of the chapel in front of me. All ignored me. I watched them pass with ever-mounting fury, until I thought I would roar out my opinion of their Christian charity to their self-regarding faces. But just then a new figure appeared, a servant girl in an unadorned green dress, with a silken cord tied around her waist. I was surprised to see her, for I would have thought the novices could do whatever chores she performed, but she seemed to have noticed me and for that I was grateful.

‘You asked for a doctor?’ she said, looking down on me with none of the humility or reserve expected of her sex and her station. I did not care.

‘I did. Can you find me one?’ I forsook the usual forms of courtesy. ‘This boy is dying.’

‘So I see.’ She knelt beside him to put two fingers to his wrist, and laid her palm against his forehead. Her hands, I noticed, were very clean for a servant’s. ‘Has he lost much blood?’

‘All you can see.’ One entire leg was cased in crusted blood. ‘And more. But fetch me a doctor — he will know what to do.’

‘He will indeed.’ She spoke as immodestly as her apparel, this girl, for she wore no palla to wrap her head and shoulders. Though truly, she could not be called a girl, I realised, for her uncovered face and bright eyes held a wisdom and a knowledge that only age can inscribe. Yet she wore her black hair long, tied behind her with a green ribbon like a child’s. And like a child, I saw, she showed no sign of obeying me, but continued to stare with the tactless fascination of the young.