Tom Harper - The mosaic of shadows

Sigurd clearly had many ideas, but with a reluctant growl he at last laid his weapon on the stone floor and made a seat beside it.

‘We don’t move,’ he warned me. ‘And we don’t sleep. Anyone who comes out of that door before dawn will find my axe through their throat.’

I did not ask what would happen to me if I failed to stay awake.

I hesitated to talk with Sigurd after that, but when half an hour had passed in silence I risked the hope that the chill air would have numbed his anger a little.

‘Your zeal in defence of the Emperor is like something out of legend,’ I said quietly, thinking he could ignore me if he chose. ‘No wonder he prizes his Varangians so highly.’

‘Only the English.’ Sigurd stared moodily at his fist. ‘There were others in the guard, Rus and Danes and their sort, but he expelled them because he could not trust them.’

‘Why the English?’ I was genuinely curious: to me one fair-headed barbarian giant seemed much like another.

Sigurd grunted. ‘Because the English are the only men who will hate the Emperor’s enemies as if they were his own. I will tell you. Fifteen years ago, at a battle near Dyrrachium, the Normans trapped a company of Varangians in a church. At first they offered gold, and riches, if the English would desert the Emperor and join them in battle, for they knew of our fame in war, but the Varangians refused. Then they grew angry, and threatened to slaughter them to the last man if they did not surrender, but still the English defied them. So at last they set fire to the holy sanctuary where they had sought refuge, and razed it to the ground. Not one man escaped. We would rather the Normans burn us alive than surrender to them. That is how deep the hatred goes.’

‘But why? Why leave wives as widows, when they could have been safely ransomed after the battle?’

Sigurd leaned forward. ‘Because the Normans killed our king and stole our country. Their bastard duke tricked and lied his way onto our throne, then laid the land waste.’

‘When was this?’ He spoke with such a savagery that it could have been yesterday.

‘Thirty years ago. But we do not forget.’

‘You would have been a child thirty years ago, no more than five or six years old. The same as me.’

A sound from the door behind us broke off our conversation. Before I could even turn my head Sigurd was on his feet and lifting his axe, poised to strike. I had a flash of panic that he would behead some innocent monk attending a call of nature, but it was not a monk, nor yet the boy escaping: it was the doctor. She had wrapped a stola around her shoulders, covering the indecency of her shift, and held two steaming clay bowls in her hands. Had it been me, I thought, I would probably have dropped them in the face of a lowering Varangian, but she simply set them down on the floor before us.

‘Soup,’ she said. ‘I thought you might be cold. I did not want to find a pair of obstinate men with frostbite in the morning.’

Sigurd resumed his seat, and we tipped the hot food eagerly down our throats. The lady stood over us, watching, until we had wiped the bowls clean with the bread she gave us. To my surprise, she did not then retreat inside with them; instead she smoothed her skirts under her legs and seated herself on the steps between us.

‘It’s cold out here,’ I warned, my clouded breath illustrating my words.

‘Indeed,’ she agreed. ‘Too cold for two men to sit here all night keeping an unconscious cripple from wandering out of his bed.’

‘We do not merely guard against his escape. There are men out there who would ensure he never left his bed again, if they could reach him.’

‘And what do you want with him then?’ she pressed. ‘To offer him prayers to speed his recovery?’

‘Justice,’ said Sigurd harshly.

‘Tell me, how did you come to be a doctor?’ I interrupted, hurriedly pushing the conversation into less contentious grounds. ‘And in a community of monks at that? I am Demetrios,’ I added, aware that none of our unruly meetings had yet yielded an introduction. ‘This is Sigurd.’

‘I am Anna. And I am a doctor care of a wise father and a crass lover. My father taught me to read and learn the knowledge of the ancients — the texts of Galen and Aristotle. My lover, to whom I was betrothed, chose to abandon the marriage at the last minute. After that humiliation, none would marry me, so after the tears I chose this profession. I had friends who had suffered at the hands of incompetent surgeons, men who knew no more of a woman’s body than of a camel’s. I thought I could do better.’

She pressed her palms together, and in the moonlight I saw that despite her cloak she was shivering.

‘Do you think me shameless?’ she asked. ‘Telling near strangers my intimate history?’ She leaned forward. ‘I see a dozen patients a day, and every one of them asks me my story. You grow used to it.’

‘You could tell them you were inspired by the example of Saint Lucilla,’ suggested Sigurd gruffly.

Anna laughed. ‘Perhaps that would have been easier. As for the monks, their typikon commands them to provide a hospice with doctors who can minister to all the sexes. Usually there are two of us, but my colleague died last spring and they have not replaced him. So I do the work of two.’

I nodded. ‘And is that better than marriage?’

Again she laughed. ‘Mostly. Sometimes men propose it, but it is hard to be stirred by a man when you have searched the contents of his bowels for evil humours. The monks, of course, fear that I will pollute their thoughts, and keep their distance as much as they can.’

Probably they thought her a perfect succubus, hovering in their tormented dreams, but I did not say so.

‘And what of you?’ she asked. ‘The strange man who brings me dying youths in the morning, and demands them back in the evening. Do you work for the Emperor, like your companion?’

‘I work for myself,’ I said stoutly.

‘No man works for himself.’ I was surprised by the force of her statement. ‘Men work for greed, or for love, or for vengeance or for shame.’

‘Then I must work for greed, I suppose. And for other men’s revenge.’ I thought on this. ‘In this case, the Emperor’s.’

‘And how, Demetrios, did you become the angel of the Emperor’s vengeance?’

I gestured to the monastic walls around us. ‘I started in a place much like this, a monastery in Isauria. My parents sent me.’

‘Did the life of a novice agree with you?’

‘The food was plentiful, and regular. I had a taste for butter, which my parents could not provide, so I stayed.’

‘But not forever?’

I shook my head. ‘When I was fifteen I ran away to join the army. I wanted to kill Turks and Ishmaelites.’

‘And did you?’

‘No. The generals were too busy using their armies against each other, trying to put themselves on the imperial throne. The only chance I had to kill Turks was when we fought a lord who had hired them as mercenaries. I did not want to die with an arrow in my throat because our noble families had carried their feuds across the empire, so I went to work for myself. At least I could choose my causes. A merchant hired me to guard him and I failed, so to save my reputation I found his killers and killed them myself. Then I discovered others needed similar services.’

‘So you were a bounty hunter?’

‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘Not a proud occupation, but a lucrative one. And as my name spread and my clients grew more illustrious, the burden of the work moved from exacting revenge to revealing the guilty. Clerks who stole from their masters, uncles who abducted their nieces and held them hostage, sons who killed their fathers for the inheritance.’