Tom Harper - The mosaic of shadows

‘When I have earned enough dowry to find you a man who deserves you, then I will look for him,’ I tried. ‘You don’t want to squander yourself on some unworthy wretch who stinks of garlic.’

‘You wouldn’t want me to squander myself on a prince in the palace, even if his estates stretched from Arcadia to Trebizond.’ Helena’s face was red now. ‘And how am I to know what a worthy man should be, if the only people I see are the women in the market?’

‘A husband is not everything,’ said Anna gently. ‘I have survived without one.’

‘But you chose that it would be so. You did not have a father who would rather see you married, like Persephone, in Hell, than in this life. And you had a noble calling to sustain you — I merely buy vegetables, and prepare them for this table.’

‘Very successfully,’ offered Aelric.

I turned to Anna, desperate to change the tone of the conversation. ‘Talking of your calling, I must congratulate you on the healing you have given Thomas. It seems nearly miraculous. When I found him bleeding to death in that fountain, I thought he would barely survive the afternoon.’

Anna smiled, her skin golden in the candlelight. ‘Wounds like his are straightforward, and whether he lived or died was more in God’s hands than mine. I simply staunched the bleeding and cleaned away the evil humours which might have grown there. It was as important that you brought him to me so readily. And that you took him into your home afterwards. Few recover in prison air.’

I shrugged, embarrassed. ‘I acted from selfish motives. I needed him for my work. But. . I am glad to have helped him. He needed some kindness.’

‘Hah.’ Helena had her arms folded, and was glaring at her empty plate.

I frowned. ‘You disagree? Perhaps, now that I think on it, locking him up with you for company was less of a kindness than I intended.’

‘Hah. He was lucky I was here. He needed attention, and understanding. You could not care what he felt, or how he fared in his soul, so long as he stayed tethered here like a sheep. You were barely here to notice.’

‘And you have succoured him like a Samaritan, I assume?’

‘Like a baby?’ suggested Zoe, giggling.

Helena tossed her head. ‘Enough to know that he deserves far more sympathy than you would ever show him.’

I looked angrily at Aelric, uncomfortable with what she implied. ‘You were supposed to be here to ensure that nothing untoward happened between my daughters and the boy. How else could I have conscienced leaving him alone in my house with them?’

The Varangian lifted his arms in innocence. ‘I watched him every hour of every day, or Sweyn did. Nothing could have happened. Although,’ he added, ‘my task was to guard against anything that might befall him, not safeguard your children’s virtue.’

Helena hissed like a cat. ‘My virtue is better defended than any walls that Constantine and Theodosius and Severus together could have built. All I did was talk to the boy. Even that, it seems, displeases my father.’

‘Talk?’ Now I was quite incredulous. ‘Have you also learned Frankish, then? Or did you hire a priest to come and translate for you?’

‘If you had ever bothered to try, you would have discovered that the boy can understand Greek far better than you think. And, with some encouragement, speak it.’

For a moment I was silent, agape at this revelation and digging desperately through my memories to think what I might have said in front of the boy; searching for confidences revealed or insults unwittingly given. But Helena was not finished.

‘And if you had spoken with him, and heard his story, you might genuinely feel for his plight.’

‘And what story is that?’

‘Do you really care to hear it?’

‘Yes,’ I said tersely.

Anna touched Helena’s arm. ‘And even if your father does not, I certainly do. He was, after all, my patient.’

Helena settled back, triumph written across her young face. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so miserable. His parents were seduced by some charlatan back in their homeland, and as if under a spell left their fields to travel across the world. Their patriarch had preached that every Christian should fight the Ishmaelites, and this mountebank persuaded them that even unarmed, the hand of God would protect them and scatter their enemies.’ She shook her head. ‘I have never heard such stupidity.’

‘I have. Go on.’

‘They passed through our city last August, two weeks before the feast of the Dormition. Our Emperor gave them food, and ferried them to the far shore of the Bosphorus.’

‘I saw them,’ I interrupted. ‘A rabble of peasants and slaves, mostly, with little more than ploughshares and pruning-hooks to fight with. They marched into the Turkish lands in Bithynia, and did not — so far as I know — return. Though I heard rumours that they slaughtered whole villages of our own people in their quest.’

‘Thomas did not say that. But his people began to quarrel among themselves. Some went off in search of plunder, while others waited for their leaders to decide what to do. They heard that their vanguard had advanced, even that it had taken Nicaea, and they rejoiced, but then word came that the Turks had slaughtered their expeditions and were camped not ten miles away. Some of the knights rode out to meet them, but they were ambushed and driven back. The Turks followed, and routed their camp in a frenzy of murder. Thomas saw his own parents hacked apart, his sister consumed in the chaos.’

I saw Helena reach under the table and touch Thomas’s hand, but I did not rebuke her.

‘Thomas, and a few others of their company, retreated to an abandoned castle near the coast. Between the mountains and the sea, he said, there was not one inch of land that was not deep with the dead, but he and his companions managed to improvise a defence — using the bones of their kinsmen for masonry — and withstood the Turkish siege. At last the Emperor heard of their peril, and sent a fleet and rescued them, and brought them back to our city. Not one in ten of the original host survived.’

Some of this I had heard in rumour, and some in gossip, but nothing so terrible, so utterly desolate. And so vividly told: I doubted Helena’s words all came from the boy’s crude, untutored tongue. I have always noticed the poetry in my daughters.

I looked at Thomas with new compassion, wondering that he had survived such ordeals. He must, as Helena said, have understood much, for his blue eyes were moist with hemmed-in tears, and his hands were tight fists.

‘When was this?’ asked Anna.

‘Two months ago. A month later he arrived in the city and was forgotten. He survived alone for a week on the streets, before a disreputable man found him and promised him gold to join his sordid designs. What choice did he have?’

Aelric reached across the table and touched Thomas’s shoulder. ‘You were brave. And lucky, though perhaps you think otherwise now. In my homeland, I saw many boys like you.’

‘If that’s his story, then I think you did well to get him to speak of it,’ Anna told Helena. ‘For all we smear them with ointments and wrap them in bandages, most wounds need light and air to heal. The wounds of the mind most especially.’

Helena looked pleased.

‘But you should respect your father. You never could have helped the boy if Demetrios had not rescued Thomas as he did.’

Now I looked smug. Doubly so, in fact.

From there the meal relaxed, though several times I saw the others watching Thomas with oblique glances. Anna talked of her profession, with Zoe and Helena a keen audience, and Aelric let them prod him for gossip from the palace, the fashions the ladies wore and the tastes of the empress. They were genial company, and the candle was burned low when at last Anna rose and announced she must go.