Tom Harper - The mosaic of shadows

‘You disappoint me, Demetrios. You had a reputation for insight, for seeing the hidden truths which other men did not. Not for pouncing on chance.’

‘I may see deeper than other men, but if I find a man standing over a corpse, with a knife dripping blood and a stolen purse in his hand, I do not presume that there must be a more subtle explanation and let him go.’

‘This time you should.’ Krysaphios clapped his hands together. ‘The barbarian army had barely crossed our frontier three weeks ago. Even if the attempt on the Emperor’s life had succeeded, they would have profited nothing from it. And besides, they are come to aid us, to drive the Turks and Saracens from our lands in Asia and restore them to their rightful owners. For all the mob may fear them, they are our allies, our allies, our welcome guests.’ He did not try to hide the scepticism which underpinned his words. ‘It is on that understanding that the Emperor tolerates them, that he gives them food for their bellies and straw for their horses.’

‘Nonetheless,’ I pressed, ‘I would like to see these men. Even if it is a foolish fancy, you know that I prefer to be thorough.’

‘As thorough as you were in the cistern?’

Krysaphios mocked me. Aelric and his companions had spent a day and a night standing watch over the cistern’s entrance, but no-one had emerged. They had concluded that the monk must be dead, but I had insisted on finding a body, and had led many men down there with nets and torches to scour it. We found nothing except fish: the monk, it seemed, had dissolved into the water like powder. Or more likely, as the hydrarch suggested, crawled out through one of the pipes which fed it.

‘As thorough as I was in the cistern.’ I had not been deterred by the complaining doubts of the Varangians, and I would not defer to the eunuch’s scorn. ‘My instincts are sound, Krysaphios, if not always true. I need a pass into the barbarian camp, and perhaps an introduction to their captains.’

Krysaphios’ eyes dipped in thought.

‘After all,’ I added, ‘even if — as you presume — the man who would kill the Emperor rests within our city, it cannot have escaped his notice that a foreign army will give him great scope for mischief.’

Krysaphios looked up. ‘I fear you are too easily tempted by digressions, Demetrios, and succumb to fancy.’

‘My fancies have served well enough.’

‘That is why I will give you the opportunity you seek. The Emperor will send an envoy to the barbarian captains tomorrow, and you may accompany him. If, of course, you can stand their stink. Report to me in the new palace by the walls when you return.’

The path out of that courtyard had grown familiar in the past weeks, and my face was now known well enough that the sentries did not challenge me. Winter had at last entered the palace; the gaiety and laughter which I remembered from my first visit were replaced with grim intent, and the gilded walls seemed dulled.

‘Demetrios.’

One man at least could muster some warmth: Sigurd, striding toward me along the arcade. The hollows of his eyes were dark, all the more so against the pale skin, but his greeting was hearty enough.

‘I thought you were at the walls.’

‘I was. But the Franks are keeping quiet enough in their camp, and without siege engines or boats there’s little they can do to trouble us.’

‘Surely there should be nothing they would do to trouble us in any event. Krysaphios tells me they are here as our allies.’

Sigurd eyed me as a teacher with a peculiarly obtuse student. ‘When ten thousand foreign mercenaries are camped before the city walls, you do not trust to kind words and noble intentions. Particularly if they are as duplicitous and greedy as the Franks. The Emperor will not believe they are his allies until they have defeated his enemies and returned to their own kingdoms. Until then, he will treat them like a tame leopard — with good will, and great caution. Otherwise, he may find one day that they have bitten off his hand and more besides.’ He scratched his beard. ‘But I cannot waste time educating your credulous ignorance, Demetrios, for I must get my company ready to call on the Franks tomorrow. We will be escorting the Emperor’s ambassador, the estimable Count of Vermandois.’

‘The Count of where?’

‘Vermandois.’

‘I know that the Emperor’s lands stretch far across the world, but that does not sound like a Roman place.’

‘No.’ Sigurd grinned. ‘It’s in the kingdom of the Franks, not so far from my own country. The Count is the brother of their king, apparently.’

‘And he’s the man the Emperor chooses as his emissary to the barbarians?’

‘He has been here some weeks as the Emperor’s honoured guest. An unfortunate shipwreck deprived him of a grander entrance. His time here has convinced him to swear loyalty to the Emperor, for here at last he has found a man who respects his position with all the riches and women he deserves.’

‘He’s been bought.’

Sigurd fixed me with a warning stare. ‘He has, Demetrios, he has. As have you.’

I had, but my price was a sorry trifle against what the Count of Vermandois — Hugh the Great, as he styled himself — must have commanded. He appeared before us the next morning an hour late, clothed in a robe whose very fibres seemed spun from pearls and emeralds. His skin was pale and smooth, like silk beneath his golden hair: doubtless he meant to look magnificent, almost angelic, but his eyes were too cold, too petulant for that. Nor did his beard flatter him, for it seemed a recent creation: a thin, uneven affair which would not have looked amiss on an adolescent.

He did not speak to us, but mounted his horse in a haughty silence at the head of our column. There must have been fifty Varangians in a double file, headed by Sigurd looking magnificent in his burnished mail and helm. The guards’ customary axes were in slings by their sides, and they carried instead fine lances, tipped with pennants which rippled in the breeze. At their rear, Father Gregorias and I — dressed in a monk’s mantle — were a less than fitting tail for the glorious cohort.

We kicked our horses into a trot and rode out of the palace, out through the Augusteion and down the broad Mesi. Our pomp drew crowds, convinced that this must herald an appearance by the Emperor, though when they saw that it was no Roman who led our column but in fact a barbarian, their shouts became jeers, and they turned their backs on us. No longer did they recede out of our way, and our lines became ragged, uneven, as each man drove his own path through them. I had worn my hood, for anonymity as much as warmth, but now I tipped it back so those around me could see I was of their race. It seemed to ease my way a little.

At the Gate of Lakes we halted, in the shadow of the new palace where, according to rumour, the Emperor Alexios preferred to keep his private quarters. Sigurd bellowed a challenge, and a fanfare of horns rang out from the tower as the gates swung open. It was a grand spectacle, though whom it impressed besides the Count I do not know.

We passed under the arch and out of the city, keeping close to the placid waters of the Golden Horn. It was almost two miles to the village where the barbarians were billeted, but in all that distance we saw hardly a soul. No-one worked the fields or shared our path; not so much as a single hen pecked at the roadside, and no smoke rose from within the dwellings we passed. I remembered Aelric’s talk of the desolation wrought upon his country by the Normans, and shivered to think that it might happen here.

Soon, though, there were many signs of life ahead: the smoke of a hundred fires, though it was only midday, and the smells that men and horses bring wherever they settle. I could see a cordon of mounted soldiers stretched out across the landscape, spaced like the towers which crowned the city walls. As we came near, one of them challenged us.