Tom Harper - The mosaic of shadows

‘I will show the reverence due his office,’ Baldwin snarled. ‘He cannot beg our aid and then treat us as villains. Tell him that he will let us pass, or he may find he no longer has a kingdom left to rule.’

‘If you ever had any title of your own, Baldwin Duke of nowhere, you might have the least idea what it is to rule.’

‘Better no land at all than to fuck it out of a Norse princess like you, Count.’

‘Enough!’ Duke Godfrey raised himself to his feet. He too was a tall man, though lesser than his brother. ‘There should be no quarrel between us here. You have come as the king’s ambassador, Count Hugh, so tell me plainly: how soon can we make the crossing of the straits?’

Hugh pushed out his chest like a songbird. ‘As soon as you have sworn the oath he demands, to restore his rightful lands.’

‘You know I cannot.’

‘Please, Duke Godfrey, you must. Or at least come to the palace with me. My lord Alexios invites you to celebrate the feast of Saint Basil with him, to savour his hospitality. He is a reasonable and generous man; I am sure an hour in his company would convince you of the value of an alliance.’

Godfrey shook his head wearily. ‘I do not think that would be helpful.’

‘And who is to say that if we enter his city we will come out again?’ Baldwin demanded. ‘I have heard that the brother of the king of the Franks went in a free man and came out a slave, bound in golden chains and with his balls cut off. What will the king of the Greeks do with us, once we are inside his fortress? I would sooner walk unarmed into the court of the Saracen caliph, for at least he would stab at me in the chest.’

‘I think what my brother means,’ said Godfrey uneasily, ‘is that he cannot understand why you would have us parley with this foreign king. He has already shown himself no friend to our people by his treatment of the hermit Peter and his humble army who came before. Now he tries to exact oaths and obligations from us simply to continue our journey? I trust neither him nor his offers. Tell him this: “Worship the Lord your God, and him only serve.”’

‘And tell him also that we are but the vanguard of a greater army, and that soon our ten thousand will be a hundred thousand. We will see if he still dares defy us when they are come.’ Baldwin sat back down at the table, and began to pick grime from his fingernails.

‘I will wait here until he gives me leave to pass,’ said Godfrey. ‘But I will not render myself a hostage in his city. You would do well to consider your own situation.’

‘I will return to the Emperor,’ said Hugh, furious. ‘And remain his honoured guest. Think of that when the rains come, and the water rises under your humble bed of straw; when your sword and armour rust and the fever infests your limbs. Then you will regret this show of pride. But the Emperor is a merciful man: when you decide to show him the honour he is due, he will greet you like a lost son. Until then, you can rot here.’

I had hoped to have an hour or two to probe around that camp with Father Gregorias, to see if I could glean any sign of the monk having been there, but that was clearly impossible. Duke Godfrey might have managed a bare civility, but his brother Baldwin’s crude spite was closer to the mood in the faces which surrounded us when we emerged. As we remounted, I saw that Count Hugh no longer took his place at the head of the procession, but dropped back so that he was in the midst of the Varangians. Gregorias and I had no such fortune: we were at the rear again, and had to endure a strained half hour in the fear that we might be dragged from our horses and butchered, or find an arrow between our shoulders, before at last we came through the Patzinak cordon.

At the Gate of Lakes we halted again, this time for Hugh to leave our column and pass through another gate into the first courtyard of the new palace. Remembering Krysaphios’ instructions to report to him there, I followed.

Against the decadent sprawl of the old palace, expanded out over many centuries, the new palace was a compact building whose growth was purely, dizzyingly vertical. It was built on a hill, with a commanding view over the Golden Horn to the north and the line of the ramparts to the south. Much of the brickwork was as yet unplastered, but there was none of the chaos of construction that I had seen at Domenico’s house.

A boy came and took our horses, while a guard led us up a steep stair to a high terrace, where two sets of bronze doors brought us into a high-vaulted room. There was neither ornament nor decoration on the walls, and the marble floors were of the simple, modern style. But the view at the end was breathtaking, a row of full-length, arched windows looking out to the dark sprawl of the barbarian camp. The room must be built atop the great walls themselves, I thought, on the outermost line of our defences. It would take a confident man to stand by those windows, and I noticed that neither of those present chose to risk it.

‘Count Hugh. What success?’ It was Krysaphios, interrupted in his conversation with the Sebastokrator Isaak.

‘None.’ Hugh crossed to a finely wrought chair, inlaid with gold, and slumped into it. ‘They are impossible, my countrymen, full of false pride and toothless threats. They have no love of nobility, no respect for their betters. I cannot talk to them.’

‘Threats?’ Isaak looked at him keenly. ‘What threats?’

‘None that would trouble a man of your power. They say they want only boats to cross the straits, and then they will depart. But they will not swear the oath the Emperor demands.’

‘With boats they could attack the sea walls, divert our strength.’ Isaak paced the room in agitation. ‘What exactly did they threaten?’

Hugh wiped an ornate sleeve across his brow. It came away smeared with grime. ‘They said they were merely the vanguard of a greater army — this is as I told you it would be — and that the Emperor could not defy them when all their host was assembled. They said. . I cannot recall what precisely. Your secretaries recorded it all, I think.’

Isaak and Krysaphios looked at me.

‘Well, my spying secretary, what did you discover?’ the eunuch asked.

‘Little enough,’ I admitted. ‘They were rarely minded to give answers. There were two of them, Duke Godfrey and his brother Baldwin. Godfrey, I think, is an honest man, though stubborn: he will not be swayed from his path. Baldwin is more dangerous. He has nothing to lose and a fortune to gain, and he burns with pride and envy. I think he means to find a kingdom for himself, and from where he does not care.’

‘And do you think he would go so far as to murder the Emperor to get it?’ Krysaphios’ voice was sharp. ‘Is he in league with the monk?’

I pondered this. ‘I think not. He did not seem a subtle man.’

‘So a subtle man would have you believe.’

‘He said also that they were here at the Emperor’s invitation. Is that true?’

‘Hah.’ Isaak stopped his pacing and looked at me. ‘Two years ago we sent emissaries to their church to request a company of mercenaries. We did not ask for an army in its ten-thousands, commanded by our ancient enemies and bent on their own ends. They have used our need as a pretext, Demetrios, for it is well known they wish to overthrow our power and install themselves as masters of the east.’

‘I must protest, My Lord,’ said Hugh. ‘I cannot speak for all my countrymen, but certainly for most. We came from noble motives, to free the Holy Land and the great city Jerusalem from the yoke of the Turk, so that all Christians would be free to follow in the steps of our Lord Jesus Christ. Do not let the ambitions of a base few obscure the virtue of the many.’