Tom Harper - The mosaic of shadows

The young man smiled, though there was a strain in his cheeks. ‘Thank you — it will relieve the Emperor. God alone knows what else will on this accursed day.’

‘Accursed indeed if my doings are his only comfort.’

‘Today has been bad. His enemies have risen, and his friends circle the throne like dogs; his choices are few, and ever diminishing. Yet these are merely the first breaths of the storm.’ He played absently with the clasp of his brooch, scanning the sky as if for a portent. ‘Tomorrow, I fear, it will break.’

It was the Great Friday of Easter, the holy day when Our Lord was crucified, and I woke in fear. Not fear of the barbarian armies who massed to strike us, nor of the assassins who might haunt the palace halls, nor even of the mob who could tear the city in two at their Emperor’s cowardice. It was fear of my daughters, fear that they would wake too soon in the small chamber where we had been lodged, and see their father curled shamelessly on a mattress with a woman who was not their mother.

Anna must have sensed that I stirred, for she twisted herself so she could see my face. ‘I should go. There must be some in need of a doctor here, after yesterday’s violence.’ She shook her tangled hair. ‘And though your daughters guess much, there are some things they should not see.’

‘Some things their father may not wish them to see,’ I added quietly. My spirits had leapt when Zoe and Helena arrived at the palace with Anna, she having still been at my home when the guards came. When at last I had finished roaming the passages near the Emperor’s apartments, well after midnight, I had been grateful, if cautious, of her embrace.

All thoughts left me as a stern knock came from the door. I was on my feet in an instant, trying to kick the blanket free of my legs, while Anna rolled against the wall and affected sleep. I heard tentative sounds from the far corner, but by the time Zoe’s head had peeked above the covers I was at the door and looking into the unblinking face of a guardsman.

‘You are summoned.’

I had grown tired of this abrupt phrase, seemingly the only form of invitation familiar to the guards, but I was glad of an excuse to be out of that room, and followed willingly. The smudged light I saw beyond the windows suggested that the dawn had not yet come, yet still we had to force a way through the bleary-eyed functionaries bustling about, until at last we came to a door guarded by four Patzinaks. My escort spoke something unintelligible to them and they stepped apart, flanking the door.

‘Go up,’ said my escort. ‘We wait here.’

Trying to affect calm under the Patzinaks’ hostile stares, I pushed through and began climbing the stairs beyond.

After a time, I began to wonder if this was some joke on the part of the guards, for there seemed no end to the stairs, only a succession of turns and counter-turns leading inexorably up. Nor did it seem that any others attempted the ascent: I passed no-one, saw none descending, and heard nothing but the lonely sound of my own footsteps. Even the slitted windows were sunk too far through the walls to reveal anything but grey light beyond.

I turned another corner, identical to every other, and saw a slab of sky above. I ran up the last dozen steps, and emerged onto a broad, flat platform. It was a high place, as high as I had ever been in my life and perhaps as high as man could build without provoking the jealousy of the Lord. By day it must afford an extraordinary view of the city, and all the lands for miles about, but in the predawn darkness I could see only a skein of embers spread across the landscape. A low wall lined the tower’s edge, utterly out of proportion to the depth of the drop beyond. Certainly inadequate beside the magnitude of the imperial life it now had to protect.

I dropped to my knees, glad of the excuse to be hidden from the dizzying space around me, and prostrated myself.

‘Get up. By tomorrow you may have to save your homage for another man.’ He spoke gently, but there was a weariness in his face which gave his words an unintended bitterness.

‘Is your confidence in me so low, Lord?’ The altitude must have enfeebled my mind: how else could I presume to jest with an Emperor?

He stretched his lips a little under the thick beard. ‘Confidence? Demetrios Askiates, you are one of the few men in whom I keep any confidence. Every one of my generals thinks me a coward, or worse, and my subjects denounce me in the streets. Many of my predecessors have found their eyes put out and their noses slit open for less.’

‘They pray that you will live a thousand years,’ I protested, but he rolled his eyes in impatience.

‘I have ruled fifteen years already,’ he said. ‘Longer than any since the great Bulgar-slayer himself. Yet what will a later Theophanes or Prokopios write of my reign? “He spent his life fighting the barbarians when they attacked, yet willingly surrendered them the empire when they came as guests.”’ He turned to the east, where a smear of crimson heralded the sun’s rising. ‘I stood here when Chalcedon burned with the fires of the Turkish army, when a single mile of calm water kept us from their advance. Without the Franks, and the Normans and Kelts and Latins and whomever else the pontiff of the west sends us, the Turks will come again, and they will not pause at the shores of the Bosphorus.’ He kicked the balustrade, and I tensed for fear that he might trip and topple over it. ‘My counsellors and their mobs do not understand that we no longer have the might of our ancestors. We cannot march across the world, as a Justinian or a Basil could. We are a nation rich in gold but poor in arms, and if I am to protect my people I must let others fight in their place.’

‘Then it is little wonder that your generals chafe, Lord.’

The Emperor laughed. ‘Little wonder indeed, and far greater wonder that they have left me my throne this long. In fifteen years I have never sought war — why would I? If I win, my commanders grow stronger, and scheme to put themselves in my place; if I lose, then thousands more Romans are left to the depredations of our enemies. Only by turning those who would attack us against each other can I keep my people safe. Except now the barbarians will not be turned, and the precarious edifice which passed for my policy is revealed as a conjuror’s trick.’

‘Yet the walls remain strong,’ I argued. ‘As long as they are manned, the barbarians can do little more than ransack the suburbs.’

‘The walls remain strong while their garrisons are loyal. How long will they support a coward who resists every provocation of the barbarians?’

The scarlet sun was rising now, filling the east with a cold red light, while above us great banks of clouds surged against each other, scarring the sky. The first bells were ringing in the churches below, and I could see their many domes gleaming crimson in the dawn. I shivered, and the Emperor must have noticed for he warmed his tone a little. ‘Keep faith, Demetrios, and keep close beside me. Have you not guessed their plan?’

I started. In the night I had conceived a hundred plots which the barbarians might have devised, but none which seemed probable.

‘They mean to kill me today.’ He assessed the prospect calmly. ‘When I am dead, I will change from coward to martyr. The mob and my generals will throw open the gates to avenge my memory, and the barbarians will rout them. That is what I would do. While we keep to our walls they cannot harm us, so they must tempt us out. As long as I rule, we will keep inside, so they must remove me.’

‘You could stay here, Lord,’ I suggested, ‘on this tower. Then none could approach, and you would be safe until the barbarians were gone.’