Tim Severin - King's Man

Halldor ran his fingers over the workmanship with admiration.

"What's that worth?' he wondered aloud.

'Weigh it and we'll find out,' came Harald's blunt instruction. 'There are seventy-two nomisma to every pound of gold.'

If Harald was naturally inclined to follow any god, I thought to myself, it was not the White Christ but Gullveig from my own Elder Faith. Thrown into the fire to be destroyed, Gullveig, whose name meant 'gold draught', always emerged more radiant than before, the very personification of thrice-smelted gold. But she was also a treacherous and malignant witch-goddess, and suddenly I felt a twinge of foreboding that Harald's gold thirst would lead to his downfall.

FOUR

'YOUR EXCELLENCY, HARALD plans to return to Constantinople now that the pirate menace is dealt with,' I reported to John the Orphanotrophus when I got back to the capital. 'He has already transferred the bullion shipment to Dyrrachium, where he intends to purchase a replacement ship for the Greek captain Theodore so that he can continue on to Italy with the army's pay. They may even have received it by now.'

'This Araltes acts without waiting for orders,' commented the Orphanotrophus.

'It is his nature, your excellency.'

The Orphanotrophus was silent for several moments. 'Corruption is everywhere in the bureaucracy,' he said, 'so the information that the pirate had a spy in the office of dromos is useful, though hardly surprising.'

His words had an undertone which made me wonder if the discovered spy was to be added to the minister's schemes. John was as likely to blackmail the informant into working for him as to punish the man. I felt sympathy for the victim. His position was not so different from my own.

'Does Araltes trust you?' the eunuch asked abruptly.

'I don't know, your excellency. He is not someone who gives trust easily.'

'Then I want you to win his trust. When he arrives back here, you are to assist him in any way you think will earn his confidence.'

When I told Pelagia about my new assignment that evening, she was apprehensive.

'Thorgils, it looks as if you can't untangle yourself from affairs of state, however much you try. From what you've told me about Harald, he is a remarkable man, but dangerous also. In any conflict of interest between him and the Orphanotrophus, you will be caught in the middle. Not an enviable position. If I were you I would pray to your Gods for help.'

Her remark prompted me to ask if she knew anything about the older Gods who were worshipped by the Greeks before they began to follow the ways of the White Christ.

'Theodore, the Greek captain I sailed with,' I told her, 'pointed out to me a ruined temple up on one of the headlands. He said the old Gods were like a family. So I'm wondering if they were the same Gods we worship in the northern lands.'

Pelagia shrugged dismissively. 'I'm not the right person to answer that. I'm not devout. Why would I be when I am named after a reformed prostitute?' She saw she had to explain herself and continued wryly. 'St Pelagia was a streetwalker who took the faith and became a nun. She dressed up as a eunuch and lived in a cave on the Mount of Olives in the Holy Land. She's not the only harlot to have done her bit for the Christians. The mother of Constantine, who founded this city, previously ran a tavern where she provided her clients with more than cheap wine and stale bread. Yet she was the one who found the True Cross and Christ's tomb in the Holy Land.'

Seeing that I genuinely wanted to know more about the older beliefs, Pelagia relented.

'There's a building called the Basilike on the Mese, close to the Milion. It's stuffed full of old statues which no one knows what to do with. Some of them have been stored there for centuries, and among them you may be able to find a few statues of the old Gods. Though whether anyone can identify them for you is another matter.'

The following day I located the Basilike without difficulty and gave the elderly doorkeeper a few coins to let me look around. My intention, of course, was to discover who the old Gods were and why they had been replaced. I hoped to learn something which might save my Gods of the North from the same fate.

The interior of the Basilike was dark and depressing. Hall after hall was filled with dusty statues, placed with no sense of order. Some were damaged, others lay on their sides or had been leaned casually against one another by the workmen who had brought them there. The only sunlight was in the central courtyard, where the larger pieces had been dumped. All were crammed so close together that it was difficult to squeeze through between them. I saw busts of former emperors, sections of triumphal columns, and all manner of marble odds and ends. There were heads which lacked bodies, faces with broken noses, riders without horses, warriors missing shields or holding broken swords and spears. Every few paces I came across inscribed marble panels which had been prised from their original locations. Cut in different sizes and thicknesses, the panels had once identified the statues to which they had been fixed. I read the names of long-dead emperors, forgotten victories, unknown triumphs. Somewhere in the jumble of statuary, I imagined, were many of the originals to which the inscriptions had once belonged. To reunite them would be impossible.

I was standing in front of a marble panel trying to decipher the worn letters when a wheezing voice said, 'What size are you looking for?'

I turned to see an old man who had shuffled out from the maze of figures. He was wearing a shapeless woollen mantle with a frayed hem.

'The best pieces go quite quickly, but there are some large ones at the back which have cracks in them. If you cut away the damaged areas, they're still usable.'

I realised that the old man had mistaken me for someone searching for scrap marble. Pelagia had mentioned that marble-work in the city was now made mostly from pieces of salvaged material.

'I had no idea there was so much derelict statuary in store,' I said.

The old man sniffled; the dust was getting in his nose as well as his eyes.

'The city authorities need the display space,' he explained. 'Every time there's a new monument, the sponsors want to put it in the city centre where most people will see it. But the city centre is full up. Not surprising when they've been erecting public monuments there for seven hundred years. So they tear something down and, if they're trying to save money, reuse the plinth. Half the time no one can remember who or what the original statue commemorated. And that's not to mention the statues and monuments which get pulled down when someone wants to build a new apartment block, or which topple over due to neglect or during an earthquake. The city council doesn't want to spend money on putting statues back on their feet.'

'I came here to look at the older statues,' I said cautiously. I did not want to arouse any suspicions that I was a heathen. 'Maybe I can find a representation of one of the ancient Gods.'

'You're not the first person to do that ' said the old man, 'though I doubt if you'll have much luck. Difficult to turn an old God into a new man.' He cackled. He still believed that I was a monumental sculptor looking for a cheap and quick way to carry out a commission by remodelling an earlier statue.

'Can you tell me the best place to look?'

The old man shrugged. 'Can't help you there,' he replied curtly. 'Could be anywhere.' As he turned away with complete lack of interest, I reflected that when the old Gods were discarded, they fell into oblivion.

I spent the next few hours nosing around the Basilike. Nowhere did I find a statue that resembled the Gods I believed in, though I did find what was obviously a sea god, for he had a fishy tail and carried a seashell in one hand. But he was not Njord, my own God of the Sea, so I presumed he belonged to a different faith. In one corner I saw a well-muscled statue sporting a bushy beard, and thought I had stumbled across Thor. But, looking more closely, I changed my mind. The unknown God carried a club, not a hammer. No True Believer would have failed to show Mjollnir, or Thor's iron gloves and strength-giving belt. The other effigy which raised my hopes was the contorted figure of a man pinioned to a rock. The writhing figure was obviously in torment, and I thought it might be Loki the trickster whom the Gods punished by tying him to a rock, using the entrails of his own son as his bonds. But I could see no trace of the serpent whose venom would fall on Loki's face if it was not collected in a bowl by his faithful wife Sigyn, nor a statue of Sigyn herself. The carving remained a mystery, and I was disappointed that I found no trace whatever of the God whom I expected to be there — Odinn. And among all the inscriptions I saw not a single rune letter.