Tim Severin - King's Man

Harald, Halldor and the other Varangians kept to themselves throughout the trip, though I sensed they were itching to take the helm or adjust the dromon's sails. Her captain was a palace appointee with no apparent seafaring skills, and he had the good sense to leave the running of the vessel to the protokarabos and his assistants. Navigation presented few challenges as they could set the course from one island to the next, watching for each new sea mark to come up over the horizon ahead even as the last island peak dropped out of sight behind us.

As we were steering toward the distant loom of an island, Trdat made a comment which caused a jolt of memory. Squinting at the high ground taking shape ahead, he remarked, 'That must be the lame smith's favourite haunt.'

His words brought back an image of my first tutor in the Old Ways, Tyrkyr the German. He had been heating and shaping iron in his forge when he told me how Volund the master metalworker had been deliberately crippled by the evil King Nidud and left on an island where he was forced to work for his captor.

'A lame smith on that island. What was his name?' I asked Trdat. 'Hephestus the smith God,' he replied. 'That island over there is Lemnos. Legend says that it was the place where Hephestus resided. There's a shrine to him there and a cult still flourishes, so I'm told, though it operates in secret.'

'Why was Hephestus lame? Was he mutilated deliberately?'

'No,' Trdat replied. 'As far as I know, he was born lame, and he was ugly enough as well. But he was a magnificent metalworker, the finest ever known. He could make anything. He even fashioned a metal net, which he hung over his bed when he suspected his wife of adultery with another God. He pretended to leave home, then crept back, and when his wife and her lover were in action, Hephestus dropped the net on them as they lay stark naked. Then he called the other Gods to visit him and have a laugh at their embarrassment. It's said to have happened over on that island, inside a burning mountain.'

'Strange,' I said. 'We also have the story of a lame metalworker who took his revenge on his enemy. Though it was by murdering his sons and making drinking cups of their skulls and jewels from their eyes and teeth, which he presented to their unknowing parents.'

Trdat grimaced. 'Bloodthirsty lot, your Gods,' he said.

'I suppose so,' I replied. 'They could be cruel, but only when it was deserved. Like Loki, whom they punished for his endless deceit by tying him to a rock with the entrails of his own son. The earth shakes when Loki struggles to free himself. I saw Loki's statue in the Basilike.'

Trdat laughed out loud. 'That wasn't Loki or whatever you call him. I remember that statue. It used to be in the Forum of Constantine until someone needed the space and it was taken away and dumped in the Basilike. It's one of the earlier Gods — well, he was the son of what they called a Titan — by the name of Prometheus. He was a trickster who angered Zeus, the chief of the Gods, once too often. Zeus punished him by telling Hephestus to nail him to a rock. Then Zeus sent an eagle each day to eat Prometheus's liver, which grew again during the night. So he was in endless torment.'

'Sounds as if your old Gods were just as cruel as mine,' I said.

'Equally human, I would say,' was Trdat's response. 'Or perhaps inhuman, if you want to put it that way. Depends how you look at it.'

'Was I also mistaken in thinking that there's a marble panel in the Basilike which shows the Norns?' 'Never heard of them. Who are they?'

'The women who decide our destiny when we are born,' I said. 'They know the past, present and future, and they weave the pattern of our lives.'

'I can't remember seeing that panel, but you must be talking about the three Fates,' Trdat answered after a moment's thought. 'One spins the thread of a man's life, another measures it and the third cuts it. Norns or Fates, the message is the same.'

We reached our destination, the port of Joppa on the coast of Palestine, to find that the local governor knew nothing about our mission. For three days we sweltered in the summer heat, confined aboard the dromon while the governor checked with his superiors in the capital at Ramla if we could be allowed to land.

Finally Harald, rather than the easy-going Trdat, took command of the situation. He stormed ashore and I went with him to the governor's residence, where the anger of the towering northerner with his long moustaches and strange lopsided eyebrows cowed the governor into agreeing that a small advance party could go ahead to inspect the Anastasis while the majority of Trdat's technicians and workmen stayed behind. As we left the governor's office, we were surrounded by a clamouring crowd of elderly men, each offering to act as our guide. For years they had made their living by taking devout Christians up to see their holy places, but the prohibitions of Murad the Mad had destroyed their trade. Now they offered to hire us carts, tents, donkeys, and all at a special price. Brusquely Harald told me to inform them that he did not ride on carts and certainly not donkeys. The first person to come to the dockside with two dozen horses would be employed.

The horses that were brought were so small and scrawny that I thought for a moment Harald would take it as an insult. But their owner, as lean and malnourished-looking as his animals, assured me that the creatures were adequate to the task, and it was only two days' easy ride to our destination. Yet when Harald got into the saddle, his feet almost touched the ground on either side, and the other Varangians looked equally out of proportion to their mounts. So it was an undignified cavalcade that rode out of the town, crossed a narrow, waterless, coastal plain, and began to climb into the rocky hills of what our guide enthusiastically called the Promised Land.

I have to admit that I had expected something better. The landscape was bleached and bare with an occasional small field scratched out of the hillside. The few settlements were meagre clusters of small, square, mud-walled houses, and the inn where we stayed that night was crumbling and badly run-down. It offered only a dirty courtyard where we could stable the horses, a dreary meal of pea soup and flat bread, and flea-infested bed mats. Yet if we were to believe our guide, who was very garrulous and spoke Latin and Greek with equal ease, the sere brown land we were crossing was fortunate beyond all others. He reeled off lists of the holy men or miraculous events associated with each spot we passed, beginning with Joppa, on whose beach, he claimed, a great fish had vomited up a prophet.

When I translated this yarn to Harald and the Varangians they looked utterly incredulous.

'And the Christians revile us for believing that the Midgard serpent lies at the bottom of the World Ocean,' was Halldor's comment. 'Thorgils, don't waste your breath translating that old fool's prattle unless he says something believable.'

In mid-afternoon on the second day we rode across a ridge and there, spreading up the slope of the next hill, was our goal: the holy city of the Christians, known to them as Jerusalem. No larger than a single suburb of Constantinople, the place was totally enclosed within a high city wall studded with at least a dozen watchtowers. What caught our attention was a huge dome. It dominated the skyline of the city. Built on rising ground, it dwarfed the buildings all around it. Most astonishing of all, it appeared to be of solid gold.

'Is that the Anastasis, the place where the White Christ was buried?' I asked our guide.

He was taken aback at my ignorance. 'No,' he said. 'It is the Holy of Holies, sacred to the followers of Muhammad and those of the Jewish faith. The Anastasis is over there,' and he pointed to the right. I looked in that direction, but saw nothing except a nondescript jumble of roofs.