Tim Severin - King's Man

'What idiots,' said Pelagia when I told her. 'It's no good stealing from the state unless you can cover your tracks properly. All those files and written reports pile up in the archives. They may seem a waste of effort, but if someone has the motivation they can be used to bring down even the most powerful person.'

'What's going to happen to them?'

'The tax collectors will be dismissed from their posts, all their private property will be seized to pay the massive fines levied on them, and they will be lucky not to be sent to jail. As for your Varangian friends, I don't know. They might be able to bribe their way out of trouble and flee the country, or they might be made an example of. Depends who their friends are. I'm sure you remember that Bulgarian who was paraded through the streets last autumn.'

Indeed I did. Like Harald, the unfortunate man had been a foreigner at court. He had decided to raise a rebellion in his native country, slipped out of the capital and gathered an army. The tagmata had crushed him, and he had been brought back to Constantinople, where he was paraded through the streets on a leading chain, his nose cut off, then strangled.

'My best guess,' Pelagia continued, 'is that the authorities will hold Harald and his associates in jail and interrogate them until they reveal where they've put the stolen money so that the treasury can try to recover it. The interrogation will be a nasty business. The interrogators pride themselves on being able to extract information without spilling blood. It's not that they're squeamish — it's a matter of having pride in their work.'

Pelagia and I were standing in her garden, overlooking the straits. The moment I had heard about Harald's arrest I had fled the city, crossing the Golden Horn on one of the public ferries to Galata. I knew very well that the Orphanotrophus would want to question me. He would ask why I had not alerted his office to Harald's conspiracy, and I was sure that Simeon would soon reveal that Harald had extorted a ransom for the emir's son. Then my failure to report truthfully to John the Eunuch would concern not theft from the state, but an act of treason.

'I can hide you here in Galata for a few days,' Pelagia offered. 'Long enough for you to find some way of escaping from the reach of the Orphanotrophus, though that will be difficult. Luckily the Eunuch has troubles of his own, and may be distracted from your case. Matters are coming to a head between him and his nephew. The Basileus has been scheming — he's fed up with doing whatever John says — and he's been playing John off against his other uncle, Constantine. No one knows who's going to win. My guess is that it will be the Orphanotrophus.'

Pelagia was wrong, and spectacularly so. The young Basileus delivered his masterstroke right before our eyes. Several days had passed, and we were once again in the garden, overlooking the straits, when we saw a state barge about to put out from our side of the harbour and return to the city. We recognised the vessel at once: it was the boat reserved for the personal use of the Orphanotrophus, and the pennant showed that John himself was aboard.

'I wonder why he's going back so soon?' Pelagia mused. 'My servants tell me that the Eunuch only came here last night, and in a towering rage. The Basileus had publicly snubbed him at court, refused to grant him an audience, and went to consult with Constantine instead. If the Orphanotrophus is being summoned back to the Great Palace, it must be to arrange some sort of truce between the family factions.'

We watched the barge cast off from the landing stage below us. A small cluster of brilliantly dressed officials stood amidships, among them the soberly dressed figure of the Eunuch himself. It was a bright sunny day, with a gentle breeze, and the personal standard of the Orphanotrophus rippled prettily. Everything seemed peaceful and normal. A few fishing boats had their nets down in the bay, a couple of merchant ships were on passage down the straits, and an imperial dromon was heading into the Golden Horn. I guessed she was on her way to the naval arsenal to pick up stores.

We saw the gap widening between the dock and the departing barge. Down on the quayside the bodyguard of Varangians which had accompanied the Orphanotrophus to his embarkation turned and began to march back up the hill to his residence.

'I wonder what the Basileus has got to say to him, and whether he'll manage to patch up his quarrel with his brother Constantine,' Pelagia mused.

Even as she spoke, a bright flash came from high up on the walls of the Great Palace. At first I thought it was the sunlight reflecting off a polished metal shield or a pane of glass in one of the palace rooms, but then the flash was repeated, and I knew it was a signal mirror. Someone in the palace was sending a message across the water. Even as the mirror stopped flickering I saw the dromon, inbound to the arsenal, suddenly change course. Her oars began to thrash the water as her rowers were urged into action, and their blades left a line of small whirlpools in her wake as the warship accelerated. Her target was the Orphanotrophus's barge which was making its way sedately across the harbour. Capture was inevitable. Within moments, the dromon had laid alongside the slow-moving barge and grappled with her. A boarding party from the dromon — I guessed it must be a squad of the Basileus's Pechenegs — rushed across the barge's deck. In a few strides they had surrounded the Orphantrophus and his entourage, who were so astonished that they offered no resistance. For ten years no one had dared challenge the Eunuch's authority, let alone lay hands on him.

I could just make out that the Pechenegs had seized the Orphanotrophus and were carrying him back aboard the dromon, then saw that the warship cast off her lines. She pulled away rapidly from her victim and set course out of the bay, southwards towards the horizon, carrying John with her. The entire operation had lasted less time than the Orphanotrophus's bodyguards took to return back up the hill to his house. The most powerful man in the empire until now had been kidnapped.

'His eyes have almost certainly been put out,' said Psellus with a grimace when I managed to get an appointment with him at his office in the chancellery a week later. 'He may even have been executed. The rumour in the palace is that the Basileus himself stood on the battlements and gave the signal for the Orphanotrophus to be carried off.'

His remark made me realise how lucky I was. I could have been similarly maimed if the Eunuch had set his interrogators on me.

'I've come to ask for your assistance,' I told Psellus. 'Can anything be done to extricate the spatharokandidatos Harald and his colleagues from jail, now that the Orphanotrophus is out of the way? They were put there on his orders.'

To my disappointment, Psellus shook his head. 'I can't risk anything at this time. Not until I know who really holds the reins of power now. Is it the Basileus or is it his uncle Constantine? And what's going to happen to Zoe? Is she still going to be treated as the Empress Mother, as her "son" promised? It's better to wait for things to settle down. There's no need to be distressed about the prison conditions for your friends. I've heard that Araltes has been very generous, spreading his money around, so that he and his companions are living very comfortably. No dark dungeons, heavy chains and that sort of thing. They're being held in the Prandiara prison, and have their own suite of rooms. He has even hired his own staff. Your Araltes lives like a prince.'

'That's what he is, in his own country.'

'My advice to you is to act normally, as if nothing has happened. Carry on with whatever duties are allocated to the Varangians, and not to those Pecheneg ruffians whom Michael brought in as his enforcers. I'll contact you as soon as I see an opportunity to get Araltes's case reviewed by the officials in the Treasury. However, I must warn you that there's no way of knowing when that will be. The civil administration is in paralysis. Everyone believes that the arrest of the Orphanotrophus heralds the start of the power struggle. It has shown that our new Basileus Michael is capable of lashing out suddenly. Who the next victim will be is anyone's guess. Yet as fast as he cuts down his rivals, he makes enemies for himself, not least among the priests. Our religion tells us that the Basileus is Christ's divine appointment, so the Church thinks that it should have a say in how the emperor conducts himself. If Michael alienates the Patriarch, he will have a dangerous foe.'