Tim Severin - King's Man

The sebastokrator ended his announcement and was met with silence. This was more worrying than if the crowd had jeered or scoffed. Only the clanging of the bells sounded.

Beside me Halfdan said quietly, 'Tell him to get down from the mounting block and begin walking back to the palace. He must move calmly and without haste and make it seem as if he has completed his assignment. If he does that, we can protect him. But if he shows any panic, the crowd may turn nasty. There are not enough of us to hold them off.'

I translated Halfdan's instructions and the sebastokrator followed them scrupulously. It was only a short distance back to the palace, but at any moment I expected to feel the thud of thrown stones on our unprotected backs. For the first time I regretted that the Varangians did not carry shields, and I began to appreciate just how menacing a crowd can be. The main gate of the palace, the Bronze Gate, opened a fraction to allow us in, and Halfdan let out a sigh of relief as we slipped inside.

'The Basileus had better do something, and quickly or we'll have a full-scale riot on our hands,' he said.

Michael's response was to reverse his policy towards Zoe. No sooner had the sebastokrator reported the crowd's mood than a squad of Varangians was detailed to accompany a high official of the chancellery to the Bucephalon harbour. A guard boat rushed them to the Prinkipio Islands, where the grovelling official explained to Zoe that her 'son' desired her to return to the city as he needed her advice.

As we waited for Zoe's return, we became aware of increasing disturbances in the city. Frightened messengers arrived with reports of gangs of looters on the prowl: the marauders were selecting the town houses of those who were most closely associated with the Basileus. The largest mob had laid siege to the palace of the emperor's uncle and confidant, Constantine, who had been elevated to the rank of nobelissimus, second in seniority only to the Basileus himself. This worried us because a detachment of Varangians had been assigned to guard Constantine, and we wondered what was happening to our comrades. In mid-morning they joined us, several with cuts and bruises. Constantine had decided to abandon his palace, they said, and had asked his Varangians to escort him through the streets to the Grand Palace where he could join his nephew.

'What's it like out there?' asked one of my colleagues.

A weary-looking guardsman, with a deep gash over one eye where a stone had hit, shrugged. 'No one seems to know what's going on. The crowds are still disorganised. The only thing they do agree on is that the Basileus should not have mistreated Zoe. They're shouting that she is the true imperial line, and that Michael and his family are upstarts. The women in the mob are the worst. They scream and yell abuse. Apparently the staff from the gynaeceum has been spreading rumours that Zoe was beaten up by the Pechenegs. The crowd can't tell the difference between Pechenegs and Varangians. It was a woman who flung the stone that caught me in the face.'

'Is Zoe really the true imperial line?' someone asked. 'What should we do now? Seems to me that we don't owe any loyalty to the new emperor. He ditched us in favour of those beardless Pechenegs. Let them look after him.'

'Enough of that!' snapped Halfdan. 'The guard is always loyal to the emperor. As long as Michael is Basileus, we serve him. That is our oath.'

'And what happens if the mob decides someone else is the emperor? Whom do we follow then?'

'You follow orders,' said Halfdan. But I could see that many of my colleagues were uneasy.

That night we mounted double patrols on the ramparts and gates of the palace. It was an awkward place to protect because, having been expanded and altered over the centuries, it lacked a single defensive perimeter. The best defence, according to the Basileus's councillors, who hurriedly convened, was somehow to deflect the anger of the citizenry and prevent the mob from attacking. So when Zoe arrived back in the palace the following morning, Michael apologised to her for his earlier behaviour and then took her to show her to the crowd.

Crossing the footbridge which joined the palace to the hippodrome, Michael made his entrance in the imperial box with Zoe at his side. But if he thought this display would reassure the mob, he was mistaken.

The hippodrome could hold forty thousand people to watch the parades and spectacles held there. That day not a single seat was empty, and even the sandy arena where the chariots normally raced was packed. The crowd had waited since dawn for Michael to show himself, and the long delay had increased their discontent. When he finally appeared on the balcony, many in the crowd were too far away to recognise that it was Zoe at his side. Others, suspicious of the duplicity of the palace, believed that the old woman beside the Basileus was not the empress at all, but an impostor dressed up in the imperial regalia. Listening from the parapet above the Bronze Gate where Halfdan's company was stationed - the Pechenegs were on Life Guard duty and the bells were silent at last — I heard something which previously I had associated with a bungled circus act in the hippodrome: the sound of jeering interspersed with insults and cries of anger.

As the heckling continued, a movement in the courtyard below me caught my eye. A small group of gatekeepers, the manglabites, was heading towards the palace entrance. Something about their furtive manner told me that they were about to desert their posts. Halfdan noticed it too.

There was a confused shouting in the distance. The Basileus must have left the hippodrome and returned across the footbridge.

'Here they come,' warned Halfdan. 'Lars, take ten men and get down to the gate, make sure it is bolted and barred. Thorgils, you stay close by me. I may need a Greek speaker.'

When I next peered over the parapet, the front ranks of the mob were already milling about in the open space before the Bronze Gate. Most of them were armed with rocks and stones, crowbars and torches. Several, however, carried swords and pikes. These were soldiers, not civilians. The palace was facing a military mutiny as well as a popular uprising of the citizenry.

'We need archers, slingers and javelin men up here, not a squad of axemen,' muttered Halfdan. Once again, the veteran guardsman seemed to be taking charge in a palace crisis. 'Thorgils, go and find me someone in authority who can explain to us the overall plan of defence. Not a tablet scribbler, but a trained soldier.'

I hurried through the corridors and hallways of the palace. All around me there were signs of panic. Officials, still dressed in their formal costumes, were scurrying about, some of them carrying their personal possessions as they anxiously sought to find some way of leaving the building. Once or twice I passed a detachment of Excubitors, the Greek household regiment, and I was relieved that at least some of the local garrison were still loyal to the throne. Eventually I caught up with one of their Greek officers. Saluting him, I asked if he could send archers to the parapet above the Bronze Gate as the mob was getting dangerously close to breaking in.

'Of course,' he snapped. 'I'll send bowmen. Anything else you need?'

'Two or three scorpions would be helpful. If they could be positioned high up on the wall, they would have a good field of fire and prevent the crowd from massing in front of the gate.'

'Can't help you there,' answered the officer. 'There are no ballistae operators in the Palace Guard. Nobody ever thought they would be needed. Try the Armamenton. Maybe someone there can assist. I know they've got some scorpions stored there.'

I had forgotten about the armoury. The rambling Great Palace was like a city in miniature. It had its royal apartments, formal state rooms, chancellery, treasury, tax office, kitchens, silk-weaving workshops, and of course a major arms store. I raced back to the Bronze Gate, where Halfdan was now standing cautiously behind a battlement, looking down at the mob, which had doubled in size and grown much more belligerent