Tim Severin - King's Man

'They'll have to catch him first,' said Halldor stubbornly, but I could see that he lacked a solution to the problem.

'Let me see what I can come up with,' I said, for something told me that this was my chance to make myself indispensable to Harald and win his trust for the future.

Psellus was so swamped with work that I had to sweeten the chartularius of his office with a small bribe to give me an appointment.

'It's all very well having two empresses,' Psellus complained when I finally got to see him, 'but it doubles the workload of the officials. Everything must be prepared in duplicate. Every document has to be written out twice so that a copy can be sent to the staff of each empress, but frankly neither woman seems much interested in dealing with the chores of government when the papers do arrive. They prefer the more frivolous aspects of their role. It's very pleasant having so many banquets, receptions, pageants and the like, but the administration moves very slowly, mired in honey, you might say.' He sighed and shifted the pile of paperwork on his desk. 'How's your friend the spatharokandidatos doing?'

'You've guessed correctly,' I said. 'My visit is about Araltes.' I lowered my voice. There was no one else in the room, but I knew that very little was truly private in the Great Palace. 'Araltes urgently needs to resign his post and leave Constantinople. It is very important that he does so. But he has been forbidden permission by Zoe. '

Psellus got up from his seat and went over to check that there was no one loitering outside.

'Thorgils,' he said seriously, 'it was one thing to suggest how Araltes might be cleared of charges for tax fraud. That could have been arranged with some judicious bribes. It is entirely another matter to connive at the direct disobedience of an imperial decision. It could lead to my impeachment and — at worst — the death penalty. I have no wish to be scourged, tied up in a sack and thrown into the sea.'

'I know,' I said. 'It gets worse. It's not just Araltes who should be allowed to leave. The surviving members of his war band — there are about eighty men - will want to depart with him. They've got what they came for. They've made their fortunes.'

Psellus sighed. 'That's outright desertion. Army regulations call for punishment by mutilation or death.'

'I know,' I said. 'But don't you have any suggestions as to how Araltes and his men can get away?'

Psellus thought for a while. 'Right now I don't have any idea,' he said, 'but I can assure you that if Araltes does succeed in leaving without permission, there will be a violent hue and cry. There will be a hunt for those who might have helped him. His close associates will be picked up and interrogated. You have worked with Araltes for several years now, and you would be the first to fall under suspicion. I suggest that if Araltes does leave the city, you make sure that you leave with him.'

'That's something that I've already been thinking about,' I said.

Psellus came to a decision. 'Thorgils, I promised that I would assist you. But this request of yours goes beyond anything I had expected. I have to protect myself. If the scheme fails and you, Araltes and the others are caught, I must not be traceable. If an opportunity for Harald's departure with his men presents itself, I will contact you, but not in person. That would be too dangerous. Even your visit here today is now a risk to me. I do not want you to come to this office again. Instead I will write to you, and that message will be the last you will hear from me.'

'I understand,' I said. 'I'll wait for your contact.'

'It may never arrive,' Psellus warned. 'Anything could happen. I may get transferred out of this office, or I may never see the opportunity for Araltes to slip away. And if the letter falls into the wrong hands, that would be a disaster for all of us.'

By now I had guessed what Psellus was leading up to. I remembered how Harald had used rune symbols as a private code to set up the ambush of the Arab pirate, anticipating that his letter would be intercepted.

'You will use code?' I asked.

Psellus blinked in surprise. 'As I've noted before, Thorgils, for a barbarian you are remarkably astute. Here, let me show you.' He reached for a sheet of paper and wrote out the Greek alphabet, arranging the twenty-seven letters in three equal lines. 'The principle is simple,' he said. 'One letter substitutes for another that falls on the same line but in the mirror position. Thus, the second letter on the first line, beta, is substituted with the second to last letter on the same line, eta. Similarly with the other letters. It's a very basic code, and any senior bureaucrat would recognise it immediately. But it would baffle a mere messenger who might open the letter and read it out of curiosity.'

'I understand,' I said. 'I'm very grateful.'

I HAD TO WAIT nearly five weeks for Psellus's coded message to arrive, and it was a bitter-sweet interval. As Psellus had remarked, the reign of the Augustae, the two empresses, was characterised by frivolity. It was as if the terrible events of the fall of the Basileus Michael had to be followed by a period of gaiety so that the people could expunge the memory of the rebellion. Apparently, when Halfdan and I had been taking the Basileus to the Studius monastery, hundreds had died in the streets during skirmishes between the rebels and the troops loyal to the Basileus, as well as among the bands of looters fighting over the spoils. Now the populace wanted to be distracted, and Zoe and Theodora dipped into the treasury reserves to pay for parades and spectacles in the hippodrome. They gave lavish banquets, and even allowed selected members of the public to visit the Great Palace and see its marvels.

This gave me the opportunity to repay Pelagia for her kindness and hospitality, and I showed her as much of the Great Palace as was permitted. As a commoner she was banned from the great apartments of state, of course, but I took her to see the private zoo with its collection of exotic animals, including a hippopotamus and a long-necked African cameleopard, and in the Tzykanisterion sports ground we watched a horseback tournament. Young patricians were playing a game which involved using long-handled mallets to hit a leather ball the size of an apple into a goal. The game bored Pelagia, but she was fascinated by the horologion, a Saracen-made contraption which calculated hours by measuring water draining from a bowl and opened and closed small doors from which carved figures emerged according to the time of day.

'Isn't it strange,' she commented 'that the palace tries to make sure that everything endures and remains the same as it has always been. Yet it is also the place that measures how time is passing. It is almost as if the palace believes that one day they will discover how time could be stopped.'

At that moment I should have told Pelagia that my own time in that city might soon be coming to an end, that I would be leaving Constantinople. But I shirked the opportunity, and we went instead to visit the gynaeceum, where Pelagia's sister was waiting to show her around. I was forbidden from entering. As I stood in the courtyard of the beardless ones, the guardian eunuchs, I agonised that perhaps I had been too hasty in seeking Psellus's help in extricating Harald and the others from their service to the emperor. Maybe, instead, I should make my life in the Queen of Cities, just as Halfdan had done. I was now forty-two years of age, past the prime of life, and the attractions of Constantinople with its luxurious lifestyle and pleasant climate had a strong appeal. Pelagia had never remarried since the death of her husband, and the two of us had become very close, so there was every chance that she would accept me as her partner, if that was what I proposed. There was no doubt that life with Pelagia, whom I respected deeply, would be very agreeable. I would retire from the Life Guard, live harmoniously with her in the villa in Galata, and give up my ambition to restore the Old Gods in the northern lands. All I had to do was ignore Psellus's message, if it ever came.