Lord of Slaughter

23

Loys strode out, surprised at the cold of the sunless streets. Inside the palace was always warm and pleasant, heated by the hot-air hypocaust system beneath the floors. Outside it was freezing. The sky had disappeared completely and the fine ash lay thick on every surface. He had to carry a lamp at midday — not to see so much as to be seen. Fewer people ventured out under the unnatural fog, but those who did moved no more slowly — horses and carriages looming suddenly out of nowhere, clattering past on the cobbles, unmindful of who or what they rode down.

The one business unaffected by the awful weather was that of the soothsayers on the Middle Way. They crowded in the murk under the grand porches and spilled out into the side-streets — dice throwers, palm readers, entrail burners and head feelers. Loys had never seen so many — but he quickly came to the conclusion these people were frauds. For a start, one man he had seen operating as a shoemaker when he first came to the city now sat throwing handfuls of coins into a box and using them to offer predictions. Still, Loys opted to question them in passing, but they wanted money for everything and the explanations they gave of their skills failed to convince. One woman told him he was born into riches, noting his expensive robe, another said he longed for his homeland. Loys thought he could do better than that himself. He asked for charms to help him in his quest for promotion. He was offered all sorts of things — the feet of animals and birds, potions, salves and medallions. Did these things work? He doubted it — they were just tokens sold by charlatans to fools. Loys quickly realised if magicians capable of producing effective magic did exist, he would not find them on the Middle Way.

Magic, though, was not his immediate interest. Rather, it was the beliefs that informed it. The chamberlain had spoken of old cold tides in the city. Loys needed to dip his toe in them to assess how they might have pulled and pushed at people. He spent longer than he had intended outside the palace — a week in all. His strategy was simple. He needed to gather whatever knowledge he could of the city’s pagan practices before he made a judgement on the cause of the black sky. This was not a subterfuge; he genuinely did want this information to arm himself in his quest for an answer.

He also wanted to hear rumours about Styliane and the chamberlain. His official robes would silence anyone he questioned, so he returned to the waterfront where he had lived with Beatrice, found the landlord and rented a tiny room. He changed his clothes there, entering wrapped in his big cloak and leaving the same way. The only difference was what he wore underneath — scholar’s rags instead of imperial silks.

He used his letter of engagement with its chamberlain’s seal to get him outside the city. The guard on the gate made a record of his leaving.

Down towards the water sprawled the Varangian camp, its black banners limp in the cold wet air. It was enormous but not as enormous as the shanty town that spread out from the walls on that side, seemingly as big as the sea that surrounded it on the other. All manner of materials had been used to construct houses here — some stone, some wood, some no more than tents or planks nailed together and propped up into lean-tos. Native Greeks mingled with men of many nations — Arabs and Bulgars, Turks and Moors, even the small, hard horsemen of the Mongolian steppes with their sallow skin and tear-shaped eyes. The camp was full of squabbles and fights. The people were united only by poverty.

Loys gripped the little knife at his belt and felt faintly ridiculous. If these people wanted to set on him, a sword, shield and breastplate wouldn’t stop them. The dogs were threat enough, roaming in packs and starved to skeletons. He could not risk wandering in that place alone, so he went to the Varangian camp and hired four men to accompany him with their axes and shields. Loys said his name was Michael, in a bid to put at least a small difficulty in the way of anyone who was trying to discover his business and he offered a daily rate, conspicuously emptying his purse when he paid them. If they wanted more money they would need to keep him safe — robbing him would end the arrangement.

A tall man called Galti took up his offer and brought his brothers. Loys was pleased with them — giants with impressive tattoos and scars. They might be overwhelmed by a mob, but it would be a brave man who attacked first. The Norsemen had no idea what he was doing, had no curiosity and did not speak Greek. They were ideal. He would be conspicuous with his guards but not obviously associated with authority. In his Norman clothes he even passed for another Norseman to anyone who wasn’t familiar with the difference between Normans and Vikings.

Loys began by asking for a charm to help him gain promotion. He made it clear he had no money with him but would return should he find such a thing. Loys wore his poverty ostentatiously and visibly, pulling a tear in his trousers, muddying his cloak and — despite the fact it numbed his toes — wearing only his monk’s sandals. Plenty of people offered him things, but some were no more than pebbles scratched quickly from the earth, pieces of twig, even.

‘Not these,’ he said. ‘Is there no one here who can call on the old goddess of the city? We are near enough to the walls she blesses.’

There was evidence enough of the worship of Hecate. Her symbol was daubed on walls. At places where three roads — or rather tracks through the debris — met, there were occasional posts, rough things carved with three heads at the top. This too was the goddess’s symbol. But who would own up to carving it? And even if anyone did, they could say it was just a post to mark the junction, the faces representing winds or angels.

He asked about the goddess indirectly, but if people knew anything then no one confessed to it or they missed his hints. After the third day anyone following him would have got bored, made their report and gone to buy wine, he thought. So he became a little bolder.

He had located an old man who claimed to have lived in the shanty all his life. ‘We make our fortunes by copying great men,’ said Loys. ‘Tell me, where was the chamberlain Karas born? I wish to offer a prayer of thanks for his success at the place he grew up.’

The old man said he didn’t know but knew a man who might. The man who might didn’t know either but he said it was possible a neighbour would. The neighbour thought he knew but, when they arrived at the spot, no one there could remember the chamberlain being there at all.

A crowd of children had formed around Loys on his first day in the slum, tugging at his clothes, asking him for money. He shouted at them to go away but they only stood further off, calling to him, offering him women, recommending themselves as excellent and diligent servants. By the third day, they concluded he had no money and was probably a madman. Now they left him largely alone.

Loys stood in the midst of the broken-down shacks, the human stink around him — cooking smells, dirt, urine and worse.

‘You’re lost, sir?’

It was a small boy. The child was thin and his eyes seemed ridiculously big in his head. He wore a loincloth and his body was red with scabies.

‘No.’

‘Then can I help you in any way? A woman is easy to find.’

‘That’s not what I’m looking for.’

‘Then what is it?’

‘Are you a clever lad?’ He had noticed the boy spoke quite well.

‘I don’t know. My mother says I am useful.’

‘Then what will you be when you are older? What will you do?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Will you have a profession? Will you be a soldier or a bureaucrat?’

‘I can’t read, sir. A bureaucrat needs to read.’

‘Do you know anyone who can read?’

‘I would say you can.’

Loys smiled.

‘So you will be a soldier?’

‘If I live so long and am strong enough by the time the army will have me. They eat well, those men.’

‘But they die too.’

‘Here we die but do not eat.’

‘You live on this street?’

‘Yes.’

‘I heard it said the chamberlain of all the empire grew up here.’

‘So it’s said.’

‘So why don’t you follow him? Why don’t you go to the court and become a servant of the emperor. Be diligent and work hard, and you may rise to that splendour.’

The boy laughed. ‘I don’t go because I can stay here and get beaten. The city guards would not even let me in.’

‘And yet the chamberlain went there.’

‘He was blessed by God.’

‘By God?’

‘By God, sir.’ The boy put up his chin, defying Loys to say different.

Loys gave him a coin.

‘And only by God?’

The boy put out his hand. Loys gave him another coin.

‘Will you give me another if I tell you?’ said the boy.

‘You’ve had two; I will not.’

The boy ran away.

Loys shrugged.

Galti laughed. ‘These people live like rats.’

‘They might say the same of you.’

‘I grew up on a farm,’ said Galti. ‘In winter we sat in the hot spring all day. The Greeks are not clean.’

‘No.’ Loys had a thought. ‘Did you never consider another life, Galti, other than that of a warrior?’

Galti looked at him as though he had sprouted troll ears. ‘Not where I come from. The sheep don’t always have enough to eat and you get a good crop only every third year if you’re lucky.’

‘You never thought to come somewhere like here, to study, to be a merchant, to be a bureaucrat?’

‘A what?’

‘A scribe, a writer.’

Galti laughed. ‘The great emperor wants Norsemen for one thing. The same as you do. Our muscle and the swords we carry.’

‘You didn’t have to follow that life.’

Galti seemed genuinely puzzled. Clearly Loys made no sense to him.

It was the same with the people who lived in the slum, Loys thought. Beyond the wall, in the city, opportunity awaited the diligent man. But here that world was almost unreachable. The children didn’t read, they had no manners, and even the cleverest saw no way out beyond the army, were they lucky enough to live long enough to join.

So how had the chamberlain got out? Extraordinary fortune? And why did his younger sister, who he had brought with him and raised out of the mire, despise him so?

‘We should go,’ said Galti. ‘It’s getting dark. Well, darker.’ It was too: a very fine rain made a veil of the air.

Loys heard a noise from behind a tent. He went to investigate. Sheep. Or rather a sheep suckling a single lamb. A single black lamb. Loys remembered the book he had read. Black lambs were sacrificed to Hecate. He walked through a line of tents and lean-tos. At the top of the hill was another black lamb, this time in a rough wooden cage. He ran down into the valley that dipped by the walls before the long climb up into the hills and the distant trees. Another lamb, tethered. Also black. It was very nearly the full moon. Three days before a ceremony to Hecate would be held. He needed to see where those black lambs were taken.

He returned to the Vikings.

‘We need to go,’ said Galti, ‘it will be dark soon.’

‘Yes,’ said Loys, ‘but I have a service to ask of you.’

‘What is it?’

‘I need you to find me some smaller guards,’ he said.