The Mosaic of Shadows

Sigurd’s voice broke into my thoughts. ‘You know that the Emperor relies on the Varangians because of the hatred we bear the Normans. You may guess how he relies on the eunuch.’

Such tales of horror dampened further conversation, and we rode on in silence, save for Father Gregorias grumbling at the back of our column: that his horse was lame, that his saddle chafed, that the water in his flask was brackish. It seemed he did not number horsemanship among his accomplishments. After a time, we splashed through a ford in the shallow river and joined the main northerly road. A high-arched aqueduct rose about half a mile away on our right, mimicking the line of the road, and we followed it as the land grew wilder. The sporadic clusters of trees we passed became more frequent, then began to reach into each other, and finally merged into a forest which pressed constantly against our path, stretching away deep into the hills. The sound of running water was never far off, and sometimes we could see the moss-covered brickwork of a cistern or channel through the branches. A few hardy wood birds whistled their song, and occasionally we would meet a lone pilgrim or merchant, but otherwise the forest seemed deserted. Pines and oaks and beech trees towered over us, and it did not take long for my fears to begin preying on me. Every snapping twig or falling branch or rustling animal had me jerking awkwardly around, scanning the underbrush for the first signs of attack. As generations of careless travellers had found to their cost, it was the perfect place for an ambush, remote and hemmed in.

Sigurd must have shared my apprehension, for at lunchtime he posted four of his men as pickets on the edge of the glade where we halted. Our horses chewed contentedly on the grass, but even the sight of open sky above us did not lift my oppressed mood, and we ate our bread in haste.

‘I’ll be glad of Christmas,’ muttered Sigurd, eyeing his meagre meal with disdain. ‘The feast of the Nativity, as you call it. If man doesn’t live by bread alone, a soldier certainly can’t.’

‘Ten days,’ agreed Aelric. ‘Then we’ll have feasting.’

‘If we’re out of this forsaken wood by then.’ Sigurd spat an olive stone into the bushes. ‘If the boy can lead us to this house we’re told of, and doesn’t run off into the trees when we’re not looking.’

Thomas, oblivious to our words, sucked on the dried dates I’d brought him. The dressing that Anna had wrapped around his leg seemed to be holding up under the strain of riding – I could see no new blood seeping through it – and I fancied that the clean air and fresh surroundings had brought a new vigour to his cheeks. It was the first time I had seen him not poised on the brink of death, and it struck me how he seemed now both younger and older. Younger in his limbs, which all seemed a half-inch too long for him, though clearly they were strong enough to wield the arbalest; younger also in his beardless cheeks, which in a year or two might be ruggedly handsome, and in his fair, uncombed hair which blew wild in the wind. But there was a hurt in his blue eyes which, even in our pastoral surroundings, was never truly gone; a heaviness in the way he carried his broad shoulders. He had known pain, I guessed, and not merely the physical kind of a Bulgar’s sword. Though he seemed placid enough for now.

‘Well?’

I looked up from my thoughts. Sigurd had been speaking all the while, his words drifting past me, and now he was staring expectantly at Father Gregorias.

The priest turned on the boy and uttered a string of incomprehensible syllables, to which the reply came in more abbreviated kind.

‘He confirms that he will find where the house was,’ said Father Gregorias sulkily. ‘He will remember the way.’

‘Did he unwind a ball of string behind him then, like your Theseus in his maze?’ Sigurd was scornful. ‘Or can he speak with the birds?’

Gregorias put the question to the boy. Without the sarcasm, I assumed.

‘He says he did not survive in the slums of the megapolis by daydreaming. He watched the path closely, in the hope that he might escape.’

‘Then we’d best get on. Dusk never lingers in the woods.’ Sigurd hoisted himself back onto his horse. ‘Even a boy with memories painted like icons might not find this house in the dark.’

We rode on another two hours, meeting ever less traffic on our lonely road. Our beasts began to tire, and even Father Gregorias eventually lost the energy to complain; so much, indeed, that twice I had to turn back to be sure his horse had not thrown him into a thicket. Light was fading from the sky, and although most of the trees were leafless, their canopy still brought on premature darkness.

A sharp elbow against my ribs interrupted my thoughts; I pulled back on the reins, alive to the possibility that Thomas intended to use the gloom to escape. But he had jostled me intentionally, and now had an arm stretched out – as much as the rope would allow – towards an oak tree. Its massive girth was swathed in ivy, and wrinkled roots had begun to tear the roadstead beneath us, but otherwise it seemed unremarkable.

I called a halt, and beckoned Father Gregorias forward.

‘Ask him what he wants.’

I’endured the usual frustrating pause.

‘He recognises the tree. He says that the path to the house is around the next corner, on the left.’

‘Is it?’ Sigurd swayed in the saddle as his horse pawed at the ground. ‘Does he also recognise the shape of the pine-needles?’

But his suspicion was misplaced; we rounded a curve on the murky road and there, just as Thomas had said, a path forked away. We had passed many like it that day, some little more than animal tracks, some so broad we had struggled to discern the true road. This one was wider than most, but rutted and broken by rain. Whoever owned it clearly cared little for its upkeep. Perhaps, in this wild place, he hoped to avoid the attentions of brigands.

Nonetheless, it had clearly been used recently. As we rode up it I could see small heaps of stale dung, and the traces of hooves imprinted in the mud. The forest was silent here, and more ominous for it. Sigurd, I saw, had his axe in his hand, and several others of the Varangian company had followed his lead. I felt a chill of fear as I realised that the boy in front of me would be wholly defenceless and an obvious target, the sort I would have relished in my days as a bounty hunter. And any blow aimed at him would be as likely to strike me.

But no-one assailed us. We passed between a pair of stone columns, surmounted with carved basilisks, and the path began to rise steeply up a hill whose summit was lost in the trees. I touched Thomas on the shoulder, gesturing at the pillars, and he nodded recognition. The foliage around us thinned, and looking through it I could see the sky drawing steadily nearer the ground. For a good quarter hour I could have sworn that the brow of the ridge was just ahead of us, but every crick and twist in the path yielded nothing but a further climb.

And then, without preamble, we came between an opening in a wall and into a broad clearing, shaved off the crown of the hill like a monk’s tonsure. It had the feel of a high place, but the tall trees growing close against the encircling wall blocked out any view we might have had beyond. The wall ran around the entire perimeter, save where we had entered, and within the enclosure there stood half a dozen outbuildings, including a stable block and, on the far side, a large, two-storied house. We rode towards it.

‘It’s quiet.’ We were all glad to have clear space around us, but the lonely solitude was still unnerving. Even to Sigurd. ‘Wulfric, Helm – see if anyone will fodder our horses.’

Two of the Varangians broke away and crossed to the stables. One dismounted, unsheathed his axe, and pushed through the unlocked door. Weeds grew around it, I saw – as indeed across much of the open ground.

I motioned Father Gregorias forward. ‘Is this the place? The place where the monk and the Bulgars brought Thomas?’

I hardly needed the answer. The way that the boy’s shoulders hunched forward as we saw the house, that his knuckles whitened around the rim of the saddle, told me everything.

‘Empty, Captain.’ The two Varangians were walking back from the stables. ‘It’s been completely swept out.’

We continued towards the house. It must have taken a Heraklean effort to erect it in this remote place, and you might have thought that whoever did so would have troubled himself to maintain it. But the closer we came, the more derelict it appeared. Ivy and creepers grew up its walls, and the glass in its windows was broken. The plaster was mottled and cracked; in some places it had peeled away completely to reveal the dull brickwork underneath. A short flight of steps led up to the arch of the main doorway, but there too the marble was chipped away, uneven.

Sigurd slid off his horse and threw the reins to one of his men.

‘Was this the place where you came?’ he asked the boy.

Thomas nodded.

‘Were any others here?’

‘Only those he came with,’ translated the priest. ‘The monk, and the four Bulgars. Otherwise the house was as abandoned as it is now.’

‘We’ll judge how empty that is when we’ve seen it.’ Sigurd lifted his axe and thumped the butt against the wooden door. It resounded with a low rumbling, ominous in those lonely surroundings, but did not open.

Sigurd tried the handle, a brass knob shaped like a howling boar. It gave readily.

‘Did you see the monk lock the door when he left?’ I asked, alive to any clue that it might have been occupied since. But the boy did not remember.

‘We’ll see if anyone’s here soon enough.’ Sigurd pushed open the door, and ducked under the low, fractured lintel. ‘Wulfric stay with the horses. The rest – follow me.’

We crossed the threshold, glancing nervously about as we entered a narrow hallway, which almost immediately gave out into a square peristyle. This too bore a dilapidated air: the tiled images on the floor – bare-chested warriors sticking bears and lions – were faded and uneven. Rainwater had collected in pools in the depressions, and in one corner a small shrub had forced its way up through the stone. Doorways in each wall led on to further dark rooms.

‘Search it,’ Sigurd ordered. ‘Four men each way. Demetrios and Aelric can stay here with the boy and the priest. If anyone finds trouble, regroup here at once.’

Thomas and I seated ourselves on a marble bench, while Aelric paced around the courtyard and Father Gregorias looked worriedly at the mosaics. The slapping of the Varangians’ boots faded away, and we were alone. From somewhere within, I heard the steady dripping of water.

I turned to Thomas. He rested his chin on his knuckles, and stared mournfully at the floor.

‘Where did you stay?’

He looked up, listened to the priest’s translation, then pointed to our left.

‘Did you all stay there?’

‘Yes.’

‘And did the monk leave anything when you departed?’

The boy shook his head. I could have guessed, of course: a monk who tried to leave no living witnesses to his plot was unlikely to have left anything to identify him in this ruin.

‘Demetrios!’

I looked up. Sigurd had appeared in the gallery above me, flanked by two of his men.

‘There’s nobody here. A few beds, a table, some stools – all of them rotting, by the smell of them. Nothing else.’

‘Nor here.’ One of Sigurd’s lieutenants had appeared on the balcony opposite. ‘House is as quiet as the tomb. Nice view though.’

Indeed there was. The third corridor led from the peristyle onto a wide terrace at the back of the house, projecting out over the steep hillside. We stood there in silence and gazed onto the furrowed landscape of hills and wooded valleys before us. On the western horizon was an orange smear where the sun was setting, while to the south-east I fancied we could just see the glittering domes of Constantinople. It was a magnificent vantage point, ingeniously constructed so that the trees would block any sight of it from below, while leaving the view from above unconstrained.

A cold breeze played over our faces, and we were turning to go indoors when Thomas surprised us all by speaking unprompted, and at such length that Father Gregorias was pressed to remember it all.

‘He says the monk often came here,’ he said. ‘He would stare out at the queen of cities, and beseech God to annihilate her, as He did Sodom and Jericho.’

‘He said all this in Frankish?’ It seemed strange that a monk would address his God in a foreign tongue.

Gregorias conferred with Thomas. ‘In the language of Old Rome, Latin. Thomas knew the words because the Franks and Normans use it in their worship.’

This was more curious still, and I shook my head in defeat. At every turn I found a dozen new questions, but never a single answer.

Sigurd looked up at the sky. ‘We’ll spend the night in the stables,’ he announced. ‘With the beasts. I don’t want to find myself stranded here by some poacher turning his hand to horseflesh. And there’s only one door to guard.’

A peal of thunder rippled through the valley.

‘And,’ he added moodily, ‘the roof’s intact.’

I spent another half hour exploring that mournful house, but found no answers among the crumbling fabric and mouldering furniture. The thunder was moving slowly nearer, and every time it sounded I would snap my head around, unsettled by the surroundings. I was glad at last to escape the building, to return to the company of the Varangians, who had tethered our horses in the stable and made a small fire in a ring of stones outside. On it they roasted salt fish and vegetables which we gulped down in haste: there was little of the usual banter of soldiers on a march that night.

We settled down on the hard floor, cursing whoever had swept out all the straw before abandoning it. As I closed my eyes, I heard the first drops of rain beginning to strike on the lead tiles above us.

It was still raining when I awoke, and still dark. A horse was snuffling somewhere on my right, but otherwise nothing moved. I lay there a second reminding myself where I was, allaying the natural fears of night with the knowledge that I was surrounded by a dozen of the stoutest warriors in the empire. That was comforting. I put my hand under the balled-up cloak I used as a pillow and felt the haft of my knife still there; then, almost from superstition, I reached out to touch Thomas on the shoulder.

My hand felt cold air, then cold stone. I stretched further, my heart whipping itself into a panic, but again felt only the slap of my hand on the hard floor. Where was he? I threw off my blanket and stood, picking my way between the sleeping Varangians to the doorway. Warriors they might have been, but none of them, I noticed, stirred as I stole like a thief between them.

None, at least, save Aelric: but he could not help it. He was sitting in the doorway, his back against the frame, and as I reached it to look outside I fell sprawling over him. He cursed, and staggered to his feet, his hand fastening around the axe at his side.

‘It’s me, Demetrios,’ I hissed. Old though he was for his calling, I suspected I would not survive more than a single blow of his axe. ‘The boy’s missing.’

‘Christ.’ Aelric rubbed his eyes. ‘Oh Christ.’

A clap of thunder exploded over our heads, and almost simultaneously a shaft of lightning cracked through the clouds.

‘There!’ I had been peering out into the rain, searching in vain desperation for any sign of the boy; by the white glare of the lightning, I thought I had seen something. ‘Someone moving, over by the house.’

‘And what’s to say it’s the boy?’ demanded Aelric. ‘Are you armed?’

‘I have my knife.’ His words struck a fresh wave of dread into me, as all my fears of brigands and bandits and the monk’s adepts in this desolate place came flooding back, but there was no time. I launched myself out into the rain, flinching under the barrage of the water, and began running across the open ground to the house, with Aelric’s footsteps close behind me. My feet dragged in the mud and puddles, and my clinging tunic hobbled me. Rain ran off my sodden hair into my eyes, which I had to keep squeezed close together, but another flash of lightning guided me on towards the house. The door, I saw, was open.

‘Follow me in,’ I shouted, looking back over my shoulder. Aelric was invisible, and any sound he made was now drowned out by the torrent of winds around us.

The gale stopped as I pushed through the door, and for a second my squelching tread seemed terribly loud in the small hallway. Then there was rain pelting my face again, and I realised I had come into the peristyle. The water rattled on the stone tiles, but I thought that somewhere in the surrounding darkness I could hear a more animate sound, as of someone scraping at something.

I stepped forward, trying to gain a sense of where the noise was strongest. My effort was thwarted, though, as thunder boomed out over me, resounding off the walls and galleries in a dizzying, deafening roll. I tried to steady myself against a pillar but found none; then, for an instant, lightning burst across the square of sky overhead. The entire courtyard was held in its cold brilliance, and by the light I saw the boy, Thomas, crouched in the far corner by the bush which grew through the mosaics.

The light vanished; I stepped towards him, but in that moment something blunt and heavy cannoned into my back between the shoulder blades. Instinct took over; the months of training I had endured in the legions flooded into my blood, and as my shoulder hit the ground I rolled away across the floor. If my assailant aimed a second blow at where I had fallen, he would meet only stone.

‘Aelric?’ I yelled, wondering if he had blundered into me in the dark.

There was no answer, and I sprang away again just as I heard something crash into the space where I had been. Someone else is here, I thought in disbelief. Some murderer intent on killing me. Did Thomas purpose to lead me here as a trap?

My knife was still in my hand, for instinct and discipline had tightened my grip when another man might have dropped it. I raised it before my face, straining every sense for a sign of my enemy. Someone was moving in the blackness before me, but where I could not tell. He did not seem to be so very near, but with the uproar of the weather that could yet be near enough.

And what of Thomas? He had been in front of me when I was struck from behind: where was he now? Perhaps my invisible assailant was not hunting me at all. Perhaps he had come to slaughter the child.

Another sheet of light from the sky broke off my frenzied speculation. Thunder and lightning seemed now to have joined themselves immediately overhead, and by the spark of their union the courtyard was again illuminated. And there, standing in the shadowy doorway directly opposite me, a huge figure with a weapon raised in his arms.

The light vanished and I launched myself forward, charging across those slippery tiles heedless of the rain and the chance of other, unseen enemies. As I came near I lowered my shoulder – as the dekarch had demonstrated on so many parade grounds – drew back my knife, and tensed my neck for the impact.

He had not moved in those few seconds; I struck him in the belly and drove my knife hard into him. He grunted and fell backwards, bringing me tumbling down over him, but it was I who shouted the louder, for his stomach seemed to be lined with steel, and my knife had bounced harmlessly off him. He was in armour, I realised with horror, while I lay there defenceless. I tried to pull away but he had wrapped an arm about me and was holding me down, scrabbling on the floor for the weapon he had dropped.

‘Shit,’ he swore.

My heart stopped. ‘Aelric?’ I gasped. ‘Aelric? It’s Demetrios.’

A sharp blade hovered against the hair on my neck.

‘Demetrios?’ he growled. ‘Then why in Satan’s hell did you try to rip my guts out?’

He loosened his grip, and I drew myself up. ‘There was a man in here, attacking me.’ I shook my sodden head. ‘Was that you too?’

‘What do you think?’ Aelric’s voice was surly – perhaps I had hurt him through the armour. ‘I followed you in. I was only just here when you rammed me.’

‘But I’ve been here . . .’

A flickering light by the entrance silenced us both; we drew apart, tensing our weapons in our arms as it drew nearer.

‘Aelric? Demetrios?’

‘Sigurd?’

The Varangian captain stepped into the room, his axe in one hand and a torch in the other. God alone knew how he managed to get it lit in the midst of that pelting storm. He held it under the colonnade, but its burning glow pierced the night to reveal the entire courtyard, frozen into a tableau where even the rain seemed to stand still.

Aelric and I were standing in the door to Sigurd’s left, by the passage which led into the western arm of the house. Sigurd, flanked by two of his men, was at the main entrance, staring angrily at Thomas, who cowered in the corner where the lightning had last revealed him, his hands still loosely bound. Of whomever else I might have battled in the darkness, there was no sign.

‘I suppose,’ said Sigurd, ‘that there is a reason for this.’

Aelric answered first. ‘The boy managed to escape the stables. Demetrios and I chased after him, but in the storm I lost my bearings. By the lightning I saw him entering by the west door and I followed. As I came in here, he rammed me like a trireme and we both went down. Fortunately I recognised his voice before I took his head off.’

‘But I didn’t come in the west door,’ I objected. ‘I came by the main entrance, which was open. Where Sigurd is. And I was here several minutes before I attacked you. Mistakenly,’ I added. ‘But I grappled with someone well before that.’

‘Perhaps it was the boy.’ Sigurd had no patience for this; I guessed he would be furious that the boy had come so close to escaping. ‘We’ll get his explanation in the morning. Until then we double the guard and tether the boy in the stables.’

‘What about the other man? He may still be in the house – or at least in the grounds. Supposing he is an assassin sent by the monk – or indeed the monk himself?’

Sigurd snorted. ‘Even if this man exists, and if he is not some phantom of your dreams, I will not waste my night chasing over rubble and through mud to find him. If you want to stay in this house and seek him alone, then do it. I will not risk a sprained ankle or a knife in the dark.’

Nor, on reflection, would I.

ι α

Nothing more came to disturb my sleep, though it would have found little sleep to trouble. I lay awake, tensed by every creaking beam or rustle of blankets, until the air outside the door lightened, and the few birds which had not fled before the winter began their morning song. Glad of any excuse to be away from my restless bed I rose, passed the sentries on the door, and made once more for the house.

My head already ached from its broken sleep, and the stiff chill in the air did nothing to help it, but at least the rain had passed. I looked around, nervously scanning every yard of ground between me and the encircling woods. Nothing moved.

My pulse quickened as I reached the house, and even the sight of the empty courtyard did nothing to soothe it. I glanced up at the surrounding galleries, unable to shake the apprehension that someone might be watching me; I even walked all around the colonnade to be sure that no-one lurked behind a pillar. No-one did.

I turned my attention to the corner where we had found the boy in the night. His behaviour was a mystery, for if he had wanted to escape he would surely not have come in here. And he would be desperate indeed to try to run in a storm, in the midst of a forest with his legs bandaged and his arms tied before him. He would not have survived a day. So why had he risked so much coming here, when an overzealous Varangian might easily have cut him down in the dark?

I looked to the floor. The mosaic tiles were loose, cracked open by the bush which had pushed through them. I squeezed my thumb under one and tugged, watching as it came away in my hand. Mortar trickled off it in a fine powder, turning to a grey paste again on the wet floor.

I prised away half a dozen more tiles, looking particularly for those which were already loose. They would be the ones nearest the stem of the plant, I guessed, and I scratched my arms several times reaching under its branches to grasp them. Perhaps it was a futile exercise in eliminating an unlikely possibility, but this whole expedition had been just such a task: what were a few more wasted minutes?

And then I saw why the boy had risked so much to come here. A black tile – the stripe in the side of a tiger – came free, and as I poked my finger in the cavity beneath I felt the cold surface of polished metal. It was a ring, the gold barely tarnished by its underground sojourn, set with a red stone which was probably a garnet. A sinuous black crack was cleft through the gem, almost like a snake, and written around the shank in clumsy, Latin lettering was an inscription.

‘The captain says breakfast is cooked, if you want any.’

I looked around to see Aelric. ‘Tell Sigurd I’ve found something,’ I ordered. ‘Tell him to send the boy here with the interpreter.’

I rinsed the dirt from my hands in a puddle while I waited, and rubbed the ring on the hem of my tunic before folding it into my fist as Thomas stumbled in. His face was set firm in a hard scowl, and his bandages were caked with mud.

‘Ask him what he was doing here last night,’ I instructed Father Gregorias. ‘Did he really think he could escape us?’

‘He says he was called by nature.’

‘And his modesty was such that rather than relieve himself against a wall, he walked two hundred yards through a driving storm to piss in here?’ I rolled my eyes. ‘Ask him if he was looking for this?’

As I spoke, I opened my hand to reveal the ring, keeping my eyes always fixed on Thomas’s face. He may have learned his craft in the slums of the city, but he could not hide the surprise of recognition which flashed across his features.

‘Where did you find that?’ asked the priest, irrelevantly.

‘Under a stone. What does the inscription say?’

The little priest took it in his hands and squinted at it. ‘Saint Remigius, lead me in the way of truth,’ he read.

I had never in all the feasts and liturgies heard of this Saint Remigius, but I recognised the trinket clearly enough. It was a pilgrim’s ring, the sort sold by hawkers and peddlers near the shrines of the sanctified. Had the boy left it here? His parents had been pilgrims, I remembered: was it theirs?

‘Ask him if it was his mother’s.’

The boy’s cheeks coloured, and he spoke angrily at some length. I twisted the ring in my hands while I waited, until the priest was ready to translate.

‘He says it is his. The monk who brought him here wore it on a cord about his neck. One night the boy managed to cut the cord and hide it. The monk was furious and searched everywhere, but eventually he accepted that it must have worked loose and fallen somewhere in the grounds. The boy never had the chance to retrieve it from its hiding place.’ The priest cleared his throat. ‘According to the boy, he remembered this in the middle of the night and came to fetch it for you.’

What devotion. ‘Tell him I do not believe him.’

The boy muttered a few short words, which Father Gregorias seemed challenged to translate.

‘He says you . . . He insists it is the truth.’

‘Am I to think he would simply have presented me with this ring in the morning?’ I rolled my eyes. ‘If he stole it once, he would not lightly surrender it.’

The priest was translating my words as I spoke, but they wrought no change in the boy’s hardened face. I began to doubt I would achieve much by continuing this bout of contradiction and denial.

‘Whatever his purposes,’ I shrugged, ‘you may tell him that by running away in the night he has done nothing to help his fate with us. Nor has he helped his wounds to heal by splashing them through mud.’ I looked at his shabby clothing and the soiled bandages. ‘I saw a spring in the gardens; we had best use it to clean him.’

We walked around the house – Aelric, the priest, Thomas and I – and down some stairs into a sunken, walled orchard. In its centre was a low plinth, from which a stone channel ran between the trees back to the cistern under the house. The channel was broken, feeding only into a boggy patch of ground, but the spring still rose, and fed enough water over the moss-grown lip of the trough that I could splash it over Thomas’s leg.

I had just dried him with my cloak, and was wrapping on the fresh bandages which Anna had given me, when he spoke unexpectedly.

‘What was that?’ I asked, pulling the linen tight.

Gregorias translated. ‘He said this was where the monk brought him to practise with the arbalest. They would spend much of the day shooting at targets against the far wall over there.’

I tied a knot, then paced down the garden to the wall which the boy had indicated. Like all this estate, weeds and lichens had made it their own, but there were many places where the stone showed through, clean and sharp, and pitted with white gouges. Many arrows must have struck here, each drawing the boy’s eye closer to the true aim which would see his bolt strike home on the Emperor. It was as well he had not practised any more.

A shout from above interrupted my thoughts; I raised my head over the parapet and looked out across the broad enclosure. One of our sentries had issued a challenge to a man now riding between the gateposts on a handsome white mare. I saw Sigurd emerge from the stables and move quickly to meet him, with the rest of his company spread in a purposeful line behind. I ran to join them.

The man on the horse seemed untroubled by the cordon of Varangians, every one of them with an axe in their hands. In fact, there seemed to be an arrogant amusement on his face as he looked down from his mount.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked. Although his green cloak and high boots seemed expensive, his accent was rustic.

‘We heard rumours that the Emperor’s enemies could be found here,’ said Sigurd evenly. ‘We came to find them.’

The man on the horse squinted. ‘Did you find them?’

‘None. Yet.’

I think Sigurd meant it as a threat, but it drew a laugh from our visitor. ‘I am Kosmas, and no enemy of this or any other Emperor. I am the forester, and I manage this estate for my mistress, the owner.’

Sigurd moved his head in a broad are, deliberately studying the ramshackle landscape. ‘Does she pay you well for it?’

‘Enough that I do not tolerate uninvited guests. If you have found all there is to find, which is nothing, you should go.’

I could see Sigurd boiling up to resist the man’s demand, and did not want a confrontation here. ‘Tell me, forester,’ I broke in, ‘who is this inhospitable mistress?’

‘My mistress, who is most hospitable to those she invites, is the noble lady Theodora Trichas. Wife of the Sebastokrator Isaak, and sister-in-law to the Emperor Alexios Komnenos.’ He smiled. ‘Hardly a family to be harbouring traitors and treachery.’

That was so optimistic as to be laughable. But we left anyway.

The long ride back was silent, and the arrival stormy. The road grew ever busier as we neared the city, and though we chose one of the lesser gates so as to arrive inconspicuously, we still found a mass of people jostling to get in. The watchmen were ill at ease, barking questions at the entrants and searching their belongings with brusque contempt; most of those around us seemed to have come in from the country, and many must have carried the greater part of their belongings on their backs. We might have been there until nightfall if Sigurd had not managed to push and kick a path through for us, and fortunately the guards recognised him. When the last of our company was within the walls, he called a halt.

‘We’ll take the boy to the palace and keep him in the gaol,’ he declared. ‘If he’s well enough to escape once, he’s well enough to get out of that monastery.’

‘If you put him in there, he’ll die in a week.’

‘And that will be no loss to me.’ Sigurd snapped his reins angrily. ‘Let disease take him, if God wills it.’

‘Disease is my least concern. Have you forgotten what happened to the Bulgar? The monk, or his agents, can enter the gaols at will it would appear.’ Although few seemed to care about the Bulgar’s death, it troubled me every time I thought on it. How had an assassin crept into the depths of the palace, through a locked gate and past a legion of Varangians? None of the enquiries that Krysaphios, Sigurd or I had made could answer it.

‘We’ll be more careful this time,’ said Sigurd. ‘For all it matters.’

‘Do you want me to go to the chamberlain over this? He has given me the prerogative. I say the boy does not go into the gaol.’

Sigurd glowered. ‘And where will you take him then, Demetrios? Into the monastery, to the care of monks and women? Will God protect him there?’

That thrust me onto the defensive. I had had all day to ponder it, but my thoughts had been ever distracted by other questions. Now I floundered for a solution, while Sigurd watched with a sneer on his lip.

I spoke the first thought I had. ‘He will come to my house.’

‘To your house?’ Sigurd looked delighted with my folly. ‘Your castle? Your tower, surrounded by water and guarded by a thousand archers? Or your tenement, where the boy could slit your family’s throats and escape over the rooftops in a second?’

They were all sound objections, but I would not give him the victory of acknowledging so. ‘If the boy wants to escape, he will succeed eventually. Unless we put him in the prison, in which case he will die. You will lend me two of your soldiers to watch my door. As for my family . . .’ I hesitated. ‘I will see they are safe.’

Sigurd stared at me in angry silence.

‘The boy is no more the monk’s ally than was the whore he used. Perhaps a little affection and charity will coax more information from him.’ I raised my hands. ‘Or, I can talk to Krysaphios.’

‘Take care,’ Sigurd warned. ‘You might get your way with him for now, but who will you turn to when he loses patience? Take the boy; I will leave you Aelric and Sweyn – for the moment.’

He kicked his horse and cantered off, followed closely by all but a pair of his men.

‘I must go too,’ said Father Gregorias. He looked desperate to be parted from his mount. ‘I am needed at my church.’

‘You are needed with me,’ I answered. ‘How else am I to talk to the boy?’

‘Call in the doctor. She speaks his tongue.’

And meek though he was, he left me. With two reluctant Varangians, and a boy none of us could comprehend.

I led my companions back to my house, and realised I had nowhere to stable the horses.

‘We should take them back to the palace,’ said Aelric. ‘The hipparch will want them immediately.’

‘I can go,’ I offered. ‘I ought to report to Krysaphios.’

Aelric shook his grizzled head. ‘You can’t go alone. It’s getting dark, and the Watch will have you locked up for a horse thief if they see you. And I can’t come with you: you don’t want to leave Sweyn alone with your daughters.’

I smiled wearily. ‘My daughters are with their aunt, my sister-in-law.’ I would have to leave them there another night, though they would return primed with even more disdain for my disreputable profession, and for my paternal failing to find them suitable families of their own.

‘Then you and I can guard the boy, and Sweyn can return our mounts.’ Aelric swung himself down from the beast and strode over, lifting Thomas onto the ground. I dismounted, and handed both sets of reins to the taciturn Sweyn.

‘Get back quickly,’ Aelric told him. ‘You don’t want to rely on my old eyes all night.’

‘Not if last night is any guide,’ I said, as the horses vanished around the corner. I had not yet raised his failure to stop Thomas escaping the stable, for fear of provoking Sigurd to still greater wrath, but I had not forgotten. Nor forgiven it.

Aelric looked me in the eye. ‘We all have lapses, Demetrios. You were kind to hide mine from the captain. But the boy is safe, and no harm was done. If I’ve learned one thing from my life, it’s that when I escape the worst consequences of my mistakes, I should thank my God and forget it.’ He clapped me on the arm. ‘Now let’s get the boy out of the street, before some arbalest-wielding monk gallops past and puts an arrow in him.’

We climbed the stairs to my home, keeping Thomas always between us.

‘Is this the only entrance?’ Aelric asked, as I unlocked my heavy door.

‘There is a way out onto the roof inside.’ I crossed my threshold, bending to pick up a scrap of paper which someone had pushed under the door. ‘Unfortunately, it only bolts from the inside. This house wasn’t built to be a prison.’

‘But are we here to keep the boy in, or others out?’ Aelric crossed the room and rattled the shutters. ‘At least you’ve got bars on the windows.’

‘A sensible precaution for a man with young daughters.’ My skills as a bounty-hunter and a searcher had allowed me to move my home away from the more dangerous corners of the city, but not always their inhabitants.

Aelric continued prowling around the house while I unfolded the paper. ‘The merchant Domenico wishes to see me at his house in Galata.’

‘Do you know him?’

‘I’ve never heard of him.’ I put the paper on a table. ‘Perhaps he wants to sell me an arbalest.’

‘If that’s so, you’d better see the eunuch first to collect your pay,’ Aelric chuckled. He poked his head around one of the dividing curtains. ‘Who sleeps in here?’

‘My daughters.’ Although they were away, I did not want Aelric or Thomas staying in that room. But I had yet to consider how I would manage that combination in my household. ‘The boy and I can sleep in my room; you can sleep on the bench in here.’

‘I’ll get a palliasse from the barracks tomorrow.’ Aelric was clearly unimpressed at the prospect of another night of hardship.

In the absence of my children, I chopped up some leeks and onions, and mixed in some Euxine sauce which a former client had sent me. Sweyn returned with bread he had had from the palace kitchens, and the four of us shared a coarse meal by the light of my candle. Then Aelric took the bench and pushed it against the bolted roof door, while Sweyn descended to the street.

‘Better to guard at a distance,’ he explained solemnly. ‘Otherwise, if you miss them, it’s too late.’

I retired to my bed chamber with the boy and lay down on the bed, gesturing that he could share it. Instead of gratitude, though, he recoiled, cowering by the wall like a cornered hare, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. He stared at me with bitter eyes, and his legs, I saw, were trembling.

‘Do you take me for some sort of pederast?’ I was angry and embarrassed. At the tone of my voice he cringed still further; a tear ran down his cheek.

With a sigh which might have been exasperation or pity, I rolled off the bed and stood on the far side, pointing first to him, then to it, then to myself and then to the floor.

Still he did not move.

‘Very well.’ If words and signs would not suffice, he would have to judge me by my actions – or stay cramped in his corner all night. Very deliberately, I laid out a blanket on the floor, reclined myself on it, and blew out the candle. Then I listened in the darkness.

It must have been a full half an hour before I finally heard the boy creep into the bed above me. And it was long after that that I at last fell asleep.

ι β

Early the next morning I went straight to the palace, thinking Krysaphios would demand to know my progress immediately. He did not. Instead, a clerk directed me into a long arcade lined with benches, where scores of petitioners had already gathered, some so settled they seemed scarcely different from the marble statues around them, as if a gorgon had come and gazed on them. I tried to explain my importance to the clerk but he would not hear me: promising that my name would be noted, he vanished.

I leaned against a cold pillar – the benches were all occupied – and waited. The pale sun moved above the fountain behind me; clerks and secretaries, men and eunuchs, bustled about, talking in urgent voices and ignoring the supplicants who lined their way. In over an hour, I did not see one of them granted an entrance. And an entrance to what? I wondered. I doubted the Emperor Alexios, or even his chamberlain Krysaphios, awaited me on the other side of the doors at the end of the passage. They would admit to another secretary, who might direct me to yet another vestibule or atrium, where another clerk would take my name and ask me to wait. In these heavenly surroundings men moved like the stars, their path prescribed by a higher law and destined never to deviate, nor to touch another body.

I would go, I decided. The thought of the boy and the two Varangians in my house made me anxious, and the eunuch’s gold made me only less tolerant of time wasted. I pushed myself away from my column, and for a moment thought that I had committed some grave offence: there was an almighty clash of cymbals from the far end of the corridor and a great commotion all about me. Men who had not twitched a muscle all morning were suddenly off their seats and on their knees, touching their foreheads to the ground and trying to mumble the words of an adoring hymn. I could hear the tramp of many footsteps, stamping out a rhythm over which rose the plangent cadences of flutes and harps. I knelt; but did not make my bow so low that I could not see who was coming.

First there was a company of Varangians, though none that I recognised. Their burnished axes were held over their shoulders, the hafts capped with the plumed feathers of great birds, and even in the wan light their armour gleamed. Behind them came the musicians, their faces pursed in concentration, and then a priest, swinging a censer before him and filling the air with its rich perfume. Finally came their master. The pointed toes of his mismatched boots moved serenely over the floor, as though he did not touch it; his head, under its pearl-crusted crown, was bowed in solemn contemplation and glowed with the radiance reflected up from his golden robes. It was far removed from when I had last seen him, in a simple, white dalmatica standing before his unsettling mosaic. The Sebastokrator Isaak. Whose wife’s decrepit hunting lodge, I thought, I had visited only the day before.

As he came level with me, I saw my chance.

‘May you live a thousand years, Lord,’ I called. ‘It is Demetrios. I must speak with you.’

Not one hair on his beard moved, and his eyes remained fixed on whatever it was that he could see that other men could not. Then he was past me, and the space was filled with his retinue, dozens of nobles following like crows after an army. He was long disappeared behind the bronze doors before the last of them had passed.

As soon as the way was clear I made to go, but again I was delayed, this time by a stout, dwarfish slave tugging on my elbow.

‘Come with me,’ he said, his eyes very bright. ‘You are summoned.’

‘Where?’

But he had slipped behind the column, and I had to make haste to find him again. He led me to a door – not the great doors that the Sebastokrator had entered, but a small door more suited to his height than mine, set into the wall a little to the side of the main gate. Nor did it lead into any jewelled hall, but into a tight, low-roofed passage whose lamps gave little protection against the erratic steps and turns which beset it. We met no-one, until suddenly the way ended abruptly in a stone wall.

‘To your right,’ whispered the dwarf.

I stepped to my right, and suddenly I was out of the tunnel and in a bright, airy room. Its high-domed roof was set with many windows, and painted with ancient kings, while the light from the gilded walls shone like an eternal dawn. I blinked, and looked back, but behind me there seemed only solid masonry. Of my shrunken guide, and the passage by which I had come, there was no sign.

‘Demetrios.’

I looked back to the centre of the room, where two men stood ringed by marble columns. One was Krysaphios, more immaculately dressed than ever; the other . . .

For the second time that morning, I prostrated myself before the Sebastokrator. He took my homage with a smile, then gestured me to rise and approach.

‘I summoned you, Demetrios, when I saw you in the hallway. I have come with tidings which concern you – and I am quick to share with those who will find use in it.’ He lowered his chin and stared at me. ‘Terrible news has reached me from my wife. Her forester has reported that a monk and a company of Bulgars broke into her hunting lodge in the great forest; I fear they used it to concoct the plot which almost murdered my brother. I rushed immediately to tell the chamblerlain, for my conscience cannot bear the burden that I may have given succour to my brother’s enemies, however unwittingly.’

Now it was my turn to eye him sceptically. ‘Did your wife’s forester also relate how a dozen Varangians were at the house yesterday, and discovered all this before an inhospitable steward named Kosmas evicted us?’

The Sebastokrator did not flinch. ‘I did not know that, Demetrios. This message only came this morning. I think it took many days to reach me. I would have sent a messenger to you, but I thought it wisest to tell the chamberlain first. I feared that he might see me more readily than you.’

‘Indeed,’ said Krysaphios. ‘Sometimes I have more urgent matters to attend than belated, inconclusive gossip.’ He was looking at me, but I felt he spoke to the Sebastokrator.

‘More urgent matters?’ Isaak made to defend me. ‘What could be more urgent than the safety of the Emperor?’

‘The safety of the empire, as you well know, Lord.’

‘They are the same. And where is my brother?’

‘He is at the walls, seeing to the defences. The masons have been labouring since dawn to put them in good repair.’

‘Why?’ I broke in. Did this bear on the crowds I had seen pouring in from the country the night before?

‘Because we may soon be attacked,’ snapped the eunuch. ‘Why else? But that is not your concern, Demetrios. Your concern is that if a barbarian army does besiege our gates, there is not a homicidal monk at large who could destroy the Emperor when he is most needed. I do not think you will snare him by loitering in this room.’

He jerked his wrist, and the doors behind me opened noiselessly. Taking his meaning, I bowed low and left, passing a host of musicians and sycophants loitering in the next chamber. As I walked in they leapt to attention, and as quickly forgot me when they saw who I was.

As I was already at the palace, I sought out the archivist at the imperial library, for there was a small detail I wished to know better. He was a fastidious man, and would not let me touch his precious books and scrolls, but insisted I wait in the scriptorium among the rows of monks hunched over their desks, while his acolytes searched through piles of parchments and papers. It was a bright room, lit by enormous arched windows at either end; the only sound within was the reed pens scratching like chattering insects.

After a wait, which could have been minutes or hours, I saw one of the assistants emerge from the rampart of shelving and whisper something in the archivist’s ear. The old man nodded slowly, then shuffled across the room to where I stood.

‘We have found what you sought,’ he whispered to me. His voice was like the rustle of dry papers. ‘This Saint Remigius you ask of is not known in our church, but he has much importance to the barbarian Franks.’

Again the Franks. The boy had said that the monk prayed in their language; now it seemed he venerated their saints also. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What is this Remigius’ story?’

The archivist clasped his hands together so that they disappeared in his long sleeves. ‘After the fall of the West, when the barbarians had made themselves masters of Roman Gaul, and paganism and heresy were rife, Remigius converted their king to the true faith. Thus the Franks were saved for Christ.’

‘What else?’ Though doubtless important for ecclesiastical history, I could see little reason why that should win the saint an assassin’s devotion.

The archivist looked at me severely, as if my impatience were a slight on his scholarship. ‘There is nothing else. He was made a bishop, and died at a venerable age. His shrine is in the Frankish town of Rheims, where the barbarians keep one of their few centres of learning. It is written that there he effects many miracles.’

I could not tell whether he considered the education of barbarians to be one such miracle, but it was obvious that he drew little pleasure dispensing from his hoard of knowledge to an ignorant supplicant like me. I gave my thanks and left, unsure whether I had gained anything of importance. It was another link which tied the monk to the barbarian west, but I sought ties with Romans, with men who stood ready to assume the imperial throne if the Emperor fell. Whichever saints the monk prayed to, and whether he worshipped in Latin or Greek, I needed to find his masters.

That morning, however, I had little idea where I might seek them. I could try to talk further with Thomas, but I was impatient and could not find the enthusiasm for it. There were still many eminent names on the list to interview, but I feared a shared language would not make them any more forthcoming than the boy. And walking the streets hoping to glimpse a monk with a crooked nose would avail even less.

I fished out the paper that I had found under my door the night before and re-read it. ‘The merchant Domenico wishes to see you at his house in Galata.’

It would be a change to speak to someone who wished to see me. I turned onto the steeply sloping stairs, and made my way down to the harbour.

A boatman rowed me across the Golden Horn, wending his way between the dolmans and biremes, skiffs and dhows which choked the wide bay. I have ever wondered that they called the Horn ‘golden’, for though enough of it was loaded on the decks and wharves – in specie and in kind – the water itself was rank with flotsam: the splintered wood of discarded crates, dead fish fallen from the nets, and the floating effluence of the sewers. None of which, thankfully, I could dwell on, for the boatman had constant need of my eyes to look over his shoulder and guide him between the crushing hulls of the larger vessels.

‘Fleet’s come in,’ he said, nodding to his right. ‘Came up last night.’

I risked a quick glance where he indicated, and saw the huge sterns of imperial triremes moored further up the channel. The flag of the High Admiral himself flew from the largest, and all their decks were thronged with men.

‘Why is that?’

‘Barbarians.’ The boatman sucked in his cheeks as he navigated the bow of a Levantine trader. ‘They say the Normans will come again. Three days’ march away, they say.’

‘That seems unlikely. The Emperor would have fought them on the shores of the Adriatic before they ever got this far.’

The boatman shrugged. ‘I repeat what I hear. I’ll believe when I see.’

We pulled in towards the high walls ringing the colony of Galata on the far shore.

‘Which gate do you want?’ asked the boatman.

‘I’m looking for the merchant Domenico. Does he keep his own wharf?’

‘I’ve never heard his name. A Venetian?’

‘Or a Genoese.’ I scanned the pilings, and the ships moored against them, for any hint of their owner’s identity.

The boatman hailed a stevedore on one of the quays, and shouted the name Domenico at him. The man frowned, then shook his head and gestured along the shore to the next landing stage.

‘Most of the Genoese have their houses in the city,’ the boatman told me, unhelpfully.

We had to ask at three more wharves before at last the name Domenico drew a response. A burly foreman waved us in, took the rope we threw him, and helped me up the ladder.

‘Do you want me to wait?’ asked the boatman, looking up from the base of the wall. He seemed anxious to leave, for the sky was darkening, and I sensed a squall might be coming from the Asian shore.

‘I’ll find another.’

As the boatman splashed his way back across the Horn, I took my directions from the foreman and began to mount the hill. The land near the shore was cluttered with warehouses and the narrow lanes between them, but as I rose higher they quickly gave way to generous houses projected on terraces, built to see over the commercial sprawl beneath to the hump of the city across the bay. The mansions grew in proportion with their elevation, though it seemed to me that that lofty magnificence would afford their owners only sore knees and tired lungs. And solitude, for the bustle of the docks below was far behind now.

The house of the merchant Domenico was not at the crest of the hill, but it was nearer there than the foot. One day he would live in considerable splendour, for it was a vast, imposing property, but for the moment the platoon of builders, plasterers, carpenters and masons he employed disrupted its elegance. The air in the outer courtyard was thick with dust, and rang with the noise of hammers chiselling stone. Plaster was caked onto the trunks of orange trees planted in fresh earth, and a pair of trestles had turned the nymphaeum into a sawpit.

I sought out the steward and showed him my letter, trying to make myself understood over the din. It must have meant something, for he ushered me into a broad room which, while in the throes of reconstruction, was at least temporarily empty. Originally the floor had held images of fish and sea monsters, snaking through the blue-green tiles, but half of the mosaic was now overlaid with wide slabs of marble, surrounded at its borders with narrow ribbons of pink and green and black. Beyond it, through three wide arches, I could see the domes of the city cascading down from the pinnacle of Ayia Sophia to the small churches by the sea walls; the pines and cypresses spread over the eastern slopes; the heroic columns of the Emperors spiking above the skyline, and the high bulk of the pharos, the beacon, towering over the city.

‘Demetrios Askiates. Thank you for coming.’

I turned to meet my unknown host. His voice was warm and eager, though marred by a note of insincerity from the too-perfect way he formed his words. He was about my age, or perhaps a little older, and had a figure which suggested he did not make the ascent to his house very often. His cheeks glowed red, perhaps from the effort of carrying the immaculate silk finery he wore, but his round eyes danced with energy.

‘Were you admiring my new floor? The workmen were supposed to finish it a week ago.’ He chuckled. ‘I can know to within two days when my ships will arrive from Pisa, for all that they must travel hundreds of miles at the mercy of winds and currents and storms. But ask a builder when he will finish, and he is as vague as an astrologer casting his horoscope.’

‘I preferred the old floor better.’

‘So do I, Demetrios, so do I. May I call you Demetrios? Good. But fashion dictates that the floors must be simple – clean lines of pure marble – and so I must follow her demands.’ He rubbed his toe on the stone. ‘Apparently it will focus the eye on the splendour of the walls – when the bastard painters have done their work, of course.’

I took a breath to speak, but he forestalled me.

‘But you did not come to discuss aesthetics. You came because I, Domenico, invited you. And why? Because, my friend, I think we both trade in the same market.’

‘Do we?’ Experience had taught that any man who proclaimed himself my friend was usually either lying, or a hopeless optimist. ‘Do I sell anything that you would load onto your ships for Pisa?’

Domenico laughed as though it was the greatest witticism. ‘Not unless you dabble in fine cloths, or spices from the east, or miniature ivories. But the wind that drives my ships brings other commodities too, besides those I can sell in the forum. News, for example. Some wine?’

He pulled a clay bottle and a pair of chalices from an alcove in the wall.

‘Not in the fasting season.’

‘A pity. This I had from Monemvasia, in the Peloponnese. Very sweet.’ He filled his goblet almost to the brim and sipped enthusiastically.

I paced over to the window and looked out, seeing the great warships of our navy moored in the bay below. ‘You speak of news. What news? News that would interest me?’

‘Almost certainly.’ Domenico put down his glass with an ungainly bang. ‘If we could agree its worth.’

Now it was my turn to laugh. I met many such men in my profession, worms and leeches who learned some trivia and tried to turn it into gold through dark hints and extravagant promises.

‘No thank you,’ I said. ‘I have no need of quayside gossip, and certainly not the money to pay for it.’

Domenico looked affronted. ‘Quayside gossip? Demetrios my friend, this is more than quayside gossip. And as for the price . . . I am told you have influence in the palace?’

Who told you that, I wondered? ‘I sometimes have business at the palace. So do many men. But no more influence than a sailor on one of your boats has over your affairs.’

Domenico looked crestfallen. ‘I had heard otherwise. But irrespective,’ he persisted, ‘you can take word into the palace, and let those in command choose how to reward it.’

‘I can take word into the palace. But I would not trust too much on the generosity of my masters.’

‘Not even for information regarding a plot to murder the Emperor?’

Domenico slurped at his wine and turned to gaze innocently at the panorama below, though he must have seen my eyes jerk open.

‘What of a plot to murder the Emperor?’

‘Demetrios, my friend, I am a new arrival in this city, come to establish a business and to earn an honest fortune for my dear father in Pisa. But the life of a merchant is hard here – many men before me have invested themselves with rank and position and privilege, and they do not surrender it easily. You see how I am exiled from the commercial quarters within the city, forced to trade in this remote, unfashionable suburb. How can I forge alliances, Demetrios, when none of those whose ear I seek will venture across the harbour to meet me?’

He took my arms in his hands. ‘If my seed is to flourish here, and not wither and die, I must find powerful friends. Men who will unlock the doors which are barred to me, who will ensure that I am not the last to the market with my wares. I need influence, Demetrios.’

‘You spoke of a plot to murder the Emperor.’

‘If I tell you, will you see that the palace knows of the service I performed? Can I trust that the eparch will look favourably on me if I petition him?’ He sounded almost desperate.

‘You can trust the palace as much as they may be trusted.’

He wrung his hands together, then sighed. ‘Very well, Demetrios. As a sign of my faith, I will tell you what I have to say, and leave it to your conscience to see that I am rewarded as I deserve.’

‘None of us are rewarded as we deserve, certainly not in this life. But I will do what I can, if you warrant it.’

That seemed to satisfy him. ‘Then know this. A man has approached me, a monk, though he was no man of God. He offered me an investment. He told me that, like Christ, he would tear down the temple of your empire and build it anew. He said the old order would be swept away, that there would be opportunities for the downtrodden and meek to claim their inheritance, that those who aided him now would not be forgotten later – after the Emperor was dead, and his throne occupied by another.’

Somewhere outside the window a seagull uttered its wheedling cry, but inside all was silent. I could hardly move for the shock of what the man had told me, the disbelief that he actually had something to offer. As for him, his restless energy spent, he watched me closely.

‘Can you describe this monk?’ I asked at last.

‘Sadly not. He wore a hood over his face and would not remove it. All I saw was his chin: bony, and creased with age.’

‘And did he explain how he was to accomplish this regicide?’

‘He said he had agents close to the Emperor, against whom he would be defenceless. All he needed, he said, was gold to make the final arrangements.’

‘Did you give it to him?’

Domenico looked wounded. ‘Certainly not, Demetrios. I am a friend of your people; I know that it is my own countrymen who conspire to bar me, not yours. My loyalty is unswerving. I told him he would have nothing of me, and that he should depart in haste if he did not want me to turn him over to the Watch.’

‘He said nothing more?’

‘He departed, as I suggested.’ Domenico licked his lips. ‘Perhaps I could have pressed him for closer detail, but I was afraid. I know the Emperor has many ears – even in this corner of his realm – and I would be mortified if it were thought I had any time for such treachery.’

I thought a moment as my pulse slowed again. Though the information was useful – and though I would probably send word to the eparch commending the merchant to him – it took me no further. It confirmed the monk’s ambitions, certainly, but those I knew. It suggested he might have spies in the palace, but that too I had long suspected. Beyond that, nothing.

‘And this would have been about three weeks ago?’ I asked, thinking back. Presumably before the monk found the money elsewhere, and hired the Bulgars and journeyed into the forest.

But Domenico was shaking his head vigorously. ‘Three weeks ago? Indeed not. Do you think I would hide such information for three weeks, when the very life of the Emperor might be in jeopardy? Not for three weeks, no – not even for three days.’ He swallowed. ‘This was the day before yesterday.’

ι γ

Through the next week the city grew ever more oppressive, as if the very walls themselves squeezed in on us. Each day the crowds in the streets were thicker, and each night the colonnades along the great roads brimmed with those who could find no shelter. The churches were thrown open, and when they were filled the hippodrome became a vast, open hostel. Prices rose, and food became scarce.

Nor was the weather kind. A bitter wind came down from the north – a Rus wind, as we called it, after the wild men who followed it – and even the wealthiest of citizens covered their finery with heavy cloaks. By night the streets danced with the candle-flames of priests and nuns who worked tirelessly to keep the poor and the homeless from freezing, while the smell of wood smoke lingered on every corner. Never were the bakers more popular.

Through all this, the rumours spread. There was a barbarian army coming, some said; yes, but to offer their lives to the Emperor against the Turks and Saracens, argued others. No, the despondent insisted: they would finish the work that Bohemond the Norman had begun once before, devouring our lands and putting our cities to the sword. And why did the Emperor Alexios not go out to fight, they demanded? There was no hour when the streets did not echo with the tramp of soldiers, when a squadron of cavalry magnificently attired did not thunder past – why did he not use them? Had he betrayed us, or been petrified by a fit of panic? Why could he not show himself to reassure his people?

Many sought my opinion, for they knew I had dealings with the palace, but in truth I knew as little as they. Krysaphios had barely acknowledged my report that another assassination might be imminent, and I had not seen him since I delivered it. Nor Sigurd: Aelric told me that he worked every hour to get the walls into good defence, and had not even returned to the barracks for three days. Aelric stayed with me guarding Thomas, but otherwise I was forgotten, left to spend my days asking unwanted questions of distracted nobles. The fact of the villa in the forest belonging to the Sebastokrator’s wife inevitably drew my attentions in his direction, but however many of his servants I discreetly questioned, I could find none who had ever heard of him having dealings with a foreign monk. With reluctance, at least until I could find greater proof, I had to allow that perhaps the monk had used the house unbeknownst to the Sebastokrator.

Every other day Anna came to my house, to examine Thomas’s wounds and change his bandages. Her visits were a rare source of pleasure in those nervous days, and on the third occasion I invited her for dinner.

‘The moralist Kekaumenos tells us that we should be wary of dining with friends, lest we be suspected of plotting treason and betrayal,’ she said, smiling as she tucked away the loose ends of Thomas’s dressing.

‘The old misanthrope also tells me that you’ll mock my servants and seduce my daughters. But I have no servants, and I will trust you with my daughters. If you will trust their cooking.’

She brushed back a loose strand of hair that had fallen from her hood. ‘Very well. Tomorrow night?’

I had hoped she could come that same evening, when the Sunday break in the fast would allow me to serve her a finer meal, but I mastered my disappointment and agreed. So, on a cold Monday before the feast of the Nativity, Anna, Thomas, Aelric and my daughters and I sat down for supper together.

‘You’ve made a virtue out of the church’s proscriptions,’ Anna told the girls, spooning another steaming portion of the meatless stew onto her plate. ‘Some day you’ll make your husbands fat.’

I rubbed a hand over my temples. It was the wrong thing to say, and Helena took her opening ruthlessly.

‘Not if my father has any sway. The spice-seller’s aunt wishes to make a bargain for her son, but my father will not even meet her. He would rather I tended him until he was dead and I was shrivelled, than that I should find happiness with another man.’

‘You shouldn’t cook so well then,’ suggested Zoe. ‘You should spit in the pots and serve nothing but beans.’

I noticed Aelric and Thomas watching their plates intently, both now taking smaller portions in each mouthful, as if trying to eke out their meals.

‘When I have earned enough dowry to find you a man who deserves you, then I will look for him,’ I tried. ‘You don’t want to squander yourself on some unworthy wretch who stinks of garlic.’

‘You wouldn’t want me to squander myself on a prince in the palace, even if his estates stretched from Arcadia to Trebizond.’ Helena’s face was red now. ‘And how am I to know what a worthy man should be, if the only people I see are the women in the market?’

‘A husband is not everything,’ said Anna gently. ‘I have survived without one.’

‘But you chose that it would be so. You did not have a father who would rather see you married, like Persephone, in Hell, than in this life. And you had a noble calling to sustain you – I merely buy vegetables, and prepare them for this table.’

‘Very successfully,’ offered Aelric.

I turned to Anna, desperate to change the tone of the conversation. ‘Talking of your calling, I must congratulate you on the healing you have given Thomas. It seems nearly miraculous. When I found him bleeding to death in that fountain, I thought he would barely survive the afternoon.’

Anna smiled, her skin golden in the candlelight. ‘Wounds like his are straightforward, and whether he lived or died was more in God’s hands than mine. I simply staunched the bleeding and cleaned away the evil humours which might have grown there. It was as important that you brought him to me so readily. And that you took him into your home afterwards. Few recover in prison air.’

I shrugged, embarrassed. ‘I acted from selfish motives. I needed him for my work. But . . . I am glad to have helped him. He needed some kindness.’

‘Hah.’ Helena had her arms folded, and was glaring at her empty plate.

I frowned. ‘You disagree? Perhaps, now that I think on it, locking him up with you for company was less of a kindness than I intended.’

‘Hah. He was lucky I was here. He needed attention, and understanding. You could not care what he felt, or how he fared in his soul, so long as he stayed tethered here like a sheep. You were barely here to notice.’

‘And you have succoured him like a Samaritan, I assume?’

‘Like a baby?’ suggested Zoe, giggling.

Helena tossed her head. ‘Enough to know that he deserves far more sympathy than you would ever show him.’

I looked angrily at Aelric, uncomfortable with what she implied. ‘You were supposed to be here to ensure that nothing untoward happened between my daughters and the boy. How else could I have conscienced leaving him alone in my house with them?’

The Varangian lifted his arms in innocence. ‘I watched him every hour of every day, or Sweyn did. Nothing could have happened. Although,’ he added, ‘my task was to guard against anything that might befall him, not safeguard your children’s virtue.’

Helena hissed like a cat. ‘My virtue is better defended than any walls that Constantine and Theodosius and Severus together could have built. All I did was talk to the boy. Even that, it seems, displeases my father.’

‘Talk?’ Now I was quite incredulous. ‘Have you also learned Frankish, then? Or did you hire a priest to come and translate for you?’

‘If you had ever bothered to try, you would have discovered that the boy can understand Greek far better than you think. And, with some encouragement, speak it.’

For a moment I was silent, agape at this revelation and digging desperately through my memories to think what I might have said in front of the boy; searching for confidences revealed or insults unwittingly given. But Helena was not finished.

‘And if you had spoken with him, and heard his story, you might genuinely feel for his plight.’

‘And what story is that?’

‘Do you really care to hear it?’

‘Yes,’ I said tersely.

Anna touched Helena’s arm. ‘And even if your father does not, I certainly do. He was, after all, my patient.’

Helena settled back, triumph written across her young face. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so miserable. His parents were seduced by some charlatan back in their homeland, and as if under a spell left their fields to travel across the world. Their patriarch had preached that every Christian should fight the Ishmaelites, and this mountebank persuaded them that even unarmed, the hand of God would protect them and scatter their enemies.’ She shook her head. ‘I have never heard such stupidity.’

‘I have. Go on.’

‘They passed through our city last August, two weeks before the feast of the Dormition. Our Emperor gave them food, and ferried them to the far shore of the Bosphorus.’

‘I saw them,’ I interrupted. ‘A rabble of peasants and slaves, mostly, with little more than ploughshares and pruning-hooks to fight with. They marched into the Turkish lands in Bithynia, and did not – so far as I know – return. Though I heard rumours that they slaughtered whole villages of our own people in their quest.’

‘Thomas did not say that. But his people began to quarrel among themselves. Some went off in search of plunder, while others waited for their leaders to decide what to do. They heard that their vanguard had advanced, even that it had taken Nicaea, and they rejoiced, but then word came that the Turks had slaughtered their expeditions and were camped not ten miles away. Some of the knights rode out to meet them, but they were ambushed and driven back. The Turks followed, and routed their camp in a frenzy of murder. Thomas saw his own parents hacked apart, his sister consumed in the chaos.’

I saw Helena reach under the table and touch Thomas’s hand, but I did not rebuke her.

‘Thomas, and a few others of their company, retreated to an abandoned castle near the coast. Between the mountains and the sea, he said, there was not one inch of land that was not deep with the dead, but he and his companions managed to improvise a defence – using the bones of their kinsmen for masonry – and withstood the Turkish siege. At last the Emperor heard of their peril, and sent a fleet and rescued them, and brought them back to our city. Not one in ten of the original host survived.’

Some of this I had heard in rumour, and some in gossip, but nothing so terrible, so utterly desolate. And so vividly told: I doubted Helena’s words all came from the boy’s crude, untutored tongue. I have always noticed the poetry in my daughters.

I looked at Thomas with new compassion, wondering that he had survived such ordeals. He must, as Helena said, have understood much, for his blue eyes were moist with hemmed-in tears, and his hands were tight fists.

‘When was this?’ asked Anna.

‘Two months ago. A month later he arrived in the city and was forgotten. He survived alone for a week on the streets, before a disreputable man found him and promised him gold to join his sordid designs. What choice did he have?’

Aelric reached across the table and touched Thomas’s shoulder. ‘You were brave. And lucky, though perhaps you think otherwise now. In my homeland, I saw many boys like you.’

‘If that’s his story, then I think you did well to get him to speak of it,’ Anna told Helena. ‘For all we smear them with ointments and wrap them in bandages, most wounds need light and air to heal. The wounds of the mind most especially.’

Helena looked pleased.

‘But you should respect your father. You never could have helped the boy if Demetrios had not rescued Thomas as he did.’

Now I looked smug. Doubly so, in fact.

From there the meal relaxed, though several times I saw the others watching Thomas with oblique glances. Anna talked of her profession, with Zoe and Helena a keen audience, and Aelric let them prod him for gossip from the palace, the fashions the ladies wore and the tastes of the empress. They were genial company, and the candle was burned low when at last Anna rose and announced she must go.

‘I’ll walk you to the monastery,’ offered Aelric.

‘I can manage. The Watch have almost forgotten the curfew these last few nights, since the rumours of the barbarian army spread. The streets are so busy that under a full moon, midnight might be confused for noon.’

‘But there’s a new moon tonight, and if the Watch aren’t looking there’ll be more than late guests about.’

‘Take Aelric,’ I pressed. ‘Think what satisfaction the moralists would derive if something happened to you after you ignored their precepts on coming to dinner.’

While Aelric sought out his cloak, I walked Anna down the stairs and helped her wrap her palla over her head. The night was freezing, and in the orb of the lamp I held I could see a few, tentative snowflakes drifting from the sky.

‘That will make the plight of the homeless worse,’ observed Anna. ‘I’ve already seen a dozen families with chills and frostbite, forced to seek medicine when a warm fire would have saved them.’

‘Perhaps it will freeze the barbarian army too, if indeed they exist. Then your patients can go back to their villages.’

Anna was tugging at her cloak. ‘Can you adjust this, Demetrios? My brooch has come unclasped.’

I reached forward, my hands clumsy on the frozen metal. I had to lean close to see where I worked, but the honeyed perfume on her neck distracted my senses in dizzying fashion. So much that I could scarcely tell afterwards whether, as I fumbled in the dark, I had indeed felt the warmth of her lips brush against my icy cheek.

‘There.’ I fastened the clasp and stepped back, as the pounding beat of Aelric’s tread heralded his arrival. ‘Thank you for your company – and for risking the moralists’ reproach. It’s rare that I entertain friends.’

‘It was a pleasure.’ A snowflake landed on the tip of her nose, melted, and slid down onto her lip. She licked it away. ‘And a pleasure meeting your family. Strong-willed girls – they do you credit.’

‘When they don’t abuse and insult me.’

Aelric emerged into the street and looked up at the sky. The snow was falling thicker, now: already a soft layer covered the road like goose down.

‘I’ll be back in an hour,’ he said. ‘I’ll try not to wake you.’

He took Anna’s arm, and I felt a burst of jealousy that she did not snatch it away immediately. I tried to laugh at myself – if I could barely think about finding a husband for my daughter, how could I contemplate my own desires? Helena, certainly, would never forgive me.

I said goodnight, and watched the pair of them disappear into the falling snow.

ι δ

I awoke early after strange dreams. The house was achingly cold, and I huddled tight under my blankets to try and generate some warmth. Despite Helena’s efforts of the night before, there was a hunger in my stomach which only made my limbs seem colder; the last two days of the fast would, as ever, be the hardest.

I raised myself on my elbows and peered over the edge of the bed, to see how Thomas fared on the floor. Anna had scolded me for leaving him there, lecturing that evil vapours lurked near the ground, but Aelric had found a straw mattress and the boy had seemed comfortable enough since then.

He was not there.

I rubbed my eyes and looked again. The blankets were thrown back, and there was a depression where he had slept, but of Thomas there was no sign.

I rose, and brushed past the curtain into the main room. Perhaps he had come to pick over the crusts of the last night’s meal.

He had not. Nor was Aelric there – his mattress, though recently used, was empty.

I was growing uneasy, but not yet overly concerned. For the past few mornings Aelric had left early to fetch bread from the baker; I supposed this time he might have taken Thomas with him. I pushed open the shutters on the front window, hoping to see some sign of them in the street.

The shutters did not give easily – the icy night must have frozen their hinges – but as they at last swung open I was dazzled by the crisp light which poured in. The entire street was turned white, drenched in a sea of snow as far as my eyes could reach. Nothing save the wind had stirred it, and from my high vantage it seemed as smooth as the marble floors of the palace. And as cold.

Only a single figure broke its pristine coating, a solitary man almost directly below my window. He wore a monk’s habit, but even in the chill of the morning he had pulled back his hood, so that the skin of his tonsure stared up at me. Breath steamed from his lips; he did not move, but seemed to be watching for something.

I stood for a moment as if the air had frozen my very soul. Was this the monk, I asked, the man who had contrived to murder the Emperor? Why should he be standing in the bleak dawn outside my house? But then, who else would be standing there? And Thomas was missing.

I shook free my amazement and ran to the girls’ room.

‘Helena,’ I said, ‘Zoe. Wake up. The man I seek . . .’

As my eyes adjusted to the gloom after the brightness of the street, my words fell away. One mystery at least had been solved.

‘Thomas! What in all Hell’s dominions are you doing here?’

He was sitting on the end of their bed, wrapped in a blanket and staring at me with wild, uncomprehending fear.

‘Helena! Is this your mischief? Are you mad?’ Outrage and urgency wrestled in my mind. ‘Never mind; we will talk on this later. A dangerous man – the man I seek – is outside our house, and I cannot let him escape. If Aelric comes and I am gone, tell him to follow if he can. And you,’ I said to Thomas, ‘get away from my daughters’ bed and cloister yourself in my room. I will deal with your wickedness presently. And yours likewise, Helena.’

Battling the confusion that raged within me, I pulled on my boots, grabbed my knife and hurtled down the stairs.

I came into the street and blinked; the monk was gone. Had I imagined him? No; I could see his footsteps in the snow, the trodden circle where he had waited, and two parallel lines where he had come and gone. I followed them with my eye and there, just at the crossroad, I saw a flash of darkness on the snow disappearing around the buildings.

With the chill air rasping in my throat, and my sleeping tunic no protection against the cold, I chased after him. Nothing stirred in the snowbound streets, and the tracks were easy to discern, if not to follow. The snow rose above my ankles, tumbling into my boots and trickling down so that my feet were numb and sodden. Even with the effort of forging a path my legs trembled with the cold, and I wished with a burning fervour that I had seized a cloak, perhaps some leggings, before leaving. But then I might have missed him, for those few minutes’ delay with Thomas and Helena had given him a start which I could not close, and for the first half-mile I barely saw him save in fleeting seconds before he turned another corner.

Mercifully, he did not make for the heart of the city, where the marks of others might have obscured his trail, but seemed instead to aim for the walls. Up winding alleys and treacherous stairs I followed him, sliding and stumbling where the driven snow masked hard contours. Forgotten washing, frozen like lead tiles, hung on taut ropes above me; but no-one appeared at the windows to haul them in. It was as if the winter storm had stilled the entire city, all save me and the man I chased.

The silence thawed as I came suddenly onto the Adrianople road. A few bold travellers ventured along it, mostly on horseback, but I had seen the monk turn west and now, with the snow thinner and the way straighter, I could lengthen my strides and close my pursuit. For vital seconds I was unseen and unnoticed, but then the monk cast his eyes back over his shoulder, saw me, and began to run. I tried to increase my pace still further, but there was little purchase to be had on that road and my legs were already stiff with cold. Thankfully the way was wide and straight, so there was no losing the monk, but he remained as far beyond my reach as ever. We careered through the trickle of traffic, kicking up plumes of snow behind us, though there was nothing I could summon to gain on him. But soon we would be at the walls, and then he would be trapped. He must have realised this, for at that moment he veered suddenly right down an alleyway. I flailed my arms to keep my balance as I followed him, but too late – he had vanished. I cursed my luck, and his wiles, but did not succumb to misery, for the snow was thicker again and his tracks were fresh.

And then, it seemed, he flew away, for ahead of me the tracks stopped abruptly in the middle of the road. I came nearer and nearer, looking about for fear that he might have leapt into a doorway to ambush me, but he would have needed a giant’s stride to make that leap and there was nothing. Was there another Genoese invention which would carry men into the air?

I reached the end of his trail and understood. He had vanished not into the air, but into the ground: the footmarks finished at a narrow hole, a dark circle in the spotless snow. The iron disc which had covered it lay discarded a little way away, and at its rim I could see the first rung of a ladder leading down. From the bottom, perhaps thirty feet below, the mirror-gleam of black water told me it was a cistern.

A more cautious man might have waited there for help, for men with swords and torches to flush out the monk like a hunted boar. But the blood was flowing quick under my skin, and I did not know how many other tunnels might lead out from the chamber. Barely thinking, I lowered my legs into the hole and slid down the ladder. My palms burned with heat and splinters from the coarse wood, but I did not dare descend more slowly for fear that the monk might lurk at its foot, might drive a blade through me as I came down on him. When I could see the water was near, I pressed my foot against a rung and vaulted out into the darkness. The searing chill of the water clenched around me and I howled; had the monk been there he could have felled me at a stroke, for I was frozen in the icy water. I feared I might never move my limbs again so tight was its grip. My scream echoed around the dark hall, resounding off the domed ceilings and ranks of columns whose dim edges I could see in the pool of light shining through from above. Then there was silence. And then, at once some way off and all around, a frantic splashing.

The monk, I thought, and that sound stirred enough within me to lift my legs and start pushing through the chest-high water. I did not move quickly, but it took only seconds to leave my well of light and pass into utter darkness.

Was this how Jonah felt in the belly of the whale? I struck out blindly and felt a low wave ripple away from my chest, then slap against the surrounding forest of columns. One by one my senses deserted me: first sight; then sound, as the rushing echoes overrode each other in my ears; then, as the water numbed my soul, touch. I scraped against pillars and their pedestals and barely noticed, though the rough stone tore my shrivelled skin. Once my hand brushed something cold and clammy, and I started with a shout, but it was only a fish carried deep under the city by the aqueduct. I wondered if I had any more chance of escape than he.

Too late, I realised the futility of my ambition. I would not find the monk down here. Even with a score of men and fires there would have been endless columns for him to duck behind; alone, and in the dark, it was hopeless. Now my only thought was to escape, to be out of these depths and back in the light. I spun around, feeling the water swirling about my legs, and searched desperately for that beacon of daylight where I had entered.

‘Deliverance is of the Lord,’ I mumbled through shivering teeth. ‘Deliverance is of the Lord. Out of the depths have I called thee, Lord; hear my prayer.’

I thought I could see a smear of pale light somewhere to my left, surprisingly closer than I had expected. Had I stumbled around in a circle?

‘Christ have mercy. Christ have mercy. Christ have mercy.’

I repeated my prayers with a ferocity I had not felt since my days as a novice, and with each ‘Christ’ I forced another step forward. Soon the saviour’s name was little more than a whisper, a puff of air hissed through frozen teeth, but still it drove me on. The light was near now, cold and silent and beautiful, and I stumbled towards it with new hope. I could see the rungs of the ladder, shining like steel where the daylight met them; I could see the small circle in the roof where the world awaited. And there, far beneath it, I could see a dark figure hauling himself out of the water. His wet robe clung close about him so that he took the form of an eel or a serpent, the wet fabric gleaming like scales; the limbs which he stretched upwards seemed to be webbed into his body. I gave a faint, gurgling cry, and plunged forward, splashing and flailing to reach him before he escaped.

Even with the bewildering echo he must have heard me come, for I saw his head swivel round, and then his arms jerk up in frantic motion. I flung out a hand and felt it close around his foot; it pulled free of the rung as I fell back, but I did not let go. With a shriek and a howl the monk lost his grip, and there was nothing I could do to move as he came crashing down on me. His falling weight pressed me under and I sank, convulsing as my lungs drew in great gulps of icy water. I tried to stab him with my knife but my hand was empty: in the confusion I must have dropped it and never noticed.

And that was my last hope gone, for my enemy had found his footing now and was holding me under, waiting for the water to drown the life out of me. I did not have the strength to resist, and a few feeble kicks did nothing to dislodge him. I had been a thoughtless fool to think I could trap him in this cavern, and now I would pay the price of pride.

Calm descended. I ceased my struggle, and he must have been almost as drained as I, for he seemed content to hold me there and let nature take its course, without advancing the moment by further violence. I was suspended in the void; the waters closed in over me and the deep surrounded me; I could imagine that the fingers on my throat were nothing more than drifting weed. There are men I have spoken with, often after a battle, who claimed that in the moment of certain death they were transported to some earlier time in their lives, but I felt none of that: only a dull warmth creeping through my veins, a serenity in the knowledge that my struggle was gone, and soon I would be with angels. And Maria, my wife.

But not yet. Suddenly the hands which held me down drifted away. I was rising through the water, and could feel a stinging on the crown of my head where it was exposed to the biting air above. Then it was on my shoulders, my back. My body drifted and my foot touched ground; I pushed up, and gasped as my head broke free. No-one pressed it back. I gagged and choked, coughing gallons of liquid out of my lungs and trying to overcome the wracking pain which had exploded in my head. Somewhere, I thought, I heard someone call my name.

‘Demetrios. Demetrios.’

I opened my stinging eyes. It was not Maria, still less the angels. It was – against all hope and reason – Sigurd.

He lifted me out of that cave and slung me over his shoulder, pumping ever more water out of me as his armour rose and fell against my stomach. Dazed and bedraggled, I saw the snow-bound city turned on its head. He carried me tirelessly, never stopping, up stairs and twisting passages, across great roads, down narrow lanes and through stout gates, until I was brought within a room and laid in a bed. I shut my eyes, and the soft voices over me did nothing to spur my consciousness. Instead, I fell into a profound sleep.

I might have slept forever, but it was still light when I woke. My first awareness was that I was warm. Beautifully warm, beatifically warm, warm like a saint in God’s eternal gaze. A warm mattress was underneath me, warm blankets wrapped around me, and from somewhere behind the walls a bell was ringing.

I rolled over, opening my eyes further. I recognised this room, with its whitewashed walls and small windows: it was the hospital at the monastery of Saint Andrew, and by a chest a little distance away stood Anna.

She was not warm, not even remotely; she was entirely naked. She was brushing her hair, and the motion of the arm behind her head lifted her bare breasts like some antique statue. Her small nipples were puckered tight and hard, while by her hips the olive skin of her stomach rose gently as she breathed. Such was her lack of modesty that she did not even try to hide the dark shadow between her thighs.

For a moment I stared like some virgin on his wedding night; then, overcome with guilt, I belatedly pressed my blushing face into the pillow.

Anna laughed; a soft, forgiving laugh.

‘Come, Demetrios,’ she mocked me. ‘You were married, and raised two daughters to womanhood. Surely you must have uncovered these mysteries before. Am I so shameful?’

‘Shameless, I think.’ My humour returned a little, and I risked looking back. I was just in time to see her arms wriggling through the sleeves of a woollen camisia, which tumbled down over her body to mask its temptations. I felt an ache of regret that I had not looked longer, but dismissed the thought at once.

‘Do you always undress before strange men in the middle of the day?’ I watched her pull on her green dress and fasten the silken cord around it.

‘Only when they appear at my door half-frozen and close to death. I had to force some heat into you, so I lay beside you in the bed until you stopped shivering. You served in the legions – surely when you campaigned in the mountains you huddled together with your comrades at night?’

‘If we did, we kept our clothes on.’ I had endured much that day; it seemed almost too much to believe that I had risked mortal sin lying with Anna and not felt a moment of it.

Again I drove back my thoughts from the places they strayed. ‘And how did I come to be here?’

‘Sigurd brought you. He said he found you almost drowned in a cistern.’

‘Is he here now?’ Had he watched while Anna undressed and shared my bed?

‘He had important things to do. He said he would return, and try to bring some fresh clothes.’

Only now did I realise that under the blankets, I too was wholly naked. I pulled the covers closer.

Anna tied the scarf over her head and crossed to the door. ‘I must go. I have other patients to see. I will send an apprentice with some soup, and try to visit soon.’

‘Will you share beds with all your wards?’ I raised myself on one elbow.

The door closed without answer.

Not long afterwards, Sigurd came. His face was flushed despite the cold, but he waited while I dressed with the tunic, leggings, boots and cloak he had brought. He must have gone to my house, or sent someone there, for they were my own. Which was as well, for his tunic would have reached almost to my feet.

‘That’s the second time I’ve saved you from a battle you were foolish to enter,’ he said pointedly. ‘There may not be a third.’

‘I know.’ I was honest in my gratitude. ‘But how did you find me? And what of the monk?’

‘Your elder daughter found me with Aelric. I met him in the street; he had left his station to go and buy food.’ I did not envy Aelric explaining that to his captain. ‘We followed your tracks through the snow as far as the Adrianople road, where there were plenty of witnesses who could remember a bare-headed monk and a half-dressed madman chasing him. From there we searched the side-streets until we found you.’

‘And the monk?’

‘We saw him trying to drown you at the bottom of that hole, but as I came down the ladder he fled. I let him go; only a fool would follow a man into that abyss. My men are guarding the entrance. If he comes out, we’ll catch him.’ He looked theatrically at the sky, though the sun was veiled in cloud. ‘If he’s still down there, he’ll already be dead.’

‘We should go and see.’ I stood, feeling the trembling in my legs as they took my weight. I was weak, but the food which Anna had sent gave me strength, and the hunger to see the monk who had almost killed me was all consuming.

‘Will the doctor let you go?’ Sigurd asked with a smile. ‘She protects her patients like a tiger, you know.’

That was only half true. Some she protected like a tiger; me she waved away with a dismissive snort.

‘If you choose to risk your health and your strength running around the city, trying to do the monk’s work for him, then do so,’ she said briskly. ‘I need your bed for the more deserving anyway.’

Sigurd and I walked out of the monastery. It was late afternoon, and the road was almost solid with the humanity herded onto it. The snow, so pristine that morning, was now ground to a grey slush and mixed with grit and mud. It was well that the ground stayed frozen, or many might have sunk into an inescapable mire.

‘I must go to the walls first,’ said Sigurd. He had seemed cheerful at my bedside, but now his mood was grim. ‘I need to check on the garrison. The monk will wait an extra half hour – whether he’s under, on or in the ground.’

I did not argue, but pushed my way after him through the tide of men and beasts which flowed against us. It was straining work, and if I had not had Sigurd’s commanding bulk to follow I doubt I would have progressed a step. There was an intensity in the crowd now which I had not noticed previously: a hunch to their shoulders and a desperation in their gaunt faces. Perhaps it was the burden of snow and cold added to their already straitened condition, or perhaps they knew that the city was ill able to provide for them after the many others who had preceded them.

Sigurd had anticipated an extra half an hour, but it was almost an hour later, near dusk, when we at last reached the walls. Along them the Watch had kept a corridor free for messengers and heralds to gallop through, and I was glad of the space to breathe as we came into it.

‘My men are up that tower,’ Sigurd told me. ‘Will you wait?’

A squadron of cavalry thundered past, drowning my reply and spraying me with mud. Above me, a ballista was being winched up a tower on a scaffold, straining at the thick ropes which held it.

‘I’ll come up.’ I did not want to end that day crushed under a horse or a falling siege weapon.

As ever, Sigurd was recognised, and we were waved up by the guard at the foot of the stairs. It was not an arduous climb, but my head ached again and my legs begged for rest. About me, I could see sentries scurrying about, shouting and calling, though I could not hear what they said.

We came onto the broad rampart and my interest rose. A hush had fallen, and the guards were still, their faces pressed against the embrasures as if watching for a miracle. Sigurd ignored them and continued up the steps to the turret, but – drawn to the spectacle – I crossed to the battlements and stared.

Out across the snow-swept fields the sun had sunk beneath the rim of the clouds, facing us like a glowing eye. The sky and land alike were caught in its crimson glare, shimmering red, but that was not what had silenced the watchmen. On the ridge across the plain, some two miles distant, an army had appeared. They rode towards us with the sun behind them, their spears like pricks of flame and their banners dark above them. They were moving forward, but as one row passed into the shadows below the ridge another came up on their heels and took its place. It was a host of thousands – tens of thousands – and the snow turned black underfoot as they marched towards our gate.

The barbarians had come.

ι ε

‘This changes everything.’ I had waited three days for an audience with Krysaphios, and now that I had it I was giving full vent to my feelings. ‘Can you believe it is merely chance that not three weeks after the Emperor was almost murdered, an army of barbarians arrives at our walls?’

Krysaphios stroked his beardless chin. ‘This changes nothing,’ he said calmly. ‘Except to raise the penalties should you fail.’

‘The man who directed the assassin was a monk who prayed according to the western rites, and used a barbarian weapon unknown to our people. Now ten thousand of his kinsmen, armed for war, are camped just across the Golden Horn. Can it be happenstance?’

‘You disappoint me, Demetrios. You had a reputation for insight, for seeing the hidden truths which other men did not. Not for pouncing on chance.’

‘I may see deeper than other men, but if I find a man standing over a corpse, with a knife dripping blood and a stolen purse in his hand, I do not presume that there must be a more subtle explanation and let him go.’

‘This time you should.’ Krysaphios clapped his hands together. ‘The barbarian army had barely crossed our frontier three weeks ago. Even if the attempt on the Emperor’s life had succeeded, they would have profited nothing from it. And besides, they are come to aid us, to drive the Turks and Saracens from our lands in Asia and restore them to their rightful owners. For all the mob may fear them, they are our allies, our allies, our welcome guests.’ He did not try to hide the scepticism which underpinned his words. ‘It is on that understanding that the Emperor tolerates them, that he gives them food for their bellies and straw for their horses.’

‘Nonetheless,’ I pressed, ‘I would like to see these men. Even if it is a foolish fancy, you know that I prefer to be thorough.’

‘As thorough as you were in the cistern?’

Krysaphios mocked me. Aelric and his companions had spent a day and a night standing watch over the cistern’s entrance, but no-one had emerged. They had concluded that the monk must be dead, but I had insisted on finding a body, and had led many men down there with nets and torches to scour it. We found nothing except fish: the monk, it seemed, had dissolved into the water like powder. Or more likely, as the hydrarch suggested, crawled out through one of the pipes which fed it.

‘As thorough as I was in the cistern.’ I had not been deterred by the complaining doubts of the Varangians, and I would not defer to the eunuch’s scorn. ‘My instincts are sound, Krysaphios, if not always true. I need a pass into the barbarian camp, and perhaps an introduction to their captains.’

Krysaphios’ eyes dipped in thought.

‘After all,’ I added, ‘even if – as you presume – the man who would kill the Emperor rests within our city, it cannot have escaped his notice that a foreign army will give him great scope for mischief.’

Krysaphios looked up. ‘I fear you are too easily tempted by digressions, Demetrios, and succumb to fancy.’

‘My fancies have served well enough.’

‘That is why I will give you the opportunity you seek. The Emperor will send an envoy to the barbarian captains tomorrow, and you may accompany him. If, of course, you can stand their stink. Report to me in the new palace by the walls when you return.’

The path out of that courtyard had grown familiar in the past weeks, and my face was now known well enough that the sentries did not challenge me. Winter had at last entered the palace; the gaiety and laughter which I remembered from my first visit were replaced with grim intent, and the gilded walls seemed dulled.

‘Demetrios.’

One man at least could muster some warmth: Sigurd, striding toward me along the arcade. The hollows of his eyes were dark, all the more so against the pale skin, but his greeting was hearty enough.

‘I thought you were at the walls.’

‘I was. But the Franks are keeping quiet enough in their camp, and without siege engines or boats there’s little they can do to trouble us.’

‘Surely there should be nothing they would do to trouble us in any event. Krysaphios tells me they are here as our allies.’

Sigurd eyed me as a teacher with a peculiarly obtuse student. ‘When ten thousand foreign mercenaries are camped before the city walls, you do not trust to kind words and noble intentions. Particularly if they are as duplicitous and greedy as the Franks. The Emperor will not believe they are his allies until they have defeated his enemies and returned to their own kingdoms. Until then, he will treat them like a tame leopard – with good will, and great caution. Otherwise, he may find one day that they have bitten off his hand and more besides.’ He scratched his beard. ‘But I cannot waste time educating your credulous ignorance, Demetrios, for I must get my company ready to call on the Franks tomorrow. We will be escorting the Emperor’s ambassador, the estimable Count of Vermandois.’

‘The Count of where?’

‘Vermandois.’

‘I know that the Emperor’s lands stretch far across the world, but that does not sound like a Roman place.’

‘No.’ Sigurd grinned. ‘It’s in the kingdom of the Franks, not so far from my own country. The Count is the brother of their king, apparently.’

‘And he’s the man the Emperor chooses as his emissary to the barbarians?’

‘He has been here some weeks as the Emperor’s honoured guest. An unfortunate shipwreck deprived him of a grander entrance. His time here has convinced him to swear loyalty to the Emperor, for here at last he has found a man who respects his position with all the riches and women he deserves.’

‘He’s been bought.’

Sigurd fixed me with a warning stare. ‘He has, Demetrios, he has. As have you.’

I had, but my price was a sorry trifle against what the Count of Vermandois – Hugh the Great, as he styled himself – must have commanded. He appeared before us the next morning an hour late, clothed in a robe whose very fibres seemed spun from pearls and emeralds. His skin was pale and smooth, like silk beneath his golden hair: doubtless he meant to look magnificent, almost angelic, but his eyes were too cold, too petulant for that. Nor did his beard flatter him, for it seemed a recent creation: a thin, uneven affair which would not have looked amiss on an adolescent.

He did not speak to us, but mounted his horse in a haughty silence at the head of our column. There must have been fifty Varangians in a double file, headed by Sigurd looking magnificent in his burnished mail and helm. The guards’ customary axes were in slings by their sides, and they carried instead fine lances, tipped with pennants which rippled in the breeze. At their rear, Father Gregorias and I – dressed in a monk’s mantle – were a less than fitting tail for the glorious cohort.

We kicked our horses into a trot and rode out of the palace, out through the Augusteion and down the broad Mesi. Our pomp drew crowds, convinced that this must herald an appearance by the Emperor, though when they saw that it was no Roman who led our column but in fact a barbarian, their shouts became jeers, and they turned their backs on us. No longer did they recede out of our way, and our lines became ragged, uneven, as each man drove his own path through them. I had worn my hood, for anonymity as much as warmth, but now I tipped it back so those around me could see I was of their race. It seemed to ease my way a little.

At the Gate of Lakes we halted, in the shadow of the new palace where, according to rumour, the Emperor Alexios preferred to keep his private quarters. Sigurd bellowed a challenge, and a fanfare of horns rang out from the tower as the gates swung open. It was a grand spectacle, though whom it impressed besides the Count I do not know.

We passed under the arch and out of the city, keeping close to the placid waters of the Golden Horn. It was almost two miles to the village where the barbarians were billeted, but in all that distance we saw hardly a soul. No-one worked the fields or shared our path; not so much as a single hen pecked at the roadside, and no smoke rose from within the dwellings we passed. I remembered Aelric’s talk of the desolation wrought upon his country by the Normans, and shivered to think that it might happen here.

Soon, though, there were many signs of life ahead: the smoke of a hundred fires, though it was only midday, and the smells that men and horses bring wherever they settle. I could see a cordon of mounted soldiers stretched out across the landscape, spaced like the towers which crowned the city walls. As we came near, one of them challenged us.

‘Who travels this road?’

‘The Count Hugh the Great,’ answered Sigurd. ‘And his escort. Here on an embassy from the Emperor. Much good may it do us,’ he added under his breath.

‘You’ll need patience,’ observed the sentry. We were close enough now that I could see he was a Patzinak with a scarred face and narrow eyes, from another of the Emperor’s mercenary legions. From the time I had spent talking with Sigurd and Aelric, I knew even the Varangians bore them a grudging respect.

‘Have the Franks hired you as their guardians?’ asked Sigurd. ‘You should be protecting the Emperor, not these whoresons.’

‘We protect them from themselves,’ the Patzinak said with a toothless grin. ‘They come in the name of the cross, they say, so we keep their souls free from the cares of the world beyond. Like the walls of a monastery.’

‘Or a prison.’

‘Or a prison.’ The Patzinak pulled his horse aside, and waved us past. ‘Strange enough, we had a scuffle with some of them last night. They said much the same.’

We rode on, into the makeshift town which had descended onto our plain like the new Jerusalem. They had been here only four days, but already the earth was ground to mud by the passage of a thousand feet, and the trees had been felled for kindling. Blacksmiths had constructed rudimentary forges under canvas awnings, and sparks flew through the blue smoke as they worked against the ceaseless demands of arms and horses. Peddlers of a dozen races proclaimed their strange and multifarious wares, while on every corner of this tented city women shouted offers which, in any tongue, were readily understood. Many of them, I saw, were our own people, who clearly had bribed or crept their way through the Patzinak cordon.

At length we came to what had once been the village square, now covered with a vast tent. The knights who stood grouped before it seemed larger, stronger than the haggard creatures we had seen before, and there was a stiffness in the way they held themselves. On a crude post behind them, beside the pavilion door, was draped a banner emblazoned with a blood-red cross and a slogan in barbarian characters: ‘Deus le volt.’

‘Thus God wills it,’ whispered Father Gregorias in my ear.

‘Does He?’

The Count Hugh dismounted, grimacing as his fur boot settled in the mire. Sigurd and the nearest Varangians followed.

‘Halt.’

A guard by the door angled his spear across the Count’s path and spoke brusquely. The Count responded with anger, though to little effect.

‘He says none are allowed in his lord’s chamber bearing arms,’ explained Gregorias. ‘The Count replies that it demeans his honour to be denied his vassals.’

Honour or no, he at last agreed that the Varangians would wait outside while he conducted his audience with the barbarians. Gregorias and I pushed forward.

‘My secretaries,’ said the Count curtly. ‘So that none may falsely represent what is said.’

The guard eyed us as warily as he had the axe-wielding Varangians, but allowed us to pass into the gloom of the tent. It took some moments for my eyes to adapt, for the only light within came from a three-branched candlestick on a wooden chest, and the dimly glowing coals of an iron brazier. Behind the pole which supported the coned ceiling there was a splintered table, where two barbarians sat on stools arguing; otherwise, the room was empty. The Count strode into the open space in its midst, the only place where he did not have to stoop, while Gregorias and I perched ourselves on a low bench by the door.

Everything that followed they said in Frankish, but by peering at Gregorias’ quick scribbling, and with the odd whispered explanation where his hand lagged their mouths too far, I managed a fair understanding of what passed.

In the time-hallowed manner of ambassadors, the Count began by announcing himself. ‘I am Hugh le Maisné, second son of Henry, King of the Franks; Count of Vermandois . . .’

‘We know who you are.’ The interruption was as unexpected as it was abrupt, and came from the man at the right of the table, a tall man with unkempt dark hair and a skin so pale it was almost luminous. It seemed that long use had set his features in a perpetual sneer.

‘And we welcome you, Count Hugh.’ The other barbarian spoke with calm diplomacy, in stark contrast to his companion. His hair was fair, though darker and longer than the Count’s, and the months of travel had given him a weathered complexion which suited him well. He wore a handsome robe of russet cloth, and leaned forward earnestly over the table. ‘We had hoped to find you safe arrived here.’

‘Mincing like a Greek, and dressed like one of their girl-men. Have they made you their whore, Hugh, or clad you with so many gilded lies that you forgot your true countrymen?’

‘Peace, brother,’ the fair-haired man rebuked him. But the Count’s delicate skin was crimson, and his chin quivered.

‘The great Emperor Alexios grants these gifts in honour of my position,’ he squealed. ‘And I wear them of courtesy to him. Have a care, Baldwin no-lands: a single thread of this cloth would buy more than your miserable position could ever afford, yet it is but the least of the magnificence which the Emperor has given me.’ He turned his eye to the other end of the table. ‘To you though, Duke Godfrey, the Emperor will be likewise gracious. There is treasure in his palace the like of which has never been seen in Christendom, and he is eager to bestow it on men of good faith, those who follow the path of Christ.’

The dark-haired Baldwin made to speak again, but his brother stilled him and spoke first. ‘I have not come here seeking favours, Count Hugh, and the true pilgrim needs little baggage on the holy road. Even where the path is most perilous, a sword and a shield and fodder for my mount will suffice me.’ He gestured about. ‘You see my quarters – a bare floor and a place to conduct my business. I need no praise or trinkets from the Greek king, only a safe passage for my men across the straits. If he grants that, I will be gone within the week. I do not wish to dally here.’

The Count shifted on his feet. ‘The Emperor applauds your noble purpose, Duke Godfrey, for your pure heart is well renowned, even in these distant kingdoms. He will happily do all he can to advance your eternal victory over the Saracens. All he asks is your oath that whichever lands you take that once were his, you will restore to him as is his right.’

Baldwin’s fist slammed down on the table, scattering the papers laid over it. ‘He asks what? That we should lay down our lives so his miserable nation of Greeklings can spread their bastard offspring back into lands they were too weak to defend. We fight for God, Count, not for the glory of tyrants. Any lands we win in battle will be our own, earned with our swords and bought with our blood. If your master desires them, he can come and claim them himself. In combat.’

Duke Godfrey frowned. ‘My brother speaks harshly,’ he told Hugh, ‘but there is truth in what he says. I came to serve Christ, not men, and I have already sworn my oath to the Emperor Henry. I cannot serve two masters.’

‘Do not mention the Emperor Henry to the Emperor Alexios,’ cautioned Hugh. ‘It does not please him.’

‘If Alexios gives me the boats to cross the straits, we need never meet. I have no need for the flattery of kings.’

‘And do not call him a king. He commands the reverence due his office, unbroken since the days of the first Caesars.’

Baldwin stood suddenly. He walked around in front of the table, lifted the hem of his tunic, and sprayed a stream of piss onto the floor by Hugh’s feet. The Count leapt back in horror, holding his precious skirts like a girl.

‘I will show the reverence due his office,’ Baldwin snarled. ‘He cannot beg our aid and then treat us as villains. Tell him that he will let us pass, or he may find he no longer has a kingdom left to rule.’

‘If you ever had any title of your own, Baldwin Duke of nowhere, you might have the least idea what it is to rule.’

‘Better no land at all than to fuck it out of a Norse princess like you, Count.’

‘Enough!’ Duke Godfrey raised himself to his feet. He too was a tall man, though lesser than his brother. ‘There should be no quarrel between us here. You have come as the king’s ambassador, Count Hugh, so tell me plainly: how soon can we make the crossing of the straits?’

Hugh pushed out his chest like a songbird. ‘As soon as you have sworn the oath he demands, to restore his rightful lands.’

‘You know I cannot.’

‘Please, Duke Godfrey, you must. Or at least come to the palace with me. My lord Alexios invites you to celebrate the feast of Saint Basil with him, to savour his hospitality. He is a reasonable and generous man; I am sure an hour in his company would convince you of the value of an alliance.’

Godfrey shook his head wearily. ‘I do not think that would be helpful.’

‘And who is to say that if we enter his city we will come out again?’ Baldwin demanded. ‘I have heard that the brother of the king of the Franks went in a free man and came out a slave, bound in golden chains and with his balls cut off. What will the king of the Greeks do with us, once we are inside his fortress? I would sooner walk unarmed into the court of the Saracen caliph, for at least he would stab at me in the chest.’

‘I think what my brother means,’ said Godfrey uneasily, ‘is that he cannot understand why you would have us parley with this foreign king. He has already shown himself no friend to our people by his treatment of the hermit Peter and his humble army who came before. Now he tries to exact oaths and obligations from us simply to continue our journey? I trust neither him nor his offers. Tell him this: “Worship the Lord your God, and him only serve.”’

‘And tell him also that we are but the vanguard of a greater army, and that soon our ten thousand will be a hundred thousand. We will see if he still dares defy us when they are come.’ Baldwin sat back down at the table, and began to pick grime from his fingernails.

‘I will wait here until he gives me leave to pass,’ said Godfrey. ‘But I will not render myself a hostage in his city. You would do well to consider your own situation.’

‘I will return to the Emperor,’ said Hugh, furious. ‘And remain his honoured guest. Think of that when the rains come, and the water rises under your humble bed of straw; when your sword and armour rust and the fever infests your limbs. Then you will regret this show of pride. But the Emperor is a merciful man: when you decide to show him the honour he is due, he will greet you like a lost son. Until then, you can rot here.’

ι ς

I had hoped to have an hour or two to probe around that camp with Father Gregorias, to see if I could glean any sign of the monk having been there, but that was clearly impossible. Duke Godfrey might have managed a bare civility, but his brother Baldwin’s crude spite was closer to the mood in the faces which surrounded us when we emerged. As we remounted, I saw that Count Hugh no longer took his place at the head of the procession, but dropped back so that he was in the midst of the Varangians. Gregorias and I had no such fortune: we were at the rear again, and had to endure a strained half hour in the fear that we might be dragged from our horses and butchered, or find an arrow between our shoulders, before at last we came through the Patzinak cordon.

At the Gate of Lakes we halted again, this time for Hugh to leave our column and pass through another gate into the first courtyard of the new palace. Remembering Krysaphios’ instructions to report to him there, I followed.

Against the decadent sprawl of the old palace, expanded out over many centuries, the new palace was a compact building whose growth was purely, dizzyingly vertical. It was built on a hill, with a commanding view over the Golden Horn to the north and the line of the ramparts to the south. Much of the brickwork was as yet unplastered, but there was none of the chaos of construction that I had seen at Domenico’s house.

A boy came and took our horses, while a guard led us up a steep stair to a high terrace, where two sets of bronze doors brought us into a high-vaulted room. There was neither ornament nor decoration on the walls, and the marble floors were of the simple, modern style. But the view at the end was breathtaking, a row of full-length, arched windows looking out to the dark sprawl of the barbarian camp. The room must be built atop the great walls themselves, I thought, on the outermost line of our defences. It would take a confident man to stand by those windows, and I noticed that neither of those present chose to risk it.

‘Count Hugh. What success?’ It was Krysaphios, interrupted in his conversation with the Sebastokrator Isaak.

‘None.’ Hugh crossed to a finely wrought chair, inlaid with gold, and slumped into it. ‘They are impossible, my countrymen, full of false pride and toothless threats. They have no love of nobility, no respect for their betters. I cannot talk to them.’

‘Threats?’ Isaak looked at him keenly. ‘What threats?’

‘None that would trouble a man of your power. They say they want only boats to cross the straits, and then they will depart. But they will not swear the oath the Emperor demands.’

‘With boats they could attack the sea walls, divert our strength.’ Isaak paced the room in agitation. ‘What exactly did they threaten?’

Hugh wiped an ornate sleeve across his brow. It came away smeared with grime. ‘They said they were merely the vanguard of a greater army – this is as I told you it would be – and that the Emperor could not defy them when all their host was assembled. They said . . . I cannot recall what precisely. Your secretaries recorded it all, I think.’

Isaak and Krysaphios looked at me.

‘Well, my spying secretary, what did you discover?’ the eunuch asked.

‘Little enough,’ I admitted. ‘They were rarely minded to give answers. There were two of them, Duke Godfrey and his brother Baldwin. Godfrey, I think, is an honest man, though stubborn: he will not be swayed from his path. Baldwin is more dangerous. He has nothing to lose and a fortune to gain, and he burns with pride and envy. I think he means to find a kingdom for himself, and from where he does not care.’

‘And do you think he would go so far as to murder the Emperor to get it?’ Krysaphios’ voice was sharp. ‘Is he in league with the monk?’

I pondered this. ‘I think not. He did not seem a subtle man.’

‘So a subtle man would have you believe.’

‘He said also that they were here at the Emperor’s invitation. Is that true?’

‘Hah.’ Isaak stopped his pacing and looked at me. ‘Two years ago we sent emissaries to their church to request a company of mercenaries. We did not ask for an army in its ten-thousands, commanded by our ancient enemies and bent on their own ends. They have used our need as a pretext, Demetrios, for it is well known they wish to overthrow our power and install themselves as masters of the east.’

‘I must protest, My Lord,’ said Hugh. ‘I cannot speak for all my countrymen, but certainly for most. We came from noble motives, to free the Holy Land and the great city Jerusalem from the yoke of the Turk, so that all Christians would be free to follow in the steps of our Lord Jesus Christ. Do not let the ambitions of a base few obscure the virtue of the many.’

‘An army bent on liberating Jerusalem avails little when the Sultan holds court in Nicaea,’ Isaak observed. ‘And even less camped outside the walls of Constantinople. If they truly desire to pray by the Holy Sepulchre, then they should swear the oath and be on their way, not bandy threats against the Emperor.

Hugh wrung his hands together. ‘I know that, Lord Isaak. You know that had my army not perished in storm and shipwreck, I would even now be in Jerusalem. But these men are unreasonable, and they suspect the wiles of the Greeks. They will twist sinister meanings even out of your generosity, which I know well to be true Christian charity.’

‘If they will not accept our gifts, then they can do without them until they find their senses,’ said Krysaphios. ‘Send orders to the Eparch that their grain supply is to be reduced. We will see how long they endure empty bellies and the winter rains. And prepare to have them moved across the Horn to Galata. They will be further from mischief, there, and easier to contain.’

‘And what of my responsibility?’ I began tentatively. ‘How do you wish me to proceed?’

Krysaphios glared at me. ‘As you see fit, Demetrios, as you see fit. Whether the barbarian captain would overthrow us or not, I do not doubt that he would seize upon any disruption to work as much evil as he could. So whoever wants the Emperor dead, you had best find him quickly. Now go.’

I returned home in haste, for it was less than a week after midwinter and the days were still short. I could no longer afford to flout the curfew, having lost my Varangian escort when I sent Thomas back to Anna’s monastery, to learn our tongue and our customs, and to keep him away from my daughters. Helena, in particular, had not forgiven me for it, nor for the scolding she had received for her immoderate conduct that morning when I found Thomas in her room. She had persuaded me that nothing more reprehensible than talk had passed between them, and Zoe, unusually, had supported her story, but it had done little to placate me. Nor deterred me from sending the boy away.

It still rankled with Helena. ‘After he was kidnapped and enslaved by that wicked monk, how could you lock him away in a monastery? He’ll go mad.’

‘I doubt the monks of Saint Andrew’s will force a bow into his hands and make him shoot it at the Emperor. And why is there no meat in this stew? The fast ended three days ago.’

‘The fast will continue until the barbarian armies go. At least, that is the rumour. Few drive their beasts to market for fear that they will be seized by a mob of Franks and Kelts, while the animals which do come are bought by the imperial commissary and taken to feed our enemies. So we go hungry.’

‘“If your enemy hungers, give him bread to eat; if he thirsts, then water to drink, for you will heap up coals of fire on his head and the Lord will reward you,”’ I told her. ‘I met the King of the Franks’ brother today.’

‘Was he fat?’

‘He was wearing an enormous, ill-fitting robe. It was hard to tell. Nor did he have coals on his head.’

‘Did he say when they would be leaving?’ asked Zoe quietly. She was at an age when the slightest change in her mood could make her seem almost a woman, or scarcely a child. Now she just looked afraid.

‘The decision is not his to make. They need permission from the Emperor.’

‘Then he should give it to them and let them go.’ Her voice was rising, the words tumbling out, and she was twisting her hair round her finger as she had not done for many years.

I tried to speak gently. ‘Why? Are you hungry, Zoe? The Emperor cannot simply let a horde of barbarians pass through his empire. He must ensure that they are kept from causing injury.’

‘Well he should send them away. The streets are filled with strangers, and there’s no food, and soon it will be the feast of Saint Basil and we won’t be able to celebrate it properly, and all the time there are a thousand Franks at our gates armed for war. I hate it. I want the barbarians to go, and the city to be normal again.’

‘So do I.’ I put my arm around her shoulder and drew her in to my chest. ‘Doubtless the Emperor will order it that they are gone as soon as is possible.’

He did not. Through a long, wet January the barbarians stayed camped by the head of the Golden Horn, while I searched with ever-mounting frustration for any sign of the monk, whether he even lived or not, and if so whether he was in consort with the Frankish army. I found nothing. After a fortnight I began to doubt myself, to wonder whether he had indeed perished in that freezing cistern. I would have trawled it again, but I no longer commanded any urgency in the palace: with every fruitless day which passed, my meetings with Krysaphios became less frequent, the hours I waited in crowded corridors ever longer.

January passed: the day of the Heirarch Basil, then the Epiphany, and even the feast of Gregory the Theologian, and still – so far as I could see – the barbarians would not demur. Every day brought new rumours: of other great armies at Thessalonika, Heraklea or even Selymbria; of villages raided or livestock stolen; of barbarians stealing through windows in the night. As my business still took me, occasionally, into the palace, I perhaps heard more tales than most, though the gossip in the gilded halls seemed no more reliable than that in the market. And still we went hungry, still the streets teemed with those who had sought refuge, still it seemed that the barbarians were as much our besiegers as our allies.

One evening, a few days before the onset of February, a messenger came to my house, dressed in the livery of the palace.

‘I am come from my master, the Emperor,’ he announced. Water dripped from the hem of his cloak onto my floor.

‘Indeed?’ I had expected this moment for some days now, the news that my services were no longer required. I could not say I would have done otherwise in his position.

‘The barbarian captains have agreed to send ambassadors to meet with the Emperor and discuss his demands; the Emperor fears that the monk may try to slip into the palace disguised among their retinue. As you are the only Roman who has seen the man and lived to tell of it, he asks that you attend.’

It was comforting to know that the monk still lived in the thoughts of the palace at all. ‘I will be there,’ I said. It would not do to have the Emperor cut down before the barbarian envoys, and it would be interesting to hear what they had to say, after the defiance I had witnessed in their camp. At the very least, it promised to be a spectacle.

ι ζ

Cymbals clashed, and a thousand guardsmen stamped their feet as one. A lone trumpet sounded its mournful note and the choir began again, their voices rising a half-tone with each repetition. The light of countless candles glittered off the ranks of axes, the scaled armour, the gold and silver of the courtiers’ robes and the emeralds, sapphires, rubies and amethysts that bedecked them, a mosaic of coloured light.

The imperial acclamation resounded through the hall.Behold the morning star approaches,The daystar comes.His eyes a mirror to the sun,Alexios, our prince,Doom of the Saracen.

A dozen priests stood at the front of the room, swirls of incense rising from the censers which swung in their hands. They chanted their own contrapuntal hymn, matching the rhythm to perfection so that the tunes flowed together like water. An Egyptian pounded on a pair of goatskin drums, rising to a climax at the end of each verse until, with a single breath, every man in the room bellowed out: ‘Hail!’

‘You’d think with all that cheering the Emperor would show some gratitude,’ said Aelric, next to me.

We were in a gallery above the main hall, peering down from behind a curtained arch. Below us, on a throne mounted on a marble pedestal, the Emperor himself sat like a statue. A resplendently jewelled lorum covered his chest and shoulders, overlaying a dalmatica of shimmering purple silk: only as it caught the light could you see the subtlety of the patterns which curved through it. The constellated pearls and gems of the imperial diadem covered his head, and a pair of bronze lions lay like sentinels at his feet. To his right, on a lower dais, sat the Sebastokrator Isaak, regaled in finery which eclipsed all but his brother’s, while on his left stood the eunuch Krysaphios. Beyond them a galaxy of lesser nobles and bishops vied among themselves for the opulence of their dress.

The choirs of priests fell silent, leaving only the drummer striking his staccato beat. It rose through the silence like thunder, sounding from the walls and columns; it seemed to fade from beneath us, yet the echo at the far end of the room grew ever louder, until I realised it had become a pounding on the golden door which faced me.

Krysaphios lifted a hand and the doors flew apart, thrown open by the hands of a half-dressed giant who lumbered in like some latter-day Polyphemos. He stood at least a head taller than Sigurd, and his skin gleamed with oil; he led an octet of eunuchs bearing silver biers on their shoulders. Seated atop them, seeming at once in awe and discomforted, were two barbarians. Their garments were dull and drab, with neither the artistry nor the ornament of our people; they seemed, if it were possible, to suck the radiance from the air they inhabited. Neither of them were men I recognised.

The eunuchs set them down on the floor before the Emperor, bowed low and left. They seemed unsure whether to stand or sit: one made to stand, but even as he did so the pair of bronze lions by the Emperor’s feet sprang into life. Their jaws rose up and down; their manes flared, and their tails thudded against the floor. The barbarians watched open mouthed, as if afraid they would be devoured by these mechanical toys.

‘Welcome to the court of the prince of peace,’ Krysaphios intoned. ‘He bids you offer your petition.’

With a hesitant glance at the nearer lion, which had lapsed into stillness, one of the Franks stood and gave a curt bow. The crowd stirred, and I guessed this was not the protocol, but he remained standing and uttered a short speech in his own language.

‘I am Geoffrey of Esch, companion of Godfrey, Duke of Lorraine.’ Perhaps it sounded magnificent in his tongue, but the monotone of the interpreter robbed it of any grandeur. ‘It is by Duke Godfrey’s command that I speak here, O morning star, most noble Emperor.’

‘The interpreter’s obviously been instructed to avoid trouble,’ murmured Aelric. ‘I doubt his true words were half so humble.’

He spoke in a slightly hollow, detached manner, far removed from his usual good spirits. His knuckles were white where he gripped the balustrade, and he seemed to sway slightly, as if he would fall without a handhold. Perhaps he feared for the Emperor’s safety – I certainly did. A pack of barbarians had spilled into the chamber behind their leaders, standing sullenly by the doors, and I scanned them anxiously for any sign of the monk. With the smoke of candles and incense making my eyes water, and a bright light pouring through the doors, it was hard to see anything of them at all.

The barbarian spoke again, though not one thread of the Emperor’s robes moved in response.

‘Prince of peace, we have journeyed many miles, and through many dangers, to come to your aid, to join you in God’s holy war against the Saracens and Ishmaelites who infest the holiest places of Christendom. But the road is long, and already we have delayed a month here, while in distant lands the ravages of the heathen continue unchecked. We ask you, great Emperor, to give us leave to pass from here and to give us passage across the water, the better to perform God’s work.’

The interpreter fell silent, and every man in the hall strained to hear Krysaphios’ answer.

‘Honoured guests, come from all the nations of Christ, the serene Emperor embraces your thoughts to his heart. He gives thanks to the One God that you have come to fight at his side in the cause of righteousness, and would not see your keen swords dulled through unuse. But before you pass from our walls, he would have you swear the oath customary among our people, to serve him truly and to restore to him that which is rightfully his, the ancient Roman lands of Asia.’

A murmur arose at the back of the room, and the envoy’s face darkened. Even the translator’s tact could not disguise the true intention of his words, for he spoke in haste and anger, with frequent jabs of his finger towards the impassive Emperor.

‘Great star of the morning, we humbly beseech your indulgence. While nothing compels us more urgently than the desire to see your glory and power restored to its fullest lustre . . .’ The translator faltered, his talent for equivocation clearly stretched to breaking. ‘But we Franks are jealous of our oaths, and do not give them lightly. We beg more time for reflection.’

Krysaphios’ lip curled. ‘We know well how close you guard your allegiance. That is why we honour you as allies. But the munificent Emperor would have you remember that he is quick to show his gratitude to those who aid him.’

The eunuchs who had borne in the barbarians now reappeared, four mahogany caskets slung between them. As they neared the dais they seemed to trip, sinking to their knees and tipping forward their loads. The chests fell open and the barbarians gasped as a king’s treasure spilled out across the floor. Golden chalices and plates, bowls and bracelets, necklaces set with pearls, myriad shining trinkets and enough coin among them to pay an army. Both barbarians were on their feet, stooping down to touch the riches before them with wonder on their faces. One scooped up a handful of hyperpyri and let them trickle back through his disbelieving fingers; the other held a drinking vessel, and stared at it as though he had found the cup of Christ.

‘Great are the rewards for those who pledge their loyalty to our cause,’ said Krysaphios.

But the barbarians showed little heed. They were talking urgently between themselves, fingering the treasures as they spoke. There seemed to be some disagreement.

‘That’s unsettled them,’ said Aelric. ‘That much gold could turn anyone’s mind.’

‘Buying allies can be an expensive habit. Allegiance bought with gold is like meat in the sun: it festers quickly.’

The two barbarians concluded their argument and turned back to Krysaphios. For all the wealth at their feet, neither looked happy.

‘The friendship of the Greeks is a valued honour,’ said the interpreter. ‘But nothing gains merit by haste. We ask time for pause, to carry this offer’ – he waved his hand at the scattered treasure – ‘to our lord Godfrey.’

‘The lord Godfrey should have sent ambassadors who could vouch for his thoughts and speak with his voice,’ Krysaphios told them. ‘But perhaps you wish to retire to a private chamber to consult your hearts.’

The envoys nodded dubiously. Again the eunuchs ran forward to raise their litters, but the barbarians disdained them, and were already walking back down the aisle to the door.

‘Halt,’ called Krysaphios, and they paused. ‘None leaves the Emperor’s presence.’

Without warning a tremendous noise exploded through the room, and a billowing column of smoke rose around the Emperor’s dais. The barbarians trembled, grasping one another for support as if they expected a bolt of lightning to sear into their flesh.

The smoke began to clear, and I felt a surge of shock as I looked down at where the Emperor had sat. He was gone, and with him the gilded throne, the bronze lions, everything: all that remained was a smooth disc of white marble.

Aelric must have noticed my shaken pallor. ‘Don’t worry, Demetrios,’ he said, touching my arm. ‘That was no miraculous barbarian weapon. It always happens like that, to excite the foreigners.’

There was a touch of scorn in his voice, though I was too flustered to comment on it. Looking through the eddying remnants of the smoke, I could see the ambassadors hurrying out of the door glancing nervously over their shoulders. Krysaphios and Isaak, I noticed, had also disappeared.

‘Well, I saw no sign of the monk in their retinue. Did you, Aelric?’

‘None.’

‘Though if he prefers to hire others to do his work, it could have been any of them.’ It was hard to think of the monk while marvelling at how close I had been to the Emperor, at the glory which surrounded him; I was still remembering the splendour of the barbarians’ entrance when the door behind me opened. A slight commotion in the room caught my attention, but it was only at the sound of the voice that I shook off my daydream.

‘Why do we persist with all that theatre? The smoke stains my robes and scalds my cheek – it’s a miracle that it hasn’t burned my beard off. How would I look to the barbarians then, Krysaphios, with one cheek charred and shorn?’

‘It serves its purpose, Lord.’

I turned around, forgetting even to sink to my knees. The man who had sat on that throne so motionless and unyielding, the prince of peace and the morning star and the heart of the empire, now paced only a few strides away. Beneath the well-groomed beard the cheeks were ruddy, like a peasant’s; thick eyebrows surmounted his flashing eyes. Even under his shapeless robe you could see the breadth of his chest and shoulders, sense the rough strength in his arms. He moved with restless energy, barking his thoughts to Krysaphios and the Sebastokrator who stood respectfully by the door.

I collapsed to the floor and made the customary obeisance, rigid with apprehension. I had spent almost two months thinking of little other than his safety, of the cares and motives of his killers – but as an abstraction, a riddle: never had I considered him a living, breathing man. Now, as he strode around the small chamber, it was hard to imagine him otherwise.

‘Who is this?’ he demanded, breaking off the litany of his impatience with ceremonial. ‘Why is he here?’

‘Demetrios Askiates, Lord,’ Krysaphios murmured. ‘He is the only man who has seen the monk who tried to murder you on the feast of Saint Nikolas. He is here to protect you.’

‘Get up, then, Demetrios Askiates.’ The Emperor’s eyes fixed their curiosity upon me. ‘I have heard your name. But tell me, can you protect me against the inflammatory excesses which the credulous minds of barbarians require?’

‘Lord . . .’ I stammered.

‘No matter. I knew when I accepted the throne that assassins, ingrates, invaders and usurpers would try and depose me from it: I did not think I would have to pose there like a statue while gouts of smoke roared about me. Perhaps I should haul the great founder Constantine down off his column and erect him on that throne. He would serve as well.’

‘But did you see the terror in their eyes, brother?’ Isaak asked merrily. ‘They imagined you were some pagan god of the ancients, Zeus descended to claim their souls.’

‘I fear the gold made more impact on them. What do you say, Krysaphios?’

‘I fear even the lustre of gold will not warm their hearts. The deceit was plain in their faces. Their captain has sent them as a distraction, to divert us with hopes of promises to come until their strength is sufficient that we cannot resist them. Then he will come – and he will lay down his own terms.’

‘The chamberlain is right.’ Isaak’s fingers twisted a pearl which dangled by his ear. ‘If all Duke Godfrey wanted was to spear Saracens in the name of his church, then he could have taken the oath and be besieging Nicaea even now, rather than casting threats outside our walls. Delay favours his ambition.’

The Emperor leaned against a wall and stared at a hanging icon of the Theotokos. ‘So – the barbarians are duplicitous. That we knew. What do you propose we do with them, brother?’

‘Muster our armies and confront them.’ There was no doubt in Isaak’s voice. ‘When they see the size of our forces, they will agree our demands immediately.’

‘And if they do not?’ Alexios probed. ‘Our legions are not so invincible as they were in the age of our grandfather, even of our uncle. That is why the barbarians have come.’

There was a shout at the door, and all looked around as it opened to admit Sigurd. He wore a wolf pelt cloak from his shoulders, while his hauberk cast dappled crescents of light across the floor.

‘Your pardon, Lord.’ He genuflected. ‘The ambassadors ask to take their leave. What are you doing here?’ he added, puzzled. I thought he spoke to me, though his eyes were on Aelric.

‘Let the barbarians wait,’ said Krysaphios. ‘They can leave when the Emperor dismisses them.’

‘More smoke and toys,’ Alexios muttered. I was having difficulty reconciling this reluctant, businesslike figure with the autocrat who controlled the fate of nations.

Isaak looked up. ‘But what do they say? Have they agreed to take our oath?’

‘They plead that they must consult their leader. They wish to defer their decision for a later time.’

‘If they needed their captain’s assent then he could have come himself.’ Isaak punched the palm of his hand. ‘I told you, brother, they will lead us a dance until they can strike us. Our only hope is to strike first.’

‘But what if they do not surrender when we mass our army? What if I am sitting on my horse at the head of my cavalry and the barbarians refuse our demands? Then I will either look a coward, or be forced to press home the battle. A quarrel between us and the barbarians will draw laughter in the court of the Sultan, and will do nothing to restore our inheritance. And if we lose the battle – what then? Our walls will be undefended and the barbarians will take the city – we will lose everything.’

‘We would not lose the battle, not against those barbarians. Throw gold on the ground and they would root at it like swine.’

‘Dyrrhachium. Joannina. Ochrid. Arta. Have you forgotten those battles, Isaak, merely because there are no triumphal columns or arches to remind you? I have not. The barbarians defeated us there, and whatever their defects, they fight at least as hard as we do – doubly so when there are riches to be won. They are a race of gamblers, and if they thought they could take our city they would not hesitate to risk the throw.’

By the door, Sigurd shifted a little on his feet. The gesture was not lost on the Emperor. ‘But what to do now, you say? Tell them, Captain, that . . .’

I was genuinely curious to see what the Emperor would decree, but at that moment a movement by my side distracted me from his words. Aelric, who had stood by me in silence all this time, was moving forward, unbidden. He staggered a little, as though under a heavy burden, and there was a dull emptiness in his eyes. You might have thought he had drunk too much, save for the deliberation with which the axe lifted off his shoulder and settled into his hands. The weight seemed to compose him: his stride stiffened, and the muscles of his arms tensed as the blade came up beside his head.

‘What . . . ?’

Almost numb with surprise, and almost a second too late, I saw the impossible truth and sprang forward. The Emperor’s back was to us, though he must have sensed something was amiss for he began to turn; Krysaphios was looking away, and Isaak was speaking with Sigurd. A bow of light played across the blade as it swung past a pendant lamp, and a roar rose in Aelric’s throat.

For an instant it seemed as if my heart stopped, and with it all time, but mercifully my body continued to move. I dived for Aelric’s feet, flailing my arms forward to catch him. His axe was slicing through the air as I felt my fingers make contact with his brass-ringed boots; I fastened my grip around them and let my full weight meet his legs.

There were many shouts, but his was one. His knees buckled and he tumbled forward, tangling me between his shins as his axe struck the floor. What else it might have hit in its path I could not tell. Our momentum carried us sliding across the marble a few feet, until at last we came to a halt. Even then he was not defeated; he pulled free of my grasp and began to rise to his feet, his axe still in his hand.

A roar sounded from above, and I looked up. Sigurd was standing over me, a tower of rage and fury. His face was ashen, shaken, but there was not the least compunction in his eyes.

‘You betrayed us,’ he breathed. ‘Everything.’

His axe swung down, and hot blood splashed against my cheek. At a little distance, Aelric’s head rolled free across the floor.

ι η

For a moment we were still as the icons on the walls – Sigurd, Alexios, Krysaphios, Isaak and I. Blood welled from the stump of Aelric’s neck, soaking through my robes, but I had not the wit to move. A bead of sweat or tears sank down Sigurd’s cheek, and the rings of his armour tensed and slacked as his chest heaved beneath it.

The Sebastokrator Isaak was the first to find his voice. ‘The barbarians,’ he hissed. ‘They must have planned this, to murder you in your own hall and seize the crown as it slipped from your head. Let us kill them now, and then fall upon their kinsmen in their camp.’

I saw Krysaphios nodding behind him, but Alexios raised a weary hand to still them. There was a gash in his sleeve where Aelric had landed his final, glancing blow. ‘Do not touch the ambassadors,’ he commanded, imposing authority on his shaken voice. ‘Why would they attempt such a crime when they were my hostages? They must have known their lives would be forfeit if anything happened to me while they were here.’ He paused. ‘Unless, of course, there was another candidate ready to take the diadem and command the mob to save them.’

His sharp eyes glanced at each of us in turn, fixing – so I thought – a second longer on Isaak than any other.

‘We will seek out all who have a claim to the throne and establish their whereabouts,’ said Krysaphios. ‘And we should deploy the guard in the streets, lest in haste someone has already started to move against you.’

‘Can we rely on the guard?’ asked Alexios. ‘If one of my longest-serving Varangians will betray me, whom then can I trust?’

Sigurd winced; he seemed on the edge of tears. ‘The Varangians will defend you to the death, Lord. But if you do not trust us, then take our arms and make us your slaves.’ Dropping to his knee, he held his axe by its blood-swathed blade, and offered it to the Emperor.

‘Take it, Lord.’ Krysaphios kicked angrily at Aelric’s headless corpse. ‘If you do not know why a Varangian should have done this terrible thing, you cannot tell us why another may not try again. Was he a traitor all this time, waiting for his moment to strike? If so, why now? Was it a moment of madness? Or did he indeed act for a wider cause among his legion?’

‘On balance,’ I observed, ‘it would have been useful if Sigurd had not been so quick to dismember him.’ I looked at the staring, lifeless eyes and shuddered. This was a man who had ridden at my side and eaten in my home: it was not easy to see him now. ‘It would have been worth everything to know his motives.’

Sigurd, still on his knee, growled. ‘You can wrestle a snake to the ground, Demetrios, but to be sure it will not bite you must behead it. My duty is to keep the Emperor from harm – yours is to find those who would harm him before they enter his presence. Which of us has failed today?’

‘My task would be easier if you did not help the monk by destroying every link with him.’

Sigurd looked as though he might like to use his axe again, but Isaak spoke to me first. ‘What of the monk? There is a greater power at work when the Emperor is almost murdered in his own palace, and you think only of spies and foot soldiers. Forget the monk, if he even exists, and instead seek out his masters.’

I was about to retort unwisely, for in all this argument it seemed my own role in bringing down the assassin was forgotten, but I was forestalled by an urgent rapping on the door, and the sound of voices in the passage beyond. We turned, and Sigurd raised his axe, though Alexios stayed unmoved.

‘Who disturbs the Emperor?’ Krysaphios’ fear wrought anger in his voice.

‘Your pardon, Lord, but it is urgent,’ said a voice behind the door. ‘The watchmen on the walls report smoke rising from the outlying villages. The barbarian army has begun to riot, claiming that we hold their embassy hostage and demanding their release.’

Isaak exploded. ‘You see brother – already they are moving. Their haste betrays them. Let us chain the hostages and ride out to face our enemies.’

Alexios ignored him. ‘Captain,’ he said, beckoning Sigurd. ‘I will not disband your legion. Long service has proven their value; I would be an ingrate and a fool to squander it because of a single man’s treachery.’ More immediately, I thought, he could ill afford to lose good troops with the barbarians so near. ‘Fetch your company and escort the envoys to the gates. Explain that I will await their answer in the coming days.’ He pulled his lorum straight, wiping a drop of blood from one of its gems. ‘If so much as a single strand of their hair is harmed, either by your men or by the mob in the city, you will answer for it personally, Captain. Is that clear?’

Sigurd nodded, bowed, and backed from the room, while Isaak glowered in the corner.

‘Now,’ continued the Emperor. ‘Find me the captain of the Patzinaks. I have forgiven the Varangians the traitor they unknowingly harboured, but I cannot keep them in the palace if even a single man is suspected. I will need men about me I can trust, for it will be another day at least before we know if the danger is passed.’

‘The danger will never pass so long as the barbarians live outside our walls,’ muttered Isaak.

‘Unless the danger is already within.’ Krysaphios turned to me. ‘Demetrios, you remember the list I showed you once?’

It was almost two months since I had seen it, but I remembered enough of its eminent names to manage a convincing nod.

‘Then take a company of Patzinaks and find where those men are as quickly as you can. Any who have taken sudden trips to their country estates, or who have hoards of arms cached in their cellars, or who have tried to slip through the gates in disguise, report back to me. I will be at the new palace with the Emperor.’

I nodded my obedience. ‘And what of Aelric? Someone must know, or guess, the motive for his treachery. Some of his comrades? His family, perhaps?’

Krysaphios shrugged impatiently. ‘Perhaps. You can ask Sigurd when he returns. Though do not seek him in the palace – by nightfall all the Varangians will be at their barracks by the Adrianople gate.’

I made my obeisance and left, stepping over Aelric’s riven head as I did so. The blood had matted through his greying hair, and the jaw was slack, but the eyes remained as firm as ever, fixed where Sigurd’s vengeful blade had swung.

The next few hours passed in a daze. The shock of what I had witnessed, the disaster which had almost befallen and my improbable part in averting it, occupied my soul as I marched my squadron of Patzinak mercenaries between the houses of the nobility. I quizzed their gatekeepers and stewards, searched their halls and cellars for signs of flight or rebellion, but found little. Most had been in the palace, watching the ambassadors; some were away in the country, and a few were at home attending to their private business. All of them I noted in the thin book I carried, recording their excuses and alibis with reflexive thoroughness. Krysaphios could scour it for whatever incrimination he sought, but none of the men I saw seemed seized by manifest guilt.

And hour after hour, as I asked the expected questions and heard the expected answers, I struggled with the motive of the crime. Aelric could not have hoped to gain from his treachery, for even had he felled the Emperor he would have died the next instant. Unless madness or an evil spirit had taken hold of him, someone must have driven him to attempt the murder with a threat greater than certain death. What could that be – and who? It might have been the monk, but whose ends did he serve? Was it as Isaak suggested, that the barbarian envoys had hoped to use the confusion to their advantage? That was madness, for they would have been slaughtered to a man. Or was it the barbarian captains, away in their camp, hoping that the Emperor’s death would give them an excuse and an opportunity to take the city? That was almost too fanciful to credit. Or were the barbarians simply a distraction, an irrelevance in a political contest fought among our own nobles?

I found no answers, but when my task was done I took the notes to Krysaphios at the new palace. Such was my exhaustion, my shock, that I did not argue when the guard announced that the eunuch was unavailable: I called for a secretary, sealed the book with wax, and left it with him to relay to his master. Then, as it was not far, I walked along the hilltop in the shadow of the walls to the Varangian barracks.

‘Is Sigurd the captain here?’ I asked.

‘On the ramparts,’ answered the sentry.

‘Can I speak with him?’

‘You can,’ he said dubiously, ‘though you might regret it. He’s in an evil mood.’

‘I’ll risk it.’

I crossed the parade ground and climbed the broad stair up to the wall, watching my breath cloud the bitter air. The sky was clear, a swathe of purple far above me, and the first stars were beginning to prick through. They reminded me of the Emperor’s opulence, the glittering gems set in the imperial fabric, and I wondered who would have been wearing those robes tonight if I had been a second slower. The Sebastokrator Isaak? The Emperor’s first son, barely eight years old? One of the eminences whose servants I had interviewed that afternoon? Or a barbarian from the west, sitting awkwardly on the throne watching the abomination of an empire?

I found Sigurd alone, leaning on the deep embrasure between two battlements and staring out at the sparks across the water where the barbarian campfires burned. He grunted when I greeted him, but did not turn to face me.

‘It seems so tranquil,’ I mused, pulling my cloak tight about me. ‘Truly, night smoothes the fractures of the world.’

‘But night dawns, and it will be a long time before the fragments of this day are forged back together.’ Sigurd tipped a clay flagon to his lips, and I heard the gulping of liquid tumbling from its throat to his. ‘Wine?’

‘Thank you.’ It was coarse stuff, but a welcome tonic against the cold.

‘Though you’ve no cares. You saved the Emperor’s life. You can expect a house and a pension for such service. I let a traitor destroy the honour of the Varangians, and come within an inch of razing the empire.’

‘So who guards the Emperor now, if the Varangians are expelled from the palaces?’ My fevered mind wondered whether Aelric’s deed had merely been a gambit to discredit his legion, to leave the Emperor vulnerable.

‘Patzinaks.’ Sigurd’s voice implied they might as well be lepers. ‘Round-faced barbarians from the east: an ugly race, with ugly women and uglier habits.’

‘Reliable?’

‘As rocks. Once the Emperor defeated them in battle; now they worship him as a god, and serve him as zealots. I once saw a Patzinak stand for four days and nights in driving snow because no order came to relieve him.’

There was a silence as we swapped the wine again. I leaned against the massive parapet, and felt the cold of the stone on my cheek.

‘I know your wounds are sore,’ I began again, ‘but there are questions which need swift answers before the trail fades. Did Aelric have any particular comrades in the guard? Or a family?’

‘He was in a company of men who were all like brothers. But do not seek answers from Sweyn or Stigand or any of the others: they were as ignorant as me. Otherwise Aelric would never have crossed the palace threshold, except in chains. He had a family, though – a wife, Freya, and a son.’

‘Do they live in the barracks?’

‘None of the women do. The wife keeps a house in Petrion, not far from here. The son left home years ago – he probably has grandchildren by now. Remember, Aelric was already a warrior when most of us were still sucking on our mothers.’

‘Did you know him then? Back in Thule?’

‘England,’ Sigurd corrected me automatically. ‘No – our paths here were separate, and it was years later, when I was a grown man, that we met.’

‘And his wife – did he meet her here, or was she also from England?’

‘English. She fled with him after the Bastard conquered us.’

‘I think I had best see her. Will she already have been told Aelric’s fate?’

‘I doubt anyone has thought of her until you, Demetrios. You may have to relate the news yourself.’

‘Will you come?’

Sigurd drained the last of the wine and tossed the bottle over the parapet. I heard it shatter on the stones below.

‘I cannot leave this place.’ He kicked at the battlement before him. ‘We are not allowed any closer to the palace than these walls.’

On balance, I decided, it would probably be better to arrive at the widow’s house without her husband’s murderer.

I left Sigurd in his isolation, walking the utmost boundary of the city, and made my way to the house he had described. Though I knew that the passing of time was no ally, I moved listlessly, rebuffing the attentions of the Watch and hating the fact that I would have to tell Aelric’s wife of her husband’s treason and death. All too soon I was at her door, thumping a cold fist against the thick oak. Every stroke sent numb shivers through my hand, but I persisted until at last I heard a suspicious voice within demanding my business.

‘I have come from the palace. It concerns your husband.’ My words haunted the empty street.

Three times I heard the sounds of bolts being drawn. Then the door cracked open.

‘You are not of the Varangians. Have I seen you before?’

All was darkness beyond the door, but the voice bespoke someone old, a woman pinched by a weary life.

‘I am a stranger,’ I admitted, ‘but I knew your husband. He . . .’

‘You knew my husband?’ The door edged open a fraction further. ‘Why is it that you knew my husband? Where is he now?’

‘He is dead.’

I had not meant to say it so baldly, but it was out now and I could curse my carelessness later. I heard a wail arise in the room within, the sound of someone stumbling about, and I pushed in through the door before she could slam it on me. Small fists flailed against my chest, and I raised my arms in defence, though there was little force in her bony blows. The darkness hindered me, but eventually I managed to catch hold of her wrists and hold them away, until the screams of defiance broke down into a forlorn sobbing.

As gently as I could, I steered her backwards, away from the door. She was weeping, calling her dead husband’s name and many other things in a tongue I could not understand.

‘Do you have a candle?’ I asked as she took a choking breath. ‘It would help if I could see you.’

Tentatively, I relaxed my grip a little, testing whether she still aimed to attack me. There was no sudden movement, nor any increase in her sobbing, and so I let her loose.

She moved away. For a second I feared she might be fetching a blade, might assault me in the darkness, but then I saw a shower of sparks in a corner and the flare of a wick. The candle was burned low, crusted with shrivelled knobs of wax, but it gave enough light that I could at last see Aelric’s poor widow.

She was old, at least as old as he, and the deeply-shadowed furrows of her face added still more years. Her ragged hair was grey and untied, hanging in frayed bunches, and her skin shone with tears. Dressed only in a woollen shift, she fell back onto a stool and gestured me to take a bench. I reached out a hand to stroke her arm, but she recoiled in loathing and huddled herself away.

‘Did Sigurd kill him?’ she asked.

The question startled me, so much that I could do little but flounder for a minute before admitting: ‘Yes.’ And then, struggling to impose myself: ‘Why should you think so?’

‘My husband always feared it, that Sigurd would find his secret and murder him in a fit of rage. Every day in the last ten years, since Sigurd joined the Varangians, Aelric feared him.’

She scratched her scalp through her thin hair, and shivered as though a draught had blown over her.

‘Why did Aelric fear him?’ I asked. ‘What secret could he have kept that would have inflamed Sigurd so? Was his purpose with the Emperor always . . . ?’

‘The Emperor?’ Aelric’s wife – Freya, I remembered was her name – gave a bitter laugh. ‘What did Aelric care for the Emperor? Or Sigurd, for that matter?’

‘Sigurd loves the Emperor like a father.’

‘Love?’ Freya spat on the floor. ‘None of you act from love – but from hate. Sigurd does not love the Emperor; he hates the Normans, and with a merciless passion. Why else would he not forgive Aelric, who brought him into the Varangians and was like an older brother to him?’

‘But what had Aelric done?’ I was bewildered; it was like trying to knead oil, reasoning with this woman.

She ignored me. ‘He knew it was returning. So did I. Ever since Asgard appeared at our door three weeks ago it haunted him. Aelric, who served the Emperor long after most of his companions would have hung up their armour and taken a farm in the country. Will Sigurd still be standing his watch when he is as old as Aelric? Never.’

‘Who was this Asgard? Another Varangian?’

‘He came three weeks ago, and Aelric changed. His smile vanished, and his shoulders sagged; he would hardly eat. At first he did not speak of it, but I knew, for what else could Asgard have to talk to him about? Then Asgard called again and took him away: to meet his friends, he said. And now he is dead, the most loyal man who ever carried an axe. My husband.’

I leaned closer, trying to find some thread to guide me through the fog of her babble. ‘And what was this secret of Aelric’s that Asgard wanted to talk of?’

Freya straightened, defiance kindling within her. ‘Why should I tell his secrets to a stranger, the crow who croaks his death?’

‘Because all our safety depends on it – and yours especially. If you do not tell me others will come, and they will not be as gentle as I. Before he died, Aelric betrayed the Emperor and the Varangians, and that will not be forgiven lightly.’ I had not wanted to touch on Aelric’s treachery, and it had been a sound instinct, for Freya plunged her face into her hands at the sound of it.

‘My husband was an honest man who served his masters faithfully,’ she sobbed. ‘If they were devious, or evil, or made him defy his nature, then God will judge them, not him. And you call yourself gentle – you, cursing his name to me while my tears are warm, before he is even laid in the ground. Get out of my house, and allow me my grief without poisoning it.’

‘I cannot. I must know . . .’

‘Out! Out!’

She would not be consoled, certainly not by me, and until then I would get no sense from her. I left her to her tears, and hurried back to the walls. It seemed the night had lasted an eternity, but Sigurd was still there, pacing the ramparts and scanning the dark horizon with vacant eyes. Neither of us offered a greeting.

‘Do you know a man named Asgard?’ I asked. ‘Maybe a Varangian, or someone from the palace.’

Sigurd’s scowl, if it were possible, deepened. ‘I know Asgard,’ he grunted. ‘He was a Varangian, until a few years ago. I expelled him myself for stealing from us, thieving in the barracks.’

‘Did he know Aelric?’

‘They escaped England at the same time, and arrived in the city together: Asgard and Aelric, their wives, a few others. Most are dead now.’

‘But not Asgard?’

Sigurd raised his hands in ignorance. ‘I could not care. I heard that he kept a stall in the fur market, selling mangy pelts and skins that the Rus traders could not persuade any others to take. Maybe he’s still there, maybe not. He was a worm, and we were well rid of him.’

‘He did not keep in contact with any of your men?’

‘They would have spurned him. Stealing from your messmates is like stealing from the church – except that we have no obligation to forgive. Why all this curiosity? Do you want a cheap shawl for your daughter?’

‘He visited Aelric several times in recent weeks. Freya blamed him for a change in Aelric’s mood, and I think he may have carried messages for the monk.’

Sigurd snorted. ‘The monk? The monk is a phantom, Demetrios, an apparition. The sort of man you blame when there are no other excuses.’ He paused, pondering this. ‘Asgard, on the other hand – he’s real enough. Seek him in the market.’

ι θ

The furrier’s market was a dismal place next morning. A fine rain had been falling since dawn, and however hard the vendors tried to keep their wares under awnings the pelts still grew mottled and bedraggled. Only the richer merchants escaped, those whom the guild favoured with places under the eaves of the stoa: they sat shivering at their tables, rarely rousing themselves to tout for custom. The stink of treated hide drifted down from the far end of the market, where the tanners and leather workers kept their stalls, and with the mouldering air of animal carcasses as well it was no wonder there were few buyers.

Rain trickled down the back of my neck and soaked the shoulders of my tunic, while my boots grew ever more like sponges underfoot. The faces of dead animals stared plaintively from every rack and trestle: rabbits and hares hung by their ears, long-snouted wolves piled above each other, deer whose antlers had already been sold to the ivory-carvers, and – on one stall – an enormous bear mounted on a pole.

I stopped at several stalls to ask after Asgard, and received a predictable pattern of replies. He was on the west side of the market, one man claimed; no, the north insisted his neighbour. Perhaps he had given up his stall altogether and abandoned the trade, suggested another, for the quality of his wares was second-rate and he rarely saw his customers twice. Some had seen him but could not remember where, and others knew of him but had not seen him that day. It was a common pattern of response, but on that mournful day, with rain constantly dripping in my eyes, it seemed more than usually futile.

Nor were the merchants amiable company. They say in the provinces that a shepherd comes to resemble his flock, and here the same was true. All the men I encountered were lumbering and hairy, with wide, untrusting faces and thick beards, some smeared with fat to keep them dry. Many must have been the bastard sons of Norse traders, and they fragmented their language with peculiar sounds which seemed to owe more to the tongues of beasts than men.

At last, though, I found my quarry. He did not warrant a shop in the stoa, nor even a covered stall in the square. He huddled in a corner in a rat-eaten fur cloak, his grey hair splayed flat across his skull and his blue eyes squinting almost shut against the rain. A tray bearing the skins of small vermin was laid out before him.

‘How much for a stoat’s pelt?’ I asked, affecting to examine his merchandise.

‘Fourteen obols.’ The line of his eyes became rounder, watching me carefully.

‘Too expensive. Do you have anything else to sell me?’

He blinked. ‘Alas, nothing but what you see. The guild does not allow me any more.’

Wincing slightly at the dank feel, I lifted the dead stoat in my hand and weighed it thoughtfully. As I studied it, my right hand strayed to the pouch on my belt and pulled out a golden nomisma.

‘I do not need your rats,’ I told him, dangling the pelt by the scruff of its neck and discarding it. Asgard’s eyes ignored it, fixed on my right hand. ‘I need knowledge. Information. An observant man in a crowded market must witness many things.’

‘Some things. When I am not occupied with the needs of my trade.’

I picked out another fur and swung it in my hand. ‘Are these local furs?’

I could see that he did not like the meandering direction of my questions, that the doubt in his eyes was turning to suspicion, but he could not keep from reciting his sales chatter. ‘Local? Indeed not. They are brought by the mighty Rus, from the wild forests of the north, down great rivers and across the Euxine sea to grace your garments. You will not find pelts of a higher quality anywhere in a thousand miles.’

Though I guessed the words were seldom used, they still sounded tired and hollow.

‘You clearly know their provenance well. Are you one of these Rus?’

‘No,’ he admitted carefully. ‘But they are my kin. I am from the kingdom of England – Britannia, as some of you call it, an island just beyond the Russian shores.’

‘Where the holy Emperor, may he live a thousand years, recruits his bodyguard?’

‘The same place. In fact, I served the Emperor myself, once, as one of his Varangians, carrying my axe in his service. He chose me for my honesty.’

‘Truly?’ I wiped a lock of hair out of my eyes. ‘I am looking for a man who knows of Varangians. Or rather, a man who seeks to know more of them. A monk who travels the city bargaining with guardsmen past and present. Have you seen such a man?’

The gold coin I had been holding slipped from my fingers and landed noiselessly on a pile of fur. I did not pick it up. It agitated Asgard; he cast his eyes down, then to one side, and fidgeted with the clasp of his cloak. Always, though, his gaze leapt back to the glittering nomisma in his tray.

‘Why should I know that?’ he croaked. ‘There are many Varangians in this city, and many who have left after a lifetime of loyal and honourable service. Who would come to a distant corner of a stinking market, a space which even the whore-born guilds do not value enough to rent for more than an obol, to ask questions of a luckless merchant?’

‘A man who placed great value on what that merchant might tell him,’ I answered. ‘As I do.’

Two more gold coins dropped before him.

‘No,’ the old man whispered. ‘No. I have not seen your monk.’

‘Yes you have. You led him to your old comrade Aelric, and revealed some terrible secret which compelled Aelric to betray everything he valued. Do not deny it.’

Asgard was shuffling back now, glancing about for a path to escape. I followed him, tipping over his tray and scattering his pelts over the wet stone.

I pulled out my knife. ‘I will know what you have said and done, Asgard. You can take either gold for it, or steel. Do you know a Varangian captain named Siguard?’

Asgard’s thin jaw opened wider. ‘Sigurd? He is a berserker, a madman. He would kill his own mother if she stepped too near the Emperor for his liking. I served under him in the guard.’

‘And now, through the treachery you concocted with Aelric, you have ruined him. If you do not tell me what you have done, he will come with his axe to make you answer.’

All this time I had been advancing on Asgard as he retreated; now, he found himself with his back to a broad column. I watched him squirm against it, and stood ready to strike if he tried to run.

But running was no more in Asgard’s character than fighting: there was no strength in his time-ravaged limbs and he knew it.

‘He will kill me,’ he pleaded. ‘The monk swore he would kill me if I told any other.’

‘If the monk has finished with you, he will probably kill you anyway. At least I will give you a chance to live.’

‘But I did no wrong. I did not betray Aelric – he did that himself. I never murdered my countrymen, or put innocent families to death, or burned homes and crops and poisoned wells so that the land would lie empty for a generation. Not I, no. Why do you point your blade at me, when it is Aelric’s neck which should feel its edge?’

‘Aelric’s neck has felt its last blow.’ My words were short, brusque – what were these horrors he ascribed to the genial Varangian? ‘Do not try to save yourself by blackening the names of the dead.’

‘If he is dead, then that is the least justice he was due. A man lives by his loyalties, and he had none.’

‘Then your head should join his, for if you conspired with the monk then you betrayed the Emperor just as much as Aelric.’

‘The Emperor?’ Asgard gave a horrible, cackling laugh. ‘What do I care for the Emperor? For some years he paid me to serve him, and then he did not. But Aelric did not betray some jumped-up Greek – he betrayed his own people. His real kin. The English.’ Somehow, through his obvious fear, Asgard managed to contort a vicious smile.

‘Aelric fought with your king against the invaders.’ I remembered his confusing tales of Normans and Norsemen. ‘Was that a lie?’

The fur-merchant shook his head. ‘It was true enough. But what he did not tell you was that three years after the invasion, when the Bastard conqueror came north to wreck the land, Aelric’s lord supported him, and Aelric with him. There were more than Normans up there – Englishmen turned on their neighbours too. Some say they were the worst, the fiercest. Aelric always held that he did it because his thane ordered him, but who is to tell the truth of that?’

‘Aelric spoke of this? To the Varangians?’

Again that awful sneer. ‘Not to the Varangians. If you so much as admired a Norman whore you’d be out of their ranks with your head cracked open. But he spoke of it to me, on the long nights during our flight from England. He used to wake up crying in the night remembering the things he had done, needing to confess. They were ugly stories, too, but I kept them secret. Then they threw me out of the barracks and he did not raise a word to protect me, after I’d kept him safe all those years. So when the monk came to my stall, asking if I knew any of the guards who were disloyal, or might be, it did not take much of his gold to draw out Aelric’s name.’

‘And then you took this monk to Aelric’s house? You forced him to betray the Emperor?’

‘I forced him to do nothing. I persuaded him to share a drink with me. When he came, I introduced him to the monk. The monk explained that if Aelric served him faithfully, he might die but his wife would live in comfort; otherwise, he would die in ignominy, his past treachery revealed, and his wife would have to whore herself to Normans simply to live. Once Aelric had agreed, and the monk had rewarded me for my work, I left them to their own business.’

‘Where was this meeting?’ So great was my anticipation that I moved closer, almost pricking Asgard with the point of my knife.

He whimpered, and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his cloak. ‘At a tavern near the harbour. He arrived after us, alone. I never saw him after that.’

‘So you do not know where he can be found? Did he not leave instructions in case you thought of another victim from whom he could extort disloyalty?’

Asgard shook his head so violently that I almost believed him.

‘I will take you to the imperial prisons,’ I told him. ‘Then I will find Sigurd and repeat your story. Perhaps he will remind you of things you have forgotten.’

Asgard cowered back in terror, pressing himself so close against the column he might have been carved on it. ‘Do not take me to Sigurd,’ he pleaded. ‘Not to Sigurd.’ A leering hope entered his eyes. ‘Perhaps there are other things I remember.’

‘What other things?’

Asgard raised his chin in rare defiance. ‘The monk did not leave instructions – but that does not mean I was fool enough not to make enquiries. Asgard always seeks new business.’

I stood very still. ‘What did your enquiries reveal?’

‘That a man who values knowledge will pay for it.’

‘You were involved in a plot to murder the Emperor,’ I reminded him, ‘and your life will be forfeit unless you ransom it with something of singular value. Is your knowledge enough to buy your soul?’

Asgard looked miserably unhappy, but with a knife at his throat and Sigurd’s vengeance to follow, he had little choice.

‘I paid a boy to follow the monk when he left the tavern. A clever lad, and sly. He knew how to find the shadows when the monk looked around. Which he did often, apparently – a suspicious man. But the boy tracked him like a deer, back to a tenement in Libos.’

‘Where in Libos? When was this?’ I raised my knife so that it hovered before Asgard’s eyes. It seemed to make the words come faster.

‘Two weeks ago, perhaps three. I do not know if he has been there since. But that you can find out yourself. It is west from the column of Marcian, near the north bank of the Lycus. A grocer named Vichos keeps his shop on the ground floor.’

I stared into his eyes, trying to judge the truth of his words, but fear had long stripped all honesty from his face and I could not tell.

‘If we find the monk, you will live.’ Though not in the least comfort. ‘For now, you will come with me to the palace, until I can judge the truth of your tale.’

Asgard’s eyes widened, and he sank to his knees. ‘No,’ he implored me. ‘Not to the palace. If I go there they will kill me. I have helped you all I can – have mercy on me now. Let me go – give me only an hour to escape, and that will be a fair bargain.’

‘I will decide what is a fair bargain,’ I told him, feeling no pity for this traitor. If he had hoped to win mercy by grovelling, he had misjudged me. ‘Get up.’

But Asgard’s serpent mind had a final draught of venom in it. I must have edged back a little as he rose, and those few inches were all the room he needed to spring forward, crashing into my legs and driving me away. My feet kicked and slipped on the wet stone beneath and I fell, landing heavily on my back. There was a terrible pain in my lungs and throat where the air had been forced out, and by the time I regained my feet Asgard was gone.

I cursed, though it was of little moment. I disbelieved at least half his story, and suspected there was another half as yet untold, but that could wait: doubtless the Watch would have him before nightfall, if the monk did not find him first. For now, the highest imperative was to reach the house in Libos, the house of Vichos the grocer. If the monk truly was there, then even Asgard’s escape would be a small price to have paid.

I climbed back up to the palace and summoned the guard. It was strange to meet Patzinaks, with their short swords and pointed helmets, in the places where Varangians should have been, and my unfamiliarity with them meant further delay until I could explain myself to their captain. He listened to my story with ever greater concern, and rattled off orders to his subordinates as soon as I was finished.

‘We will call out the Watch to find this Asgard, and take a company of men down to the house in Libos.’

I nodded my approval. ‘Good. I will go with you.’

For all that we needed haste it took some time to assemble his men, while I wandered the courtyard and fretted that the monk might even now be fleeing his house, again just a few paces beyond our grasp. I tried to goad the Patzinaks to swiftness, but they treated me with indifference and ignored my pleas. Only when the captain was satisfied that all his men were correctly arrayed and equipped did we march out through the Augusteion.

The crowds in the streets were surging as thick as ever, despite the persistent rain, and a column of a hundred guardsmen in their midst brought constant friction. Feet were trampled, baskets spilled and clothing muddied as the Patzinaks rammed their path through. Sigurd had spoken of their single-minded devotion to the Emperor, but here they seemed like automata, like the lions in the palace whose apparent obedience was entirely free of will or reason. It felt strange, unsettling to be in their company; I would much rather have been with Sigurd and his men. Coarse and wild though the Varangians were, I could at least admire their passion, the unbridled currents which ruled them. There was nothing of that in the unmoving Patzinak faces which followed me.

Nor were they as physically arresting as the giants of Thule. If Sigurd was a bear, then his Patzinak counterpart was more a mule: shorter and stockier, but with a stride I suspected would never falter in a month of hard marches. His arms swung freely at his side, and his head jerked erratically as he walked. He had the face of a man who would prefer to knife his enemy in the back than meet him in a head-on duel, but in a fight, I guessed, he would have the guile and will to wear down mightier opponents. If once he was on the field of battle, I did not think he would leave it lightly.

We passed under the column of Constantine and through the arch of Theodosius, and further along the road to the small square where the Emperor Marcian had found a space for his own monument. No doubt walking in the shadows of the past should have inspired us to rival its legend, but with rain trickling in my ear and the carved figures in the sky almost invisible, it only depressed me. Even the prospect of finding the monk could not inspire me: I had seen too many broken men and women in the last hours for that. And it was hard to lift my mood on the strength of a traitor’s desperate lies.

Past the column of Marcian, as Asgard had said, we turned left. It was a narrow, unpaved street, turned to mire by the rain and with streaming water gouging a new course down its centre. The buildings were of unpainted wood, dark and rotten with all the moisture they had absorbed, tottering over us like drunken giants. We progressed slowly down the road. The Patzinaks had their swords out, alert for any danger, but there was little life to be seen around us, and the only sound was the constant rattle of raindrops on the puddles and tiles. Though marching soldiers were a common enough sight on the Mesi, a hundred of them prowling through a private neighbourhood would sweep every resident, honest or otherwise, out of their path. With nothing to obstruct us, the grocer’s shop was plain to see, and the faded paint on the lintel – just visible through the gloom – gave me the name: Vichos.

‘So far your informant does not lie,’ muttered the captain. ‘But I wonder what he keeps in his shop.’

‘You should array your men around it before we find out. It will do us no good if there are a hundred of us inside the house while the monk jumps from a window and makes his escape.’

The captain gestured to his sergeants to deploy the men as I had suggested, keeping a dozen close about us. The grocer’s shutters and door were fastened shut, as tight as their skewed hinges would admit, but I thought I saw a shadow within moving across one of the cracks. Was he watching us? Did he realise that he had failed, that soon the Emperor’s torturers would be heating their irons before his eyes? Or did he have a plan, another gambit to outwit us? Was he even there?

‘My men are ready,’ the captain told me. Though there was nothing the least secretive about our actions, his voice was hushed. ‘Shall I send for the stone-throwers and ballistas, or do you think we can break this siege ourselves?’

I ignored his sarcasm. ‘This monk commands weapons whose power you could not conceive. Tell your men to beware, for their armour may be no protection.’

The captain shrugged, and fell silent as his men moved towards the building. The sergeant at their head banged on the door but there was no answer.

‘Break it,’ said the captain.

Water was dribbling behind my ear and off my nose; my breaths emerged in ragged clouds, but despite all the misery of cold and damp I felt my heart beating faster, my mind awakening with the hope of success. At the door, the sergeant now had a mattock in his hands, and was swinging it hard against the fractured timbers. The wood did not groan or crack under the impact, for it was too sodden and rotten for that; instead the blow knocked one of the panels clean out of the frame. The sergeant bellowed an order and his men piled forward, driving their boots and shoulders against the flimsy barrier. It did not hold for more than a second. With swords outstretched and shields held before their faces the men charged in, disappearing into the dim room beyond. I heard shouts and the screams of women, the crash and clatter of upturned tables, then the curt staccato of commands.

I could not stay in the street. I ran across to the house, stepped heedlessly over the broken threshold and took in the carnage before me. Two soldiers were kneeling over an elderly man and his wife, pinning them to the ground amid a sea of broken pottery and scattered vegetables. Dried fish lay in pools of olive-oil, while pickled sauces were splashed across the earthen floor. In less than a minute, the soldiers had left barely a single thing in that room untouched.

‘Where is the rest of your company?’ I demanded.

One of the Patzinaks jerked a thumb towards the spindly ladder in the corner. I climbed it two rungs at a time, hoping it would not crack apart under me, and hauled myself through a narrow gap onto the floor above. Frayed curtains had once shielded the room from the stairs, but they were pulled down and bunched on the floor, revealing more carnage: rudimentary pieces of furniture overturned, clothes and keepsakes tipped out of trunks, and even an icon of the holy virgin ripped off the wall. But no Patzinaks.

A second ladder continued the ascent to the topmost level, from where I could hear shouts of triumph and anger. Without another thought I leapt up the ladder, vaulted into the room above, and set my eyes on our new prisoner.

Two Patzinaks were holding his arms, their fingers squeezed tight into his skin as he writhed and struggled between them. He was not dressed as a monk, but in a nondescript woollen tunic which reached almost to his ankles; there was fresh mud on his boots, and dampness on his clothes which suggested he was only recently returned here. His skin was dark and his features hard, set with black eyes which flickered desperately around the room. He was thinner than I had expected; his garments hung from his shoulders like shrouds, and there was a stoop which had not seemed so obvious when I chased him through the snowbound streets. He gave no sign of recognising me.