As far as the other so-called danger was concerned, why worry? He was now the trusted servant of a demigod, out on the Lord’s good business for his holy master. Ergodotes flipped a copper coin at the stable boy, strolled behind the inn, and identified the entrance to which he had been directed.
The house behind the inn was a curious ruin, perhaps an old chapel of which only the basement remained; the plaster was completely peeled off, and only the bare bricks, set with thick courses of crumbling mortar, remained. The wooden roof stuck on top of this decaying foundation was of much more recent vintage than the brick walls but was not in considerably better condition. The door was solid and new, though, sturdy oak studded with iron braces and nails. Ergodotes knocked three times, waited, then knocked once.
Ergodotes thought he would collapse from the stench when the door was opened; he assumed the occupant must live atop a sewer or never discarded his own slops. And the shrieking and howling quite unnerved him.
‘Come in before the demons snatch you!’ The man inside chortled. He was short, fantastically obese, with a head as smooth and round as a marble sphere; this sphere pivoted back and forth on his neck as if run by some sort of clockwork mechanism. ‘Come in here!’ The fat man chortled again, as if even his most mundane pronouncement were a source of great mirth. He waddled through the small dark vestibule of the dwelling, his stained tunic out before his stupendous belly like the sail of a Genoese merchantman.
The main room resembled the factory of a chemist or pharmacologist, a complex jumble of vials, jars, bowls, mortars and pestles, with all sorts of dried and fresh leaves, berries, chunks of rock and dried mushrooms scattered among the utensils. Jars of reptiles stood in rows against one wall, and against the opposite wall were wicker cages full of howling monkeys.
‘Well, you knew the street, you knew the knock, you knew this was me, because who else would be here!’ The fat man chortled yet again. He needed to squat only about a palm’s width in order to seat his amorphous rump upon a backless chair. ‘Let’s hear who you are and what you want!’
Ergodotes explained his mission. When he had finished, the fat man whistled a tune for some time, his head swivelling periodically. ‘That’s a big one,’ he finally said, for the first time looking crestfallen. ‘But I’d like to add him to my collection, you’re certain I would!’ He laughed wildly and the monkeys went into virtual hysterics in response. ‘When did you say you’d bring the money!’
Ergodotes finalized the details, getting a lengthy, chuckling discussion of how the poison would work and how his ‘specialist’ would deliver it to the ‘acquisition’.
‘One thing,’ asked Ergodotes when he was satisfied that everything else had been taken care of. ‘How do we stop if we must change our plans?’
‘You can’t do that!’ said the fat man, howling as if it were the funniest thing he had said all night.
‘Provocations,’ said Haraldr. ‘Four incidents last night, yours, and two others already tonight. He looked at Ulfr searchingly. ‘There is a plan here.’
‘Well, they’re getting nowhere,’ said Ulfr. ‘Was anyone hurt tonight, other than the ache in Askil’s head?’
‘Hedin had his leg cut,’ said Haraldr. ‘That’s what concerns me, that there is no apparent reason for these quarrels. Ulfr, the Studion is like no place we have ever known. The palace, for all its splendour and vastness, is like a court in the north, only more complex. The Studion is like a dense, almost impenetrable forest, with its own laws, its own warnings, its various hidden lives that can suddenly appear to challenge one’s own.’ He pointed down the street at a vista of towering, brutely simple brick buildings, ramshackle balconies, reeking lanes, and wretches sleeping on the streets. ‘They are doing something out there, and we don’t know what. But we are certainly part of it.’
The Caesar looked out on his empire; a doe loped into a clearing and then darted back into the thick brush. On the Golden Horn, the sails were like bits of coloured paper. Michael turned away from the window.
‘When will he do it?’
‘He says tomorrow night,’ replied Ergodotes. ‘He did not think it would be difficult to arrange, since I had given him most of the information he needed.’
Michael recoiled from the sharp pain in his stomach. Was he moving too precipitously? Did he need more time to contemplate, to prepare? Then he remembered – no, felt, in his belly, almost as if a woman had grasped his manhood -that moment in the Hagia Sophia, the moment that had transfigured him, the moment that seemed like a thousand times the ecstasy of an ejaculation, a thousand thousand times more than the exhilaration of a wager won, a sensation that wrapped the soul like the arms and legs of Helen, who drove the strong-greaved Achaians across the water to Troy. That sensation would never release him: The beauty, the light, the chords of pure sound, the . . . godliness. God. Hadn’t there been a moment, as the chants of Rome’s dignitaries rose to beseech the Dome of Heaven, when the Pantocrator had answered? Yes. Yes. There truly had been. Only if a man had been there could he know this, even believe this, and how many men had ever stood where he had stood that day? The Pantocrator already moved His Caesar’s hand, was not that clear? Yes. The Caesar could not move fast enough now; had not God created all of this in scant days? And as God was present at His creation, so the Caesar would need to be there when his creation began. He was Caesar, heir to the lords of both the old and new Romes. He would look in the dying eyes of the man who denied him his indescribable passion, his eternity, his soul of pure light, and damn him to the tomb where the voices of the adoring multitude were for ever silent.
‘Ergodotes,’ said Michael, ‘tell the centurion of my guard that I am to be escorted into the city tomorrow.’
‘Yes, Majesty.’ Ergodotes withdrew with his hands crossed over his breast. He had reached the door before Michael remembered, with a jolt, the detail he had neglected.
‘Ergodotes,’ he whispered, coming close, ‘where will it be?’
Ergodotes stepped back in the room, closed the door, and told his Caesar the secret.
The new moon floated over the Studion, her full, lustrous serenity a mockery of the squalid world below. The bonfire had been set at a crossroads, and the flames cast an orange glow on the surrounding facades and down the four arms of the streets, turning the intersection into a fiery crucifix. The young man had stripped off his tunic and stood in a dirty loincloth, his bare buttocks tensed. He let out a whoop and dashed towards the pyre of burning boards and branches. Just when it seemed he would plunge into the flames, he lifted, throwing his arms skywards and pulling his legs up. He hurtled through the raging tongues and rolled into a ball when he landed on the other side. After he had popped back to his feet he was given a drink of wine from a clay jar; his friends pounded his back and two young girls threw their arms around him and kissed him. The crowd cheered and another young man stripped off his tunic and prepared to take his leap.
‘I don’t like it,’ said Haraldr.
‘I don’t like anything in this Studion,’ said Ulfr, ‘but of all I have seen, this least offends the gods. At least there is some joy in this. They say it is an old pagan custom, to leap over the fires on the new moon.’
Haraldr looked down the long blocks of misery. Another fire blazed at an intersection five blocks away. ‘Look at these,’ he said, pointing to two ponderous, listing, enclosed wooden balconies that met over the street and were saved from collapse only by their mutual buttressing. ‘This is why elsewhere in the city the Logothete enforces the separation of balconies by at least four fathoms. Here, one spark could turn the entire Studion into a pyre.’
‘Perhaps that is why the regulations are not enforced here,’ said Ulfr.