Haraldr was taken aback by Joannes’s passion. In spite of his overweening authority, his virtual omniscience, Joannes had always seemed fundamentally limited, a glorified, fantastically efficient servant. To see that he had a vision of Rome was disturbing, like learning that a huge beast was capable of human reason. ‘Yes,’ Haraldr admitted. ‘A Norseman would agree with you. Wealth and power are won at the ends of the earth. If we Norsemen did not believe that, I would probably be some ignorant farmer dreaming of the land beyond the next hill, praying that men do not come in fast ships to burn my crop and steal my wife. If we were not willing to go to the ends of the earth in our open ships, our lands would scarcely give us even that much. But a Norseman does not go a-viking and think nothing of the family and people he has left behind. It would shame a Norseman to win gold in some distant land and come home to a village where even one man lived as the tens of thousands do in the Studion.’
Joannes studied Haraldr’s pensive face. ‘I need you, Hetairarch Haraldr. I have already confessed that. I do not ask you to trust me; I ask you not to condemn me until you know more of my policies. Let me offer this as a gesture of good faith, to you and to those wretches, to whose plaints I am not entirely immune. There is nothing here for me to give them.’ Joannes fanned his torch through the empty vault. ’However, I have resources of my own – acquired, I might add, by dint of unceasing labour compounded by unremitting frugality. From my own resources I will build a charity hospital in the Studion, the largest and the finest the world has yet seen. I ask that you do nothing in return save wait for me to make this gesture, and to render judgement on me when you know more of Rome and my policies. If then we are still enemies, I will consider you a worthy adversary.’
‘And I would consider you worthy of destroying as well, Orphanotrophus. The next time we speak, I will expect to hear of your remarkable progress in the construction of this hospital.’
Joannes nodded, the great hollows of his face suddenly seeming more like wells of weariness then pits of evil.
‘Monastery! Uncle, you know that the word alone is anathema to me! Look, my hands are trembling!’
Michael placed his palsied hands straight out and the beautiful dappled Arabian he had been examining whinnied as if verifying his master’s claim. ‘Oh, damn me, I have disturbed Phaethon.’ Michael turned and stroked the horse’s probing nose. ‘And I have shouted at you, my precious uncle!’ Michael clasped Constantine’s shoulders warmly. ‘I am certain your decision was judicious, Uncle. It is simply that with each week that passes, I feel my time in the world of … of pleasure running out. I hate to think I will never see a horse run again unless it is some mangy mule sent to fetch one of my eremite brothers.’
‘Nephew, trust in me. Remember, I have managed the second city of the world and the affairs of a vast and prosperous theme. I can certainly manage to make a profit on the sale of this monastery’s property. In any event, I will not require a contribution from your purse. I have scraped together the requisite solidi and already settled with the former owner.’
‘Do you think your purchase will quite enrage Joannes?’
‘It may discomfit him more than that, Nephew. Constantine went on to describe the letters of Father Abbot Giorgios. Michael listened so raptly that he even batted Phaethon’s nose when the horse nudged him. When Constantine had finished, Michael embraced him. ‘Oh, Uncle, for the first time since our Emperor returned from the dead I have hope. When can we see the seraphim-sent correspondences of this Father Abbot Giorgios?’
‘I have already dispatched a ship and porters to pack and deliver the items. I warn you that many tedious weeks of sifting through these documents await us.’
‘Uncle, you must remember that I am also not without certain qualities of industry when the rewards are sufficient. Until we find the treasure we are seeking amid this abbot’s dross, I will display a dedication to the task that would make the stylite upon a column question the vehemence of his own commitment.’ Michael took Constantine’s arm and escorted him away from Phaethon’s stall without even a farewell to the neighing horse.
‘This is the oldest part of this garden,’ said Maria. She stepped through a bed of metallic-orange marigolds and entered a dark sycamore bower. The evaporation from the trees sprayed the baked, late-afternoon air with a sweet, cooling mist. ‘We can sit there.’ She pointed to an almost sarcophagus-like bench; the thick marble base was decorated with marble carvings partially visible through clutching tendrils of ivy. A statue of a woman, her body stiff and geometric but with a soft graceful face and long braids gently falling over her shoulders, faced the bench from the middle of a small pool rimmed with crumbling granite bricks.
The cold touch of the stone bench was refreshing. ‘It is not Greek,’ said Haraldr, meeting the eternal gaze of the statue. ‘But it is not in the fashion of Egypt, either.’
‘I think it is Greek, at a time when the sculptors of Athens borrowed from the ancients of Egypt. Before they learned to surpass them. I am not certain. Anna would know.’
‘Is Anna well?’
‘I think she will soon be betrothed. To an officer of the Scholae. He is a good man, both courageous and intelligent enough not to grovel before her father.’ Maria turned her head suddenly, as if just noticing something. ‘You are not sorry, are you?’
‘No, I am happy that she has found someone worthy of her.’ Haraldr frowned at the stone face. ‘But I feel that she has taken a part of me.’
‘And you have taken a part of her.’
‘Yes. That seems to be the way of life, endless partings where something is always taken and something is always left behind. I wonder if at the end of that long road anything remains of ourselves.’
‘Perhaps the soul we began with is not the soul we are destined to end with. The destiny of the soul is immutable, but the soul itself is constantly transformed.’
‘Or perhaps the same soul is destined to wear many disguises. That is the way Odin more than once tricked fate.’
‘Then it is important to know when the soul has been transformed, or when it merely masquerades.’
Haraldr fell silent and watched a mayfly skim over the surface of the pool. A shout floated distantly from the polo field. Had his soul merely deceived him, and her soul fooled her? That was the question that stood between them as they struggled to reach each other again.
At length Maria whispered into the rustling silence. ‘Perhaps that is the cruelty of fate, that until the end we do not know if our own soul was true, or merely lied to us from behind its mask.’
‘Might it not also be the cruelty of death that we will never know?’
Maria pulled her arms around her silken waist, as against a chill. ‘I pray to the Holy Mother that at death we will at least have the comfort of that revelation.’
‘I pray that when fate takes me, I will leave enough of my soul in another breast to know that I will live on until the day all souls are taken.’
‘You know that will be true. Look at the souls who already live in your breast.’
‘Yes. My father. My brother. Jarl Rognvald.’ He could not say the other name.
‘You are fortunate. One of the souls who lives in my breast only stabs at my heart.’ Haraldr sensed that he would be a fool to presume that he was the cause of her pain. He waited. Maria moved her white silk slipper gently over the tops of the tall, slightly wilted grass. A sulphur-yellow butterfly drifted erratically through the bower and out into the bright sunlight. The small crowd at the nearby polo field acclaimed some feat of horsemanship with a muffled applause.