‘Better stay back, boy. If they see us together, they’ll want us to take them to the Chalke Gate tonight.’
The Blue Star tugged on Haraldr’s heavy woollen cloak, pulling him back into the narrow, refuse-glutted alley. Her towering, bearded son stood protectively behind her.
Haraldr moved back but stuck his head around the ragged brick corner of the tenement. At the street corner to his left a bonfire sputtered against the cold drizzle. A crowd of as many as several hundred, anonymous and virtually asexual in their tattered brown tunics, had gathered around the blaze, but not for warmth. The sound was a continuous murmur of discussion punctuated by periodic outbursts. They were asking themselves one question: who would rule them? And they were offering themselves the answer that had brought them into the streets: Joannes. The name was a staccato epithet spat forth in harsh punctuation to the general anxiety. Occasionally wooden staffs jutted into the air.
‘It’s building, boy,’ said the Blue Star. ‘Joannes bought himself three days’ grace with that hospital. But if another night goes by without the purple-born proclaiming her husband’s successor, these people are going to know that Joannes intends to keep the Imperial Diadem for himself. When they realize that, one hospital isn’t going to keep them from going up on those hills. And then it won’t be just the Studion that will burn.’
Haraldr drew his head back and turned to the Blue Star. He had seen at least two dozen street-corner gatherings like this on his way into the Studion; he wasn’t certain these people would wait until tomorrow night. His own internal debate continued. Why not let loose this collective rage, use his Grand Hetairia to hold the Imperial Taghmata in check, and purge Rome of Joannes and his Dhynatoi accomplices? But there were several reasons why not. Foremost, with the traitor Mar and his men in exile and the terrible attrition of his own pledge-men in the Bulgarian campaign, he had one third the strength he had been able to count on the last time he had considered this equation. And the last time he had not had an opportunity to see his ally mustered for battle. He looked at the pathetic wretches with their staves and stones and realized how many of these innocents would be slaughtered.
‘What will you do, boy?’
Haraldr gave fate a fool’s reply, but to honour the only answer he could. ‘If Joannes crowns himself Emperor, the Grand Hetairia under my command will besiege him in the Hagia Sophia and demand that he relinquish the Imperial Diadem. I think we will be joined by many factions of the Imperial administration.’ And we will eventually be defeated and massacred by the Imperial Taghmata, he silently concluded. ‘It is possible,’ he offered with more hope than proof, ‘that Joannes’s delay is due to genuine grief. I had never believed Joannes capable of any love except power, and yet I believe he truly loved his brother. In some strange way his brother seems to have been the repository of all the love and kindness that had otherwise been driven from Joannes’s breast.’
‘That love is now buried,’ said the Blue Star, her irony ominous. She made a smacking sound with her lips. ‘But it is possible he will offer this Caesar up to conceal his own ambitions. Will you swear your loyalty to this Caesar?’
‘Yes, presuming that the Empress will endorse him.’ That, too, was in doubt. Zoe herself had told Haraldr that she considered the Caesar to be too weak to challenge Joannes. ‘I think it is to the benefit of both Rome and the Studion to give this Caesar an opportunity to oppose his uncle, and to serve his purple-born Empress and her people. I have followed the Caesar’s rise more closely than many, and I see a much more capable man than others credit him.’ Haraldr again was struck by the parallel between himself and Michael Kalaphates, how they had both been accused of lacking ambition, and how fate had given them both an opportunity to prove otherwise.
‘Capable, perhaps. But capable of good or ill, boy?’
That was the question Haraldr had, with no little foreboding, just asked himself. What was it? That day on the ambo in the Hagia Sophia, when their eyes had met? ‘If he is capable of good, I will serve him until he can serve the people of the Studion. And then I will return to my people. If he is capable only of evil, I will consider him another account I must settle before I can leave Rome.’
The Blue Star nodded approvingly. ‘If Joannes crowns the Caesar, we will wait and see what he is prepared to render unto the Studion. But look for yourself, boy. Their patience is growing short.’ The Blue Star stuck her pudgy face round the corner. Her breathing fogged the cold, misty air. She turned back to Haraldr and looked up at him, her eyes gleaming with the power of the other Rome, the Rome that did not stroll silk-frocked through marble palaces. ‘These people have accounts to be settled, too, boy.’
‘This is not tolerable!’ shouted Michael Kalaphates, Caesar of Rome. ‘I am led to understand that the burial has already taken place and that my uncle and I have not even been granted the courtesy of viewing the mortal container of our relative and sovereign! I don’t think you understand the position you find yourself in, Chamberlain! You are inflaming the brow that will soon be illuminated by the Imperial Diadem!’ The chamberlain bowed smoothly. ‘I am to tell you that the Orphanotrophus Joannes will shortly join you. He is on his way.’ He crossed his hands over his breast and withdrew.
‘The Orphanotrophus will now deign to join us, now that he has concluded the affairs of state!’ Michael’s face was brilliant red, his eyes like glass. ‘Who is the heir here, Uncle? Who will soon receive the crown that rules over humankind?’
Constantine grasped Michael’s shoulders in his surprisingly powerful hands. ‘Nephew! Nephew! Master yourself!’ Michael seemed jolted by his uncle’s admonishment, and his eyes snapped back into focus as if he had just emerged from one of Abelas’s trances. ‘I am sorry, Uncle. I quite forgot myself.’
‘Listen to me, Nephew,’ said Constantine with a firmness and authority that his voice had never had before; it was as if the Imperial Diadem had in fact been passed from the late Emperor’s head to his. ‘We haven’t much time. Remember this when Joannes arrives: he is the Emperor now. If you let that thought leave your head, you will find your head leaving your body.’
‘But what of our secret, Uncle? Isn’t this the time--’
‘Right now our secret is but an ingot awaiting the goldsmith’s hammer. We have many laborious steps ahead of us before that lump of metal can be shaped to glorious effect. This is the first step in that process of transformation.’
Michael looked at his uncle, his face as stricken with confusion as that of a schoolboy who understands nothing of what his master has told him but who also knows that the lash will be at his back if he does not commit it to memory. ‘Yes, Uncle, I trust you. You know that I will follow in your steps as obediently as if the Christ himself were walking before me.’ He embraced Constantine. ‘Thank you for saving me, Uncle. I will find some way to reward you.’
The chamberlain arrived a moment later. ‘The Orphanotrophus,’ he announced. Joannes swept into the room, his distorted features inscrutable. Michael watched in rapt astonishment as Constantine dived to his knees before his brother and clutched his legs and smothered his thighs with kisses. He took the cue and himself fell to his knees and held out his hands to Joannes. The Orphanotrophus’s eyes seemed to devour this adulation; it was as if fires were slowly kindling within the dark sockets.
‘Brother. Nephew.’ Joannes gestured for them to rise.
‘Rome is now vested in our hands, and yet we cannot rule her without the generous endowment of our bereaved purple-born Empress.’ He turned to Michael. ‘Nephew, go to her, succour her in her grief. Remind her of the pledges she has made to her adoptive son, and pledge yourself to her again with your hand upon the Holy Relics. Beg her to sponsor you in your coronation as Emperor. And ask her to proclaim immediately her sponsorship to her people.’