‘Haraldr Nordbrikt, Slayer of Saracens, to whom brilliant Achilleus and resourceful Odysseus and indeed the entire host of strong-greaved Achaians are but phantom mists seared to oblivion in the withering sunburst of your fame! Rise up, O former denizens of Olympus, a man lives among us who would be our successor to your Heracles! Rise up, O Christendom, embrace your new champion! Rise up, O ye firmament that doth illuminate our flickering lives. A new beacon is set among you!’
Euthymius advanced, fell to the floor, and threw his arms around Haraldr’s new leather boots. ‘Haraldr Nordbrikt, I greet you with as much felicity as can surmount the towering edifice of reverence already constructed to your immortal memory!’
Haraldr understood only a fragment of this; he had been told of Odysseus and Achilleus and Heracles, heroes of the ancient Greeks, and he knew the terms for ghosts and sun. But he hardly needed a complete translation to understand what a Euthymius was; he had finally met a Roman skald.
‘Tell him I thank him for his verses,’ Haraldr told Marmot-Man, ‘Unfortunately I have both Ulfr and Thorfinn the Otter to serve me in the role of skald, and possibly Grettir before too long. Besides, from the look of him, even now I could not afford his upkeep. But tell him his verses would surely please Odin, our patron of poets.’
‘No, no, Haraldr Nordbrikt, this is the Euthymius, as he urges me to tell you, “impresario of entertainments, husbander of amusements, commander of an army of mirth”. He offers you one of his amusements, celebrated in the Hippodrome and throughout the Empire. Theatre. Dance. Song. Comedy. Drama. All specially created for the entertainment of you and your men. Believe me, Haraldr Nordbrikt, this is an honour you will enjoy beyond all others!’
‘I will be all right, Nicetas.’ Maria whisked her hands gracefully at the concerned-looking eunuch. He bowed and retreated into the villa.
Maria turned to Giorgios. ‘How did you find me?’
Giorgios’s face was flushed from his run up the flight of marble steps, and contorted with pain. ‘I followed the Imperial galley. I thought you might be on it.’ He did not need to remind her that he had been trying to see her for weeks, and that her servants and guards had rebuffed every attempt.
‘This is my villa,’ Maria said. She stood on the portico with her arms folded beneath her breasts, as if defending it. Behind her, the great cities on either shore of the Bosporus were framed by scudding rain clouds and metal-hued water; her villa was on the Asian side, to the north of Chrysopolis. ‘I don’t want you here.’
Giorgios’s brown eyes were wet with confusion and sincerity. ‘I can’t play this game any longer. I am useless without you. You must . . . please.’
Maria stepped towards him, her jaw tensed. ‘I know more amusing games. This is not love play, little boy. I have refused to see you because I do not want to see you.’
Giorgios swallowed as if preparing to attempt some athletic feat. ‘You said you loved me. The things we have done . . .’
‘Do you think you are the only man I have done those things with? You saw me do some of them with Alex. I despised him. It would make you sick if you knew some of the men I have been a whore to, and what I have asked them to do to me. And what I have done to them.’
Giorgios sprang forward, seized her arms, and shook her like a doll for a moment. When he stopped, his lower lip quivered. ‘Why did you ever say you loved me? You must despise me too.’
‘I did love you.’
‘Then why. . . ?’
‘Why do I no longer love you?’ she asked rhetorically. ‘You were only beautiful when I hurt you. You only had life when I caused you pain. I could no longer go on creating you anew each time.’ Maria’s eyes were cast down, and her tone was inexpressibly melancholy. ‘I realized I can only love a man whose pain I do not have to provide. A man bereaved in a way I cannot understand, so that I must enter him when he enters me and find the thorn that has impaled his soul. In you I could only find myself.’ Her pearl-like teeth nibbled at her wine-dark lower lip. ‘And I am empty. I am as cold and dark as the deepest abyss.’
‘There is another man?’ Giorgios sounded curiously hopeful, as if he could deal with that eventuality. It was the utter frigidity of her demeanour that baffled and frightened him.
‘There is no one. You were the last man in my bed. If I could both love you and be kind to you, I would love you still.’
Giorgios’s mouth trembled with anguish. He squeezed her shoulders gently, and when he closed his eyes, tears spilled to his cheeks. Clutching his forearms, she removed his hands from her shoulders. ‘Farewell, Giorgios.’
An awful, muffled keening came from Giorgios’s throat and he fell to his knees. The tip of his bronze scabbard clattered on the marble paving stones. He wrenched his sword free and with trembling arms held it to his own throat. ‘I want you to see the wound in my heart,’ he sobbed. ‘I want you to see the proof of my pain!’ His neck corded against the sheer, polished steel.
Maria’s eyes were uninterested, seemingly dulled by the baleful pigmentation of the Bosporus. ‘I am cold, Giorgios. I am going inside. Please go before I call for my guards.’
She walked swiftly past Giorgios and disappeared into the pillared entrance. After a moment Giorgios lowered his sword and sobbed quietly, still on his knees. He finally left an hour after dark.
Euthymius’s little army of mirth put the finishing touches on their courtyard theatre; the stage they had erected, with its gilded proscenium and brocaded curtains, was as splendid as the palace of a Norse king. Neither Haraldr nor any of his men could divine the use of the rest of the apparatus this ‘impresario’ had assembled, but the Varangians, who had already littered the courtyard with empty kegs, jars and wineskins, were loudly speculating on the possibilities offered by the dozens of variously costumed, lithe young women – all painted nearly as brightly as Euthymius himself- who scurried about, trilled brief notes, or performed agile exercises. Haraldr had nearly choked when Marmot-Man had first proposed Euthymius’s ‘expenses and honorarium – the rest of his costs are an offering, a veritable human sacrifice, to the Herculean demigod, the Slayer of Saracens, and his dauntless band of incorruptible Christian heroes.’ But now, even before this ‘amusement’ had begun, Haraldr knew that the gold spent would be more than recaptured in the heightened spirit of his men.
The performance opened with an explosion of two dozen male and female athletes, clad only in loincloths spangled with shiny, rainbow-coloured metal bits, who could spin like tops, roll like hoops, and whirl through the air like throwing axes; eventually they built a human tower crowned with the bare-breasted women. Then came dogs that dressed and walked as men; monkeys that raced into the audience and plucked coins from men’s purses, then danced in celebration; a lion whose roar seemed to shake the walls, then a lion with stripes; a striped horse with a neck so long, it seemed certain he would topple over; and finally an incredible beast with a back that reached to the second-storey balcony, legs shaped exactly like tree trunks, and most wondrous of all, a snout as long as a man was tall that could also pluck coins from the audience (leading Halldor to ask if there was any living creature in Constantinople that could not find a man’s purse).
Then came the truly extraordinary portion of the amusement, if indeed this was an amusement at all. It was well past midnight, the Varangians roaring with wine and lust, when a chorus trilled and the stage was momentarily screened. The brocade curtains parted, and the music, provided by a portable pipe organ, droned dramatically.
‘I’ll draw the curtain! You find Euthymius!’ Haraldr shouted to Halldor. Wearing purple brocade, a dark, full beard, and an elaborate sparkling diadem, the first actor was clearly a representation of the Emperor. Haraldr’s heart screamed with alarm as he rushed to the stage. Was this a plot to involve them in a treason? Clever, indeed!