‘Or the other way around,’ said Halldor.
Again Haraldr felt the awful stirring deep in his entrails. Even now, especially now, he could not tell everything to Halldor or Ulfr or any of his men. It was not only the oaths he had sworn to Olaf and Jarl Rognvald, but he now realized that the Jarl had been agonizingly prescient when he had warned him that his deadly secret could also condemn the men pledged to his keeping. Haraldr would have to deal with Mar as he had dealt with Hakon, in the arena from which the only exit was victory or death.
Haraldr pressed out the piece of parchment prised from Asbjorn’s frozen teeth. The message had been written in runic symbols, obviously drafted by an interpreter who had made several mistakes. Still, the message was clear enough. Haraldr read it aloud again, as if the words were some sort of chant that would induce a state in which a greater truth would be revealed. ‘Haraldr Nordbrikt. The next head is yours. Think well with it while you yet own it. Leave Miklagardr.’
‘Mar would not have needed an interpreter to write the runes,’ offered Halldor.
‘Perhaps the interpreter’s hand is a clever ruse,’ suggested Ulfr.
Haraldr followed his own silent line of reasoning. Why would Mar want Haraldr to leave if he had, as he had said, use for him? But perhaps Mar had butchered Asbjorn Ingvarson simply to unnerve Haraldr, to remind him of the blade he held at Haraldr’s back. If Haraldr could prove that, he would not wait. He would ask Odin to choose between his two Rage-gifted champions. But what proof? A mistaken judgement now would almost certainly doom five hundred men.
Haraldr examined the remains of the red wax seal, again cursing himself for destroying most of it that morning; by the time he realized what he had done, the remaining bits had been flattened on the stone walkway by dozens of feet. Still, the fragment that remained had a recognizable detail, an arm holding a sword. That could easily be Mar, but then many men carried swords – though it was unlikely that monks did. Haraldr fixed every detail of that fragment in his memory. If he saw it again, his sword would be swift.
‘Could it be Mar’s seal?’ asked Ulfr.
‘Why would Mar use his own seal but try to disguise his hand?’ countered Halldor.
‘Or perhaps Joannes is trying to make us think that Mar opposes us.’
Haraldr just shook his head. Each thought was like a box within a box within a box. Were Mar and Joannes themselves merely ruses? Was the whole intent of the play and its grisly aftermath to confuse? Yes, a man could be beaten by ruses alone. To march on the city that day would have been suicidal, but soon Haraldr would have to take some action; they could not fester here indefinitely, eventually to turn on themselves. He considered the bitter irony: by defeating an army of phantoms he had won enough gold to buy a kingdom, but now all the gold in the East could not help him against the phantoms the Romans had set upon him. And the names of these phantoms were fear, confusion and indecision.
How could a garden so beautiful be so empty? she had wondered, but she knew that only the iridescent peacocks watched. The huge leaves, so green that they seemed flaked from giant emeralds, bowed deeply with the moist heat. Her robe was hot, so she had slipped it up to her hips as she sat on the cool marble bench and dangled her legs in the little pool. The peacocks rustled and spread their silky fans. She touched herself, and she was already wet. Then his hand came over hers and held it there. He stroked her gently with her own finger, her spine became fluid, and she rocked her head back and saw the sun, distant and filtered through the emerald canopy. His other hand pulled her robe up and the silk seemed to dissolve over her arms, and she shivered when he touched her hard nipple. She floated on the pool, the water warm.
He tossed her like a doll and she faced him, he standing, she poised, weightless, legs wrapped around him, sensing the searing gristle just beneath her. She lowered herself and he was like a shaft of rock covered with hot unguent, sliding deep. She pressed her milky breasts to his chest, pulled his silky hair, and kissed his soft golden eyebrows, her tongue darting over the hard ridge of the pale pink scar. She rocked and rose, and the birds made a single noise like the note of a golden hymn.
Her scream shattered the glassy leaves and brought the night like a black hammer. The obsidian head of her lover leered, his horrible beak tittering and the nacreous beads of his eyes reaching for her soul. She screamed and screamed again, and her lover’s wings rose up like storm clouds. She awakened.
‘Mistress,’ lilted the eunuch Nicetas. He stood at Maria’s bedside, a silver tray and golden goblet balanced on his slender fingertips. ‘Mistress, would you care for your draught?’ The Mistress of the Robes usually requested this narcotic when she awakened in the night, if she did not have a companion to ease her nocturnal anxieties.
Maria looked around the bedchamber. ‘No, Nicetas, light a lamp.’ Nicetas found the brass lantern on the dresser and lit it with his own oil lamp. ‘Is our Mother awake?’
‘Yes, Mistress.’ The blessed Mother was often awake, since she was so rarely rendered pacific by the attentions of her husband.
Maria put on her beryl-green robe and padded down the marble hallways in her silk slippers. She paused before the eunuchs who guarded the Empress’s ante-chamber and was nodded past. The ante-chamber was brightly lit by the silver candelabra; the floor of opus sectile resembled a meadow of crocus and hyacinth. Two more eunuchs in lacquer-stiff silk greeted her and went softly to the huge ivory doors, incised with the Imperial eagles, and slid them slightly apart. After a moment one eunuch turned and nodded, and Maria crossed the room.
Columns of white-veined Carian marble supported the soaring golden dome of the Empress’s vast bedchamber; the walls were revetted with alternating panels of deep red porphyry and moss-green Thesallian marble. Maria observed that the Empress had expanded her cosmetics factory. Three servants attended tables covered with vials, jars, mortars and pestles, and rows of braziers simmering dozens of pungent-smelling potions.
‘Little daughter!’ cried the Empress Zoe as she swept across the room to greet Maria, her flawless white arms extended, her sheer gauze gown clinging to her full yet youthful form like a windblown cloud. She drew the small clay jar in her hand beneath Maria’s nose – it smelled vaguely of whale oil -and then dabbed with her fingers, gently massaging a cool cream into Maria’s forehead. ‘This is new. It will erase a frown as if an angel had passed over your face.’
Maria acquiesced; was not Zoe’s own unsurpassed pulchritude proof that her endless cosmetic inventions had merit? Still, the Empress’s obsession was desperate, as if she believed her beauty might flee in the night if she did not remain awake concocting ways to preserve it. Of course, Maria acknowledged that she, too, would be as vigilant when she reached the Empress’s age. She hated to think of herself as prune-faced and desiccated, no longer able to contort her lithe spine against the supple body of a young athlete. But perhaps she would not live that long.
Zoe stood back and admired Maria. ‘Already the care has been absorbed from your skin.’ She handed the jar of ointment to a servant. ‘I guess you have heard?’
‘That the Senator and Patrician Andronicus Cametus has been murdered by one of his conquests? It’s not entirely true; the boy’s father was the assailant. He hid in the Senator’s bath.’