Maria’s lips flickered with the barest discernible taunt. Haraldr wondered if his chest would explode with excitement. She remembered him! Her demeanour now was the ruse. Haraldr closed his eyes as an ancient wind swept his mind. Odin was ready to speak.
‘Forgive my insolent silence, my Blessed Mother. I can only say that since coming among the Romans I have seen many wonders that have brought comment spontaneously to my tongue. Your Imperial Majesty is the first such wonder to deprive me entirely of the faculty for speech.’
The Empress’s wine-red lips parted and her pearl teeth sparkled in a display of glee. She sat up and pulled her arms about her knees; her long, elegant white fingers stroked the raised golden-eagle medallions on her silk robe. Maria shifted to place her elbow on a thick maroon cushion. She cast her eyes down.
Zoe signalled with the merest nod, and a white-robed eunuch passed among the couches with silver goblets on a silver tray. The wine was strong and aromatic and seemed to change flavours in Haraldr’s mouth, ending its passage with a faint sweetness that dissolved on his tongue. A drink for the gods, he thought. He was seduced by the heady vapours and the down and silk that wrapped him up.
‘What place in Thule do you come from . . . Har-aldr?’ Zoe successfully feigned interest in her own question.
‘Norway.’
Zoe nodded. ‘Nor-way. And before you earned honour among the Romans, what were you?’
Haraldr was instantly cold, but almost as quickly he realised that the Empress was asking one question only to get to another. ‘I was a land man at the court of the Great Prince Yaroslav.’
Maria’s laugh was as harsh as breaking glass. She spoke several sentences to Zoe; Haraldr made out the word servant three times. He was thought a servant’s servant; apparently the Roman’s were not impressed with the Great Prince, and certainly not with his former toll collector. The blood pounded in Haraldr’s ears.
More wine was served. Zoe spoke between sips. ‘I have heard such tales of you Tauro-Scythians. Is it true that one man may have many wives?’
Haraldr flushed with wine and embarrassment. He tried to shift his body but the downy cushioning gave way, trapping him as if he were struggling in a spider’s web. ‘Not for those who believe in Kris--Christ. Pagans, perhaps.’
Zoe’s eyes bored away with insistent insincerity. ‘Yes. I have seen some of you who wear amulets dedicated to a heathen god. He is a bull?’
Haraldr was confused for a moment. Then he understood. Many Norse pagans wore the hammer of Thor, while the Greek word for bull was the similar-sounding tauros. He explained to the Empress.
Zoe tired of these preliminaries. She lowered her voice to a gentle growl. ‘So. I have heard that followers of this Thor-god will take a woman and have intercourse with her before an entire multitude. A man will spread his harlot’s haunches atop him even as he sits playing dice with his friends.’
Haraldr’s face was singed with embarrassment. Was the Empress testing his modesty? Then he remembered the scene in the play, how she had rolled on the floor with her lover. And Hakon had called her a ‘bitch-whore’.
Maria again directed an aside to Zoe. Haraldr could tell she made an obscene jibe; he did not know many of the words except donkey. He looked sharply at Maria. Who was she but a presumptuous lady-in-waiting, while he was rightful King of Norway. Odin filled his throat with a fate-tempting voice; hadn’t the Empress asked for audacity? ‘I am certain, your Imperial Majesty, that were a Roman to observe our love-making, he would not find it different from the habits he is accustomed to. Unless, of course, his own practices were as curious as those you have described.’
Zoe looked slyly at Maria, whose cheeks became slightly tinted. The barbaros had a certain deftness, Zoe observed to herself; by making his hypothetical Roman a man, he had avoided a direct aspersion to the Imperial Dignity. In the manner one should treat a lover found more skilled than one had expected, it was time to lead this Haraldr on to more . . . intriguing postures. ‘Maria says you are a harbinger of our destruction. I have often wondered why so many of my children have an inordinate fear of you fair-hairs. Of course, your role in casting us into the abyss has long been chronicled in The Life of St Andrew the Fool, and in our time this sagacious oracle seems to be present at every meeting of the Sacrum Consistorum – though God accepted the saint’s worthy soul half a millennium ago. However, since you are of the fair-haired race and St Andrew was not, might we know if you are an agent of such sabotage?’
Haraldr’s heart seemed to constrict involuntarily at this line of questioning, but he was certain that his identity was not what the Empress wanted to know. What was she getting at? He cautioned himself that this Imperial beauty was a thorn-girt rose; her question had ridiculed both him and Maria and apparently also disparaged the policies of Imperial officials, all to an end that was no more discernible than a headland lost in a fog.
Answer soberly, Haraldr instructed himself; you have permitted yourself enough recklessness for the evening. ‘It is true. If the Empire of the Romans turned against my Father the Emperor and my Empress Mother, I would be the agent of the Romans’ destruction.’
Maria spoke to Zoe, waving her hand dismissively; Haraldr recognized the words serpent and flatterer. Haraldr felt as if she had physically slapped him; his bed and his heart would be empty tonight. It saddened him to think that his fantasy love had been inspired by such an astringent reality.
Zoe sipped with both hands on her goblet, as if she were a priest consuming the blood of Christ. ‘I understand that you have made yourself most favourably known to my husband’s brother.’ Zoe’s voice was devoid of inflection, neither innocent nor accusing.
Haraldr made no attempt to conceal the shock of realization. Of course! The mouth, the eyes. One face a grotesque inflation of the other, and yet . . . Brothers! That was why the Emperor had appeared to be a mere puppet of Joannes; more likely his Imperial Majesty, who lacked none of the aptitudes for leadership, simply valued the advice of his older brother. It explained so much.
‘The Orphanotrophus Joannes,’ prompted Zoe, dismayed by the barbaros’s crude disingenuousness in attempting to conceal the liaison. Surely he was more skilled than this.
‘Yes . . . Joannes,’ said Haraldr, recovering. ‘He had suggested I not boast of the honour he has paid me. Yes, he indeed offers me the inestimable gift of his guidance.’
‘But of course. Our Orphanotrophus guides all of our earthly fortunes much as Christ the Pantocrator guides our immortal souls. He has the hands to mould whatever he will with the clay of our beings.’
Maria spoke sharply. Something about hands too big and statues lacking in grace; Haraldr would remember to ask Gregory later. Then he was chilled to the core despite the swaddling warmth of the down cushions. Kristr! Maria hated Joannes. There had been no doubt of her enmity that night at Nicephorus Argyrus’s. Could the Empress share this animosity? Had there not been a strange timbre to her voice when she had spoken of him? Cold, stormy, mortally dangerous, these Roman waters were indeed.
Zoe looked keenly at Haraldr. She was certain that this interpreter was good, and that the barbaros was really almost a semi-barbaros with a fair command of Greek already. And yet he had betrayed nothing when she had mentioned sabotage, and had stumbled with witless guile over her mention of the grotesque monk. He was either an innocent or a dissimulator worthy of Odysseus, an actor to make the entire Hippodrome weep. Either way he would be useful. But before she took this . . . seduction further, she would need to know which. She signalled Symeon to escort her guests out, and spoke in parting.