Anatellon got up and slid the doors open; he spoke briefly to the eunuch waiting in the hall. By the time he returned to his seat, a young woman had entered the room. She was not much taller than a girl but fully developed in the breasts and hips; she had heavy, sensual lips and a slight dusk to her skin.
‘Tell these eminences what happened, Flower.’
‘Yes.’ Flower looked at the carpet; there was a soft green tint to her eyes. Her wavy hair, streaked with light and dark brown tufts, hung freely over her shoulders. ‘You see, I had intended to take this man to another booth, Daria’s, because the previous guest had disturbed mine.’ Flower made a comical churning motion with her arms to indicate that the ‘guest’ had apparently vomited. ‘This man insisted that I take him to my booth. The third booth on the right.’ Flower shrugged. ‘Why not? I decided. Men make strange requests. So. I removed the filthy bedding and he reclined himself on the bare mattress. I had begun to unveil myself in the manner most men find provocative when he told me to turn away. So. I uncovered myself and found him still fully clothed, with his arm reaching beneath the mattress. “Turn away,” he said quickly, “modesty commands me to ask you to turn away until I have become accustomed to my nakedness.” ‘ Flower narrowed her eyes. ‘What? I have never heard this before. This is all becoming more curious than I can bear. So. I pretended to hide my eyes, but I looked at him through my hair like this, and as I spied, I saw him reach beneath the mattress again, and this time I discovered the cause of his modesty. From beneath the mattress he miraculously produced a great fat wallet. I could see it sag from the weight of the coins. He concealed it within his clothing, which he then removed. Then, of course, he asked me to join him and proceeded in the manner of men.’
Haraldr shook his head. Gabras, the milk-mouthed little swine. ‘Do you have any idea who this excessively modest . . . guest was?’
‘Yes, Manglavite,’ said Anatellon. ‘Having been advised by Flower of these further coincidences, I made inquiries among my clientele. The man is called the Physician. Not because he dispenses palliatives, purgatives, and healing draughts, but because he can so quickly alleviate all of the pain and suffering that this life brings upon us.’ Anatellon made a slashing motion across his throat.
‘Where would two ailing Norsemen find this apothecary?’ asked Mar.
‘Studion,’ said Anatellon ominously.
‘Studion.’ Mar’s inflection was the opposite of Anatellon’s. He said the word as if it were some sort of rare gem.
The oil lamps cast a yellowish light over the stacks of documents, making them seem ancient, archival. Joannes rubbed the deep sockets of his eyes, wishing that these papers did indeed reflect the great flow of history and not merely the fragile aspirations of a single man whose life span would be so evanescent, so insignificant against the great firmament of time. Unless. Yes. Here, surrounding him, in these figures, this legislation, these tax codifications, were the dimensions of his immortality. Yes. Just as the builders of the great Hagia Sophia had proceeded from mere wooden models to an edifice that would reign through the millennia until the Last Trumpet blew, then so these papers were the architect’s vision of the great edifice to his memory. And yet like the ever-remembered architects of the Mother Church, he needed a builder, a back to hoist the bricks and place them within the exacting strictures of his schemata. Yes, he had thought he had selected his builder well, a back broad and noble. But now that back was bowed, afflicted; each day it carried fewer and fewer bricks to the Heaven-scraping vaults. Each day his builder fell behind the schedule that had to be kept,
Joannes looked at papers on his writing table, Brilliant. This series of novels – a novel was a new law mandated by the Emperor – would generate enough tax revenues to again fill even the great Bulgar-Slayer’s vast underground treasuries, revenues enough to send armies and fleets to the Pillars of Heracles again, to regain Alexandria and Aleppo and bring Venice and Genoa to their knees, to again reap the wealth of the Tigris and the Euphrates, to humble the caliphates and the Bulgars and exterminate the Scyths from the face of the earth. The world as the Pantocrator had enjoined them it should be. And it was already here, in this beautiful paper construction! The numbers could not lie! Let the Sophists in their impotent bureaux invoke their mincing reservations about ‘an overburdened collection apparatus’, let the hand-wringing Strategi protest about ‘the difficulties of enforcement’. It would work! The numbers would become solidi, and the power those solidi could buy would reach out into the world; the numbers would increase and the power of Rome would be restored.
But it took the force of an Emperor to place such a sweeping reform before the people, for in truth wasn’t the Emperor and Autocrator really the master builder who himself could not build without the hundreds of thousands of sweating backs who laboured at his command. If the master builder was not there to lash and cajole and inspire his labourers once again to put their shoulders to the load even when they were slumped with weariness and exhaustion, then no edifice would rise. And for all the labourers of Joannes’s new Rome now knew, the master builder was a phantom, a man who could no longer appear in public, even for the briefest ceremony. Theotokos. Today’s incident in front of the Hagia Sophia could have been the end. Yes. That serious. Fortunately the barbaroi Varangians had been able to detain all of the witnesses and convince them of the inestimable value of discretion.
The barbaroi. Thugs who built nothing, only plundered what others had laboured to construct. The Hetairarch Mar Hunrodarson was moving too quickly; even common gossip acknowledged that now. And Haraldr Nordbrikt. What a mistake. To see the witless brute serenaded in the Hippodrome, his head bowed meekly – as if there had ever been a humble thought in his vanity-engorged skull. Build Haraldr Nordbrikt up and he would be more dangerous than Mar Hunrodarson; the people of the city might actually come to like him. Haraldr Nordbrikt’s ascendant power clearly required the pruning that had already been arranged for him. Was it to be tonight? He would have to check with Gabras.
Joannes shook his massive head as if awakening from a bad dream. That was what was insufferably offensive about these fair-hairs in the palace! The time one spent dealing with them added to nothing, and took away from matters of real importance! Look at him, sitting here fuming at pasty-faced pirates from Thule when history waited! Time, passing inexorably, demanded his answer.
Joannes brought his massive splayed arms down on his writing table, and the impact echoed through the empty corridors of the Magnara basement. Where was the answer? Where? And then like the voice of an angel, the answer came to him. Extraordinary. Was it possible? Perhaps it was. And yet to do it would be more difficult than passing the entire peninsula of Byzantium through the eye of a needle. Who could do that? Not even a conjuror. But perhaps … In the silence of the night the angels whispered again, and Joannes heard. Yes. Love. Love, which had created the entire world out of the formless abyss, had brought light to eternal darkness, and had vaulted the endless waters. Love had done it once. And might do it again. Love. And luck.