It was close to midday by the time I found Vassos’ house again; I had spent the morning making some arrangements, then discovered that his neighbours were less obliging with their directions when the supplicant came accompanied by four monstrously armed soldiers. With that in mind, I approached the sturdy door alone.
This time there was no need to knock. The lone gypsy who had been outside before was now augmented by a triad of youths with bruised, insolent faces; they loitered below the windows and stared at me through lazy eyes.
‘I’m here to see Vassos,’ I said, as pleasantly as I could.
‘Vassos busy.’ It was the boy nearest me who spoke. He must have been in a dozen knife-fights at least, judging by the scars, but it was the pimples which truly disfigured him. He wore a green tunic clasped with a leather belt, and as he spoke one hand drifted ominously behind his back.
‘Vassos is not too busy to see me.’ A gold nomisma appeared between my fingers, almost as if by accident, but when the youth leaned forward to stare closer it vanished. I opened my empty palm to him with a disingenuous shrug.
‘Vassos will see me,’ I repeated.
‘Vassos see you.’
The boy stretched out an arm and banged three times on the door; it swung inwards silently. With a mock bow and a sneer, he signalled me to enter.
As I came into the dim room I saw that the boy had not been making idle excuses for Vassos: he had indeed been busy, and seemed only just to have concluded the business, for he was wrapping a cloth about his bloated waist and wiping sweat from his black-haired chest. Next to him a woman was pulling a dress up over her breasts, showing not the least concern for modesty. On the couch behind them a second girl lay stretched out on her belly, shamelessly naked and glowing with a sheen of perspiration. For a moment I allowed myself to admire her openly, thinking to persuade Vassos of my complicity; besides, it was years since I had felt that pleasure, and I had the God-given desires of any man. Then I noticed the red lines scratched down the curve of her back, the slender width of her hips and the smooth skin on the flesh below her shoulder: she could not be much older — if at all — than Helena, I realised. Sickened, I looked away.
‘Not to your taste, eh?’ Vassos misread my look. ‘Don’t worry, I have more. What do you prefer? Peasant girls from the provinces who fuck like mules? Dusky Arabians from the court of the Sultan, versed in the seven hundred ways of pleasuring a man. Golden-haired virgins from Macedonia? If you’re feeling patriotic, I even have a Norman wench, on whom you can revenge the treachery of their race. Though it will cost you extra if I cannot use her again.’
I stared at this ogre standing half-naked before me. Long, thick hair fell over his brutish shoulders, framing a face whose flattened nose and heavy cheekbones seemed more suited to a bull than a man. He wore a thick, golden chain around his neck, and rolled it between fat fingers as he spoke. It was with great restraint that I did not hit him immediately.
‘I’m not after girls,’ I said shortly. ‘I seek. .’
‘Boys?’ Vassos’ fat lips contorted into a leer. ‘I can do boys for you, my friend, if you enjoy Corinthian pleasures. Sometimes indeed I savour it myself — I must understand the tastes of my clients, you know. But it will take a little time — the boys are kept elsewhere.’
The girl who had been dressing herself when I entered had left the room, but now returned carrying a cup heavily crusted with coloured stones. She gave it to Vassos who drained its contents in a single gulp, leaving only a small trail dribbling down his cloven chin. He dropped it heedlessly on the floor, impervious to the clatter, and in the pause, I spoke again.
‘Not boys. I seek men — and not for carnal pleasures. For dangerous tasks. I understood you could provide them.’ It now seemed a faint hope: a lesson for trusting so much to the words of a charlatan and his dog.
But Vassos had gone very still. ‘Men for dangerous tasks,’ he mused. ‘More dangerous than turning their arses over to you?’
‘Men’s work, not whores.”
‘I can sell you men for any task.’ Vassos delivered each word with slow consideration. ‘Any task which pleases me. But I do not know that I like your task.’
‘Others may have paid you for similar,’ I suggested.
‘The business I do with others is my own affair. The business I do with you. .’ He thought on this. ‘I choose not to do with you. You know the watchwords and you speak of danger, but I think you are the danger, my friend. Please leave my house.’
‘I need to know if a man hired some men of you, perhaps in the last week or month. I will pay handsomely for the knowledge.’ Again I allowed the gold coin to appear and disappear in my hand.
Vassos simply laughed, an ugly laugh that stirred the girl on the bed to look up, wide-eyed. ‘You can buy my whores, and treat them as you pay for them, but you cannot buy me with your magician’s gold. My reputation,’ he explained solemnly, ‘is everything. Now go.’
‘Tell me who you’ve hired mercenaries to,’ I persisted. ‘Tell me and. .’
My plea was interrupted by a piercing whistle, as Vassos stuck two fingers between his yellow teeth and blew hard through them. ‘You will leave my house,’ he said, smirking. ‘Vassos’ hospitality is legendary, but it is not to be abused. I will have my boys see you out.’
Still I did not move. I heard the sound of running footsteps, then shouts of alarm and the noises of a scuffle. A puzzled look passed over Vassos’ face, but before he could act the door came crashing open and two giant bodies burst in. They moved like lions in the arena, bounding beyond me in a single stride and hurling Vassos into the stone wall behind. The back of an axe drove mercilessly into the fat of his stomach and he howled in agony; the skirt he wore slipped from his haunches and fell to the floor, exposing his shrivelled loins. Then he found the shaft of another axe pressed hard against his neck, almost crushing his throat in, and the wailing stopped.
A third figure stepped in through the shattered door. He was little more than a shadow against the daylight, but already the vast trunk and menacing arms were familiar to me: Sigurd, the Varangian captain. He leaned his axe against a chair and unstrapped the mace from his belt, hefting it in his broad hands as he approached the pimp cowering by the wall. The girl who had brought Vassos’ cup screamed at the sight of him, and fled behind a curtain into the next room, while the girl on the bed sat up dazed, heedless of her nakedness.
Sigurd looked at her, at the bony ribs and breasts scarcely plumper than a boy’s. He picked up the cloth that Vassos had worn and threw it over to her.
‘Cover yourself,’ he told her shortly. I doubt she understood him, for I guessed it would have been Vassos’ custom to use foreigners and immigrants for his vile purposes, but she clutched it to her chest and wrapped her bare arms over it. That seemed to satisfy Sigurd.
‘Now,’ he said angrily, turning to Vassos. ‘You have an ugly face, but I can make it uglier if I try. Who hired the men who tried to kill the Emperor?’
I winced; it was not the tack I would have taken. But I did not have a fearsome mace in my hands, and two of my lieutenants pinning Vassos to the wall. I kept silent and watched.
‘I never hired men to kill the Emperor,’ gasped Vassos, his voice now curiously high-pitched. ‘I love the Emperor. I. .’
Sigurd cut him short with an open-handed slap across his left cheek. The Varangian wore many rings, and his hand came away smeared with blood.
‘You do not love the Emperor,’ he told Vassos. ‘I love the Emperor. You would have killed him for a fistful of silver.’
Vassos glared at him with undisguised hatred, and tried to spit in his face. But the axe-haft was too tight against his throat, and he succeeded only in leaving a gob of spittle and blood hanging from his chin.
Sigurd eyed him with contempt. ‘You should never do that,’ he warned dangerously. ‘If your slime had reached me, I might have seen to it that nothing ever came out of your mouth again.’ He held out his mace with a rigid arm, and pushed its spiked ball so close to Vassos’ lips that he was forced to suckle it like a baby.
The girl on the bed stirred. ‘There was a monk.’
So unexpected was her contribution that Sigurd jerked the mace away, tearing the corner of Vassos’ mouth. The girl was shivering — from fear, I guessed, for she had pulled a blanket over her and was no longer shameful to look at — but her voice carried the ring of certainty.
‘A monk?’ said Sigurd. ‘What of him? A Roman monk?’
The girl shrugged, the blanket sliding from her shoulder. ‘A monk. I was here. Vassos let him use me for free because he paid so much money.’ Her voice was desolate. ‘He took me like a boy. Like an animal.’
Sigurd took this news in silence, and — to judge from the tinge in his cheeks — embarrassment at hearing her degradations. In the ensuing silence, I spoke gently.
‘What is your name?’
‘Ephrosene.’ She seemed surprised to be asked.
‘Where are you from, Ephrosene?’
‘From Dacia.’
‘How long have you been in the city?’
She shrugged again, but this time caught the sliding blanket. ‘Six months? Eight?’
‘And you say there was a monk. How long ago?’
‘Three weeks. Maybe four. He came several times. After the first time I tried to hide when he came, but sometimes he came unwarned. Sometimes Vassos dragged me out for him.’
‘And did he come just for you?’
A tear ran down her face; I crossed to the bed and sat beside her, putting an arm around her thin waist.
‘It’s all right, Ephrosene,’ I told her. ‘You’re safe from him now. From the monk, from Vassos, from everyone. Look at Sigurd,’ I added, pointing to the Varangian, whose mace never wavered before the pimp’s mouth. ‘If he protects you, who can harm you?’
The girl wiped her cheek, and smoothed her hair back off her face.
‘The monk came for soldiers. I was his entertainment. He wanted four men to travel with him — and a child.’ She bit her lip, while the three Varangians and I looked on, disgusted; we could all of us imagine why he would have wanted the child.
‘Did he explain his purpose with the soldiers?’
She shook her head. ‘“A dangerous task,” was all he said. He paid much gold. Vassos was pleased. He bought me a silver ring.’ She shuddered.
‘And when was the last time you saw him?’
She thought for a moment. ‘The monk, two weeks ago, I think. He came to meet the Bulgars, to take them away with him.’
‘And did you know these Bulgars?’
‘No.’
‘You had never seen them before?’
‘No.’
Her tears had stopped now; I pulled my arm from around her and made to stand up. But Ephrosene had not finished.
‘I saw one of them afterwards, though. Vassos called him in. He had another task for him.’
I froze. ‘Recently?’ I did not hide the urgency in my voice. ‘Did you see this Bulgar recently?’
To the surprise of every man in that room, the girl actually laughed. ‘Of course,’ she said simply. ‘He was here this morning. I saw him as he left. Just before you came.’
There was an instant of dumbstruck silence in the room; then, before I could move, Sigurd had whipped the mace out of Vassos’ mouth and put his face very close to the pimp’s head; so close that his beard must have tickled Vassos’ neck.
‘What did you tell the Bulgar to do, you shit?’ he demanded. His voice rasped on Vassos’ ear like a lathe. ‘Where can we find him?’ He looked down at Vassos’ sagging belly, and further down below his waist, caressing the flesh like a lover with the end of his mace. ‘Where?’
Vassos seemed to have lost much of his will to speak, but once Sigurd had grudgingly allowed him to don a tunic he was willing to lead us to a place where we might find the Bulgar. As we emerged from the house I saw Aelric, standing watch over the three youths who were — with several more gashes and bruises to their bodies — lying bound in the street. Sigurd ignored them, and sent Aelric with Ephrosene to find a convent where the nuns could tend her; the rest of us accompanied Vassos ever deeper into the tangled alleys of the slum quarter. The three Varangians marched as one, crunching out their tread in perfectly measured time and keeping the prisoner always between them; I hurried along behind.
‘Are you armed, Askiates?’ asked Sigurd, looking back. ‘You do not want to reach God’s kingdom too soon. There are some mysteries you may not want revealed to you yet.’
‘I have my knife,’ I answered, breathing hard.
‘You need a man’s weapon in these parts.’ Slowing his stride, Sigurd took the mace from where it swung at his belt and passed it back to me. I took it in both hands, almost overbalancing with the weight of it.
‘Can you use that?’
‘I can use it.’ Or at least, I could have once in my past. Those days were long ago, though, and it had been many years since I swung such a weapon in anger. Now my arms ached simply to carry it.
‘We need to capture this Bulgar alive,’ I reminded Sigurd. ‘We must discover what he knows.’
‘If he knows anything. There are ten thousand mercenaries in this city, and the word of a weeping whore is a poor guarantee that this Bulgar is the one we want.’
‘Indeed.’ But a monk who hired foreign mercenaries from a man like Vassos was unlikely to purpose any good with them: that alone made him worth finding. And as Vassos swore — despite Sigurd’s encouragement — that he knew nothing of the monk’s whereabouts, the Bulgar might be our only link with him.
The buildings around us were now grown larger. Before, we had been in a shanty town of houses that never were, but here was a place where old houses had fallen from respectability into disrepair and ruin. The streets were narrower, and the lowering ramparts hid the pale December sun from our sight. I could see faces all around us, peering out from behind broken windows and rubbled walls, but the street remained empty. Perhaps the sound of the Varangians’ boots had driven the populace indoors, but I doubted they would fear us when they saw how few we were. Sigurd looked back at me, and I saw my own thoughts mirrored in his worried eyes: this long, narrow road was like a mountain pass, the perfect situation for an ambush. And in Vassos we followed a treacherous guide.
We walked on, and I had begun to convince myself that I was imagining dangers where there were none, when a desperate scream tore through the silence of the alley. In an instant I was in a crouch, my hands raised with Sigurd’s mace; ahead of me the three Varangians had their axes poised to strike. I stared into the dark doorways and alcoves around me but saw nothing; no arrows raining down from above, and no attackers charging against us. I remembered Sigurd’s jest two days ago about the invisible assassin, and suddenly it was not so funny: perhaps after all we did face an enemy from beyond this world.
The scream came again, echoing in our ears, and I knew that — whatever else might await us — this was someone very much of our world. It had come from further along the road, and without pausing to think I broke into a run. The mace was light in my hands now, borne along by the surge of danger and excitement in my veins, and I was past my companions before they had even begun to move.
The houses ended abruptly, and the road emerged into what might once have been a pretty square. A round fountain was at its centre, seemingly dried up long ago, for weeds and mosses grew around it and the basin was riven with cracks. But it was not abandoned: a man stood on its rim, dressed in a leather tunic and standing almost as tall as Sigurd. He had his back to me, and was looking down into the fountain where another figure lay. A bloodied sword dangled from his hand.
I shouted a challenge and hurtled towards him. He spun around, surprise giving way to a snarl of defiance on his round face, and raised his sword to meet me. He was faster than I’d expected, but I was committed to my attack: as I came near I dropped my right arm back and swung it hard over my shoulder, aiming to smash my mace into his knee and fell him. But I was too slow; it was ten years and more since I had plied my trade on the battlefield, and the occasional brawl had kept neither my speed nor my strength at a pitch for defeating a mercenary. He parried my swing, crushing his sword down onto the handle of my mace and driving it clear of his body. He missed my hand by inches, but the blow served his purpose. My arm was jarred numb by the stinging impact of his blade, and the mace fell from my fingers.
Now I was exposed, too close to my opponent to retreat and without defence. Anticipating a second blow from his sword I looked up, but again he outwitted me: pain exploded through my jaw as he kneed me hard on the chin. I reeled back a step and fell flat on my back, feeling the ache in my spine and tasting blood in my mouth.
My enemy leapt down from his perch on the fountain and stepped towards me, his sword humming in the air as he took two expert swipes to steady his arm. I scrabbled desperately for the dagger at my ankle, but he saw what I did and stamped his foot down on my hand. Two fingers cracked, and I screamed, even as I saw him lift his sword over my neck for the killing stroke.
But he never struck. A new sound bellowed out in the square around us, a savage cry howled forth with a terrible anger. It was the cry Quinctilius Varus must have heard as he saw his legions hacked apart in the German forests, the cry that met the Caesar Julius as he sailed up the great rivers of Britannia, the cry of an unconquerable warrior revelling in his barbarity. A giant axe-blade sliced through the air above me and swept the waiting sword from my enemy’s grip. It clattered harmless to the ground a few feet away, and the hands which had held it were still clasped empty above me as the second blow struck, knocking the mercenary backwards so that now it was he who lay winded on the ground. Strong arms held him down, while a red-faced Sigurd stood over him and held an axe to his throat.
‘Move, and you lose your head,’ he said, breathing hard.
I looked around, dazed. ‘Is this the Bulgar? Is this the man Vassos brought us to find?’ I shook my head, trying to clear some of the pain. ‘Where is Vassos?’
Sigurd glanced around the square, and swore so angrily that I thought he might decapitate the captive in sheer frustration. Vassos was gone, presumably slipped away in the struggle.
‘This is the Bulgar,’ said Sigurd. ‘Or at least, so the pimp told us. That was when we started running. None too soon,’ he added, with a reproving glance in my direction.
I was heartfelt in my agreement. ‘Not a moment too soon. You saved my life.’
‘Saved you from yourself,’ muttered Sigurd. ‘Carrying a mace doesn’t make you a Varangian, Demetrios. You were a fool to charge in.’
A groan from within the fountain reminded me what had prompted my impulse; I crossed to where the Bulgar had stood on its lip and peered down. The figure I had seen was still there, and I doubt he had moved an inch since I joined the battle, for his bare limbs and white tunic were covered in blood, and there were deep gashes in his leg. He lay with his knees pulled into his chest and his arms clasped about his head, making not the least sound.
‘I saved someone in my turn, at least.’ I stepped into the fountain and knelt beside him, lifting one shoulder as tenderly as I could to glimpse his face. He whimpered as I prised his hand from his eyes, but as it came away I almost lost my grip so great was my shock. This creature, this man whom the Bulgar warrior had been dismembering when I attacked, was not a man at all, but a mere boy whose hollow cheeks still bore the downy hairs of the first beard. He was solidly built for his years, but those must have been fewer even than the girl Ephrosene’s.
‘A child,’ I murmured, astounded. ‘The Bulgar was trying to kill a child.’
‘Maybe he tried to pick his pocket,’ said Sigurd. ‘There’s a purse on the ground over here.’ He stooped to pick up the leather bag and hooked it onto his belt. ‘Not that the whoreson will be needing it now. Maybe the boy fucked his sister. Who cares.’
I was about to argue the point, but Sigurd had already forgotten the boy in the fountain and stepped back to regard his captive.
‘Get him to his feet,’ he ordered. ‘And bind his arms behind his back. I’m going to march you all the way to the palace with my axe at your neck,’ he told the Bulgar. ‘If you so much as stumble your head will lose the company of its shoulders.’
‘What about the boy?’ I asked. ‘He needs help — he’ll bleed to death otherwise.’
‘What about the boy?’ Sigurd shrugged. ‘I’ve already detached one of my men trying to redeem a petty whore, and had that pimp Vassos escape from me. I’ll see this Bulgar at the palace in chains whether he’s the man who tried to kill the Emperor or a pilgrim who got lost on his way to the shrine. I won’t lose him by using my men as stretcher-bearers for a pickpocket who chose his target poorly. And you,’ he added, stabbing a finger into my chest, ‘should clean that blood off your face and come with us, if you want the eunuch to think he spends his gold wisely.’
‘I’ll come to the palace in my own time,’ I said fiercely, taking a step backwards. ‘And that will be when I’ve found this boy a clean bed and a doctor. On my own, if I have to.’
‘On your own, then. If you go south down that street, you should meet the Mesi.’ Sigurd picked his mace out of the dust, scowling to see the gash in its handle, and returned it to his belt before prodding the prisoner forward. With his lieutenants flanking the captive, he marched away, and I was alone in the square.
My head was wracked with pain, and my right arm still numb, but I somehow managed to lift the boy into my arms and carry him out of the basin where he lay. My steps were awkward and faltering; I feared that at any moment I would topple forward and do the child yet worse injury, but with frequent recourse to the support of the surrounding walls I made some headway out of the square and down the hill. Now I could see a sliver of the main road at the end of the alley, and I hurried as best I could to reach it. Although it was a cool day and I was still in the shade of the buildings, sweat began to sting my eyes and trickle down my nose; my beard itched unbearably. My arms and back too demanded that I pause, that I sit down and rest them if only for a minute, but I suspected that once the boy was on the ground I would never raise him up again. I cursed Sigurd and his heartlessness; I cursed Vassos and his Bulgarian thug, and I cursed myself for risking my commission with the palace just to carry a dying boy a hundred paces closer to death.
In a haze of pain and fury, I reached the road. There I succumbed, and collapsed against a stone which proclaimed I was exactly three miles from the Milion.
‘Are you well?’
I opened my eyes, which had drifted shut for a second. I was sitting at the edge of the Via Egnatia, my back supported by the milestone, with the boy’s head resting in my arms. His face seemed peaceful — more peaceful than the rest of his ravaged body, at least — but pale, and clammy. When I touched a hand to his cheek it was fearfully cold.
‘Are you well?’
I looked up to meet the insistent voice. It was a drayman, his face shaded by a broad-brimmed hat, standing before a cart loaded with clay pots. He spoke in a kindly voice which, after a moment’s confusion, I answered.
‘Well enough. But the boy is in a perilous state. He needs a doctor.’
The drayman nodded. ‘There is a doctor at the monastery of Saint Andrew. I can carry your boy there on my cart — my journey passes it. I am going to the cemetery.’
‘I’m trying my best to avoid the cemetery,’ I said with feeling. ‘But I would be grateful to go as far as the monastery.’
We lifted the boy carefully onto the cart, laying him over the jars of incense and unguents, and set off, travelling as quickly as we dared without aggravating his wounds on the rutted road.
‘What are your perfumes for?’ I asked the drayman, thinking the least I could do was reward his help with conversation.
‘For the dead,’ he said solemnly. ‘The embalmers use them.’
We walked the rest of the way in silence, though mercifully it was a short enough journey. The drayman pulled his cart through the low arch of the monastery gate into a cloistered, whitewashed courtyard, and we laid the boy out on the flagstones. I gave the man two obols for his aid; then he left me.
A monk appeared and stared at me disapprovingly.
‘We are at prayer,’ he told me. ‘Petitioners are heard at the tenth hour.’
‘My petition may not wait that long.’ Too exhausted to argue more decisively, I merely jerked my thumb to where the boy was lying. ‘If the Lord will not hear my plea until then, perhaps your doctor will.’
It may have been a blasphemous suggestion, but I was past caring. The monk tutted, and hurried away.
The tinny bell in the dome of the church struck eight, and monks began streaming out of the chapel in front of me. All ignored me. I watched them pass with ever-mounting fury, until I thought I would roar out my opinion of their Christian charity to their self-regarding faces. But just then a new figure appeared, a servant girl in an unadorned green dress, with a silken cord tied around her waist. I was surprised to see her, for I would have thought the novices could do whatever chores she performed, but she seemed to have noticed me and for that I was grateful.
‘You asked for a doctor?’ she said, looking down on me with none of the humility or reserve expected of her sex and her station. I did not care.
‘I did. Can you find me one?’ I forsook the usual forms of courtesy. ‘This boy is dying.’
‘So I see.’ She knelt beside him to put two fingers to his wrist, and laid her palm against his forehead. Her hands, I noticed, were very clean for a servant’s. ‘Has he lost much blood?’
‘All you can see.’ One entire leg was cased in crusted blood. ‘And more. But fetch me a doctor — he will know what to do.’
‘He will indeed.’ She spoke as immodestly as her apparel, this girl, for she wore no palla to wrap her head and shoulders. Though truly, she could not be called a girl, I realised, for her uncovered face and bright eyes held a wisdom and a knowledge that only age can inscribe. Yet she wore her black hair long, tied behind her with a green ribbon like a child’s. And like a child, I saw, she showed no sign of obeying me, but continued to stare with the tactless fascination of the young.
‘Fetch me the doctor,’ I insisted. ‘Every minute brings him closer to death.’
At last my words showed some effect: the woman stood and looked towards an open doorway. But instead of hurrying away she turned, and with astonishing termerity began to upbraid me.
‘Make haste,’ she commanded. ‘You’ve carried him this far, you can carry him these last few paces. The monks here are afraid to touch the dying — they think it pollutes them. Bring him inside where we can wash his wounds and get some warmth into him.’
I was almost dumb with surprise. ‘Surely only the doctor will know if it’s safe to move him.’
She put her hands on her waist and stared at me in exasperation. ‘She will, and it is,’ she said curtly. ‘I am the doctor, and I say bring the boy inside so I can clean and bind his wounds before he slips beyond us.’ Her dark eyes flashed with impatience. ‘Now will you do as I say?’
With the colour of shame rising under the bruises on my face, I humbly obeyed. Then, when that was done, I fled to the palace.