Cheers rang out; so did shouts of “Blasphemy!” Someone flung a large melon at the monk. He ducked, only to be caught in the side of the head by a stone. He toppled to the ground. The stone-thrower’s triumphant bellow turned to a howl of pain and fury when someone punched him in the face. Crying, “Down with the icons!” several young men dashed for the first church they could find, hot to match action to word. An old woman hit one of them over the head with her basket of figs, then kicked him as he sprawled on the cobbles.
The Egyptian monk was on his feet again, laying about him with a stick. Argyros heard it thud into someone’s ribs. Then his interest in the broil abruptly went from professional to personal. Without bothering to find out which side he was on, a fat man ran up and kicked him in the shin. His yelp was reflexive. So was his counterpunch. The fat man reeled away, a hand clapped to his bleeding nose. But he had friends. One of them seized Argyros’s arms from behind. Another hit him in the stomach. Before they could do him worse damage, a ferret-faced man neatly bludgeoned the rioter who had hit the magistrianos. He fell with a groan.
Argyros stomped on the foot of the man behind him. As his sandals had hobnails, the fellow shrieked and let go. By the time the magistrianos whirled around, his smallsword drawn, the rioter was retreating at a limping run.
“Thanks,” Argyros said to the chap who was so handy with a cudgel.
That worthy was on his knees next to the man he had felled, busily rifling his beltpouch. He looked up for a moment, grinning. “Don’t mention it. Down with the icons!”
Like most educated Constantinopolitans, Argyros fancied himself a theologian, but it had never occurred to him to wonder if religious images were wrong. They were simply there: the iconostasis in front of the altar, the mosaics and paintings on the walls and ceilings of churches. At the moment, however, he lacked the leisure to meditate on their propriety.
As riots have a way of doing, this one was rapidly outgrowing the incident that had spawned it. Already several merchants’ stalls had been overturned and looted, and another went over with a crash as Argyros watched. A woman ran past him with her arms full of cheap seashell jewelry. A man struggled to drag away a chair and was set upon and robbed in his turn before he had got it thirty feet. The magistrianos sniffed fearfully for smoke; a maniac with a torch or the burning oil from a broken lamp could set half the city ablaze.
Through the shouts and screams that filled the square, through the sound of splintering boards, Argyros heard a deep, rhythmic tramping coming down the Mese from the east, getting closer fast. Nor was he the only one. “The excubitores!” The warning cry came from three throats at once. A company of the imperial bodyguards burst into the square. A barrage of rocks, vegetables, and crockery greeted them. They ducked behind their brightly painted shields, each of which was inscribed with the labarum—?—Christ’s monogram. One excubitor went down. The rest surged forward, swinging long hardwood clubs.
The rioters stood no chance against their grimly disciplined efficiency. Here and there a man, or even two and three together, would stand and fight. They got broken heads for their trouble. The excubitores rolled across the Forum of Arkadios like a wave traveling up a beach. Argyros fled with most of the rest of the people in the square. Approaching an excubitor and explaining that he too was an imperial official struck him as an exercise in futility—and a good way to get hurt. As it happened, he got hurt anyway. The alley down which he and several other people ran proved blocked by a mulecart that did not have room to turn around. A squad of excubitores came pounding after. The magistrianos’s cry of protest and fear was drowned by everyone else’s, and by the triumphant shouts of the guardsmen. He felt a burst of pain. His vision flared white, then plunged into darkness. It was nearly sunset when he groaned and rolled over. His fingers went to the knot of anguish at the back of his head. They came away sticky with blood. He groaned again, managed to sit up, and, on the second try, staggered to his feet.
As he shakily walked back toward the Forum of Arkadios, he discovered someone had stolen his smallsword and slit his purse. Maybe, he thought, pleased with his deductive powers, it was the same ruffian who had sapped the man in the plaza and then robbed him. And maybe it wasn’t. Trying to decide which only made his headache worse.
The Forum of Arkadios, usually crowded, was empty now except for a couple of dozen excubitores.
“On your way, you,” one of them grow led at Argyros. He did his best to hurry. There were excubitores on the Mese down toward the Forum of the Ox, and more in that square. Constantinople was buttoned up tight, trying to keep trouble from breaking free again. Another soldier approached the magistrianos. “Move along, fellow. Where are you supposed to be?”
“Mother of God!” Argyros exclaimed. “I’m supposed to dine with the Master of Offices tonight!” The engagement had been beaten out of his memory.
Seeing his bedraggled state, the excubitor set hands on hips and laughed. “Sure you are, pal, and I’m playing dice with the Emperor tomorrow.”
Waving vaguely to the trooper, Argyros hurried down the Mese toward George Lakhanodrakon’s residence. The Master of Offices lived in a fashionable quarter in the eastern part of the city, not far from the great church of Hagia Sophia and the imperial palaces.
The magistrianos hurried through the Forum of Theodosios and that of Constantine, with its tall porphyry column and its waterclock. He passed the Praitorion, the government building where he worked when he was in Constantinople. Darkness was falling as he lurched into the Augusteion, the main square of the city, which was flanked by Hagia Sophia, the palace district, and the hippodrome. Dinner was set for sunset. He was going to be late.
George Lakhanodrakon’s doorman, a Syrian named Zacharias, knew Argyros well. He exclaimed in polite horror as the magistrianos came up. “By the Thrice-Holy One, sir! What happened?”
“Why? What’s wrong?” Argyros said indignantly. “I know I’m not quite on time, and I’m sorry, but—”
The doorman was gaping at him. “On time? Sir, your face, your clothes—”
“Huh?” His wits muddled by the blow he had taken, the magistrianos had been so intent on getting to Lakhanodrakon’s house that he had not even thought about his appearance. Now he looked down at himself. His tunic was torn, filthy, and bloodstained. A swipe of his hand across his face brought away more dirt and dried blood.
“Sir, you’d better come with me.” Calling for other servants to help him, Zacharias took Argyros’s arm and half led, half carried him through the doorway. Like the houses of most wealthy men, Lakhanodrakon’s was built in a square pattern around a court, with blank, marble-faced walls fronting the street. On a fine, mild evening like this one, the dinner party would be held in the court, amid the fountains and trees.
Argyros did not get that far. Lakhanodrakon’s servants took him to a guestroom and laid him on a couch. One ran for a physician while others washed his face and the ugly wound on the back of his head. They fetched him wine, stripped him of his tunic, and dressed him in one belonging to the Master of Offices.
He was beginning to feel human, in a sorrowful way, when Lakhanodrakon himself hurried into the room, concern on his strong, fleshy features. “St. Andreas preserve us!” he burst out, swearing by Constantinople’s patron. “Don’t tell me the ruffians waylaid you this afternoon, Basil!”
“Well, actually, no, your illustriousness,” Argyros said ruefully. “As a matter of fact, it was an excubitor.”