“Doxy?” Argyros prodded.
The monk made curving motions with his hands. “Can’t fault his holiness’s taste, that’s certain. If you’re going to sin, it may as well be sweet, says I. I don’t think she’s an Egyptian wench, from her accent, though he’s had her since last summer, the lucky dog.”
That was mildly interesting. “What’s her name?” the magistrianos asked.
“I forget,” the monk said. “She’s no interest in the likes of me, I can tell you that, not that she doesn’t have Arsakios wrapped around her finger.” Finger was not quite what he said. Pausing to hiccup, he went on, “She’s no fool herself, though; I give her that. In fact, someone told me this night’s vigil was her plan.”
“You don’t say.” A formidable female indeed, Argyros thought. He rose from his squat, stretched, and said, “I must be off. Keep this stinking image-worshiper wide-eyed till dawn, and thanks for the wine.”
“Always happy to help an honest pious man.” The monk smacked himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand. More to himself than to Argyros, he exclaimed, “Mirrane, that’s what the hussy calls herself.”
It took all the magistrianos’s training to hold his face and walk steady. Mirrane had come unpleasantly close to killing him in Daras; despite her sex, she was a top agent of Persia. And Argyros could also well understand how she had gained Arsakios’s favor.
Argyros’s fists clenched as he hurried toward Hagia Sophia. The Persians loved to stir up religious dissension in the Roman Empire: if the Romans battled among themselves, it could only profit their rival. And Mirrane had been playing that very game in Daras, rousing the local heretics against the orthodox faith.
Now, though, she was embarking on a far more dangerous course. This quarrel over images threatened to tear all the eastern provinces away and to set faction against faction through the rest of the Empire. The magistrianos cursed. Exposing the furor over iconoclasm as a Persian plot would not help. Arsakios, whether inspired by Satan or more likely by Mirrane, had raised a real, thorny theological point, and no doubt had more in his arsenal. The only way to bring back religious peace would be to show he was in error. That made the conclave in the patriarchal residence all the more vital. There were no shouting monks in the square of the Augusteion. Their din had disturbed not only the patriarch but also the Emperor, and the imperial guards had driven them off. Things inside the patriarch’s apartments were quite hectic enough without them. The distinguished theologians and scholars there were going at one another like a kettle of crabs.
“You idiot!” an archbishop with a long white beard shouted at an abbot. “St. Basil clearly states that—”
“Don’t tell me, show me!” the abbot interrupted. “I wouldn’t take your word the sun was shining without looking outside. Show me the text!”
“Someone’s filched the codex!” the archbishop howled in frustration. The abbot laughed and snapped his fingers in the other man’s face. Just then, someone pulled someone else’s hair, and abbot and archbishop alike rushed to separate the two combatants, both of whom were close to seventy. Eutropios, who was supposed to be presiding over the gathering, looked as though he wanted to hide. Argyros unobtrusively made his way to an empty chair and spent the next several minutes listening, as if he were trying to pick up gossip at a waterfront tavern. As sometimes unfortunately happens with brilliant men, the meeting had got sidetracked. Here someone was declaring that the writings of the church fathers obviously sanctioned images; there somebody else announced that images were not consubstantial with their prototypes. It was all fascinating, and probably true, and none of it, sadly, the least bit relevant. Intellectually the magistrianos did not belong in such company, and knew it. But he did have a feel for what was important. To the man next to him, he said, “God became man in the person of Jesus Christ.”
“Amen,” the man said. He wore the pearl-ornamented robes of an archbishop. “And God made the world in seven days. What of it?” The nightlong wrangling had left him cranky. The magistrianos felt himself flush. He was groping after a concept and could not pin it down. Maybe talk would help, even if it did make the archbishop take him for a simpleton. He went on, “In the Incarnation, the Word—the divine Logos—took flesh.”
“And the immaterial became material,” the archbishop echoed. “There, you see, whoever you are, I can spout platitudes too.”
Argyros refused to let himself be baited. Without meaning to, the archbishop had helped him clarify his thoughts. He said, “Before the Incarnation, God was only immaterial; it would have been blasphemous to try to depict Him. That, no doubt, is why the Old Testament forbade graven images.”
“Yes, and the foolish Jews still keep to that law, waiting for the Messiah and not knowing He has already come,” the archbishop said. He did not sound so scornful now, only contemptuous of the ignorant, stubborn Hebrews.
“But for us Christians—” Argyros began.
Excitement flamed on the archbishop’s face. He broke in, “Yes, by all the saints! For us Christians, since God has appeared among us and become a part of history, we can portray His human form!”
“To say otherwise would be to deny the validity of the Incarnation.”
“It would! It would!” The archbishop shot from his chair as if he had sat on a pin. His shout filled the room: “I have it!” Almost word for word, he bellowed out the chain of thought Argyros had developed. There was silence for half a minute when he was through. Then the prelates and savants crowded round the archbishop, slapping his back and showering him with congratulations. Eutropios kissed him on both cheeks. The patriarch was fairly babbling in his relief; he had been quivering at the prospect of having to report failure to Nikephoros.
“Wine!” he shouted to a servant. “Wine for everyone!” Under his breath, Argyros heard him mutter, “Saved from Kherson!” The monastery at Kherson, on the peninsula that jutted into the Black Sea from the north, was the bleakest place of exile in the Empire. Argyros had been to the godforsaken town in his younger days. No wonder poor Eutropios was nervous, he thought.
The magistrianos slipped out of the patriarchal residence while the celebration was just getting started. He did his best to fight down his anger at the archbishop’s stealing his ideas. No way to claim them back now. Even if he did stand well with the Master of Offices, that meant little to the ecclesiastics he had left. Perhaps it was just as well, he thought. Arsakios and the other iconoclasts would be more likely to take seriously a proposal put forward by a churchman than one that came from an official of the imperial government.
The racket under the archbishop of Thessalonike’s window was still going on. The miserable archbishop undoubtedly wished he was back conducting services at the church of St. Demetrios in his hometown. Argyros went a couple of blocks out of his way, not wanting anything further to do with the vociferous Egyptian monks.
The magistrianos heard a low whistle from the direction of the hostel. A woman’s voice, low and throaty, said, “There he is.” Her Greek had a Persian flavor.
“Mirrane?” he called.
“Indeed, Basil. Did I not say, back in Daras, we would meet again?” Then, to her companions, she issued a sharp command: “Get him!”
The slap of their bare feet said they were Arsakios’s monks. They came dashing down the narrow street toward Argyros. Some held torches to light their way, while others brandished clubs. “Heretic!” they shouted. “Worshiper of lifeless wood and pigments!”
Argyros turned and fled. A Franco-Saxon might have taken pride in a glorious fight against overwhelming odds; he was a sensible Roman, and saw no point in enduring a beating he did not have to. A proverb survived from pagan days: “Even Herakles can’t fight two.”