“Let go of me!” Argyros yelled, struggling against the angry coppersmiths. “I am a—” Somebody hit him in the pit of the stomach, leaving him unable to speak. Fighting on instinct alone, he grabbed a man and pulled the fellow down on top of him to protect him from the Jews’ punches and kicks. At last he managed to suck in a long, delicious lungful of air. “Stop, you fools!” he shouted from beneath his unwilling shield. “I am a magistrianos of the Emperor, making an arrest!”
The mention of his rank was enough to freeze his attackers for a moment. “It was no rape,” he went on into the sudden silence. ‘The woman is an agent of Persia, and not even a Jew. Bring her here, and I will prove it to you. And if you help me find her, I will forget your assault on me—you were deceived.”
With a grunt, Argyros got to his feet and helped up the smith who had covered him. The man was holding his ribs and groaning; he had taken a worse beating than the magistrianos. The rest of the coppersmiths scattered, some dashing this way, some that.
By then, though, Mirrane had disappeared.
The shafts of sunlight streaming through the windows that pierced the base of Hagia Sophia’s great dome were paler than they had been when the ecumenical council convened two months before. High summer was past and fall approaching; if the assembled clerics were to return to their churches this year, they would have to sail soon, before the stormy season set in.
With the rest of the court, Basil Argyros stood in the aisle, listening to the patriarch Eutropios read out the acts of the council. “Anyone who declares henceforth that an icon is a graven image, let him be anathema,” the patriarch intoned.
“Let him be anathema,” the ecclesiastics echoed.
“Anyone who declares henceforth that to paint an image or give reverence to an image is either Nestorian or Monophysite, let him be anathema,” Eutropios said.
“Let him be anathema,” the clerics agreed. Argyros glanced toward Arsakios of Alexandria, who joined in the anathema with poor grace. Only that “henceforth” preserved his orthodoxy. If it had not been conceded, however, he might have led his men into schism and more strife.
“Anyone who declares henceforth that our incarnate Lord Jesus Christ may not be depicted, let him be anathema.”
“Let him be anathema.”
“Anyone who declares henceforth that—” The anathemas rolled on and on. When they were finally through, Eutropios bowed his head and went on, “With the aid and intercession of the Holy Spirit, we have determined and do proclaim these the true and correct doctrines of our holy orthodox church. Anathema to any man who dares contradict them.”
“Amen,” said everyone in the church, prelates and courtiers together. The Emperor Nikephoros rose from his high seat, bowed to the clerics, and left the church.
“This council now is ended,” Eutropios said, and let out an inconspicuous sigh of relief. As he left the pulpit, ecclesiastics began hurrying away; sailors would not put to sea in stormy weather even for archbishops.
The courtiers followed more slowly. “Once again, error is driven from the church,” George Lakhanodrakon said, rubbing his large, knobby-knuckled hands in satisfaction.
“Is it?” Argyros asked with some bitterness. The Master of Offices turned to look at him sharply. He went on, “How can we have the gall to claim the Holy Spirit descended to inspire the ecumenical council? It was a Persian scheme that threw fuel on the controversy in the first place, and pamphleteering that helped swing it back toward the way the Emperor wanted it to go. Not much room for divine intervention in any of that.”
“Wasn’t it you who said we’d have to help the Holy Spirit along?” Lakhanodrakon reminded him. “God works through men; that is why He created them, to unfold His scheme for the world.” He patted the magistrianos on the shoulder. “You were also the one who pointed out that God had to become a man to save mankind.”
Both men crossed themselves. “Yes, but that was a miracle,” Argyros persisted.
“Must all your miracles be showy?” the Master of Offices asked. “St. Athanasios and St. Cyril of Alexandria, if you read their writings, show themselves to be arrogant men, hungry for power. Yet the doctrines they fought for we still hold today, though the one has been dead almost a thousand years and the other close to nine hundred. Is that not something of a miracle?”
“Put that way, I suppose it is. And yet—”
“I know,” Lakhanodrakon sighed. “Examined closely, any human institution is sadly imperfect; with your job, you know that better than most. Should you be shocked it’s also true of the church? If you still hanker for miracles, I’ll give you one: in Egypt, Palestine, and Anatolia; in Thrace and the lands by the Danube; in Italia and Carthage and Ispania, churchmen will be going home from this council all bearing the same doctrines to pass them on in their sees, and all over the Empire townsmen who will never see Constantinople, farmers who could never even imagine Constantinople, will hear the same teachings and follow them, and so will their sons and grandsons after them. If that is not a miracle, what is it?”
“It might just be good organization,” Argyros said. “Those same peasants and townsmen pay their taxes to the government every year, and so will their sons and grandsons.”
Lakhanodrakon frowned at his obstinacy, then gave a snort of laughter. He said, “Too damned many of them don’t. And the Holy Spirit doesn’t inspire tax collectors, either; of that I’m woefully certain. They have to do the best they can, the same as you and I and poor Eutropios swimming out of his depth.”
‘The best they can,” Argyros mused. He thought it over. ‘That’s not so bad, I suppose.” He and the Master of Offices walked down the Mese toward the Praitorion. He wondered what Anthimos would have waiting for him there.
VII: Etos Kosmou 6829
The man next to Basil Argyros in Priskos’s tavern near the church of St. Mary Hodegetria took a long pull at his cup, then doubled up in a terrible coughing fit, spraying a good part of his drink over the magistrianos. “Kyrie eleison!” the fellow gasped: “Lord, have mercy! My throat’s on fire!” He kept on choking and wheezing.
Argyros’s eyebrows went up in alarm. “Innkeeper! You, Priskos!” he called. “Fetch me water and an emetic, and quickly! I think this man is poisoned.” He pounded the fellow on the back.
“Sir, I doubt that very much,” replied Priskos, a handsome young man with a red-streaked black beard. He hurried over nonetheless, responding to the sharp command in Argyros’s voice, a vestige of his tenure as an officer in the imperial army before he came to Constantinople.
“Just look at him,” Argyros said, dabbing without much luck at the wet spots on his tunic. But he sounded doubtful; the man’s spasms were subsiding. Not only that; several of the men in the tavern, regulars by the look of them, wore broad grins, and one was laughing out loud.
“Sorry there, pal,” the coughing man said to Argyros. “It’s just I never had a drink like that in all my born days. Here, let my buy you one, so you can see for yourself.” He tossed a silver coin to the taverner. Argyros’s eyebrow rose again; that was a two-miliaresion piece, a twelfth of a gold nomisma, and a very stiff price for a drink.
“My thanks,” the magistrianos said, and repeated himself when the drink was in front of him. He eyed it suspiciously. It looked like watered wine. He smelled it. It had a faint fruity smell, not nearly so strong as wine’s. He picked up the cup. The regulars were grinning again. He drank. Mindful of what had happened to the chap next to him, he took a small sip. The stuff tasted rather like wine, more like wine than anything else, he thought. When he swallowed, though, it was as the man had said—he thought he’d poured flames down his gullet. Tears filled his eyes. Careful as usual of his dignity, he kept his visible reaction to a couple of small coughs. Everyone else in the place looked disappointed.