Three Varangians were still beside him, and Gleb was huddled at his back. Haraldr reached down and grabbed the collar of Jarl Rognvald’s byrnnie, and as he did, he saw a force of armoured Rus battling over the rise, only sixty ells away.
Dragging Jarl Rognvald and carving his terrible crimson path through the Pechenegs, Haraldr led the rest to safety.
‘So we have ascertained that Alexandras is no enthusiast of romantic verse.’ Maria’s eerily enchanting blue eyes roamed from Alexandras, the young man seated at her right, to Giorgios, on her left. Her velvety tongue flicked at the gilded rim of her murrey-tinted agate goblet. ‘And what do you think of the Digenes Akrites, Giorgios?’
Giorgios extended his tautly muscled neck slightly, as if he found the high, pearled collar of his ceremonial robe too tight. He had curly, sand-coloured hair; an elegant, Grecian nose; and strangely innocent brown eyes. His sweat-glazed forehead glowed in the light of the huge pewter candelabra that floated high above the table. He glanced nervously at his friend, as if seeking direction. The evening had not been what they had expected. They had heard the tales about the Mistress of the Robes, of course, and they had envisioned an evening of sexual abandon that could otherwise be provided only by the pox-eaten whores of the Studion, Constantinople’s notorious slum. Instead the Mistress of the Robes had confounded them with rigid decorum and a trying discussion: ancient Hellenist philosophers, the several religious heresies with which the city was currently rife, and the economic possibilities presented by renewed trade with the northern barbaroi; it had been rumoured that a trade fleet might arrive from Rus within the next few weeks. Now the subject was literature. The Digenes Akrites was a popular epic of heroism and romance on the far-flung borders where the Empire abutted the Saracen caliphates and emirates.
‘I would not think that the Digenes Akrites is an accurate depiction of life on the Eastern frontier,’ offered Giorgios hesitantly. Maria had quickly concluded she preferred Giorgios to Alexandros, though the latter had a piercingly blue-eyed, scarcely restrained lasciviousness that she found appealing. But Giorgios, despite his studied Scholae swagger, had the gift of self-doubt.
‘But truth and romance are two very different qualities,’ said Maria. In a choreographed burst, five silk-robed eunuchs swept away the large golden tureens containing the dessert fruits, poured unwatered wine into the agate goblets, and promptly vanished. The heavy bronze doors slid silently shut behind them. ‘If we perceived only truth, we would be incapable of love.’
‘Do you mean physical love or spiritual love?’ asked Alexandros. ‘Perhaps a spiritual love could fool the senses. But a physical love?’ Emboldened by the wine, he allowed his eyes to rake his hostess. She lifted her dark eyebrows slightly and focused on him; he felt as if a current had swept from her eyes into his testicles.
‘You are asking in what fashion naked bodies can withhold the truth?’ Maria wryly pursed her livid, glistening lips. ‘But if a lover could see the truth of his partner’s flesh, its conception in the bowels of a woman, and its decomposition into putrescent sludge, and the trail of mastications and excretions and discharges that flesh will deposit in its transit between those two states, then I fear we would all become eremites, happy with the solitude of a barren cell.’
Giorgios leaned forward. ‘But isn’t truth what is, not what has been or what will be?’
‘That is merely the state of a thing. What cannot conquer time has no truth.’
‘Then beauty has no truth? Only decay and death?’ Giorgios frowned.
Maria tilted her head slightly. Her sable-black hair was parted in the middle and coiled at either side of her head; the coils were laced with pearls. ‘Plato believed that beauty resides outside a thing, in an eternal state. Or so Psellus informs us.’
‘Psellus?’
‘He is one of the Hellenists at court. The most gifted, I think. He is quite taken with this Plato.’
‘The Hellenists are heretics,’ Alexandros said petulantly.
Maria’s lips hovered over the rim of her goblet. Like a snake striking, her hand flashed out towards Alexandros. The full measure of wine struck him directly in the face and he jerked with surprise, flung his head, and rubbed his eyes. Giorgios stared in astonishment. Maria rose without a word and went to Alexandros. She wiped at his eyes with her linen napkin. After a moment she began to laugh, an elegant, musical sound. ‘Your robe is soaked,’ she said. Her teeth were like perfect pearls. She unlaced Alexandros’s robe and yanked it to his ankles. Giorgios stood up as if frightened. Maria pulled Alexandros’s linen breeches down and took his penis in her hand. He was almost immediately erect. With her other hand she swept Alexandros’s goblet and chased silver platter to the floor; the clatter echoed harshly, as if malevolent spirits were mocking her laugh. Then she pulled her scaramangium, a tight robe of scarlet silk, up to her waist. She sat on the edge of the table, spread her legs, and guided Alexandros inside her. She gasped and wrapped her legs around his back.
‘Unlace me!’ she shouted to Giorgios, twice. When her scaramangium was unfastened, she threw it over her head; she wore nothing beneath. She had rounded woman’s breasts and delicate white skin, but there was an athletic, almost adolescent sinuousness to her arms and legs. With the fingernails of one hand she raked Alexandros’s pumping buttocks. Her other hand found Giorgios’s, and she placed his trembling fingers to her searing breast.
‘His vitals have been pierced.’ Gleb shook his head almost in rhythm with the gentle rocking of the ship in the Dnieper.
Haraldr leaned over Jarl Rognvald and lifted the linen bandage they had applied to the gaping wound in the Jarl’s abdomen. They had given the Jarl a drink of leek-mash, and now the escaping odour told them that the organs had indeed been punctured. No man survived such injuries.
Jarl Rognvald opened his eyes. His irises were dark, as if already clouded with a vision of the waiting spirit world. He parted his mist-blue lips in a painful effort to smile. ‘The death-fragrance,’ he said. ‘But I knew I would die before the spear struck me. Odin’s third gift is prophecy.’
Haraldr clutched the Jarl’s cold, rough hand. He felt that if he spoke, he would release the terrible sob clawing at his throat.
‘You took the gift today. Didn’t you?’ The Jarl’s voice was weak but still commanding. His business in the middle realm was not done.
Haraldr fought for control. Had he really entered the spirit world? Where had the dream ended – for surely his encounter with the beast had been a dream, a dream in an incredible instant of sleep – and the reality resumed? And he had just as surely led them out of that ring of death; other men had seen it. Yet those last moments on the beach had also been part of his dream. Where had the dream ended? And what had reddened the wolf’s jaws in that time of indescribable terror, beauty and rage? His mind or his arm?
He did not know. But, yes, it had happened.
Haraldr leaned next to Jarl Rognvald’s ear. This was their secret, the bond that would tie them between worlds and beyond time. ‘I met the beast. I stood. But I think there is still a test ahead of me.’
The Jarl turned to him, his lips barely moving. ‘There is always another beast to slay. When the last beast is slain, time will end. I will be there then, to raise my sword against the last dragon. Now I know that you will be there as well. So I die happy.’
The sob struggled out of Haraldr’s throat.
Jarl Rognvald mustered a final, robust grip. ‘Don’t mourn this old pagan,’ he said. ‘Odin has already set my place at the benches in the Valhol. I will drink with your brother tonight. Honour me by listening to me now.’ The Jarl paused to marshal his strength. ‘I’m turning my command over to you. The entire flotilla. I’ve already talked to Gleb, and he agrees.’