After this curious beginning the ceremony of adoration proceeded in the prescribed fashion. One by one the dignitaries of the Roman Empire prostrated themselves before the new Lord of the Entire World and then crawled forward to embrace his knees. Haraldr’s place in the adoration, as prescribed by protocol, was after the Disputers. ‘Keleusate,’ intoned the Grand Eunuch after Haraldr had completed his prostrations. Haraldr embraced Michael’s knees and felt nothing more than the cool, smooth texture of silk and gold thread; nothing to evoke the strange marriage of fates that had joined them in that moment during Michael’s coronation as Caesar. ‘Autocrator, may you live long,’ said Haraldr, the same prescribed salutation Michael would receive from each dignitary present. ‘May you be happy,’ replied Michael in a mechanical, insensate drone. Haraldr stood and withdrew with his hands over his breast, and the next dignitary fell on his face in front of the porphyry platform; the ceremony continued until late in the day.
And thus was the power and glory of Imperial Rome passed on, as it had been for more than a thousand years.
VIII
The Protostator completed his inspection, navigated the underground galleries that led from the Hippodrome stables to the spiral staircase, and ascended to the Emperor’s box. He blinked away the bright spring sunlight and listened for a moment to the anticipatory fervour of the crowd. To his right and left, the Magisters and Proconsular Patricians, along with the ambassadorial delegation from Genoa, had already taken their seats in the loggias on either side of the Imperial Box. On the flat, roof-like terrace behind the Imperial Box, the Emperor waited, surrounded by Varangians of the Grand Hetairia. Michael Kalaphates wore the Imperial Diadem on his head; the train of his jewelled pallium was drawn up over his left arm, and he gripped the sapphire-and ruby-studded sceptre of his office in his right hand. The eagles embroidered on his pallium phosphoresced in the sunlight; it seemed as if the wings of gold thread were actually fluttering with motion.
The Protostator pressed his leathery face to the carpet upon which his sovereign stood. ‘Majesty,’ he said when he rose up, ‘we await Your light.’ With a slight motion of his hand Michael beckoned the Protostator to come close. The Protostator leaned forward until his lips almost touched the pearl-and-diamond lappets that covered the Emperor’s ears and streamed down his cheeks like jewelled tears. ‘Epaphroditis has drawn the first race,’ whispered the Protostator. ‘He will start in the second position.’ Michael nodded and the Protostator backed away respectfully. Michael nodded again and the Grand Eunuch, the same sad-eyed man who had served the previous Michael, came forward and bowed.
‘Approach the Genoese Ambassador,’ Michael told the Grand Eunuch. ‘Tell him that the Autocrator of Rome offers him a wager. I claim Epaphroditis, representing the blue colours, as winner in the first race. Offer him the team and driver of his choice, his choice to be made after fifteen circuits of the race are complete. I will put my galley full of Syrian silk, still under seals in the Bucoleon Harbour, against those six Genoese merchant craft that await unloading at the Neorion Harbour.’ The Grand Eunuch bowed and shuffled off and Michael winked at his Protostator. ‘He will be quite unable to refuse the opportunity to select a winner after the race is three-quarters complete, when I have committed myself from the outset.’
The Parakoimomenos nodded to the Emperor. Michael moved quickly into the arcaded box, his gold-armoured Varangians fanning out beside him as he ascended the porphyry steps to his throne. The crowd hushed reverently. Michael made the sign of the cross to the crowd beneath and opposite him, then turned to his right and left and repeated the blessing. Organ music flourished and the crowd erupted into the prescribed chants of greeting. The Emperor seemed impatient with the adulation, and he shifted his weight from one purple boot to the other. Finally the chants were completed and the music stopped and the vast arena became entirely silent except for the crisp snapping of the ceremonial banners. Michael handed his sceptre to a waiting eunuch and took the ceremonial mappa offered by the Parakoimomenos. He gravely lifted this swatch of white silk and watched it flutter against the glorious blue sky. Then he released it.
Four bronze gates clanked open at the north end of the stadium, initiating a rising fury from the crowd. In an explosion of gleaming horseflesh, gilded fittings and multicoloured caparisons, the four teams of four appeared, the anxious horses’ hoofs chewing up the neatly raked sand of the track. The drivers, dressed in leather skirts with leather corsets strapped over tunics in the colours of their teams, leaned over the open backs of their light, two-wheeled chariots, the reins taut in their hands. They brought their head-flinging teams slowly forward to the triangular bronze start-and-finish pylon at the north end of the spina. As soon as all four teams were even with the finishing line, the riders slackened their reins, brought their long-handled leather whips snapping over the necks of their horses, and the teams charged off, tossing clouds of sand behind them.
The crowd went into immediate hysterics; virtually every man seemed to rise from his seat and wave a towel with the colours of his team on it over his head; even the Emperor whirled his right arm above his head, as if this motion could somehow propel the teams more quickly round the track. On the spina, an elegantly robed attendant stood by a table on which twenty gilded ostrich eggs had been set in neat rows, and as the teams thundered past the finish pylon, he removed the first of the eggs.
As the race progressed, the spectators seemed to equal the fury of the foaming horses; here and there brief fist-fights erupted in the stands. On the seventh circuit the red team clipped the south end of the spina and flipped out of control, and Michael grimaced and balled his fists as Epaphroditis and his blue team – which was actually three black horses and one dapple on the outside – swerved wildly to miss the careening red chariot. The red driver somehow survived the tumble and scrambled to the railing on the outside of the track. On the tenth circuit a brawl broke out among three dozen people seated high in the southern end of the stadium, and baton-wielding cursores scrambled through the seats to keep the peace.
By the fifteenth lap the green team led the white by a length, and the blue of Epaphroditis was almost the entire length of the spina behind. Michael looked down at the Geneose Ambassador seated in the loggia to his right. The Ambassador, a noble-looking man with a high forehead, bowed to the Emperor, then held up his arm and plucked at the loose sleeve of his ceremonial white robe. ‘White! White, you say!’ shrieked Michael against both the noise of the crowd and the restraints of protocol. The Ambassador nodded.
On lap seventeen the white team overtook the green. The green fell back rapidly; the second horse seemed to have a troubled gait. The blues of Epaphroditis flew past into second position. Still, the white led by half the length of the spina.
On the eighteenth lap Epaphroditis made his move, bringing his whip savagely over the necks of his horses. A cyclone of dust trailed behind as the blues steadily gained on the whites. At the end of the eighteenth lap Epaphroditis came alongside the whites but could not pass before the turn. He dropped back slightly and then came alongside again on the next straight. But the whites held him off, and by the end of the nineteenth lap the blues had dropped off a length. One egg remained on the table, and the Genoese Ambassador looked up and waved at the Emperor. Michael glanced at him and again fixed his sharp, dark eyes on the track.
Epaphroditis’s blues made another thundering advance on the penultimate straight. The whip struck again and again, and the white supporters in the crowd jeered; Epaphroditis was leaving everything on the next to last stretch. White would win easily. But with a look over his shoulder, the white driver saw the blue horses literally snorting at his back, and he went to the whip as he rounded the last turn. His sudden acceleration forced the white chariot wide, and the wheels slid sideways, losing traction. Epaphroditis’s team hugged the spina, as if attached by rails, and suddenly squeezed through the opening provided by the centrifugal motion of the white team. Epaphroditis summoned the last resources from his team and lashed them on. The blues won by half a length.