‘Haraldr!’ Maria bolted upright, her breasts heaving and her eyes burning into the dawn.
‘What did you dream?’ His arms were already around her. ‘I was awake. I watched your eyes.’
Maria shook her head numbly. ‘I dreamed . . .’ She paused and recalled the vision to herself. ‘I dreamed . . . that you killed the Emperor.’
‘I have no intention of doing that.’ He kissed her forehead. Maria described the entire vision, however, and he listened intently. When she had finished, he said, ‘I know that many of the details of your dreams are accurate, but the prophecies of life and death are not. My experience against the Bulgars proved that. Your dreams are warnings, not the decisions of fate. It seems more likely that they have the power to reverse fates.’
‘Perhaps. But perhaps the Emperor means to provoke you somehow into striking him. As they did with Joannes. I don’t want you to dine with him this evening.’
Haraldr’s gut knotted for a moment. He considered the matter. ‘I don’t think the circumstances will be as they were in your dream. You say there were many people present? An enormous crowd? But this will not be an official banquet. It is only the Emperor, the Nobilissimus and myself in the Imperial Apartments.’ Haraldr squeezed Maria tightly. ‘If the eunuchs start dancing in circles, I will leave.’
Maria did not see the humour. ‘No, this was outside … a procession. You must not--’
‘I will no longer follow him in procession. I have resigned my office. My men are already lodged in St Mama’s Quarter, preparing our ships. The new Pecheneg guard led him through the city yesterday. There is no chance of that.’ Maria exhaled futilely, her fears exhausted. ‘You are apprehensive and I understand. And I think you and Zoe are going to miss each other more than you have imagined.’ Haraldr paused. ‘Has she said something to you since she gave us her permission to leave?’
Maria stared raptly ahead. ‘No,’ she said in an entranced voice. ‘She is happier than ever with Michael. She has hinted that she can think of him as a husband.’
‘And you wish to wait for their wedding?’
‘No. I believe she is only amusing herself.’ Maria dipped her head as if letting the vision go. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It is as if, as you say in your tongue, I can hear the Valkyrja singing.’
The Church of St Mary Chalkoprateia was located just outside the walls of the Imperial Palace complex, north of the huge bronze Chalke Gate and virtually within bowshot of the Hagia Sophia. It was one of the oldest churches in Constantinople, an austere Roman-style basilica with a flat, coffered roof and a single large apse. It might have looked like a large warehouse save for the brilliant frescoes and mosaics covering the interior walls, the result of an extensive restoration more than a hundred and fifty years previously. The visitors, six in all, seemed to have dressed in concert with the architecture; their rough woollen cloaks concealed the rich silk and gold vestments beneath. They entered the vaulted narthex at the front of the church, were greeted by four of the resident priests (who wore their vestments openly), and were quickly escorted to a door at the north end of the narthex. A colonnaded walkway led to the priests’ apartments, a cluster of brick buildings of much later construction. Shafts of sun lanced through the columns and illuminated the visitors’ jewelled silk slippers, just visible beneath the hems of their brown cloaks. The visitors entered a square, marble-framed portal and were shown down a short hallway. The room at the end of the hall was large and set into a curving apse at the end of the building. The walls were buff-tinted plaster, set with tall arched windows. The shutters remained closed. Two gold-framed icons glimmered on a small cupboard. The bed was covered in blue silk. The resident priests and four of the six visitors made the sign of the cross and left the room. The carved wooden door closed behind them.
The Augusta Theodora lowered her woollen hood and looked around the room. ‘I am certain that Pilate did not lodge Our Lord so well on the eve of His excruciation,’ she said; her blue eyes were girlish, mischievous.
‘You may be kept waiting longer than was our Lord,’ said the Patriarch Alexius; he continued to wear his hood. His beard looked like spun silver against the coarse wool. ‘But when I need you, it will be important for you to be close to the Mother Church. Though, of course, it would be far too dangerous for you to spend that length of time within the palace precincts. Someone would talk.’
‘How will you proceed, Father?’
‘I believe that if necessary, I can bring down our Emperor with the patent evidence of his heresies. But I believe that his madness will soon provide his own undoing. We will wait. At least until Mar Hunrodarson arrives.’ Theodora betrayed her surprise. ‘Oh, yes, my child, I informed him that my need for him was imminent shortly after our Orphanotrophus Joannes enrolled in one of the monastic establishments he had so energetically advanced against the interests of the One True Faith. If Mar Hunrodarson has kept to my schedule, he will have entered the Sea of Marmara already. He will wait for instructions off Arcadiopolis. And then, if necessary, he and the Tauro-Scythians will extirpate the unwanted growth from the Imperial Palace.’
‘You may find Mar Hunrodarson an even more luxuriant and far more resilient growth, Father.’
‘He is ambitious but not a fool. He knows that he cannot rule without your sanction. Let him be the man at your side. You will need neither to crown him nor to bed him. I believe his robust thinking will strengthen the secular arms of our empire while I carry forth the standards of spiritual Rome.’ Alexius tipped his head in a wry gesture. ‘And we could turn the people against him whenever we wished.’
‘It is a pity you cannot lead the secular arms of our Empire, Father. In your own fashion you are a very robust thinker.’
Alexius responded to the sarcasm with a fond smile. ‘You know, my child, my thinking on this matter could be considerably more vigorous if I knew the identity of your sister Eudocia’s child.’
No trace of amusement remained on Theodora’s face. ‘No. Father, I am willing to become your sacrifice, but I do not want that for … the child. That is one matter on which my sister and I agree. Perhaps when she is older. But she is--’ Theodora broke off, unwilling to give up any more information.
‘Very well, my child. I was only considering the girl’s own safety. Assuming the Emperor knows.’
‘I do not think he does.’
Alexius nodded cryptically. ‘I must go, then. If matters develop as I expect, I must prepare the Mother Church to withstand a siege.’
‘Hetairarch Haraldr, this is where I find myself unable to accommodate myself to the risk of war.’ The Emperor nodded that he wished his goblet refilled, and the chamberlain inclined over him for a moment. ‘I can race a team in the Hippodrome and wager on them according to their fitness, the experience of their driver, the condition of the track. If I lose, I can train the team more vigorously, hire a better driver, or perhaps sell two of the horses and replace them with others. But in war, if my team loses, I have lost the capital I need to continue in the sport, so to speak. I can hire new generals, of course, but I cannot sell dead soldiers for live soldiers. And my people suffer the loss, not only those who die but also those who grieve for them. So I consider the odds in war to be generally unacceptable.’
‘But you have moved boldly in appointing Maniakes to command in Italia,’ said Haraldr. He was enjoying the wine, the unexpected informality of the dinner, and the chance to deal with the Emperor’s only critical shortcoming: his reluctance to assume field command of the Imperial Taghmata. ‘Maniakes’s success in Sicily have already rewarded your wager.’
‘Ah, Hetairarch,’ said Michael, raising his finger in the manner of a rhetorician, ‘in Sicily I bet the man. I knew that Maniakes could win for me and for my people. But had I been there to decide on each day’s movements of our forces, I would have been quite beside myself. Let me bet on my generals, yes. But do not ask me to wager on the actual battle.’ Michael took a deep drink and the red wine spilled onto his dark beard. ‘Now you, Hetairarch Haraldr, are also a man upon whom I would wager to bring me victory in the field. How do you do it?’