‘It did,’ whispered Haraldr. ‘It seems that today you and I, with considerable help, have given Rome a new fate.’
‘Yes. I wonder if that is the destiny we have so often felt in each other’s arms.’
‘Perhaps. The only destiny I am concerned with now is the one that places you in my arms tonight.’
Tears beaded Maria’s fine dark lashes, and she touched Haraldr’s sleeve again.
‘Rise up, Rome!’ Alexius’s voice resounded through the domes and the crowd seemed to stand as one. ‘Rise up and welcome the Light of the World! Rise up and welcome the purple-born Majesties the Empress and Augusta Zoe and the Empress and Augusta Theodora!’
‘Long life to Zoe and Theodora!’ thundered the crowd over and over again, an acclamation of such pounding resonance that Haraldr actually looked up to make certain that the groaning walls still supported the immense domes. Alexius made the sign of the cross and held his hands over the heads of the Empresses to symbolize that they had both received the crown from the Hands of the Pantocrator. The chants continued for some time. After a while Theodora beckoned Maria, embraced her, and bade her stay at her side. The three women looked from one to the other, their faces jubilant.
Haraldr studied the three faces with his own joy. There seemed to be a magic about them; not just the beauty of two of the women, or the spectacle of the Imperial raiment, but something much more familiar; the charmed way their pearl-like teeth flashed as they smiled and whispered close to each other’s ears, the sense that something more profound than even fate had brought them together. He remembered how Maria had said that Zoe and Theodora were both her mothers. That thought prompted a strange shift in his vision, almost as if he had removed a distorting glass from his eyes; suddenly he could see something he had not noticed before because he had never thought to notice it. He had long since forgotten how much alike Maria and Zoe had appeared to him the first time he had seen them together, and yet now with Zoe’s very different sister present, he was struck by the subtle similarities between all three of them, a certain line to the mouth, the structure of the bones around the eyes. They were as much alike as a daughter and . . . Haraldr felt a cold finger trace up his back and he realized that destiny had not yet finished its game with him. Maria’s parents, he was now certain, had not merely been friends of Zoe and Theodora. One of them, most likely Maria’s mother, had shared the same purple blood.
X
‘Duck!’ Halldor gestured to the Imperial Chamberlain. ‘The Varangians are eating the duck,’ he explained to the desperate-looking eunuch. He pointed to the other end of the long table. ‘The Senators are dining on pork.’ The harried chamberlain hissed a flurry of new directions to the servants. The suckling pig that the servants had tried to serve Halldor was hurriedly transported directly in front of the ever-regenerate Senator and Proconsular Patrician Romanus Scylitzes. Large grilled ducks were placed on silver platters in front of Halldor, Ulfr and Hord Stefnirson. Halldor politely told the hovering eunuch that the Varangians would carve their own meat. The tablecloth fluttered in the strong, dry September wind; the weight of the Imperial Eagles embroidered in gold thread kept the fabric from being whipped away in the occasional gusts. The sun was brilliant and the sky as clear as blue porcelain.
‘Where is Haraldr?’ asked Ulfr, nodding to the empty place setting next to Halldor.
‘He is working on another petition,’ said Halldor.
Ulfr rolled his eyes. ‘I hope this one works. In another month it will be too late to start out. We will have to wait until next spring. And by then we may be too fat to move.’
Senator Scylitzes stood and began a celebration of the ‘demi-deified Achillean virtues’ of the new Emperor Constantine Monomachus, whom Zoe had taken as her husband only two months after the deposition of Michael Kalaphates. (According to court gossip, Constantine Monomachus had been one of Zoe’s lovers during her first marriage, to the Emperor Romanus.) The Monomach, as he was known, was virtually everything the Imperial Court valued in an Emperor; he was handsome, graceful in his movements, charming and adept in his speech, and an able military commander. But the august Imperial dignitaries had quickly discovered one particularly egregious flaw in their new Emperor. The Monomach preferred coarse companions: innkeepers, merchants and professional loungers, many of whom he had promoted to Senatorial rank immediately after receiving the diadem and sceptre of his office. And many of whom were now seated at the end of table, utterly ignoring Scylitzes’s endless discourse as they played with their food, knives and a wooden court ball that they casually lobbed across the table in curious concert to the rhythm of Scylitzes’s sentences.
‘Does that man ever shut up?’ asked Hord in disbelief.
‘Senator Scylitzes has received a suitable reward for his remarkable adaptability,’ said Halldor. ‘He succeeded in rescuing his fortune from the mob, in which he was more fortunate than many of his Dhynatoi comrades. But Scylitzes, who once would not have deigned to walk on the same side of the street as an honest merchant, must now acknowledge as his colleagues some of the foremost rascals of the lower Mese. Notice how they appreciate the Senator’s Attic eloquence.’
A group of masons walked by, pallets of thin clay bricks loaded on their backs. ‘Does the Emperor usually go to these lengths to inspect a building project?’ asked Hord.
Halldor laughed. The table at which they sat had been set up in a large open yard behind a fairly modest town house just northeast of the Forum of Constantine. The busy masons were laying a foundation for a considerable annex to the house, an expansion twice as big as the original structure. ‘For this particular building he does,’ said Halldor. ‘The Emperor is particularly interested in inspecting some equipment in the existing house.’
Hord understood. ‘Who is she?’
‘Her name is Sclerena. She is the niece of the Emperor’s first wife. They have a touchingly intimate relationship.’
Hord shook his head. ‘So he goes to all this trouble, telling us that he is inspecting this highly important construction project, and sets this table and serves us whatever we wish so we won’t grumble while he ploughs his niece. And he has only been married for three months.’
The chamberlain appeared at the head of the table and cleared his throat. ‘Sirs, Mistress Sclerena sends you a small token of her esteem for her Emperor’s guardsmen and Senators.’ A dozen young women in diaphanous white tunics pranced into the yard and began a sensuous, whirling dance. ‘This Sclerena is apparently a very clumsy builder,’ said Halldor. ‘I am beginning to think that this construction here will require frequent inspection and supervision.’
Hord and Ulfr laughed and joined the newly minted Senators in pounding a rhythm on the table. Some of the dancers had already begun to leap onto the table when Haraldr appeared and stood at his place setting. He was dressed in the robe of the Hetairarch, the office he had agreed to assume temporarily for Zoe’s new husband. Beside Haraldr, resting
on the tabletop at the level of his hip, was a pudgy, apparently disembodied head. The head made a few ridiculous faces and then sprang onto the table, propelled by the suddenly revealed, squat body of a dwarf. The dwarf sprinted the length of the table, pausing along the way to swat the rumps of two dancers. He halted dramatically in front of Scylitzes and made motions, as if drawing out his own tongue. He turned his rear end to the Senator and made loud farting sounds, then sped off, as if propelled by his feigned flatulence. He lay beneath the legs of one of the dancers and stuck his tongue out obscenely. Finally the dwarf leapt off the table and ran into Sclerena’s house.