Maria looked up. The colour of her eyes was a shimmering blue fjord in the darkness of a shadowed gorge. ‘I have made my farewells,’ she said fiercely. ‘I want nothing more in this life than to sail with you to Norway tonight.’
‘Who is at the Blachernae Gate?’ asked Halldor.
‘Erling,’ said Ulfr.
‘I think I will ride up there and wait for another hour. Then I’m afraid our “inspection” of the walls will have to be concluded. I’ll ride into the city after that and find out what happened to Haraldr. Hopefully he has been detained because he and Maria are celebrating a successful petition to the Empress. I’m worried about leaving too late in the evening. Even the Monomach is going to be suspicious if he finds that his entire guard has been gone half the night.’
Halldor had saddled his horse when he heard horseshoes clatter on the pavement near the dock. He reached for his purse; he intended to pay off the cursore. Then he noticed that the horse was transport for both a man and a woman. ‘Ulfr!’ he shouted. ‘Haraldr!’
Haraldr dismounted, swept Maria into his arms, and carried her onto the dock. She was pale and hollow-eyed. Halldor looked at her with concern. ‘It appears that Zoe did not give her consent,’ he said to Haraldr. He looked off towards the distant mouth of the Golden Horn, a vague aperture between the hills of light. ‘Haraldr,’ he said firmly, ‘I propose that we return to our barracks. I am certain that suspicion has already been aroused by our absence. And now Maria looks ill. Let us wait. We can go tomorrow. Or in a week.’
‘Put me down,’ said Maria to Haraldr, as annoyed as if she had been abducted. ‘I am not sick. I am . . .’ She breathed deeply and arranged her robe nervously, then looked searchingly at the three men, her head held high. ‘There is something I must tell all of you before you take me on your ship.’ She turned to Haraldr and put her hand on his arm. ‘I was going to wait to tell you until we had seen the last lights of the city disappear. But on the ride through the city I thought about what I, myself, have said about selfish love, and now I realize that I am guilty of that.’ She looked again between Halldor and Ulfr and her lips quivered. ‘You are all in grave danger if you take me with you tonight.’ Maria clutched Haraldr’s arm tightly. She faltered and blinked away new tears. ‘I have just learned that my … mother . . . was the purple-born Eudocia, daughter of the Emperor Constantine, niece of Basil the Bulgar-Slayer, and sister of their Majesties Zoe and Theodora. I … I am the last Macedonian heir to the throne of Imperial Rome.’
The night was infinite in its vast hush. The whispered conversations of the Varangians on the docks created a cathedral-like murmur. A hull groaned slightly. Finally Haraldr very slowly took Maria’s face in his hands. ‘Oh, my love.’ The pain in his voice was for both of them. ‘Oh, my love,’ he repeated numbly. He stared at the city for a long moment and then returned to her with tears in his eyes. ‘I … I will understand if you must . . . remain with your people. I … of all here I should understand what you feel now. Your obligation. But if you still … If your fate and mine can still be joined . . .’ He trailed off hopelessly and shook his head in shock and bewilderment, a man confronted by a catastrophe for which he had no solution. Finally he could only take her in his arms. ‘I … it doesn’t matter. I cannot ask these men to take that risk. I will stay here with you.’
‘No, that is not what I want,’ she said, her voice soft and high and her eyes like starlight. ‘I want to go with you more than ever. To forge a new fate with your people. We could never have a life here now. An Augusta could never marry a’ – she looked down at her feet and then into the eyes of the Norseman – ‘barbaros’. She inhaled deeply. ‘Zoe will do everything she can to keep me here. She has returned in her emptiness to her oldest passion, the House of Macedon. She has already warned me that she will kill you to preserve that legacy. It is as if her dead uncle the Bulgar-Slayer has ruled her heart all these years, and she only now realizes the terrible implications of that overweening love.’ Maria sobbed quickly and regained control. ‘All of you may be destroyed because of me.’
‘That is a risk I am willing to undertake,’ said Halldor.
‘For once I have no words to add to Halldor’s.’ Ulfr nodded.
‘May I put the question before your pledge-men?’ Halldor asked.
Haraldr looked at Maria before nodding assent. Halldor hurried down to the end of the dock and stopped at each ship in turn. He left the crew of the first ship to a low, fevered buzz of activity. The second and third vessels followed Halldor’s hurried inquiries with their own murmured choruses. Men leapt into motion, pulling oars up from the hold and scrambling to loosen mooring lines. Halldor came running back. He looked directly at Maria. ‘They are all willing to risk whatever Norway’s queen is willing to risk.’ Tears streamed down Maria’s cheeks. Halldor turned to Haraldr. ‘But we must leave immediately.’
The ships were pushed slowly past the dock, and then oars dipped and turned the prows east. The first full surge of all sixty oars buckled Haraldr’s knees momentarily, then seemed to free the enormous weight on his chest. He could not conceivably assimilate the full import of what Maria had told him, but his heart thrummed with the stunning testament of her love. He paced the catwalk between the rowing benches, making certain that the chests and gear bags were arranged as he had intended. The first of many obstacles lay directly ahead in the night. But now there was only a single destination in his mind and in his heart.
The wind rustled in his ears as the brilliant city floated past in the night. He looked at Maria, seated at the stern, wrapped in her fur cape, gazing at the brilliant lights of Blachernae, the ancillary palace at the northwest corner of the city, where the Great Land Wall and seawall met. He would never miss these lights as long as he had her blue fires to dazzle him. He had given much to Rome, but now Rome had given him her greatest treasure.
The wharves blazed with the tapers of the porters, who customarily worked long into the night. Haraldr took the tiller from Ulfr and talked to Maria; together they recited the names of the towering, broad gates in the seawall as they glided past:
Basilica, Phanarii, Petrion, St Theodosia, Ispigas and Platea, with its huge complex of wharves, warehouses and endless rows of merchant and pleasure craft. The high, round hulls of Venetian merchantmen were dark silhouettes at Droungariou Viglae Gate. On the north shore of the Golden Horn, the city of Galatea glimmered with a brilliance that would have made it the wonder of the world, were it not for the great city little more than two bowshots across the water.
The splendid spine of the city was strung with necklaces of light; already the great palaces of the Dhynatoi had been rebuilt and filled with new riches. The lights of the Imperial Palace and the ring of glowing golden windows round the dome of Hagia Sophia winked into view from the hills to the south-east. At the Perama Gate, Haraldr gave the tiller back to Ulfr and told him to steer to left centre of the channel. Haraldr joined Halldor in the prow of the galley.
‘Not good at all!’ shouted Halldor. He pointed at Neorion Harbour, a lattice of lights cradled in the slightly hooked end of the peninsula. Most of the small patrol craft were still on lifts, but Haraldr could distinctly see the hundreds of tapers milling around the dhromons like luminous ants. ‘Our passage has been reported! I presume they know what they are after!’