"If I were to perform such a marriage in the High Temple, the temples throughout the Empire would likely see schism. If you oust me, rigorists would rebel against whatever pliant prelate you put in my place. If I acceded to your demands, those same rigorists would rebel against me."
Knowing the temper of Videssian priests, Maniakes judged that all too likely.
"I do not wish to have to live with Lysia without the sanction of marriage," he said, "nor she with me. If you will not perform the ceremony in the High Temple, most holy sir, will you let it be done here at the small temple in the palace quarter by some priest who does not find the notion as abominable as you seem to?" He had yielded ground to Etzilios. He had yielded ground to Abivard. Now he found himself yielding ground to Agathios. He stood straighter. A private wedding was the only concession he would so much as consider.
With what looked like genuine regret, Agathios shook his head. "You ask me to designate someone else to commit what I still reckon to be a sin. I am sorry, your Majesty, but the matter admits of no such facile compromise."
Maniakes let out a long, unhappy breath. He didn't want to dismiss the ecumenical patriarch. Sure as sure, that would start a tempest in the temples, and Videssos might fall apart under such stress.
Agathios might have been reading his thoughts. "Since affairs of state have come to such a pass of hardship and difficulty," the patriarch said, "I urge you to incline toward putting your own affairs in good order. Do not contemplate this lawless action rejected by the statutes of Videssos, nor transgress decency with your cousin."
"You have said what you think good," Maniakes answered, "but you do not persuade me. I shall act as I think best, and the consequences of my action shall rest on me alone."
"So they shall, your Majesty," Agathios said sadly. "So they shall."
Some of Maniakes' bodyguards entered the High Temple with him. Others, the big fair men from Halogaland who did not follow Phos, waited outside. One of them yawned. "I hope your head priest will not talk long today," he said in slow Videssian. "Too nice the day for standing about."
Maniakes thought it was chilly and raw, but Halogaland routinely knew winters like the one of which his father had spoken in horror. "However long he speaks, I'll hear him out," he said. The tall, blond Haloga dipped his head in resigned acquiescence.
In the exonarthex, priests bowed low to Maniakes. They did not prostrate themselves, not here. In the High Temple, Phos' authority was highest, that of the Avtokrator lowest, of anywhere in the Empire.
A small opening in a side wall gave onto a stairway leading up to the small chamber reserved for the imperial family. Maniakes climbed those stairs. His Videssian guards mounted them with him. A couple of men stopped just out of sight of the bottom of the stairway; the rest accompanied him to the chamber and posted themselves outside the door.
As Maniakes peered out through the filigree grillwork that gave Avtokrators and their families privacy when they cared to have it, he saw one of the blue-robed priests who had greeted him hurry down the aisle and speak to Agathios, who was standing by the altar in the center of the temple.
Agathios heard him out, then nodded. His gaze went to the grill. From times when he had worshiped in the public area of the High Temple, Maniakes knew he was effectively invisible behind it. All the same, for a moment he and the patriarch seemed to lock eyes.
Then Agathios looked away from him and up toward the great dome that was the architectural centerpiece of the High Temple. Maniakes' eyes traveled up to the dome, too, and to the mosaic of Phos in stern judgment covering its inner surface. The good god's eyes seemed to look into his, as they would have had he been anywhere in the High Temple. The Phos in the dome there was the model for depictions of the good god in temples throughout the Empire. Some of the provincial imitations looked even fiercer than the original, but none could approach it for awe-inspiring majesty. You would have to think twice before contemplating sin under that gaze.
Try as he would, though, Maniakes had trouble seeing the desire to marry his cousin as something for which the lord with the great and good mind would condemn him to the eternal ice. In his time on the throne, he had seen the difference between rules in place because they made sense and those in place because they were in place. He reckoned the prohibition that so exercised Agathios one of the latter.
The patriarch kept looking up into the dome. His back was straighter when at last he gave his attention to the growing number of worshipers filing into the pews that led up to the altar. Presently Maniakes heard and felt priests shutting the doors down below him.
Agathios lifted up his hands. The congregants rose. Behind the filigree screen, Maniakes stood with everyone else, though no one except that Phos brooding in righteousness could have seen him had he stayed seated. Along with the rest of the worshipers, he followed the patriarch's lead in reciting Phos' creed, then sat once more as a chorus of priests sang the good god's praises. Going through the infinitely familiar liturgy, rising and sitting, praying and chanting, cleansed Maniakes' spirit of some of the worry with which he had entered the High Temple. It served to unite him to the good god and also to unite the people of the Empire with one another. Wherever Videssos' dominions ran, men and women prayed in the same way and acknowledged the same clerical hierarchy. A schism would shatter that unity hardly less than the Makuraner occupation of the westlands had.
Following Agathios' lead, the worshipers stood for a last time, repeated Phos' creed, and then sat back down to hear the ecumenical patriarch's sermon. That, of course, varied from day to day, from week to week, and from temple to temple. Maniakes leaned forward and put his ear close to the grillwork so as to miss nothing. It was principally for the sermon he had come, not for the liturgy, comforting though that was.
"May the lord with the great and good mind look down kindly upon Videssos and ensure that we pass through the present crisis unharmed," Agathios said. Small murmurs of "So may it be" floated up to Maniakes from the pews; a good half the congregants sketched the sun-circle over their hearts. Maniakes traced a quick sun-circle himself.
The patriarch went on, "May the lord with the great and good mind also instill piety and wisdom into the heart of the Avtokrator. The course he presently contemplates would make it difficult for Phos to grant his blessings to him in particular and to the Empire as a whole. While I grieve with his Majesty and sympathize with the loneliness now engulfing him, I must respectfully remind you all that the laws of the temples are not a bill of fare at an eatery, wherefrom a man may choose those courses pleasing to him while paying no heed to the rest. They form a seamless garment, which will fall to rags if any one of them be torn from it."
He looked up toward the grillwork behind which Maniakes sat. "The Avtokrator is of course Phos' viceregent on earth, and heads the Empire consecrated to the good god's true and holy faith. He is at the same time a man, far from being the good god's son or any other such outlandish notion, and is subject to the same fleshly temptations as other men. Such temptations are lures of Skotos, to be resisted with all the power a man shall have."
Agathios went on in that vein for some time. He was polite, reasonable; he did not shout about incest or urge the people of Videssos either to rise against their Avtokrator or risk the imperilment of their souls. As Maniakes had seen, Agathios enjoyed being patriarch and wanted to hold the job. He was giving Maniakes as little excuse to oust him as he could-but he also was not retreating from the position he had set forth in the imperial residence.
It was, in its own way, a masterful performance. In the abstract, Maniakes admired it. He was, however, not much given to abstraction at the moment.