I walked past them into the house. Myakes followed. The Khazars bowed to each of us in turn. I barred the door. That only made me feel more trapped, not more safe.
However much I desired to do so, the guards gave me no excuse to complain of their conduct to Balgitzin. When I stayed in the house to which the tudun of Phanagoria had assigned me, they remained outside. When I went out, one or two of them came along with me. I even found myself having trouble disliking them. They were but warriors, doing as they were ordered and doing it well.
No murderers with Apsimaros's gold in their belt pouches sprang out from behind a wall to try to slay me. Was that because the guards intimidated them or because they were not there? Again, how could I know?
A couple of weeks after Balgitzin gave me my armed guard, he invited Theodora and me to a feast at his residence that evening. "I thank you," I said. "What is the occasion?"
"A noble has come from the khagan's court at Atil to Phanagoria," he answered. "Of course you remember Papatzun."
"Of course," I lied. Back at Atil, one barbarian had seemed much like another. Those who did not speak Greek- which meant the large majority- might as well not have existed, as far as I was concerned.
But, as I had expected, my wife had no difficulty placing this Papatzun on my bringing her word of his arrival. She looked serious, saying, "This is a man my brother trusts."
"He has not come to Phanagoria now by chance, then?" I said.
"By chance?" Theodora frowned until she understood what I was driving at. "Oh. No. If anyone brings word from my brother to do this or not to do that, Papatzun is likely to be the one. I will learn from him what I can."
"Good." I kissed her, but then warned, "Don't let him know we suspect."
Amusement glinted in her dark, narrow eyes. "Do not fear about this. I will not ask him. I will not ask his friends, if any have come with him. I will ask his slaves. I know a couple of them well. They will tell me the truth."
I kissed her again. "I will not give you any more advice. You don't need it."
"You are my husband." She hesitated long enough to draw in a deep breath before going on, "You are my love. If I can help you, I will do it."
All I knew at that moment was gratitude. I may be reckoned unmanly for not disdaining a woman's help, but, considering how easily Theodora could have chosen the side of her brother and her tribe rather than mine, I knew how lucky I was in her. "You are my Empress, my Augusta, now," I said. "Soon you shall be my Empress in the Queen of Cities."
"God willing," she said once more, making the holy sign of the cross.
"As for the banquet," I said, "we shall see what we shall see."
On meeting Papatzun again, I discovered I did remember him after alclass="underline" remember his face, at any rate, for we had not had much to say to each other, being largely without a common language. He was not very young, not very old, not very fat, not very thin, not very tall, not very short\a160… not very interesting. In Constantinople, I judged, he would have been a secretary in charge of some medium-sized bureau, a man doing a fairly large job well enough to avoid censure but not so well as to get himself promoted out of it.
In Constantinople, such quiet, competent men are common enough. No doubt being harder to come by in Khazaria, they must also have seemed more valuable than is the case within the boundaries of the Roman Empire. This rarity, I judge, accounted for the trust Ibouzeros Gliabanos reposed in Papatzun.
Khazar notions of banqueting require the celebrants to gorge themselves until they cannot move and drink until they cannot see. Having had my fill of fish, I ate beef and mutton. Perhaps having had his fill of beef and mutton, Papatzun ate mackerel, quite different from the sturgeon of Atil. He agreed with me in preferring wine to the drink his countrymen make from their mares' milk.
Despite Balgitzin's services as interpreter, Papatzun and I had little to say to each other. He was polite enough to me; I could no more fault his behavior than that of the guards with whom Balgitzin had saddled me. Every so often, I would glance over at him from the corner of my eye. Once or twice, I saw, or thought I saw, him glancing over at me in the same way. When that happened, each of us quickly looked away from the other.
Theodora, by contrast, enjoyed herself immensely. The banquet giving her the chance to speak her own language unmixed with Greek, she took full advantage of it, chatting animatedly with Balgitzin's wife (whose name I learned but have long since forgotten), taking part in the conversation of the men more freely than would have been reckoned proper at a Roman feast, and, by all appearances, enjoying her conversations with Balgitzin's and Papatzun's slaves as well.
Balgitzin swilled till he began to snore. Papatzun let out a sniff of contempt. I had been to enough Khazar banquets to have learned that the one who passes out first is often an object of contempt, being reckoned weak if not effeminate. In slow, bad Greek, with long pauses for thought between words, Papatzun said, "No- hold- wine."
"No, indeed," I answered. I was by then quite drunk, but not so drunk as to let down my guard. "You, now, you drink like a man." He smiled vaguely, understanding enough of the Greek to know I had not insulted him. I did my best to put the words into the Khazar tongue.
"I am a man," he said in his native language. "You are a man." I wondered if he would run through the conjugation of the verb to be, but he just studied me for a while, now making no pretense of doing anything else. After a couple of minutes of this intense scrutiny, he lifted his goblet in what was half salute, half challenge. I lifted mine as well. We drank at the same time, and drank deep.
Presently, Papatzun slumped over like a tree under the woodsman's ax. Having won the drinking bout, I looked around for Theodora. She was not there; she must have gone off with Balgitzin's wife. One of the Khazar's slaves came up to me when, vaguely surprised that I could, I got to my feet. "Take me to my wife," I said when he asked what I required.
Instead, he brought Theodora to me. She looked down at Balgitzin and Papatzun, both of whom sprawled snoring on the rugs. But for those snores, they might as well have been dead men. They would lie there unmoving till sunrise or longer. After that, for some hours they would wish for death rather than imitating it. Having lain as they lay, I knew this well.
Not even the stark shadows of lamplight fully defined the expression on Theodora's face, which, being flatter and smoother than those of Roman blood, had fewer sharp angles to build shadows. Her eyes went from the snoring Khazars to me. "Can you walk home?" she asked.
"I can do anything," I said grandly, which in truth meant I could do very little. Theodora smiled. She knew what kind of talk got poured out of the neck of a wine jar. I do remember that we got home, and I am too large for her to have carried me all that way, so logic compels me to believe I walked. Logic aside, though, I have no proof of this.
Thinking on it, I suppose the guards Balgitzin had given me (or had set on me- I still did not know how to construe their presence) could have done the hauling. But Theodora would have chaffed me about that had it happened, so I still believe I did set one foot in front of the other all the way from Balgitzin's residence to my own.
Once there, I remember asking her, "What did you learn of Papatzun's slaves?"
She seemed impressed at my recalling Papatzun had slaves, let alone that they might know something important. But all she would say was, "I will tell you in the morning." I tried to argue with her. She lay down, as if for sleep. I lay down beside her to go on with the argument, and the wine overwhelmed me, as she must have known it would. Devious, was Theodora.