Nor had Cadoc used that name for a span longer yet. He replied in Greek: “Practice your living languages more. Get your terminology right. The word you used scarcely fits the most fashionable and expensive courtesan in Constantinople.”
“A whore be a whore,” said Rufus stubbornly, though he did change to the modern tongue of the Empire. “You been, uh, in-vest-igating her, talking with people, sounding ‘em out, damn near since we got here. Weeks. And me left to twiddle my thumb.” He glanced down at the stump of his right wrist. “When’re we going to do something?”
“Perhaps quite soon,” Cadoc answered. “Or perhaps not. It depends on what further I can learn about the lovely Athenais, if anything. And on much else, to be sure. I am not only overdue for a change of identity, we are both overdue for a change of occupation. The Rus trade is spinning faster and faster toward ruin.”
“Yah, yah, you’ve said that plenty often. I’ve seen for myself. But what about this woman? You haven’t told me nothing about her.”
“That is because patience in disappointment is not among your excellences.” Cadoc paced to the single window and stared out. It stood open on summer air, odors of smoke and tar and dung and hinted fragrances, noise of wheels and hoofs and feet and voices. From this third-floor inn room the view swept over roofs, streets, the city wall, the gate and harbor of the Kontoskalion. Masts raked upward from the docks. Beyond glittered the Sea of Marmora. Craft danced on its blueness, everything from bumboats shaped like basins to a freighter under sail and a naval dromond with oars in parade-ground step. It was hard to imagine, to feel, the shadow under which all this lay.
Cadoc clasped his hands behind his back. “However, I may as well inform you now,” he said. “Today I have hopes that I’ll reach the end of the trail, or find that it was a false scent. It’s been maddeningly vague, as you’d expect. So-and-so tells me that somebody else once told him this-and-that. With difficulty, because he’s moved, I track down Kyrios Somebody Else to verify it, and to the best of his dim recollection that is not quite what he told So-and-so, but from a third party he did once hear— Ah, well.
“Basically, ‘Athenais’ is the latest name the lady has taken. No surprise there. Name changes are quite usual in her profession; and of course she prefers to obscure her origins, the fact that she was not always the darling of the city. I’ve established that, earlier, she worked as Zoe in one of the better brothels over in Galata; and I am practically certain that before then she was on this side of the Golden Horn, in the Phanar quarter, as a less elegant girl calling herself Eudoxia. Beyond that, the information is slight and unreliable. Too many people have died or otherwise disappeared.
“The pattern has been the same, though, an outwardly affable but actually secretive woman who avoids pimps—at worst, formerly, she paid off as necessary—and spends no more on fanciments than she must. Instead, she saves—invests, I suspect—with an eye to moving up another rung on the ladder. Now she is independent, even powerful, what with her connections and the things she doubtless knows. And—“ Despite the dull houndwork that lay behind, despite the coolness he kept m his tone, a tingle went along Cadoc’s backbone, out to his scalp and fingertips. “The trail reaches at least thirty years into the past, Rufus. It may well be fifty or more years long. Always she is youthful, always she is beautiful.”
“I knew what you was after,” said the redbeard, unwontedly low, “but I’d stopped thinking you’d ever find it.”
“I too, almost. Seven centuries since I came on you, and nobody before and nobody afterward, for all my searching. Yes, hope wears thin. Maybe today, at last—“ Cadoc shook himself, turned about, and laughed. “I’m soon due at her place. I dare not tell you what a few hours there cost!”
“Have a care,” Rufus grunted. “A whore be a whore. I go find me a cheap ‘un, ha?”
Impulsively, Cadoc reached into his pouch and gave him a fistful of silver miliarisions. “Add this to your own coins and enjoy yourself, old fellow. A shame that the Hippodrome isn’t open just now, but you must know several odeions where the performances are bawdy enough for your less elevated moments. Just don’t talk too loosely.”
“You taught me that, you did. Have fun. I hope she turns out to be what you want, master. I’ll use a bit o’ the money to buy you a good-luck spell.” That seemed to be about as much as the prospect could move Rufus’ stolidity. But then, Cadoc thought, he lacks the wit to understand what it will mean to find another immortal—a woman. At least, immediately; it may dawn on him later.
I don’t suppose I quite understand it yet myself.
Rufus went out. Cadoc took an embroidered mantle off its hanger and fitted it over the fine linen sakkos and be-jeweled dalmatic that enrobed him. On his feet were curly-toed shoes from far Cordova. Even for an afternoon appointment, one went to Athenais appropriately dressed.
He had already gotten his hair cut short and his beard shaven off. Fluent in Greek and familiar, after much prowling, with the byways of the city, he could pass for Byzantine. Not that he would try to do so unnecessarily. It wasn’t worth the risk. Rus merchants were supposed to stay in the St. Manio suburb on the Galata side of the Horn, crossing the bridge to the Blachernae Gate by day and returning at evening. He was still listed among them. It had taken a substantial bribe as well as persuasive chatter to get permission to take lodging here. He was not actually a Rus, he told the officials, and he was ready to retire from the trade. Both statements were true. He had gone on, mendaciously but persuasively, about certain new arrangements he had in mind, which would be to the profit of local magnates as well as himself. In the course of generations, given an innate talent for it, one learns how to convince. Thus he won freedom to pursue his inquiries with maximum efficiency.
The streets throbbed and clamored with traffic. He followed their steepnesses to the Mese, the avenue that, branching, ran from end to end of the city. Down its width on his right he spied the column that upbore Justinian’s equestrian statue in the Forum of Constantine and beyond it, just glimpsed, the walls of the Imperial palace grounds, senate house, law courts, Hippodrome; the domes of Hagia Sophia; the gardens and shining buildings on the Acropolis: glories raised through lifetime after transient lifetime.
He turned left. Brilliance flowed with him and glowed from the arcades that lined the thoroughfare. Plainness was nearly lost in it, workmen, porters, carters, farmers in from the countryside, priests of the lower orders. Even hawkers and strolling entertainers flaunted fantastic colors as they shouted what wonders they offered; even slaves wore the liveries of great households. A nobleman passed by in his palanquin, young dandies whooped in a wineshop, a troop of guardsmen tramped with mail agleam, a cavalry officer and his attendant cataphracts cantered haughtily behind a runner who shouted and elbowed people aside, banners flew, cloaks and scarfs billowed in a brisk wind off the sea, New Rome seemed immortally young. Religion yielding to commerce and diplomacy, foreigners were plentiful, be they suave Muslim Syrians, boorish Catholic Normans, or from lands farther and stranger yet. Cadoc was content to vanish into the human flood.
At the Forum of Theodosius he crossed over to its northern corner, ignoring the sellers who cried their wares and the beggars who cried their need. Where the Aqueduct of Valens overlooked the roof-decked hollow it spanned, he paused for a moment’s breath. The view swept before him, down to rampart and battlements, the Gate of the Drungarii, the Golden Horn full of its own farings, and across those waters hills green with growth, white with the houses of Pera and Galata. Gulls yonder made a living snowstorm. You can tell a rich harbor by its gulls, thought Cadoc. How much longer will this many fly and mew here?