Thus spoke sword-bearer Zacharias, deceiving me and leading me into sin. God has since punished me for striking a holy man; for though he may have been evil, he was still holy. But I did not understand this then. I took with me two men on whom I could rely, Ospak and Skule, gave them wine and money, and told them we were going to beat a man who confused the two natures of Christ. It surprised them that three of us should be needed to beat one man, but when that evening we attacked the Archimandrite, their wonder ceased. As we rushed at him, I received a kick from his mule; and with his rosary, which he wore on his wrist and which consisted of heavy leaden beads, he gave Skule such a blow on the temples that he fell to the ground and remained there. But Ospak, a good man from Öland with the strength of a bear, dragged him from his saddle and threw him to the ground. By this time our blood was roused, so that we beat him worse than we would otherwise have done. He bellowed curses and roared for help; but nobody came, for in Miklagard, when anyone hears a cry for help, everyone runs in the opposite direction, lest he be arrested as perpetrator of the crime. At last we heard the sound of hoofs and we knew that the Khazar bowmen of the city watch were approaching; so we left the Archimandrite, who was by now unable to do anything save crawl, and departed. But we had to leave Skule there with him.
On the next day I went back to sword-bearer Zacharias, who was so pleased with the way everything had turned out that he acted honorably toward me. Everything, he said, leering with satisfaction, had gone better than he could have hoped. Skule had been dead when the watch had found him, and the Archimandrite was now in prison charged with street-brawling and murder. There was good hope that he would not be released before his ears had been clipped, for the Emperor Constantine feared his brother, and the Emperor Basil always meted out severe punishment to any monk convicted of disorderly behavior and, moreover, disliked having men of his bodyguard murdered. As a reward for the success of my efforts, my request was to be granted immediately. He had, he said, already spoken with important friends of his who held high positions in the navy, and before long I would find myself a ship’s chieftain in one of the red ships, which were regarded as the finest in the fleet.
Things turned out as he had promised, for even Byzantine courtiers sometimes keep their word. So I was appointed to a good ship and departed with my son from the palace and the perils it contained for us. We rowed westwards to the land of Apulia, where we fought Mohammed’s servants, both those of Sicily and those who belong to more distant lands. We stayed there a long time and underwent many adventures, which it would take long to relate. My son waxed strong and comely. I made him an archer in my ship. He liked the sea, and we were happy there. But when we were ashore, he was often foolish with women, as young people are, and this caused quarrels between us. When we anchored in the Emperor’s harbors, Bari or Tarentum in Apulia, or Modon, or Nepanto, where the great shipyards are, and where we received our pay, there were always plenty of women to choose from, for wherever sailors are with booty and pay, thither women always flock eagerly. But there were also in these towns officers called strategi, and silver-booted naval chieftains, and officials called secretices and logothetes who dealt with matters of pay and booty. They had their wives with them, beautiful women with dovelike voices and white hands and painted eyes. They were full of witchcraft, and not for seafaring men, as I often told Halvdan.
But he paid small heed to my counsel. It was his fate that women’s eyes always turned toward him, and he thought none but the best good enough for one who had lain with the Emperor’s daughter. The Byzantine women are fiery, and swift to cuckold their husbands once their lust is aroused. But their men dislike being cuckolded, and those in high office order the death of any young man who arouses their suspicions, and often kill their wives, too, that their minds may be set at rest and that they may marry again and be luckier. My advice to Halvdan was always to leave married women alone and to content himself with those whose virtue was their own business. If he had heeded my counsel, that which afterwards happened would never have happened. He would not be dead, and I should not be as I am. Neither should I be sitting here telling you of the Bulgar gold. It would have been better so.
It was not for the woman’s sake that he was killed, but for that of the gold. But it was the woman who caused our ways to separate, and the rest followed.
It was then that sword-bearer Zacharias Lakenodrako spat the communion bread into the face of his enemy, the Archimandrite Sophron, who had by this time returned into the Emperor’s favor, crying aloud before the assembled court that the Archimandrite had poisoned it. The Archimandrite was whipped for this and exiled to a distant monastery, but Zacharias, too, was dismissed from his office and had his ears clipped for dishonoring Christ. For it was held that, once a man had taken the body of Christ into his mouth, he ought to have the faith to swallow it, even if he knew it to be poisoned. When this news reached me from Miklagard, I laughed aloud, thinking that it would be difficult to decide which of the two men was the more evil, and that the ambitions of both to have the other’s ears clipped had now been satisfied.
But Zacharias had a son called Theofilus. He was already thirty years old and was serving at the court. When his father lost his ears and his office, the son went to both Emperors and prostrated himself on the ground at their feet. He said that the sin his father had committed was, indeed, most foul, and the punishment inflicted upon him so mild that he wept for joy whenever he thought of it. In short, he praised the goodness of the two Emperors so enthusiastically that before very long the Emperor Basil appointed him naval treasurer. This meant that, for the future, he was to supervise the division of all booty won anywhere by the Emperor’s ships, and was, besides, to be in complete charge of all matters concerning sailors’ pay.
We came with the red fleet to Modon, to have our keels scraped and to be paid. Treasurer Theofilus was there, with his wife. I never saw her, but my son quickly did so, and she him. It was in church that their eyes first met, and although he was but a young archer and she a rich woman, it was not long before they met in secret and indulged their lust for each other. Of this I knew nothing until he came to me one day and told me he was weary of the sea and had hopes of a better position in the treasurer’s household. The woman had told her husband that Halvdan was son to a man who had once done his father a service by spiting the Archimandrite, so that now Halvdan stood high not only in the woman’s favor, but in that of her husband also.
When I heard the reasons for his appointment, I told him he might as well run a sword through his breast there and then as do what he intended to do. I also said that it was cruel of him to leave me alone and kinless for a woman’s painted eyes. But he would have his way, and refused to hearken to my counsel. The woman, he said, was like a flame, and without flaw, and he would never be able to live without her. Besides which, he said, he would now grow rich and famous in the treasurer’s service and would no longer have to continue as a poor archer. There was no danger, he said, of his being found out and killed, for, he bade me remember, he was half Byzantine and therefore better able than I to understand many things, including women. When he said this, I was gripped with fury and cursed his mother’s name; and so we parted.
This was a great grief for me. But I thought that, in time, the woman would tire of him, or he of her, and that then he would come back. “Then,” I thought, “when my service is finished, he will return with me home to the north and take a wife there and forget his Byzantine blood.”