The Belt of Gold (13 page)

When the women had gone, he drank from the fountain and sat down beside it, thinking of the girl he had just seen. As he sat there something splashed on his hand. He looked down. His hand rested on the mossy stone base of the fountain's shell-shaped dish, and near his thumb now he marked a hole in the stone, full of black water. Above it, the fountain's dish was cracked. As Hagen watched, a drop of water slowly formed at the foot of the crack, growing from a bead to a great tremulous dark ball that hung impossibly long from the stone.

Abruptly it burst, streaked down into the dark hole below, and cast up a spidery web of a splash. Hagen put his finger down into the hole, and could not touch the bottom.

How many years had this slow drip worked, to hollow so deep a hole in the stone? For the first time the weight of the years of this place impressed itself on his mind. No wonder these people fixed their minds ever on eternity. While their City decayed around them, they consoled themselves with the struggle for a matchless purity.

Yet as he looked around, ready to despise them, he saw again how beautiful was Constantinople, although the work of time and change; how well fashioned were their lives, although the work of delusion.

He had no truth so excellent as their delusion.

Once again he felt himself utterly alone without his brother. Mounting his horse, he rode slowly back toward the Palace.

He went into the stable under the Hippodrome. While he was putting his horse away, he saw that his packs had been gone through.

He realized at once who had done it. His temper brimmed over, although he had foreseen this and left nothing of value in the stable. All his money and the Greek paper he carried in his clothes. Still he got his sword from its scabbard and stormed off through the stables, looking for the grooms, but the racing teams had already gone home for the night. Only a few guards and the dozing nightmen were left, scattered here and there in the vast subterranean barn.

He walked in through the back door on to the Palace grounds and went up toward the building where he was housed. The sun had gone down. The sky was a deep lavender, and a violet mist was rising from the sea; the great marble buildings on the top of the headland above him seemed to be floating on the clouds. He stopped to admire this, pleased in spite of himself.

Gradually, as he stood there, his senses opened to the place around him. He could hear laughter and low voices to his right, beyond the hedges that marked the edge of the rose garden; behind him someone was playing on a pipe, not making music, but going through little strands of notes, practicing, or exploring. He could smell the spicy sauce they put on all their food, and when he sniffed deeper he picked up the toasty aroma of bread, and his mouth filled up with water and his stomach growled.

Now, off to his left, a door opened, and he moved swiftly to put a hedge between him and whoever was coming out.

Two women emerged, carrying bundles of linen. From the open door behind them came a gust of damp, warm air. The door slammed. The two women, sighing over their burdens, went up the stair to the next level of the grounds.

Hagen knew what was in the building they had just left; he had come on it the first night he was here, when he had walked over the whole place. It was a little bathhouse. He had swum in the bath the first night. Now he turned his steps that way again.

The door was unlocked, as it had been the first time. The room was utterly dark. He could still smell the smoke of candles in the air. Groping along with his feet, he brought to mind his first visit and remembered where the edge of the pool was and found it with his toes. He peeled off his clothes, left them in a heap on the tiles and dove into the warm, perfumed water.

It was delicious on his skin, better than the baths at Aachen, which smelled foully of sulphur. He floated around on his back in the darkness, his arms sculling the lukewarm water; he sank down completely under the surface, his hair floating, his breath escaping in a stream of bubbles.

When he came up again, the door was open, a dim grey rectangle in the dark.

He floated away from the spreading fan of light spilling through it. Carrying a candle, Theophano walked into the bathhouse.

The light danced on the black water, picking out the ripples he left in his wake. She started around the pool toward the cabinets on the left, saw the clothes piled on the edge of the pool, and shrank back.

“Who's there? Who is it?”

“Hagen,” he said, seeing she was frightened. He went closer to the light, so that she could see him. “It's only me, Theophano.”

“What are you doing here? What a presumptuous man! This is the Basileus's place.”

“I like to swim.” He went to the side of the pool where his clothes lay in a heap. “I'm glad to see you, anyway—I have something for you.”

“For me?” Eagerly she came toward him; he gave her a quizzical look and on his arms boosted himself smoothly up out of the water, and seeing he was naked she turned her back.

“Come with me,” he said, when he was dressed, and taking her arm he steered her toward the door.

“What do you have for me?”

“The clothes you left behind you at the inn in Chalcedon.”

“Oh.” Her shoulders drooped; he could feel her disappointment by touch, through his grip on her arm.

She did not try to get away from him. They went out into the darkness, cool after the steamy warmth of the bathhouse. She lifted her free hand to brush her hair back from her face. The top of her head came barely to his chin. He wanted to put his arm around her, to shelter her in the curve of his arm. Climbing the uneven steps to the next terrace, he thought that over, and at the top he moved his hand down her arm and took hold of her hand.

She glanced up at him, but she did not pull away. “The Basileus sent you to watch John Cerulis, I thought.”

“He is going nowhere for a while.” He led her around the end of the building where his quarters were, to the courtyard on the far side, where a line of bushy trees gave them some privacy. In the quiet, there, beside a little flowering tree, he kissed her.

She put her arms around his neck, her lips eager. Her body was warm against his. One part of his mind stood aloof from this, suspicious of her, but even as he fumbled at her dress, trying to find a way through the silky folds, her hand glided down over his back and across his hip and down his thigh and pressed up hard against his crotch.

From then on he thought only of getting her inside, in to the bed. She whispered some laughing, encouraging tease, her stroking fingers cupping the swelling bulge in his breeches. He lifted her up and carried her in through the door behind the curtain, her hair all down over his arm and his shoulder, and laid her on her back on the bed.

He lit a candle. She reached out her arms toward him. Their hands stroked over each other, pulling their clothes off. Kneeling on the bed beside her, he helped her lift her white silk dress up over her head. Trembling, hard and aching, he made himself wait for her, touch her where she needed it, kiss her little white breasts, his hands on her thighs, until she was ready for him. Her hand guided him inside.

It was wonderful. He was home again, a thousand miles from home, locked in her arms, her legs crooked over his hips, her whimpering cries in his ears. When he came, he bellowed with the force of it.

The candlelight flickered over her cheeks and her hair, the damp streaks of tears glittering down over her temples. He did not have to ask her if she had enjoyed it. Her pretty breasts and shoulders were flushed, no longer white as silk. She nuzzled close to him, her eyes closed, her face lifted, wanting to be kissed, and dutifully, already half-asleep, separated from her again, he gave her kiss for kiss, until they settled together into the narrow bed and dozed.

Theophano woke with the moonlight bright on her face. The candle had gone out. She lay beside him, his arm across her as he slept on. In the uncertain light, her sense of touch was of a higher power, and on the muscular slabs of his chest her fingertips traced the seams of old scars, long and straight as if made with a knife. She pressed her face against the mat of fine colorless hair on his chest.

He was waking up; his hands moved drowsily, stroking her sides. His palms were ridged with heavy calluses like horn. Both hands: she remembered the two-handed sword he had drawn on the porch of the church on the Chalcedon road.

When she lay still, her hands idle, her mind went straight to her meeting with Karros, and the prospect of facing John Cerulis again. She flinched even from the thought of that. What she wanted, this big quiet man could give her, and her urgent hands asked him, and his arms tightened around her.

He said nothing. He had not spoken since this began. She kissed his mouth, his throat, the scars on his chest. He pulled her over on top of him and they did it that way.

“Oh,” she said, when they were both done. “That was good.”

His embrace tightened around her slightly, his arms around her waist, his face between her breasts. She could feel him smile.

She wanted him to talk to her. It annoyed her that he said nothing, as if they were animals.

“Do you ever miss your own country?”

“I miss my brother.” He shifted under her, his lips against her breast. Somehow she had expected that a barbarian would know nothing more of love than simply to get on and thrust; his tender skill amazed her.

“Did you do this with Rogerius?” he said.

“No.” His tongue on her nipple was having an interesting effect between her legs. “Karros and his men broke in before we could do anything.”

Gently he sucked and tongued on her breast. “Why are you doing this with me?”

“Must there be a reason? You are a man, I am a woman, we can simply enjoy one another.” She would have done it sooner, had she known he was so good at it; she gasped, her thighs trembling.

“You'll forgive me, Theophano—” He kissed her mouth. “If I do not believe you.”

Offended, she pushed herself away from him, her hands on his chest. “Then I shall leave.”

Effortlessly he held her fast. “I won't let you.”

“Why? Why do you want me? For pleasure—a surcease from care—”

“I've never met a woman yet who didn't want something for doing this with me.”

“You have now,” she said, angry. “In Heaven's name, Hagen, what sort of women do you have in Frankland?”

“None like you.”

He pulled her down on him and kissed her, and they caressed each other; pleased, she realized that he would be hard again in a little while. He had the strength of a lifetime of hard work, country work, like a brute in the fields. She stroked the scars on his chest.

“What happened to you here?”

“Someone tried to kill me slowly.”

“Oh. Well, he failed, for which I am most grateful.”

“He was too slow. Rogerius got him.”

“What—”

“Be quiet,” he said. “You know, all you Greeks talk too much.”

They made love with their mouths. He lit the candle and they made love in the light, sitting up. Straddling him, her arms around his neck, she thought, He will help me now, if I need him, and realized she was doing what he had said, expecting something in return for allowing him the use of her body. She promised herself she would never need him. She pressed her face into his white hair, wiping out the world.

Limp as an empty wineskin he lay there on his back with the warmth of the sun on his chest and did not really wake up; he was too relaxed to wake up. Yet in his dreams he knew she moved away, he heard her moving around the room, he heard her putting on her clothes.

Something clinked. That woke him up.

He turned his head and saw her standing over the pile of his clothes, feeling around in his purse.

“Oh, ho,” he said, and sat up, swinging his feet over the edge of the bed to the floor. “That's why you did it.”

She leapt back, dropping his purse onto the floor; the belt buckle clinked again. “No. No, it really wasn't—”

“You lose, this time, girl.” He grabbed his shirt off the floor. “You gave me a good night's pleasure, and you're not going to find what you're looking for. Now get out.”

“Hagen,” she said. “I didn't—it was an afterthought. I really didn't—”

“Go on, get out.”

“Hagen, please.”

“‘Hagen, please.'” He sat down on the bed to pull his leggings on. She was dressed again, but he knew what she looked like, now, under her clothes, and she would never be covered up against his gaze again. “Get out. Go tell the Basileus that you failed again.”

Her cheeks went ruddy, and her eyes blazed. Turning swiftly on her heel, she walked out of the room through the door on to the terrace. He went into the middle of the room, to pick up his belt, and stood there watching her walk away across the courtyard. She was straight and slim as a cypress tree, her silk dress flowing around her. Just the sight of her was a pleasure so acute he laughed. He put his belt on, ready for anything.

13

Ishmael spun the chariot wheel with his hand; the car was tipped up on one side, so that the wheel turned freely on the axle, wobbling in its orbit. He bent to see how it moved on the broad bands of leather that were supposed to cushion it. “This whole bushing has to be replaced, it's worn through.”

“Yes, sir.” His head groom crouched to see the bushing and nodded.

In the corridor outside the equipment room, in the open floor before the rows of the Blue team's stalls, some of the other grooms were dicing. Ishmael glanced that way; one of the grooms was Esad, Prince Michael's man, and although Ishmael meant to repair this car completely, he did not want his rival learning of its deficiencies. Esad had the dice. On all fours he butted into the center of the gaming circle, his voice high with excitement. Ishmael turned back to the chariot.

“The wheel is sound.” He spun it again, his eyes on the rim, embedded with tiny grains of sand that sparkled in the light of the torch on the wall.

“Ho!”

The shout whirled him around, the hair on the back of his neck prickling up. The dice-players were scattering, their voices high and keen with fear. The big white-haired barbarian strode through their midst, kicking money and dice all across the hay-strewn floor, and walked up into Esad's face.

“Stay out of my gear!”

Esad scrambled to his feet. “My master dismissed you, pilgrim!” He waved his arm, and three of the other grooms leapt onto the barbarian's back.

The big man went down under their weight, half-buried under their bodies. Ishmael leapt up, shouting, enraged at the unfairness, and rushed toward the thrashing, yelling men. Esad yanked a short-bladed knife out of his belt and lunged.

Ishmael jumped toward him, but before he could reach Esad, the barbarian was heaving himself up onto his feet, bent double under the burden of the men on his back. He staggered away from Esad a few steps, reached behind him, and grabbing one of the men hanging on him he slung that body around and struck Esad down flat on the floor.

Esad's knife fell into the straw. He rolled over onto his hands and knees and scrambled toward it again. The barbarian had fallen, two men still punching and kicking on top of him. Ishmael got hold of one of these and heaved him away from the barbarian, and the white-haired man surged up to his feet, bucking off the other groom, and from his belt drew forth a battered long sword.

“Stop!” Ishmael flung himself on the barbarian's arm.

The white-haired man whirled around to face him, the sword raised between them; in this man's face Ishmael saw a cold murderous intent that shocked him. Even Esad never really tried to kill anybody.

“I mean you no harm,” Ishmael said, and to prove it let go of the barbarian's sword arm. “You can't fight here, not with a sword, you'll get in terrible trouble.”

Behind Ishmael, several feet pounded away down the aisle. The white-haired man straightened up. With a snap of his wrist he put the sword back into its scabbard on his hip. Seeing at a glance that Esad and the other grooms had discreetly left, Ishmael backed away a step, giving this man some room.

“Thank you,” the barbarian said, and put out his hand. “I guess I lost my temper.”

Ishmael took his hand. “My name is Ishmael—Mauros-Ishmael, they call me. I am one of the drivers.”

“My name is Hagen.”

They shook hands; Ishmael liked him at once, the hard grip, the straightforward look. Michael had said he was one of the Empress's spies, which was tantalizing in itself.

“Don't worry about Esad and the others,” Ishmael said. “Once they get used to you, they'll leave you alone.”

The barbarian laughed, putting his head back, his blue eyes snapping. “They'll learn to, one way or another.”

“I can see that. Come on to the tavern. I'll stand you a cup.”

“Done.”

They went up out of the Hippodrome, on to the street past the Imperial menagerie. The bear-keepers and lion-tamers were feeding their charges, and as Hagen and Ishmael walked by, the archways resounded with the roars and growls of the great beasts in their cages under the walls. Most of the whores had gathered to watch the feeding, their backs to the street and their customers. As the two men walked by, one of the whores saw them and turned and whistled and flapped her skirt at them. A fortune-teller cackled at them from an alleyway by the tavern.

“I saw you race,” Hagen said.

“You mean you saw me lose,” said Ishmael.

“However you want to put it. You looked pretty good to me. Only one team can win at a time, right?”

They went into the tavern, half-empty in the middle of the day, and Ishmael steered the big man to his favorite table and called to the wench to bring them cups. Ishmael dropped onto his chair, leaned forward, his elbows on the table, and stared at the big man opposite him.

“Do you know anything about horses?”

“We don't drive horses the way you do. Even the harness we use is different; we use a collar, not the breastplate.”

“Do you think I can beat Prince Michael?”

The barbarian smiled at him. “I would love to see you do it.”

“You've met Michael?”

“Oh, yes.”

“What do you think of him?”

“I think he's an arrogant swell-headed cheat.”

“‘Cheat'!”

The barbarian shook his head. “He made fight-talk at me, to impress—somebody. When there was no possibility of a fight between us. That seems like cheating to me.”

Ishmael jacked his eyebrows up and down; this assessment was too small to fit the Michael he knew. “Well, that's interesting.” The wench was coming, with a jug and two cups, which she put down on the table between them.

“Mark it against my name,” Ishmael said.

“Master,” the girl said. “The old man says you owe too much.”

“Damn him.” Ishmael's neck felt hot and rough. “He does this every time I come in here. Tell him that I will pay him when I am paid.”

The barbarian put his purse on the table, a leather bag that clinked. “I'll pay it.”

“No.” Ishmael thrust out one hand to stop him. “They know me here—they'll take my word, damn them, or as the Son is equal to the Father, I'll take my custom elsewhere.”

“I'll tell him,” the wench said, and left.

“Damn them,” Ishmael muttered. He pushed his hair back with both hands. He was supposed to be paid by the Prefect of the City, who was master of the games, but they still owed him for the last two races he had driven. The barbarian was watching him, a little smile on his lips.

“It's not especially amusing to me,” Ishmael said.

“No—I was not laughing at you—I was thinking of something else.”

“What?”

“Nothing. A girl.” The barbarian picked up his cup to drink.

“I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name.”

“Hagen. Hagen the White.”

“Well, I can see why that is. Do they pay you when they are supposed to?”

“They? Who?”

“The Basileus.”

The blue eyes were sharp now, the smile still curving his mouth. “The Basileus pays me nothing. Not money, anyhow.”

“Oh. I heard you were one of her spies.”

Hagen laughed out loud. “No, no, no. I am only on my way home. I have a little business here to do, and then I will be gone.”

“Oh.” Disappointed, Ishmael drank his wine, and reaching for the jug poured another cup for himself and for Hagen, but as he reflected on it he realized that Hagen was not telling him the truth, since mere passersby could not stable their horses in the Hippodrome. Of course a spy could not reveal himself at once, or at all, if he could help it.

“Where are you coming from?”

“Jerusalem. The Holy Places. I was on a pilgrimage.”

“Really? I've never been outside of Constantinople, myself.”

“That's not a Greek name, is it? Ishmael?”

“My father came here from Nicaea. My grandfather from Aleppo, my great-grandfather from Medina. All men are citizens of Rome, as the saying goes.”

“This is not Rome.”

“Well, I am here, nonetheless.”

“I'll never understand you Greeks. How—”

Abruptly the big man stiffened, looking past Ishmael, and in his eyes there blazed the same cold killing fury that had been in his face in the stable. Ishmael wheeled in his chair to see what had so taken his attention.

Karros was in the doorway, John Cerulis's man. He saw Hagen at once, and whirled and ran.

“Thanks for the wine,” Hagen said, and bolted off his chair and out the door.

Ishmael leapt up, so quick he bumped the table and tipped the wine jug over, and raced to the door. The wench got in his way and he dodged around her.

They were gone. Looking up and down the crowded street, he saw neither Hagen nor Karros. He swore under his breath. The barbarian had secrets to hide, after all, and must work for the Empress, since at least one of his secrets concerned Karros. Standing on his toes, he searched the solid stream of passersby, but he could see nothing of Hagen or Karros. He would have to wait and see what happened. Dissatisfied, he went back into the tavern, to finish his wine.

Out of breath, Karros ran down the side of the street where the traffic was lightest, cut through an alleyway that stank of cat-piss, and crossed the Mesê, fighting his way through the crowd. On the far side, between the fluted columns of the walkway, he stopped and searched the street for the barbarian, but the big man was nowhere in sight.

Karros blew out his breath. He had outrun him. Relaxing, he sighed, smoothed down his coat, and hitched his belt up, his lungs cooling slowly. He might be getting fat but he was still fast on his feet. Soothed by that knowledge, he went around the column and walked into the arms of the barbarian.

He screamed; when he turned to run, a big hard hand clamped over his mouth, and a knife appeared before his eyes. In his ear, the rude accented voice said, “This is for my brother, Greek.”

“No!” Karros screamed into the barbarian's palm; he clutched the other man's wrist with both hands, holding the knife away from him. “Let me talk—let me talk—”

The knife pricked his nose. “You killed my brother!”

“No—no—I didn't—”

Roughly the barbarian jerked him around to face him. “Then who did?”

“Theophano!”

The big man's head jerked up. His hands slid away from Karros; he retreated, shrinking back away from him. “What?”

“It was Theophano, as God forgives all sinners, I swear it, it was Theophano.” Karros's mouth began to work at top speed. “It wasn't what you think—that business on the road. She is two-faced. She serves the Basileus but she serves John Cerulis, too, my master—she's really his thing, the Basileus thinks the other way around but the more fool she.”

The barbarian was moving, closing with him again, and the knife rose through the light and shadow, the blade flashing. “Keep talking.”

“She was only pretending to be escaping from us—it was for the Basileus's sake, a play, to fool the Basileus. I'm telling you, she killed your brother—she stabbed him from behind, in the neck.”

He saw, in the wash of expression across the barbarian's face, that he made sense of that. Karros licked his lips, wanting to get away from that knife; his eyes followed every move of the blade, fascinated by it, the play of light along it.

“Listen to me. I'll prove it to you. She will be at my master's house tonight. If you come there, you'll see her—I'll let you in, you can see her sitting at the table with him.”

The barbarian shut his mouth tight. Bad temper hardened all the planes of his face, his eyes like flint, his lips bloodless, but at least he put the knife away.

“All right, then. Take me there.”

“Tonight.” Karros put out his hand. “You know, maybe you could work for my master too—he can use a good fighting man. Hah? Think it over.”

“Bah.” The big man struck violently at his hand. “Tonight. I'll come to the back gate, the one by the myrtle tree.”

“How do you know about the myrtle tree?”

The barbarian struck at him again, a short vicious punch in the chest. “I know a lot, more than you think. Don't try to fool me. The myrtle tree, at sundown.” Glowering, his shoulders bulled forward, the big man strode off, out toward the Mesê. Karros watched him go into the crowd; he could see him for a long way, since he was a head taller than anybody else. Karros's heart was racing again. He was short of breath again, although he had not run at all. He thought, I'm getting old for this. On shaky legs he made his way back toward the palace of John Cerulis.

John Cerulis went to mass in the chapel of his palace, wearing his best coat, all worked with gold and pearls, as near to the imperial as it could be without the purple. He knelt down on the floor and asked God for help in achieving his purposes, although he knew it was God Himself who blocked him—for what other force could deny the throne to one who so obviously deserved it more than any other?

Outside, surrounded by his retinue and clients, he distributed money and bread to the poor, who came every day into his courtyard to receive his largess. They came to him, one by one, and kissed his hand, and bowing they all praised God for his wealth and his generosity, and then sent their own prayers hurrying up to God in favor of John Cerulis.

When that was done, he went into the reception hall of the palace, and there, seated in a chair covered with the pelts of leopards, smiling, ever smiling, he heard the petitions of his underlings. They came to him with flatteries and promises and begged him for his help, in gaining office, in buying land or selling licenses, in making marriages, in dissolving them, and if their oratory was clever, and quoted Homer in appropriate ways, and built up from subordinate phrase through subordinate phrase to the fully rounded climax, he granted what they wished.