The Belt of Gold (8 page)

8

In the brilliant sun of the desert, all things seemed simple, divided sharply into light and dark, just as the radiance of Christ divided up the works of men into salvation, pure as sunlight, and sin, as black as night.

Daniel had been six years sitting in the desert, eating thorns and brambles, while the pitiless purity of the sun burned away his doubt. Now he was ready. Now he was going to Constantinople, his flesh hallowed as a vessel for the message of Christ.

He had walked for three days, coming down from the treeless rock-strewn mountainside where he had been transformed, before he reached the first town in his path.

This was an ancient village, made of small stone buildings and hovels of straw and twigs. In the center stood a little domed church, shaped like an octagon. It was evening as Daniel approached, and the village women in their black shawls were drawing water from the well. In the distance the serrated ridges of the mountains were luminous with the pink sundown, and in the pastures behind the houses, the goats bleated to be milked.

Daniel was taller than most men, thin as a vine after the years of fasting, and all who saw him stopped to stare as he passed. He did not stop. With his staff in his hand and his single threadbare garment clutched close over his breast, he paced through the village straight to the church.

Inside, the village priest and his boy were making ready for the evening service. The boy at the altar was setting new candles into the candlesticks on the altar and the priest, a weary man in middle years, his head bald as a stone, stood in his pulpit turning the pages of the Bible.

Daniel walked into the center of the church and stopped and turned slowly to see the whole interior.

The building looked very old. Perhaps it had even served once as a place of pagan worship. The tile floor was worn down here and there to the underfloor by the feet of the pious; the ceiling was newly painted, a blameless white, but on the wall behind the altar, where all the faithful had to see it, a face had been made with mosaic chips, two faces actually, a mother and a child.

When his gaze fell on these false images, these demonic representations of that which could never be represented, Daniel gave out a scream of real pain. The boy at the altar whirled, several of the white candles dropping from his hands to the floor. Daniel strode toward the icon, raising his stick. When the boy rushed toward him, Daniel struck him hard on the head and walked over him.

The priest cried, “Stop! Stop—”

Daniel climbed up onto the altar, wielding his stick with both hands, and struck at the icon on the wall. His foot slipped on the altar cloth and he fell on one knee and knocked down some of the candles, and was trying to rise again when the priest caught his arm and pulled him away.

Daniel swung the stick awkwardly backwards and banged the end on the top of the priest's head. “Blasphemer! You worship idols here—idols!”

The priest went down on all fours; blood streamed down over his bald head and down his cheeks, and he swayed there, like a dog, gasping for breath and snorting, dazed. Daniel climbed down from the altar and rushed out of the church again, into the square by the well.

The women gathered at the well had clearly heard the turmoil in the church. They were clustered together, staring and muttering to one another. When Daniel came running out of the church, many of the women screamed. He rushed in among them, scattering them out of his way, and seized the first water jug he saw and overturned it into the street.

The women screamed again, and like a flock of birds scattering away from a child throwing stones, they shrank away from him, darting off in all directions. Some made the sign against the Evil Eye. Daniel tipped over another water jug and another, and beat the water into mud with his feet, and gathering up two handfuls of the mud he ran back into the church.

As he went in he saw that the men of the village were running in from the fields and their houses, drawn by the screams of the women.

He ran up the center of the church. The priest was getting up, pulling himself to his feet with one hand on the altar. The blood shimmered on his face. Daniel ran past him and flung the mud full into the face of the idols, one handful at the woman, one at the child.

The villagers were crowding into the church behind him. He swung around to face them.

“Idols! You have worshipped idols—made sinful idols and icons to give your prayers to, when you must pray to God! To God Himself and no other—for has He not told us,
I am
—”

The crowd began to clamor, drowning his sermon, and he had to raise his voice to a bellow.

“
I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before Me!”

“He's muddied up the Virgin! Look!”

“He's right—the Word of God—”

Here and there among the crowd people were going down on their knees.

“Look what he did to the picture!”

“God sent him to us.”

Some prayed, but now from the crowd three or four men burst forward, coming at Daniel with their hands out and their teeth bared. He whirled up his stick, ready to fight for the Lord's sake, and gave the first to come within range a good crack across the face. Then other men poured from the crowd, and women, too, some to attack him, and some to defend him, and all got to fighting in the middle of the church, before the altar.

In their midst the priest began to weep, and held up his hands to Heaven, crying for God's help. All around the back of the church people knelt in prayer as if their friends and neighbors did not go on beating one another there before them. In the midst of this turmoil, Daniel felt God urging him to leave, and he did so. The doorway was packed with weeping, praying women, who watched the struggle inside and wrung their hands together, and he had to bully his way through them. Outside, in the deepening grey dusk, he drank the bitter water of the well and took the road again for Constantinople.

The ceremonial robe weighed on her like a suit of chains; the headdress hurt her neck to wear. Irene stood straight and still as she could, her hands pressed together before her, her eyes on the door with its heavy bronze panels. In a few minutes she would walk through that door and into the Church of the Holy Apostles and there before thousands of her people she would reaffirm the mysterious and ancient relationship between God and this City, and there could be no mistake, no misstep, nothing to mar the perfection of the ritual.

She said, “Parakoimomenos, you may approach me.”

The Grand Domestic shuffled forward; he wore only his court costume, no ceremonial gear, since he was here to watch and not to take part. “Augustus, Chosen One of God, command me.”

“This holy man in the desert,” she said. “What do you know of him?”

The eunuch's noble white brow rumpled quizzically. “Augustus, Chosen One. A holy man? I know of no such a one.”

“I had a message last night, from the drungarius of Paphlagonia—”

Beyond the bronze doors, the drums thundered, and like a war-horse at the sound of trumpets, she wheeled around, her head rising. “Find out,” she said. “You who know everything, Parakoimomenos, do not disappoint me this time.” The doors were swinging open, letting into this little room the blaze of lights from the altar.

“Augustus—”

With a short chop of her hand, she sent him away; there was no time now to speak with eunuchs, or concern herself with the holy man. Before her lay a test, another of the many tests that God had placed in her path, and she girded herself to meet it.

“Hail, O Chosen One of God!”

She advanced through the doors into the church, and the roar of voices met her, a thousand throats yielding up praises. In the midst of dozens of her servants, each costumed in a fortune in gold and gems, she paced forward into the blaze of the candlelight. Before her, the great church shimmered with gold, on the walls, on the columns that divided off the space, on the clothing of the celebrants, on the magnificent altar. She fixed her eyes on the Crucifix, at the head of the altar, and with measured steps advanced down the aisle toward it.

On either side of her, the packed bodies of the multitude swayed and dipped down to their knees. From each the incantation rose, in perfect order, a single superhuman voice.

“God, hear us! God, have mercy on us! God, protect us!”

Ahead of her, at the altar, the Patriarch was waiting, with three ranks of lesser priests. At her approach, they knelt down, and from them also the chant sounded.

“God, defend us from the barbarian! God, preserve Thy truth in us! God, uplift us with Thy grace!”

The Patriarch raised up the image of the City, a miniature building made of solid gold; he lifted it up above his head, and the thousands of candles showered their light on it, and the people went down on their faces before it.

“God, receive us into Thy hands.”

The Basileus had reached the altar. With the people prostrated around her, she lifted her arms until the gold-plated wings of her robe were extended, took the image of the City from the Patriarch, and raised it at full length above her head. It was so heavy her arms trembled. If she dropped it, Constantinople itself would fall. She forced her arms to raise it high into the air, where all could see it, and opened her throat and shouted the chant.

“I take my City into my hands!”

“Amen! Amen! Amen!”

“I receive my people into my protection!”

“Amen! Amen! Amen!”

She turned, the golden image on her fingertips, her muscles on fire at the effort; with every passing second the weight seemed to double, the strain to drag irresistibly on her arms.

“I renew my spirit in my City!”

“Amen! Amen! Amen!”

“Here is Christ, Basileus!”

“Amen! Amen! Amen!”

The chorus echoed and echoed again in the great dome above her. She lifted her eyes to it; there in the concave surface the face of God Himself looked down, Pantocrator, the Judge of All. Her arms were numb with weakness. Still she supported the whole City on her fingertips. God had chosen her again, and her triumph gave her strength beyond herself, Basileus.

She faced the altar again, and started forward. The Patriarch and his priests stepped to one side. In solemn march, she advanced to the altar, and there, only there, allowed herself to lower her arms, to bring the great weight slowly down onto the altar, to lay it there for another year.

“Hail, Basileus! Hail, Christ, our Ruler!”

She raised her arms again, buoyant without the golden City. Her spirit flew up like a winged dove. God had chosen her again. The Caliph could threaten, and John Cerulis spin his plots, but she was invulnerable as long as God maintained her.

“Hagen has the list,” Theophano said. She lifted off the heavy golden robe like a shell, freeing the warm woman inside.

“He does? Are you sure?”

“He as much as told me so.”

Irene shook her hair out, stretching her arms, the ceremonial robes falling away from her. The other women were in the next room still, getting more clothes for the Basileus, and Theophano was alone with her for a moment. She swept a gauze dressing gown around her mistress's shoulders. When she reached forward to fasten it at the throat, her arms were around the Basileus's neck, and Irene turned her head swiftly and kissed her.

They laughed. Theophano withdrew her arms, her gaze lowered, warm and happy in the intimate moment. Irene stood up, paced across the room, and shut the door, so that the other women would stay out.

Sitting down on the stool, Theophano looked up at her mistress, aware now that some furthur task would be expected of her. Irene came back toward her and her hand passed swiftly over Theophano's head in a light caressing touch.

“The list matters nothing, so long as John Cerulis does not have it,” she said. “What matters is his plot against me, which he surely will not abandon simply because he has not got the list. I must know more details of that plot.”

“Alas,” Theophano said. “I learned nothing of it.”

“Yet you were a member of his intimate company,” the Empress said. “Could you not somehow inveigle yourself back into his good graces?”

Theophano's heart stopped; she felt cold all over. She said, “Oh, no, mistress, he will never believe me again.”

“You could tell him that you had to do what you did, to preserve your good standing with me, but that you are sincerely in his service, and mean to betray me to him.”

“Oh, mistress, he will never believe that.”

Tap-tap, came a discreet little knock on the door, Helena wanting to come in: tap-tap-tap.

“One moment,” Irene called, and leaning down took Theophano's hands in hers and looked into her face.

“You must. My love, for me, will you do it?”

“Oh, mistress—” Theophano laid her cheek against the Basileus's hand. “I would do anything for you, you know it, but—”

“I shall rescue you, I promise. God will not abandon you, if you do His will. I shall not abandon you. But we must have knowledge of his plans, or we shall all be destroyed, and the Empire with us.”

Theophano gathered breath. She was frightened of John Cerulis and the idea of putting herself into his power again turned her heart to ice. The hands on her hands were warm and soft and loving, a mother's hands. The womanly face that looked down into hers was soft with love. She could not fail the Basileus now. Lifting her eyes, she said, “I will, mistress.”

Irene leaned down and firmly kissed her lips. “Stay by me a while longer, we shall discuss ploys to use against him.”

She called out, and Helena came in, on her heels the Parakoimomenos. Theophano drew back into a corner, struggling with her tangled feelings.

To serve the Empire: she wanted nothing more. She fixed her mind on that, the one worthy goal.

Before her, the Empress had risen, restless, her hands unceasingly moving. The Parakoimomenos had prostrated himself when he entered, and now he rose to his knees.