Imperial Fire (6 page)

Hero sensed stresses in the relationship. ‘I’d be delighted.’ He glanced round and lowered his voice. ‘What’s that treacherous ruffian Wulfstan doing here?’

Vallon smiled. ‘I found him begging in the street. After reaching Constantinople, he and the rest of the Northmen joined the Byzantine navy and saw service against the Arabs in the Mediterranean. That’s where he lost his hand.’

‘Yes, but after abandoning us the way he did…’

‘If I’d been in his shoes, I might have done the same. And in the end his conscience did override his greed and made him return to the estuary. By then we’d already committed ourselves to the waves.’

Hero shuddered. ‘The most hideous experience of my life. It was a miracle we were saved.’

Peter cleared away the dishes and left. Vallon swirled wine around his beaker. ‘I can’t apologise enough for you being dragged all this way on a wasted journey.’

‘I don’t count seeing you again as a waste.’

‘You believe me when I say that I had nothing to do with the summons?’

‘Of course. But what was the Logothete’s purpose?’

‘Since it doesn’t concern you, it’s better if you don’t know.’

‘That won’t do. We didn’t keep secrets from each other on our quest to carry the ransom hawks to Anatolia.’

Vallon laughed. ‘Yes, we did.’

‘Then this time let’s start by being completely open.’

Vallon pursed his lips and stared into his glass. ‘After I came to the emperor’s attention at Dyrrachium, the Logothete examined the reasons that brought me to Constantinople. He read your account of our travels and on the strength of that document and my military record, he decided I was the right man to escort another expedition.’

‘Where to?’

Vallon’s jaw worked. ‘Well, since the Logothete has deluded himself that you’ll join me, he can hardly protest if I tell you our goal.’ He glanced up, the lamplight hollowing out his features. ‘China, the realm of the Song emperor.’

Hero let his breath go in a low whistle.

Vallon smiled after a fashion. ‘My first reaction, too – or it would have been if I’d been at liberty to express myself. The Logothete conducted the interview in the presence of the Emperor Alexius and the Empress-Mother. On a cold winter’s night in the imperial box at the Hippodrome.’

Hero straightened in his seat. ‘Why does the emperor want to send you to China?’

‘To establish relations with the Song court. Personally, I can’t see what Byzantium will gain by exchanging niceties with a heathen potentate dwelling in a land a year’s journey away.’

‘An alliance must produce some benefits. News of it would certainly burnish the emperor’s prestige.’

Vallon nodded. ‘There’s more. On his travels into the East, did Master Cosmas come across a compound called Fire Drug? It’s an incendiary even more violent than Greek Fire. The Logothete believes it has important military applications and wants me to obtain the formula.’

Hero shook his head. ‘Cosmas never mentioned such a compound.’

‘It probably doesn’t exist except in myth. Well, no matter.’ Vallon raised his hand to forestall protest. ‘You’ll stay here for as long as you wish and then return to Italy at the Logothete’s expense. I’ve already despatched a letter to the minister expressing my outrage at his deception.’

Hero traced a pattern on the tabletop. ‘I assume that he thought I would be an asset on the enterprise. Obviously you don’t share his opinion.’’

‘The journey there and back will take at least three years. I regard it as a death sentence.’

‘I take it that you’re not in a position to refuse the commission.’

‘You’re right. I face my fate knowing that if I perish, my family won’t suffer.’

Hero mused for a while. ‘Could I have another glass of that excellent wine?’

‘Forgive me,’ said Vallon, raising the flagon. ‘The whole business has unsettled me. What grieves me most is the dissension it’s caused between me and Caitlin. Imagine how she feels, knowing that I’ll be gone for years, probably never to return.’

‘When do you leave?’

‘At the beginning of the sailing season. We sail to Trebizond on the Black Sea, cross Armenia and then strike through Seljuk Persia armed with a safe conduct from the Sultan.’ Vallon uttered a sardonic laugh.

Hero raised the glass to his lips but didn’t drink. ‘Cosmas told me that the Chinese are a most ingenious race, with many inventions and wonders to their credit. It would be a singular privilege to study their arts and engineering.’

Vallon swallowed his wine and poured another cup, the neck of the flagon chattering on the rim.

‘No, I won’t allow you to come. Consider how I’d feel if you died on the journey.’

‘Consider how
I’d
feel if I let you go without me.’

‘I’m duty-bound. You aren’t. I have family to consider. You don’t.’

Hero’s mouth tightened. ‘Each of us has different motives. In my case, I’d accompany you out of choice, to satisfy my curiosity, to further my store of knowledge. An expedition to China would be the adventure of a lifetime.’

‘Do you despise your profession so much that you’d throw it away for a land march into the unknown?’

‘I’m still only twenty-seven. I have half a lifetime in which to practise medicine.’

Vallon knocked over his glass and swore. ‘Hero, you’re not coming. Let’s talk of other matters. I insist.’

Hero drank no more than a couple of sips. ‘Do you think Wayland has received a similar summons?’

Vallon glanced around as if he half-expected to find someone lurking in the shadows. ‘No, thank God. Even if the Logothete’s influence extended as far as Suleyman’s court, Wayland wouldn’t abandon Syth and the children to go traipsing to the end of the world on some unknown minister’s say-so.’

‘You said “children”. That means an addition to the family.’

‘A girl, born three years ago. I have the letter in my study. Bring your wine and we’ll read it together.’

Vallon took Hero to a small room furnished with a table overflowing with papers. Vallon waved at them in disgust. ‘I’m still struggling to complete my report on the last campaign.’ He rummaged in a casket that held his personal correspondence. ‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘Wayland’s command of written Arabic is as weak as mine.’

Hero smiled as he unravelled meaning from the letter. ‘He says that in addition to holding the position of senior falconer to the Sultan, he’s been honoured with the title of Master of the Hunt. I’m not surprised. Wayland can truly bewitch animals.’

A jangling at the gate made Vallon cross to the window.

Hero peered over his shoulder. ‘Could that be Caitlin?’

‘Most unlikely.’

Wulfstan entered. ‘Letter for you, General. Delivered by imperial messenger. No answer required.’

Vallon broke the seal and read the missive. His lips drew back from his teeth. ‘Another summons, ordering me to present myself at the Magnaura Palace in four days’ time to meet the imperial ambassador I’ll be escorting to China.’ He turned his snarl on Hero. ‘And guess what? The Logothete has learned of your arrival and requests most earnestly – in other words, demands – that you accompany me.’

Watching the ferry carry Hero away, Lucas felt a stirring of shame at his boorish behaviour. He suspected that he’d misjudged the man. Seeing him board the ship at Naples, he’d assumed from his sober dress and quiet manner that he was a monk. Perhaps he was, though he wasn’t tonsured like the Roman priests or bearded like the eastern clerics. He wore his black hair long, brushed back from a high forehead. His protuberant eyes, quill-like nose and full, almost feminine mouth should have conveyed a comical effect, but in fact he projected a most dignified air. He was certainly a scholar with an uncanny command of languages. Lucas had heard him converse with his fellow passengers in Greek, French, Arabic, Italian and some unknown tongue that might have been English.

One of the touts pestering him tugged his sleeve. Lucas rounded on him. ‘Take your hand off me.’

The tout gauged the level of resistance, flicked his fingers in front of Lucas’s face and strode away muttering. Lucas drew a deep breath and walked through the port gate into a crowded street lined with tenements, picking his way past trundling carts and porters stooped under bales. The city assailed his senses. Tradesmen from a dozen lands shouted their wares. Spices and leather goods scented the air. Overhead, neighbours held bellowed conversations from adjoining balconies that nearly blocked off the sky, their voices almost drowned out by the din up ahead. A legless man scooted alongside on a trolley, begging for alms. Whores in dresses cut low to expose their breasts stuck out their hips and spread their lips in salacious O’s.

The racket increased to a deafening pitch and Lucas found himself at the junction of a thoroughfare packed with a heaving mob – men, women and children all heading in one direction and chanting what sounded like battle cries. Some wore green or blue tabards and when the factions met, the faces of both parties contorted in fury and they stabbed fingers at each other and hurled abuse. Mounted soldiers brandished staves and whips to keep the rival groups apart.

Someone shoved him from behind, propelling him into the mob. It bore him away. Unable to go against the flow, he struggled into a colonnaded walkway on one side of the thoroughfare. Merchants had set up booths and stalls under the arches. A man waved a token in his face.

‘I don’t understand. Where’s everyone going?’

The man pushed him away and plucked another passer-by out of the stream. A shoe barked Lucas’s heel and he stumbled, almost falling. A hand pulled him upright and he turned to see a man carrying on his shoulders a little boy trumpeting through his hands in fierce ecstasy.

‘What’s going on?’ Lucas shouted. ‘Is this a religious procession?’

The man pointed ahead. Lucas heard the word ‘Hippodrome’ and understood: the crowd was on its way to the races.

He went with the flow, buildings sliding past on both sides. Some of them were fine mansions with draped balconies occupied by silk-clad figures who looked down on the stew of humanity with patrician disdain.

The mob must have borne Lucas nearly a mile before it disgorged into a forum, the river dividing around a lofty shaft of purple marble crowned with an imperial statue. The buildings on all sides were the most splendid he’d seen, with dazzling white façades and noble porticoes. The crowd spilled into an even wider thoroughfare. Over the packed heads rose a high arcaded wall similar to the ruined Colosseum he’d seen while passing through Rome. It extended away almost to vanishing point. Slowly the crush moved forward. A hand touched Lucas’s waist, but when he whirled, the faces around him were blank. He patted his purse under his tunic.

The crowd funnelled towards a massive gate surmounted by four life-size rearing bronze horses. Stewards manned the entrance. Lucas thought he saw money changing hands and fumbled for his purse, was still fumbling to remove coins when the crush thrust him forward. A steward held out his hand, but Lucas didn’t know the price of admission, didn’t know the exchange rate for his Italian money, didn’t know the value of the coins that Hero the Greek had given him. Didn’t know
anything
.

‘
Diploma
,’ the steward kept shouting. Lucas held out a few coins. The steward threw up his hand in vexation.

‘I don’t understand,’ Lucas shouted, bracing himself against the mob pressing from behind.

Unable to force Lucas back, the steward snatched the coins from his palm and propelled him forward. He stumbled through the gateway into a huge amphitheatre lit by dazzling sunshine. He’d never seen so many people in one place. The stadium could have held the population of Rome with room to spare. All the ringside seats were taken and the spectators spilled up the tiered stands. He climbed thirty steps and worked his way around the Hippodrome before finding a thinly occupied section, below the U-shaped curve at one end of the racetrack. The starting stalls were at the other end, almost a quarter of a mile away. Down the middle of the course, separating the two straights, ran a stone plinth crammed with obelisks, statues and bronze figures of animals and charioteers. Fitful music carried from an orchestra assembled in the centre of the arena. Peering hard, Lucas saw that some of the musicians were playing organs, the bellows operated by teams of children.

His neighbour noticed his astonishment and drew his companions’ attention to it. They grinned with the good-natured condescension of cosmopolitans showing off their sophistication to a foreign hick. They had come prepared for the day, with cushions to pad the stone benches, parasols, baskets of food and flagons of wine. Lucas had to turn his face from all that plenty. He hadn’t eaten a decent meal in three weeks and his stomach had shrunk so that it almost touched his backbone.

By now the Hippodrome was full, the crowd settling into an expectant buzz. Then the noise swelled to a roar that pulsed against Lucas’s ear-drums. Everybody jumped to their feet. His neighbour pulled him upright, pointing at the eastern side of the Hippodrome. Out onto a covered balcony processed a line of god-like figures. The stall must have been more than two hundred yards away, but Lucas could make out the shimmer of silk, the glint of gold, the flash of jewels.

One of the figures, black-bearded and clad in red and purple, advanced to the edge of the box and raised a hand. The crowd bellowed a salutation.

Cupping his ear against the uproar, Lucas leaned towards his neighbour. ‘Is that the emperor?’

The man crossed himself. ‘Basileus Alexius, God preserve him.’

The emperor dropped a white cloth to signal that the games had begun. Out from the stables at the far end of the Hippodrome rolled six chariots, each pulled by four horses. Their riders punched the air and the crowd responded with cheers and boos. The chariots lined up in the stalls, a flag twirled and fell and the horses sprang forward. They galloped straight towards Lucas and it wasn’t until they rounded the first turn directly below him that he appreciated their speed. The chariots drifted and skidded, wheels spraying sand, took the next curve on one rim and went weaving up the far straight.

Lucas’s neighbour nudged him, holding out some nuts. Lucas wolfed them down, the morsels only aggravating his hunger.

On the third lap two of the chariots contested the inside line and collided. One of them kept going, but the other lost a wheel; its axle dug in and flipped it over, hurling its driver ten yards through the air. Stewards ran out, and while some carried the motionless figure away, others caught up the horses and raked the ruts smooth. By the time the chariots raced round again, the track was clear.

Lucas calculated that the race had gone more than two miles before the victorious driver crossed the finishing line below the imperial box to the applause of his supporters and the groans of the punters who’d backed the wrong team.

Between races, musicians and troupes of acrobats performed for the spectators. The sun beat down and Lucas felt increasingly light-headed. ‘How many more races?’ he mimed.

His neighbour held up seven fingers. Lucas couldn’t face a whole day at the races. He had to eat or he would pass out. Touching his neighbour’s shoulder in thanks, he rose on stiff legs and worked his way to the exit.

Outside, the street was nearly empty. He walked through the forum and was heading back towards the port when a waifish girl slipped in front of him, her pretty face screwed up in appeal. She spoke to him and fluttered her eyes, caressing his arms and chest. She couldn’t have been older than twelve, yet it was clear what she was offering. He shifted her aside and walked on. She whimpered and wheedled, matching his pace, then clutched his elbow and burst into tears.

From the odd word and gesture, Lucas understood she was an orphan and perishing of hunger. She wouldn’t leave him alone. He reached inside his tunic and produced a coin. She took it and, overcome by his generosity, threw both hands around his neck and kissed him.

He disentangled himself. ‘There’s no need for that. I had a sister your age and I know what it’s like to go hungry.’

She ran off and he forgot about her, intent on finding a food stall. A heavenly aroma drew him to a booth offering kebabs and flatbread. The fumes from the grilling lamb made him swoon. Ahead of him a customer collected his order, served in a pocket of bread and topped off with a helping of pungent fish sauce. The customer paid with two coins that looked similar to the ones the Greek had given Lucas. He stepped forward. ‘I’ll have the same.’

Watching the lamb sizzle, he could hardly contain his hunger, imagining sinking his teeth into meat and fresh-baked bread for the first time in weeks. When the vendor handed over the fragrant packet, he couldn’t speak for the saliva flooding his mouth.

The vendor held out his other hand for payment.

Lucas felt for his purse, frowned, patted his waist and, with an increasing desperation that would have seemed comical to anyone who didn’t know the reason for it, beat and probed every inch of his body.

‘My purse,’ he said. ‘It’s gone.’

The vendor snatched back the food.

Understanding hit Lucas and he looked down the road where the girl had vanished. ‘I’ve been robbed.’

He ran into the road and scanned both ways. His hand went to his knife and that’s when he discovered that she’d stolen that, too.

The vendor had followed him and was shoving him in the chest. Lucas in a sick daze put up no resistance. In a stupor of disbelief he began walking, so shocked that he didn’t realise he’d taken the wrong direction until he saw a harbour below him and the Sea of Marmara widening out to the horizon.

He sat on a bench by a church and tried to work out what to do. No doubt about it, he was in a bad plight – penniless, friendless, unable to speak the language. Begging went against his nature, and from what he’d seen, the city’s halt and lame practically formed a guild. No one would give alms to a fit and healthy foreign youth. He’d have to find work. That shouldn’t be difficult in a city as large as Constantinople, and the harbour was the obvious place to look. Feeling more positive, he descended to the waterside and worked his way around the semi-circular quay, enquiring of any likely person where he might find employment. Most of them waved him away; some acted as if he were invisible.

He spotted a column of porters bent under bulky loads, ferrying grain from a ship to a granary. An overseer presided over the gang, tapping the side of his shoe with a stick. Lucas presented himself, pointed at the hurrying men, then pointed at himself. The overseer looked him up and down, assessing him as if he were a beast, then turned and shouted. One of the older stevedores set down his load and came over, cringing with anxiety. The foreman dismissed him with a flick of the hand, jerked his chin at Lucas and pointed at the load.

It must have been early afternoon when he began his labour, and he was tottering on caved legs, his back slick with sweat, his throat and eyes sore from the dust in the granary, when the overseer’s whistle signalled the end of the shift. The gang ceased like a machine that had been turned off. At first, Lucas could only move in a tortured stoop. He approached the overseer and held out his hand. The overseer fended it off with his stick.

Lucas pointed towards his mouth and patted his stomach. ‘Please. I haven’t eaten all day.’

A remote smile passed over the overseer’s face. He made to walk away.

Lucas pulled him back. ‘Just give me what you owe.’

The overseer drew back his stick. Lucas kept his grip.

‘What I’ve earned. That’s all.’

Perhaps the overseer saw in Lucas’s gaze the belligerence that had made the tout on the dock back off. With a kind of disgust, he handed over four tiny coins and swaggered away. The coins weighed next to nothing.

The sun was sinking behind the rooftops when Lucas left the harbour. He slaked his thirst at a public drinking fountain and made his way back to the centre, keeping an eye out for a food stall.

Night came down fast. One minute the streets were busy with home-goers and merchants dismantling their stalls, the next they were almost empty. Lucas took a wrong turning and found himself shut in by dark alleys that wound through canyons of solid masonry. The other pedestrians he met travelled in groups and moved at a hurry, as if fearful of overstepping some sinister deadline. The authorities must have imposed a curfew.

It wasn’t completely dark. Here and there lamps glowed in windows and torches guttered in sconces above iron-barred posterns. Several times he encountered armed watchmen making their rounds in pairs.

Lucas was going the wrong way, heading downhill towards the sea walls. He turned left and stopped halfway down the alley, his passage blocked by a pack of bat-eared dogs snarling over carrion. He retreated, took another turning and halted, a vague sense of threat tickling his senses. The alley behind him crooked into darkness. A child cried and cooking pans clattered somewhere in a tenement apartment. He went on, ascending a lane that rose in shallow steps, glancing back occasionally.

He was almost at the end of the alley when a man stepped around the corner like someone meeting an appointment. What little light there was struck cold shards from his knife. Lucas whirled and saw another man pushing out of the shadows only fifteen yards behind him.