The Sacred Scroll (15 page)

At that moment the door swung open to admit the young Varangian Guard, Frid, whom Dandolo had had himself introduced to at Contarini’s party.

‘What do you think, Frid? Do you think we should bring our departure date forward?’

Leporo glared at the young Varangian. He had hated him on sight, and now he hated him more for the sudden manner in which Dandolo had taken him into his confidence.

It had been a terrible two weeks for Frid, involving a great change in his life, and an intense struggle within himself, a struggle which he still hadn’t resolved.

Shortly after Contarini’s dinner party, Frid had been summoned to the quarters of his chief, the leader of the Varangian Guard, the
akolouthos
, John Nomikopoulos himself. Not a Viking, but a Greek, Nomikopoulos nevertheless had to bow to the customs and prejudices of the foreign rank-and-file. He told Frid that he was in line for promotion, a high honour, but that in order to qualify, he would have to abandon all ties with his Genoese mistress, Margareta.

Frid was twenty-six years old. A wife had been selected for him among the Norsewomen in the Varangian community, and he was expected to do the right thing. But Frid, faced with a choice, discovered almost to his surprise that he wanted Margareta more than he wanted anything else. He spent days and nights on his knees in his cell-like barracks room, praying for guidance, and none came. His heart and mind, however, remained unchanged.

Perhaps that would not have been the case if it hadn’t been for a new factor in his life, which had been subjected to some bewildering buffets in the space of the last fourteen days. Following his summons to the office of the
akolouthos
, Frid had accepted another invitation – to go in secret to the home of a Danish arms dealer in a distant quarter of the city, near the Palace of Blachernae in the north-western sector.

There, the Venetian special envoy was waiting for him.

It quickly became clear to Frid that Dandolo knew all about his situation and was in a position to offer him a way out. If he left the Varangians – a thing unheard of but not forbidden – Dandolo would offer him the post of captain of his own guard and, as far as that was concerned, the special envoy had no objection to his bringing Margareta to Venice with him. Matters had already been squared with Margareta’s family, and if he so chose, Frid could be married without delay by the special envoy’s own personal assistant, an ordained priest and Cistercian monk.

‘Of course, you are under no obligation,’ the Venetian had said, ‘but you should make your decision without delay, as we will soon be leaving the Great City, and you and Margareta will have only this one opportunity of joining us.’

Loyalty was paramount in Frid’s mental makeup. He had been trained to it and instructed never to give or change it lightly. It was bred in his bones from childhood onwards. And his loyalty since he had joined the guard nine years earlier, as a raw seventeen-year-old from Gotland, had been to the Emperor Manuel.

But he’d known Margareta now for a year, a long time to keep her waiting, and during that year his feelings towards her had grown. What would he not have done for her sake? And this seemed to be a truly God-given chance to change the place, if only once in his lifetime, the place where he set his allegiance and his trust.

And he would be taking Margareta back to her homeland. Well, to Italy, at least. As for the atrocity against the Genoans at Constantinople, Frid knew who the true
culprits had been. Duty had obliged him to be a member of the detachment of Varangians detailed to kill the Genoese so that blame could be placed on the Venetian community.

Frid would never tell a soul about the betrayal. But he owed Margareta something on account of it. Pisa had been a close ally of Genoa.

Within five days he had made his decision and acted on it. Two days later, he had a new uniform and a new master, and he was a married man. He knew he’d have problems imposing his will on the Italians of Dandolo’s bodyguard, but he had no doubt of his own authority. He was less sure of how he would handle the monk Leporo, who had performed the marriage ceremony with the minimum of grace and who, he sensed, resented having to share Dandolo’s confidence with him. But that, he was sure, would be settled by Time.

‘So –?’ Dandolo asked again. ‘What do you think?’

Frid was not used to having his opinion sought. It was enough getting used to speaking Italian and not Norse. But he knew his mind. ‘We should go,’ he said. His changed circumstances made him eager to finish the job, to leave the city he’d spent the last nine years of his life in. Dandolo looked across at Leporo. ‘You’ve been seconded,’ he said drily. ‘Make the arrangements.’

‘You wouldn’t take
my
word for it,’ Leporo said.

‘Make the arrangements,’ repeated Dandolo.

Leporo was on the point of leaving when there was a furious hammering at the door.

‘Open it,’ said Dandolo.

One of the Venetians of Dandolo’s team entered. The man was out of breath, haggard.

‘What is it, Francesco?’ Dandolo demanded.

‘I’ve come from the port,’ replied the messenger, steadying himself against a table and struggling to breathe evenly. ‘The news is bad. A Greek ship has just returned from Chios –’

‘Yes?’

‘Our navy has been smashed. The attack came at dawn, when no one was prepared. We’ve lost twelve ships – sunk or disabled. They set the flagship on fire with all hands. They showed no mercy. Eleven more ships were captured.’

Dandolo blanched. He would have expected the Venetians to have put up more of a fight, caught on the hop or not. Each ship represented a capital outlay of perhaps 1,500 florins. ‘What happened?’

‘They’re saying that the same wind which was behind the sails of the Greeks blew round after the attack started and scattered our ships. They couldn’t regroup and counter-attack. The Greeks lowered sails, used their oars to power their ships, and picked us off – those of us they could catch – one by one.’

‘But what were we doing? Why weren’t we ready? What were
our
oarsmen doing?’ Dandolo spoke as a great cry of triumph went up from the direction of the port.

‘Most of our ships only had skeleton crews aboard. All the rest were ashore. There was no time to muster them. Vitale had trusted in the truce, and besides – ’

‘Besides
what
?’

‘The plague,’ gasped the man. ‘The plague had taken hold. They’d set up a
lazaretto
and quarantined the sick, but they couldn’t stop the spread. Half our manpower was dead or dying by the time the Greeks struck.’

The sounds of victory had grown louder; it was as if the Greek triumph were now pounding on their door. One of their ships must have anchored and its crew was spreading the news.

Dandolo thought fast. ‘Gather our men,’ he ordered Frid. ‘Tell them to pack everything and be ready to leave by tonight. By my authority. Check the tides. Go with him, Francesco. We’ll get out by the dawn flood at the latest.’

‘They’ll detain us if they want to,’ warned Leporo.

‘Let them try,’ retorted Dandolo. He was thinking, the
only use we are to them now is as emissaries to take the bad news home. But he wasn’t taking any chances. The safety of the tablet took precedence over everything else in his mind.

He made his way down to the Galata quayside where their own three ships were moored, but was stopped by a contingent of the Greek Imperial Guard.

‘Enrico Dandolo, Italian Envoy?’ its captain demanded.

‘What do you want? How dare you accost a Venetian diplomat?’

‘You’re under arrest.’

Dandolo was taken immediately to the Palace of Boucoleon but rather than being ushered through its gates he was bundled roughly down an alleyway along one side and thrust through a side-entrance. Everything happened in silence.

Here, there was no white marble, no gold, no silver, no finery. Black stone walls hedged him in. He was shoved along a corridor and down a long staircase, carved through rock into the depths of the earth.

The staircase ended in a hallway lit by torches which guttered in their sconces. The stench was suffocating. Five wooden doors, black with soot and grease, opened off this space. The prison guards who’d taken charge of him stripped him roughly, but even in his panic Dandolo noticed that one of them, taking charge of the garments, folded them carefully and placed them on the table which was the hall’s only furniture. Then they unlocked one of the doors and flung him into the dungeon beyond it.

He was alone in the semi-darkness. The cell was windowless, and only a little grey light came from the gap between the door and the wall. The cell was clean and free of vermin, and the straw in the palliasse equally so, and dry. Apart from the straw mattress and the rough wooden bed on which it was placed, there was a chair and a table, and a half-barrel for him to piss and shit in. He knew what they were up to.

He marked out three days, No one spoke to him, and they brought him no food. Water was delivered once a day through a hatch, in a wooden beaker which he was obliged to return empty whenever the hatch opened, always at irregular times of day or night. The hatch remained open only for a few seconds, and if he missed it, he would get no chance of anything to drink until the next day. Yes, he knew what they were up to, but he refused to crack.

Dandolo spent hours listening, but heard no sound except for the banging of the hatch – not distant voices, not the wind, not a footfall, nothing. He tried to pray, but mostly he thought – would he get out? What would they do? Why was he here? Were they after the tablet, Adhemar’s sacred scroll? Had his double-dealing been discovered? His network of spies? Had he been betrayed by one of them, or was it Contarini who had given the order?

The scroll was always in his mind. It haunted him, it tormented him like an itch he could not scratch. The absence of the tablet’s familiar icy cold against his skin racked him like the memory of a lost love. It had been tucked deep into a loop of the sleeve of his inner robe when they arrested him.

The key and the box were in his baggage with Leporo, but Leporo could not open the box.

Had the scroll fallen into another’s hands? That was the thought that tore at his spirit.

He could bear his physical state. Though he was hungry, cold and naked, he was spared other abuse. He could only think that some kind of respect for his diplomatic status restrained his gaolers.

On the fourth day, the door was unlocked. Two men entered, bringing a lamp with them, whose unaccustomed light hurt Dandolo’s eyes. He rose from his chair as the door swung shut behind them.

The men were in their mid-thirties, tough-looking, bearded, with intelligent, cold eyes. Faces from which you could expect nothing – neither mercy, nor humour. The faces of people to whom there could be no appeal.

They motioned him to sit, still, without speaking. Dandolo did so, aware of how weak his limbs were.

No sooner was he settled than one of the men moved fast, unexpectedly, and kicked the chair brutally from under him. He fell sprawling on the floor, grazing his elbows and knees, twisting his foot badly. A shooting pain told him that one of his toes had fractured, snagging on the edge of a loose flagstone.

He thought they would kick him then, urinate on him, smash his head on the stones, but they kept their distance. Only as he attempted to rise did the first man push him back down, with the toe of his boot.

‘You Venetian dog,’ said the second, but his voice was mild, without malice, as if he were stating a simple matter of fact.

Dandolo started to get up again, and this time they let
him. The first man retrieved the chair and held it for him to be seated once more. Dandolo hesitated.

‘Sit down, you filthy Italian spy,’ the man roared suddenly, his voice splitting Dandolo’s ears. He took him by the hair and slammed him into the chair with such force that it rocked, and its struts split.

Angered, Dandolo started to speak: ‘What do you want from me? Do you know what will happen when Venice –?’

‘Venice will do nothing!’

‘Tell us what you have found out,’ said the quiet man, perching on the edge of the table, drawing off one glove and playing with it with his other hand.

Dandolo said, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ His first and overwhelming sensation was one of relief:
they are not after the tablet. They do not know.

But then his nightmare was realized. The man with the gloves dug into a purse at his belt and produced the tablet.

He laid it carefully on the table. ‘What is this?’

Dandolo hesitated before replying. ‘A talisman. A family heirloom. I carry it with me everywhere.’

‘A lucky charm?’ the man asked, but he wasn’t sneering.

‘If you like. It is of no value.’ He struggled to keep his voice calm.

The other man unhooked a dagger from his belt and, holding it by the scabbard, hefted it in his hand. Its pommel was in the shape of a lion’s head, in iron. ‘Then you won’t mind if I smash it,’ he said.

Dandolo controlled his breathing. They’d notice the slightest sign of tension. ‘It is of value to me,’ he said.

‘Then tell us what you have found out, if it is of value to you,’ the first man almost whispered. ‘We don’t want it. We’ll let you have it back.’

‘It’s in code, isn’t it? Were you planning to take it back to Venice with you, or were you going to send it?’ questioned the first man.

‘If you were, you’re out of luck,’ said the man with the dagger. ‘Your ships are impounded and your men confined to their quarters on board.’

‘Who?’ Dandolo asked quickly, a glimmer of hope in him.

‘Your men! The Varangian you recruited, and your guard, and your sailors. Everyone except some monk who got away – buggered off back to his monastery – that’s what they always do at the first sign of trouble.’

Dandolo let out his breath. They hadn’t got Leporo.

The other man dropped his glove on to the table and stood up again. He leaned forward and brought his face close to Dandolo’s, while the other pinioned him to the chair.