10

The Empress had a map of the world, woven of silk threads with an emerald to mark Constantinople, and a great white pearl to mark Jerusalem; the sea was the blue of lapis lazuli, the Empire was of gold, and the rimlands of earthen brown and green. Nicephoros, coming early into the council room, saw this beautiful work displayed and went up to the wall where it hung to admire it.

He was of Syrian blood, the Treasurer of the Empire, born near Damascus; he had been brought to Constantinople as a baby, when his parents fled the oppression of the Caliph, but the authority of his blood still marked him, in the dark hue of his skin, his great hook of a nose, and his passion for numbers. As a boy, sitting cross-legged on a terrace before his tutor and his tutor’s cane, he had suffered through Homer and Pindar, struggled with geography and astronomy, and gloried in the work of numbers. In their abstractions he found a peace beyond controversy, and their clues to the fundamental relationships between apparently disparate things seemed to him revelations of the order of the cosmos.

What that order was, he had never come to grasp; it was enough, usually, to know that an order existed. Especially in the administration of the Empire, it was a necessary belief that beneath all chaos there was pattern, even if comprehension of it were beyond the reach of men.

He stood before the map, seeing in the arrangement of the colors a problem in geometry; the door behind him opened, and he wheeled, ready to prostrate himself. But it was only the Parakoimomenos.

The tall eunuch advanced through the room with stately pace. His skin was white and smooth as goat’s cheese. “Nicephoros,” he said. “Perusing the book of the world, are you?”

Nicephoros greeted his colleague with a bow. “I am assured we are here today to discuss matters of war and barbarian government. I wished to refresh my understanding of the details of the earthly frame.” He sniffed. The Parakoimomenos wore a subtle fragrance he could not identify, disturbingly feminine. It suited the council room, its cushiony gold and white luxury.

“The Basileus may not appear today,” he said. His voice vibrated musically in the bellows of his chest.

“Oh?” Nicephoros raised his eyebrows.

“I understand she passed the night very poorly.” One long pale finger reached out and picked at the pearl of Jerusalem. His fingernail was perfectly oval, the color of a moonstone. In a hushed voice, the Grand Domestic said, “You know she is unwell.”

“I know no such thing,” said Nicephoros, and glanced over his shoulder.

The eunuch laughed richly at this response. “Oh, but she is. Perhaps it is a passing thing, a mere indigestion, or a touch of female troubles—in spite of all, we must remember that she is still a woman—”

He sniffed; his black eyes glowed hotly a moment. Nicephoros said nothing. It was never wise to trade confidences with a eunuch, or with a complete man, for that matter.

“She has never named an heir,” said the Parakoimomenos. “Perhaps the moment is upon us when that must be done.”

Nicephoros said, “She will never name an heir,” and promptly clamped his lips shut, vexed with himself for letting out such a revealing comment.

“Oh? Why ever do you say that?”

The Treasurer shrugged, turning away. “Merely a passing thought, my dear fellow. Think no more of it.”

“No, no.” The Parakoimomenos pursued him sedately back across the room. The piles of carpet silenced their steps, as if they walked on clouds. “Your opinion in such matters is ever acute and edifying, Nicephoros—please, amplify your remarks.”

Nicephoros bowed to him, hands pressed palm to palm. “I would not take your precious time with my ignorant daydreams, my dear Parakoimomenos.”

“Oh, but—”

The door swung inward again, and several more of the Imperial staff swarmed into the room; the Parakoimomenos, thwarted, stood back from Nicephoros, and went to greet them, and Nicephoros sat down, much relieved. He pinched the bridge of his enormous bony nose between thumb and forefinger.

The Empress would never name an heir, because to associate anyone else with her in the Imperial dignity would give her enemies one more angle of attack. He raised his head, facing the map again, his hands in his lap. For that reason also, if she were ill, she would do all necessary to conceal it. For that reason, to suspect her of illness, even rightly, or to pressure her to name an heir would be to provoke her suspicions; Nicephoros had no desire to find himself the target of his Empress’s suspicions.

The Parakoimomenos knew all this as well as anyone. Why then was he muttering into men’s ears? Nicephoros glanced across the room at the eunuch, who in the midst of the crowd of officers went from one to the next, pressing hands, talking in his melodious voice. Eunuchs were not supposed to have ambitions for themselves. But then neither were women.

Now she was here, among them as suddenly as if she had dropped from Heaven. Nicephoros sprang to his feet and at once went to his knees. She strode into their midst, her coat of gold and pearls all asparkle in the lamplight, and turned in the center of the room, and Nicephoros lay down on his face at her feet.

“Hail, Basileus, Augustus, Chosen of God!”

Some of the others had not even seen her; gaping, they were caught on their feet as in a great rustle of their clothes the men sank to the floor and raised their voices to her. Lifting his head, Nicephoros saw her smiling down at him.

Had she set the Parakoimomenos on him to test him? Perhaps that was it.

“You may rise,” she said, in her cool voice. She walked restlessly around the middle of the room, her garments swishing and swaying around her. If she were ill, it lay lightly on her; she was full of energy, her face bright with life, her eyes snapping. Nicephoros and the others rose and arranged themselves around the room according to rank, the Parakoimomenos foremost. She went along the rank and spoke or smiled to each one, and put out her hand, and each man bowed and touched her hand—this was a little private ceremony of hers; she did it always. A womanish thing: she trusted her sense of touch to find out falsehood. Nicephoros pressed his fingers to her fingers and her smile fell on him like a lover’s look. He lifted his head, his spirits suddenly high.

“Excellent,” she said, when she had seen them all. “Now. What is the news from Europe? Drungarius?”

The Grand Drungarius stepped forward and flexed his arm in a military salute. “Basileus, from Stauriakos comes word that he is steadily recapturing those villages along the coast of the Adriatic that were lost three winters ago. The Bulgars are fleeing back toward their mountain strongholds. But it is piecemeal work, Basileus.”

“Ah. Bit by bit we shall recover what is ours,” she said. “Very good. You may write to our general Stauriakos and tell him we are pleased.”

“He needs money, Basileus.”

“I shall take that under consideration.”

“Basileus, Stauriakos is a brilliant general—if we sent him more men and more money he might drive the Bulgars completely out of the Empire in a matter of months! I—”

“No,” she said, and turned her back; she went to the map on the wall and laid her hand on the hand-shaped landmass of Greece. “He does well. Bit by bit, this is how to win wars. That way, we always know what it is that we have won, and if we lose, we lose only a little. Let Stauriakos do as he can with what he has.”

Also, Nicephoros thought, to concentrate so much power in the hands of one man would make him a rival for her throne. She distrusted armies and always had. Soldiers would not obey a woman, they would always seek to put a man in her place; she had no choice but to stand alone.

“Now,” she said. “Nicephoros, you have some report on the finances of the Empire?”

He cleared his throat; he felt all eyes turn on him. Stepping forward, he faced the Empress and said, “Basileus, the most diligent of the tax-collectors have not been able to make their quotas this year. Besides the poor harvest, the plague has broken out in Paphlagonia and Chaldia again and people are fleeing from the villages there.”

Behind him the others murmured at the mention of the plague, and the Empress glanced around the room and came a step toward Nicephoros.

“The bearer of bad tidings, Nicephoros. The more galling is it that we must somehow amass the tribute for the Caliph, whose emissary is to arrive here in a little while to receive it.”

Nicephoros saw no reason to speak on this matter. He knew there would be very little money for the Caliph, but he knew also that the Basileus meant to do rather more than give the Arabs money. He backed up, returning to the protective company of the other men.

“The Caliph is sending us the Emir Abdul-Hassan ibn-Ziad,” she said, “whom many of you will remember from the last embassy here from Baghdad, a genial man, a son of the Barmakids, that industrious and farsighted family that does the Caliph’s practical work for him. While he is here—” She turned smoothly toward the map again, and putting out one red-painted fingertip directed their attention to Baghdad. “I intend to seduce him.”

Some fool behind Nicephoros actually gasped. Nicephoros laughed; some of the others hushed the fool in a barrage of hisses, and the Empress wheeled, her clothes a dance of fiery glitter as she moved.

“What! Bardas Therias, do you not believe I am capable of it? No, my good fellow, I meant it as a figure merely.” She paced forward, her hands before her, a smile curving her lips. “He has been here before, he speaks our language—somewhat—and he has learned a little of our ways. This time, we shall show him what a man’s life may be like. Let him see what it is to be Roman, and he will not want to be anything else.”

Around Nicephoros, the men murmured their rote praises of her. Nicephoros glanced behind him, looking among the ranks of officials for the Prefect of the City, whose task it was to manage the affairs of the City of Constantinople itself; the Prefect had not yet appeared, although his report would be called for next. The Empress was facing her map again, her mind still fixed on her plans for the Barmakid ambassador.

“They have wealth, in Baghdad,” she said, and put her hand out toward the blue of the twin rivers. “Mere wealth will not bend his mind toward us. In his own country he may have anything he wishes, anything he can conceive of. It is our superior uses of our wealth that will infect him with that disease most useful to our purposes—civilization. Nicephoros.”

The Treasurer bowed, spreading out his hands in gestures of submission. “Basileus.”

“You have travelled to Baghdad—you know what in our City will compare most favorably with his own. You will escort ibn-Ziad about Constantinople.”

“Basileus,” Nicephoros said, alarmed; his duties already consumed every daylight hour. The Parakoimomenos was bending forward also, urgent, intent.

“You may speak,” the Basileus said to him.

“Basileus, Augustus, Chosen of God—” The eunuch’s flexible tall shape bent in several bows as elegantly as a palm tree yielding to the blast of the wind; in the course of his obeisance he advanced himself several feet closer to the Empress.

“Basileus, the most noble and glorious Nicephoros is already much involved in the problems of the taxes and the money difficulties of the Empire—am I audacious in suggesting that this largely ceremonial duty of escorting the Arab visitor be lifted from his shoulders and placed on one with more idle moments at the disposal of his Augustus?”

She smiled at him; her smile extended to include Nicephoros, now caught in a painful conflict: dealing with ibn-Ziad was a chore he wanted neither for himself nor for the Parakoimomenos. The Empress’s eyes sparkled. Surely she enjoyed making rivals of these two men.

“You shall share the task,” she said. “Nicephoros shall bring his experience, the Parakoimomenos his own resources; in no way then can our objective confute our efforts. So be it.”

The officers chorused, “So be it,” and many patted their hands together in a polite applause. Nicephoros bowed, accepting the task, hiding his expression. The Parakoimomenos should never have thrust himself forward; yet that was a trifling lapse of decorum compared with her allowing him to dictate his will. She had slighted Nicephoros, giving him an important duty and then taking it away, even if he had not wanted it. His guts churned. He hated the Parakoimomenos, and it was wicked of her to force him into company with the eunuch. And where was the City Prefect?

Not here. Nor did she expect him here, because she was now moving on to some other problem of the government, eliding smoothly over the gap where the report on the affairs of the City should have been.

Nicephoros straightened. He was a servant of the Empire; he wore the belt of service to the Basileus, and whatever the Basileus wanted was the will of God. He had no right to these poisonous sentiments against the Parakoimomenos. The eunuch was another of the belted men, his colleague, his helpmate. Besides, he had no testicles. Nicephoros folded his hands together before him, pressing subtly against the front of his coat, reassuring himself with the witnesses of his manhood. He lifted his head. The Empress needed him. He would serve, as he always had, with no thought for himself.

After the meeting in the council chamber, Nicephoros went out to the courtyard called the Phiale of the Greens, a spacious terrace in the Palace grounds, where a fountain of fanciful shape showered the air with its cooling moisture. It was the first true summer day of the year, and the heavy, windless heat oppressed the spirit and laid waste to the body’s resources of strength and energy; the walk down to the terrace left Nicephoros damp under the arms and down the back. The cool of the fountain was a benediction. He sat down on a stone bench at the side of the terrace and prepared to eat his midday meal.

The terrace was paved in rounds of grey stone, with the spaces between filled in with red and green and blue pebbles. Doves and pigeons in busy swarms hurried over this ground; over the low wall that surrounded the area grew a profusion of wild roses. Looking on it was a tonic to Nicephoros’s spirits, and he sat a moment, his hands on his knees, smiling at this pure and unaffected beauty.

The pigeons, bold as bandits, hurried in a clucking waddling rush toward him. He broke off a corner of his luncheon bread and crumbled it up and scattered the bits around his feet, and laughed to see the birds fight over this largess. Besides the bread, he had brought a piece of cheese wrapped in a wine-soaked cloth, a little jug of the same wine, some olives and pickled mushrooms. While he was arranging this repast on the bench, his friend the City Prefect appeared.

“Good morning, my dear Nicephoros. You won’t mind if I join you?”

Nicephoros looked up, surprised; he had assumed his friend was ill. “No, of course—sit with me. We missed you, at the council.”

The Prefect pulled his coat skirts up around him and sat down. He was a younger man than Nicephoros, a native of the City, tall and handsome, with curly dark hair and a splendid beard and a ready, charming smile; in his rapid rise through the government to his present eminence this rare and delightful mixture of ingratiating charm and impeccable refinement had been more valuable than any genuine skill at administration.

“Nicephoros,” he said, with no more preamble, “may I ask a favor of you?”

“Ask me, Peter.”

The Prefect was poking into Nicephoros’s lunch; he nibbled an olive and nodded, pleased.

“Ummm. Not bad. Is the cheese as good?”

“Try some,” Nicephoros said patiently.

“Thank you.” The aristocratic fingers of the younger officer went hard at the block of crumbly cheese, which gave off its briny fragrance like a protest at this rough treatment. The Prefect leaned on his arm, a pose no less pleasing for the studiousness of its effect, the folds of his coat sleeve falling precise as mathematics to the tight-fitting cuff. “The presidents of the Guilds have come to me with a huge petition, Nicephoros, asking for a whole long list of changes in the laws of commerce. God’s Judgment, you would not believe it without reading it—they want nothing less than the overthrow of the entire economy.” The Prefect lifted his eyes to Nicephoros’s, his look candid as a baby’s. “It’s a catastrophe. She will never agree to a word of it.”

“Tell them so,” Nicephoros said.

“Nicephoros, I cannot do that. It’s not so easy as that. You know the Guilds—how hard it is to get them to do anything in concert? This petition took them weeks to draw up. Every single page is signed and sealed with every single president’s name. I can’t simply throw it into the scrap basket and say, ‘Not this time.’”

He was eating the cheese in great chunks; Nicephoros watched another toothsome piece travel to the Prefect’s lips and disappear within. What he was saying made sense. Through the Guilds of Constantinople, the Basileus regulated every detail of commerce—who bought what and at what price and for what purpose; under normal conditions, these rules provided for the smooth functioning of industry, allowed a decent living for everybody, and brought the Basileus sufficient income in taxes to support the court. Unfortunately conditions in Constantinople were seldom normal. The iconoclasm had aroused the people to unnatural passions, which even now surged powerfully into evidence at the least excitement, and the steady shrinking of the Empire itself over the past century had lost the City Guilds important markets and sources of raw materials, while driving thousands of new people into the City. The Caliph’s court in Baghdad had come to contend with the Romans for the raw materials of civilization, the gold and wax, gems and incense, wood and furs and slaves, forcing all the prices up.

“She has to see it and make some answer,” the Prefect said. “Nothing less is appropriate.”

“I agree with you,” Nicephoros said. The cheese was gone. He put the jug of wine before his friend. “What I cannot as yet perceive, Peter, is what favor you require of me in this context.”

“I can’t face her, Nicephoros.”

“Peter.”

“I mean it!” The Prefect leaned toward him, as if shortening the distance between them intensified the force of his words. “I cannot take this petition to her, Nicephoros.”

The Treasurer laughed, disbelieving and amazed; but the expression on his friend’s face moved him to the yet more amazing understanding that the Prefect meant what he said.

“She terrifies me,” said the Prefect, and his voice sank. “And you know—you know, Nicephoros, she cannot grant the changes. She will think me a fool, or worse, for proposing them.”

Nicephoros drank some of the wine; he turned his gaze away, toward the fountain’s pleasing sprays. As certain as he was of the Prefect’s real alarm at facing his Basileus, the Treasurer was just as certain that the reason for it was not what he said it was.

“Will you take it to her? You could say that—it does fall as well within your province, after all, and perhaps is better explained to her— defended to her from your point of view. Nicephoros. Please?”

“I shall do what I can. Have the petition sent to my secretakoi.”

Into the handsome face of the Prefect rushed a warm glow of relief. “Nicephoros, what a wonder you are! I shall never be able to repay you.”

“I’ll think of something, Peter, have no fear of that.”

“Anything, Nicephoros—any extravagance I can secure for you. Only name it.”

Nicephoros grunted. None of this tasted sweet to him. He reached for the wine again. “Look—there is Prince Michael.”

The Prefect turned. The wall behind the bench where the two men sat fell off on the far side ten feet to a walkway through the dense hedges that lined the Empress’s mulberry orchard. Along this walkway two people were walking, hand in hand—a girl and the charioteer.

“He’s certainly a greater driver than any other I’ve been privileged to witness,” Nicephoros said.

The Prefect was staring glumly down at the Empress’s kinsman. “I wish he would lose.”

“Oh, do you? I wouldn’t be so quick to look for Michael’s downfall. The mob adores him. The Empire itself will tremble when he loses.”

The Prefect turned around, putting his back to Michael, who was walking directly behind and below them now, his feet crunching the gravel. “Yes, but the odds they give on him are dirt-low.”

“Ishmael has an extraordinary fire and style. He’ll win against any but Michael. Bet on him.”

“The odds on him are just as low.”

Nicephoros was eating the pickled mushrooms, which, in keeping with his high-bred tastes, the Prefect disdained. “Gamblers only win in their dreams, Peter. Tend your purse in your waking hours.”

The Prefect scratched his nose, muttering under his breath. “You’ll talk to the Basileus?”

“Yes, yes.”

“You’re a lovely man, Nicephoros.”

“Yes.”