It was evening and I had just come off guard duty. I had changed my uniform for a warm robe and fur hat and was walking down the promenade from the Magnaura to the Brazen Gate when I heard voices approaching and looked up to see our new Emperor coming in my direction. With him was a pretty young girl, one of the dancers who entertained at banquets, and an elderly official in court dress with a bunch of keys at his belt. I recognized this man by sight as the Papias, the majordomo of the palace, who was responsible for its maintenance and all its operations. Behind them walked a burly slave wearing a leather cap and a thick leather belt. They swept by me without a glance, and I thought I caught the word ‘throne’ as they passed through the tall, silver-shod doors and disappeared within.
Intrigued, I followed, and stole silently behind them, keeping to the shadows along the wall of the side aisle.
“Majesty, it is not a toy, not a plaything,” the Papias protested. “It is the outward sign of your divinity. If the vulgar mob, or the barbarians, understood it, it would lose the power to awe.”
“Do as you’re told, man,” the boy answered him curtly. “I want to show her. We’ll go for a ride together, won’t we, dear?” If the girl made any reply, it was too faint to hear.
The golden Throne of Solomon glowed dully on its podium in the light that sifted through the clerestory above. The two golden lions stood motionless on either side of it, their jaws open, their long tails upraised, and, in the tree, the jewel-eyed birds did not stir on their gilded branches. All was silence except for the echoing voices of the Emperor and the Papias. At the end of the hall a purple tapestry, embroidered with square-shouldered Roman eagles, hung from ceiling to floor and stretched across the whole width of the chamber, some forty paces. I had been here many times but had never been close enough to see that this curtain was, in fact, divided up the middle, just behind the throne. From even a few feet away you couldn’t see the separation. The Papias held a fold of it aside now and they passed through into the darkness, their voices growing fainter.
What was back there? I’d gone too far to turn back now. It’s the sort of fellow I am and just as I had once followed old Vainamoinen down into the depths of the Louhi’s Copper Mountain, I waited a moment, drew a deep breath, and crept after them. Behind the curtain, I discovered a flight of a dozen stone steps leading downward. At the foot of them, the Papias lit a lamp, bringing the chamber and its contents to life. Two brass wheels, each as wide as my two arms outstretched, stood on stanchions with ropes around them as thick as ships’ cables that ran into apertures in the floor. Next to these was an array of bellows similar to those of a dromon’s fire siphon with handles for two men to work in tandem.
“Tell her, Papias, show her how it works,” Calaphates commanded.
“But Majesty,” the official protested again, “only a handful of people ever see this mystery. The men who operate it have their tongues removed...”
“Well, we won’t remove her tongue, will we—her clever tongue that knows so many tricks,” Calaphates laughed. “Go on, now, just as you explained it to me.”
The Papias sighed. “Water and air make it all work, just water and air, but the force of it is immense when exerted on a single spot. The ancient scientists of Alexandria called it ‘hydraulics’ and we are the inheritors of their wisdom.” In spite of the man’s reluctance to speak, there was no mistaking the note of pride in his voice—pride in the genius of the Greeks. “When this wheel is turned,” he tapped the nearer one, “it opens a sluice and water from the Reservoir of Aspar—you’ve seen it, Majesty, you know how vast it is—flows through pipes into a chamber far below us and the weight of it lifts the piston in its shaft. But great care is needed, the wheel must be turned only a little. Too much water and—well, there could be an accident.
“Now this piston is made from a single enormous tree trunk thirty feet tall, hollowed out with the two halves glued together and banded with brass. You see the tip of it here and the steel rod that projects from it through the slit in the curtain to the back of the throne. The throne itself is only slats of wood, gilded and jeweled, and not as heavy as it looks. To the audience watching in front, from a certain distance, in dim light, the throne appears to float in the air as the piston rises. Meanwhile, other slaves pump these bellows to deliver air to the lions, the birds, and the organ. That is where the sound comes from, like this.” He puffed out his cheeks and whistled. “To lower the throne, you turn back the first wheel to close the sluice and turn the second one, again slowly, which allows the water to run out into the harbor. Now, the Caliph of Baghdad, it is said, has a similar …”
From my hiding place, I listened with astonishment. From that first day when I saw the throne soar above my head I was convinced that some sort of machine worked it, that all their magic and mummery was only deception practiced by the Greeks upon us simpleminded barbarians. Still, I could never have imagined an apparatus like this. The labor of it! And all for mere show. On such fictions did this empire sustain itself. And it was a well-kept secret indeed. Even Psellus—my dear friend Psellus who taught me so much—had always evaded my questions about it.
“Thank you for your learned explanation, Papias,” said Calaphates, cutting the man off. “Now we will ascend, my little friend and I.”
“But Majesty…”
“Obey me, damn you!” the young Emperor, dragging the girl by the hand, turned and came back up the stairs and through the curtain. I only just had time to dodge ahead of them and crouch behind a pillar.
“Take us up now,” he shouted.
Without the noise of the lions, the birds, and the organ to mask it, you could hear the mechanism groan. The throne rose, and rose. I peeped around the pillar and followed it with my eyes.
“Ooh!” the girl squealed, “make it go down, please, my head’s spinning.”
“You don’t like it up here?”
“And what if I did this?” Calaphates gripped her wrist, put a hand behind her back and shoved her to the edge of the seat. She shrieked and began to cry. He liked her fear, I could hear it in his voice. “You want down? Kiss me first.” He pressed the girl’s face to his while she squirmed and struggled.
This went on for a minute or more. I’d seen enough and was wondering how I could make my escape when suddenly doors at the end of the hall banged open and in marched the Guardian of Orphans, looking angrier than I’d ever seen him. “Tracked you down at last, you scamp. Come down at once. Who permitted this? I’ll burn him alive.”
“The Papias, Uncle—his idea, his fault…” Calaphates’s voice cracked and faltered.
That functionary now appeared and sank to his knees before John. The throne began its descent. “I’ll deal with you later, Papias,” John snarled. “Calaphates, you had an appointment an hour ago with the Logothete and me to discuss the day’s business. And instead I find you here? You have papers to sign. God knows, I don’t ask you to read them. And then you’re having dinner with your mother, both of your mothers. Have you forgotten that too? the Empress—we still need to conciliate that woman, the people love her, Christ only knows why. We can’t keep her locked up all the time. Maria is trying to win her over, be her friend. You’re expected to join them. Try to smile for a change.”
“But I hate Zoe,” Calaphates whined. “The way I have to call her ‘Mistress’ makes me feel like biting off my tongue and spitting it out. Why can’t we just kill her, Uncle?”
“Because she is the only thing that keeps you on the throne. Will you ever understand this?”
“I can do whatever I like, I’m the Emperor. Uncle Constantine says so.”
“My brother is a fatuous ass.” The upper lip curled, the voice dripped with sarcasm. “Now come with me. The Papias will put the girl under arrest. Do you understand, Calaphates, that you’ve cost this child her life? Pity.”
Calaphates, with his eyes downcast, slid from the throne and trotted behind his uncle, followed by the weeping girl, the wretched Papias, and the burly slave, who tongue-less, would never regale his friends with this escapade.
I waited’til I could no longer hear their voices and slipped away. My brain buzzed with thought. I would keep my new knowledge to myself but I now had something to report to Psellus, for what it was worth. Calaphates was refusing to play his part as the Empress’s dutiful son. There were cracks in the regime.