Byzantium Page 3

  Brother Sergios entered my quarters in the first minutes of dusk. All day he had been absent from his watching post—attending, I imagined, to the offices of repentance. He refused to meet my eye, and as he led me up the ravine’s side he kept his silence, so I kept mine. I felt for him, but I had my own concerns.

  The moon was still down, but the last streak of red remained glowing in the west. We soon passed into a part of the monastery that Brother Sergios was unfamiliar with. At each fork in the trail he had to stop and consult his memory before choosing the way. Pitch-dark caves echoed with the mumble of prayers, and desert creatures, invisible in the blackness, skittered from our path. After a stiff climb we suddenly topped the ravine, the night sky leaping into place all around us. We only stayed a moment, long enough for Brother Sergios to find a new path, marked by a small stack of pebbles, and lead me back down. A few yards in, we crossed a fissure in the rock by a bridge of dried sticks. The bridge squeaked and shifted beneath our weight, and once we were over, Brother Sergios halted and pointed to a far boulder. Its surface flickered with reflected lamplight, the source deep in an unseen hollow. We had arrived.

  I stood for a moment, paralyzed. I was here at last, and had to master several flutters of panic. When I finally turned to Brother Sergios, to ask if it was time, I saw he had gone.

  “Come,” a voice said, from the same direction as the light. I stepped forward, toward the boulder and into the hollow, which opened into the wide mouth of a grotto. Inside, a monk my age stood with his hands clasped before him. Beside him sat a man weaving a basket, his body made of lumps, his jaw too large for his face. Next to this man was the lamp, and before him lay a reed mat.

  “The mat is for you,” the monk said.

  I couldn’t understand. What game was Theodosios playing, having me sit before this unfortunate while he watched? Just as I wondered this, the unfortunate moaned, like a man with an over-thick tongue, and the monk said to me, “I ask your indulgence. I wish to finish the basket. Two of the brothers are taking another load to Jerusalem tomorrow.”

  It took a moment, but, with a prickle of surprise somewhere beneath my gut, I understood. The monstrous imbecile was Theodosios. The other monk was translating for him. Briefly, the thought crossed my mind: was my task necessary? But Heraclius had given his command. Besides, they’d made emperors from worse. I sat and watched as Theodosios wove the basket’s rim, twisting and tucking the reed at an expert pace.

  He finished the basket, set it aside, then began to moan at me. “I apologize,” the monk translated. “I should have received you the moment you came. It was vanity that made me think I could hide myself from the world while others cannot. For this vanity, for this pride, I allowed one of our brothers, whose soul should be my greatest care, to be corrupted.”

  Theodosios looked at me. I wasn’t sure what he wanted, so I said, “For my part, I forgive you.”

  This seemed to offer him some solace. He smiled crookedly and nodded. He was about to speak again when he stopped and fixed me with a stare. His left eye was not level in his head—it was as if it had been pushed into the raw dough of his face—and it was with this eye that he studied me. He let out a low moan.

  “Something troubles you,” the monk translated. “Speak.”

  “There’s nothing,” I said.

  Another low moan. “I know what it is,” the monk translated. “I can see it in you.”

  “I tell you there’s nothing,” I said, but I rose. I had sent a message to my goatherd to have a horse waiting up the ravine. I could be in the crowds of Jerusalem, disappeared, by noon.

  Before I could take a step, Theodosios leaned forward and grabbed my ankle and held me fast. He uttered a long chain of hurried moans. “I see your father in the garden. He’s throwing his glass. I see you hiding and weeping and pitying yourself. I see the black knot within you. It was not tied by the devil and it was not tied by God—”

  I twisted free. “That is not why I came,” I said, struggling to keep my voice from shaking.

  Theodosios let out another string of moans. “You may hold on to your pains if you wish,” the monk translated. “I have been told your mission. They speak of me in the imperial court and have asked you to investigate my works.”

  I said nothing, only waited.

  “Listen,” the monk translated. “I have a message for you to take back. The people and the priests devote themselves to quibbles. They are old women arguing in the market as a flood rises to overtake the city. The emperor is a blind beast, thinking every trembling leaf the tread of a hunter, and he feels not the world shifting beneath him. We are at the gate of perdition. Our sins will be judged, and in these times we must all be brother to one another.”

  “Proof,” I interrupted. “I have come for proof.”

  And for a moment I believed this was my true mission. Theodosios remained quiet for some time. Then he closed his eyes and mumbled something the monk did not translate. When he finished, the monk—I never learned his name—went to the back of the grotto and fetched a small jar.

  “Give me your broken hand,” the monk translated as Theodosios held out his own hand, palm open.

  I hesitated. I had not expected this.

  “Give me your hand,” the monk repeated.

  I had no choice. I pulled my hand from my tunic and put it in Theodosios’s. With a solemn nod he sent the translator away, then peeled off the glove and poured ointment from the jar and began rubbing it into my skin. For ten minutes, he kissed the crook of my wrist, the knobs of my fingers. He scrubbed my hand with his hair, and the whole time moaned prayers. I watched his face and I watched my hand. When he ceased his efforts it remained as withered as ever.

  Theodosios studied my hand, his already misshapen face contorted in bafflement. He looked up to the grotto’s ceiling, moaned something, then rubbed more ointment into my fingers and wrist. He signed for me to wait and tried to communicate, with moans and shaking head, that he didn’t understand. But I did. I saw again the holy men who had humiliated me in my youth: their hollow smiles, their empty promises, their mocking eyes. Here was another with his finely honed act, playing me for a fool. It seemed Heraclius knew well what he was doing when he chose me. I burned with shame—for a moment Theodosios had gotten to me—and I felt no hesitation now.

  Before he could take my hand again, I leapt onto Theodosios and pinned him with my knees. He moaned; I covered his mouth with my good hand. He struggled, pulling himself up; I shoved him back to the grotto’s floor. With a jerk, I forced up his habit, then felt in my tunic for the knife, squeezing its handle between my stunted fingers. He was screaming and struggling. I had no time. Taking my other hand from his mouth, I gave him a cuff to quiet him and grabbed his testicles, lifting them from his body, and made the cut. With a single tug the knife sliced cleanly through the boneless flesh and it was done. Theodosios twisted beneath me, his bellowing mouth bent in a terrible grimace, but I felt a quiver of calm relief. It hadn’t been nearly as hard as I’d feared.

  The other monk had reappeared in the grotto’s entrance, panting and silent, in shock, and I was recalled to my senses. I stuffed Theodosios’s testicles in the leather purse and pushed my way out. Once across the footbridge, I fled blindly, but fleeing was easy. The monastery was only a labyrinth when you were looking for someone, not when you were running away. I slipped and slid on the paths, shoved my way through the monks who’d come from their caves at the sound of Theodosios’s howls. By the time I made it to the bottom of the ravine, they were sounding the monastery’s wooden bell. Its furious tock filled the valley. I skirted the guesthouse—the lodgers had emptied out onto the ledge—and ran to where the goatherd was waiting with the horse.

  “Sir,” he said as he helped me up. “What’s happened, why are they ringing the bell?”

  “Don’t worry yourself about that,” I said.

  He was still holding the reins when he pulled back
and pointed. “Sir,” he said. “Your hand.”

  I looked down. It was ribboned with blood. I gave the goatherd a kick, took the reins, and spurred the horse. But I soon lost track of where I was going. Too startled to think, I kept looking in disbelief at my hand. The goatherd had not seen what I had seen. He had seen only the blood. I saw something more. Where the blood had run over my hand, it had made the withered flesh whole.

  I PASSED THE NEXT DAY in a wandering stupor. I am still uncertain how I made it out of the desert. As I sat upon my horse, a lightness coursed through my veins. My mind reeled: each explanation I could fathom crumbled in the face of another. He knew what I’d come to do; he didn’t know. He was a true holy man; it was some sort of new charlatan’s trick. The hand was a blessing from God; it was a curse of the devil. I felt a sickness for what I had done, but then I would look at my hand. I had washed it and wiped it clean, and as my horse ambled and nibbled at dry grass, I gazed at its new perfection. I flexed its fingers, traced the straightened, flat pan of its palm. I held both hands side by side. They were mirrors of each other, though the healed hand was smoother, pinker.

  Just before sunset, I reached the orchards outside Jerusalem. I rode around the city, headed straight to the coast as I imagined the new life that awaited me: a place in court, prominent seats in the Hippodrome, our family restored to its rightful place. Perhaps it wouldn’t be too late for me to take a command, some squadron on the Dalmatian frontier. If any asked about my hand, I would say I had visited a sulfur spring in Greece and was treated by a physician. But surely few would ask. I was unknown. Only the emperor’s long-memoried informants had any idea who I was. That, I decided, would soon be changed.

  BY THE TIME I RETURNED TO CONSTANTINOPLE, I had regained enough of my reason to be fearful. I didn’t know what news had reached the city, or what the reaction might be: perhaps mobs filled the fora, clamoring for my death. Once off the boat, I hid in the crowds and gleaned the conversations of passersby. I trailed parties of beggars through the markets, sat with the mad outside church doors. Only among these did I feel safe, unseen. Within hours of my arrival, while huddling outside the Church of the Holy Wisdom with a pair of moaners, I heard the first rumors of the gelding. Some passing monks were discussing it, and I was relieved: they had the story wrong. “The assassin was a Monophysite,” one declared, setting the others off. “No, I heard he was a Jew.” “No, a devil.” “It was a punishment, for pride.” The monks all frowned, though on one I detected a stifled smile. By evening, a troupe of clowns had spread through the city, portraying the surprised Theodosios and his veiled attacker.

  After another day of listening, satisfied I wasn’t hunted, I made my way to the Chalke Gate, where I whispered my presence to one of the guards. I was expected. Within a minute, the eunuch from before came and showed me directly to the Chamber of the Golden Meadow. There I knelt and waited, nervous, every organ beneath my chest grown cold, my palms and my scalp beading with sweat. I returned triumphant, but what if Heraclius had lied to me? What if my reward awaited me here, among the silver thorns? I glanced at them now, wishing I knew which were poison-tipped.

  I had just begun counting the drops of sweat falling from my forehead when the emperor burst through the door and strode toward me, roaring gleefully. “I have heard the reports!” he said. “There’ll be no more talk of a monk on the throne, that’s for certain.”

  I kept my head bowed. Warm relief flooded through me. My fears now seemed groundless.

  “Your father would be pleased,” Heraclius went on as he stood over me. “You have done your duty.” Then he chuckled and seemed to play out the gelding in his mind, for I saw him make a flick of the wrist like a man slicing grapes from a vine. After two more of these flicks, he asked, “Do you have them?”

  I bowed lower and offered up the leather purse, which I had kept tied to my tunic since fleeing the monastery. Before leading me to the Chamber, the eunuch had made sure I remembered to bring Theodosios’s testicles. It seemed Heraclius possessed a cabinet near his bed in which he stored, preserved in vinegar, similar artifacts taken from vanquished pretenders and Persian generals.

  “Tell me,” the emperor said when he finished prodding the purse, “did he squeal?”

  “He screamed in pain, Emperor,” I answered, speaking as evenly as I could.

  “Very good,” the emperor said, then, after losing himself in thought and chuckling once more, “you may go.”

  I hesitated. I felt as if I couldn’t move and before I knew what I was doing I called out, “Emperor.” He looked back—he had already stepped toward his door—and I held up my bared hand.

  The stream purled beneath the silver briars. Above us the eyes of God stared, fixed in stone and gilded glass.

  “Theodosios?” Heraclius asked, his face gone pale.

  I nodded.

  The emperor came to where I was kneeling. He grabbed me by the wrist and examined my hand. “So he was genuine,” he said. “That is unfortunate.”

  I quaked. On the ship back, as my fascination with my hand settled into calm acceptance, doubts began to plague me. Surely I had committed a grievous crime. Now I was certain I would be tipped into the briars.

  “I will tell you something,” the emperor said. “It is by far not the worst thing I have had done.” He pulled me close. I could see a narrowness in his gaze, the tired narrowness of one long hunted, of a bear in its final moments in the pit as the dogs close in. I thought of Theodosios’s vision, of the emperor as a frightened, blind beast, and waited for the shove, for the prick of the thorns. But before I could close my eyes the emperor let me go, pressed the carnelian berry, and sent me away.

  RELEASED FROM THE CHALKE GATE, I picked my way through the Mese’s undulant, squabbling crowd of merchants. Dazed still from my meeting with Heraclius, I paid no attention to the clothier who thrust a wool mantle into my hands, to the tin seller who danced before me, his cups dangling from his arms. I was headed, at last, for home.

  “Eusebios,” my mother said when I stepped into the courtyard. She stood there as if knocked still, whispered a veneration to the Holy Mother, then clutched me and wept into my shoulder. My heart—this surprised me—swelled, and for a moment I forgot all that I had done. Only when she pulled away did she see my hand.

  “How?” she asked, seizing it and pulling it close to her eyes. I started on about a Grecian spring, but she scoffed. So I told her the truth, and in the telling I felt suddenly proud. What I had done was difficult. I had served the emperor. And mightn’t the hand be a sign that I had done right? But before I could finish, my mother let me go and backed away.

  “That was you?” she said. Her flesh seemed to have turned ashen. “You have mocked God,” she pronounced. “That hand is a curse. He has shown you His power.” She looked at me, her face stricken with disappointment, then fled from the courtyard to her room, where she shut herself for the rest of the afternoon.

  For several days after, she avoided me. Then one morning, a servant came to my bedchamber as I was dressing and presented me with a new glove. I didn’t need to ask who had sent it. I wanted to throw it across the room. I wanted to send it back torn. But I put it on. When I went down, my mother was waiting in the courtyard. With a brief flick of her eyes she confirmed the glove’s presence. After that, she never again mentioned my hand.

  I WAS NOW A GREAT MAN. I rode through the city, shouting across the rabble to other young courtiers I had met, and involved myself in Hippodrome politics, supporting the Blues, as my father had, and standing feasts for the chariot racers. Heraclius had kept his promise of reward. It had been announced that at the Feast of Palms I would be granted an income and subpatrician rank, which, among other privileges, would allow me a title, the use of blue ink, and the right to be drawn in a carriage by four brown ponies.

  A month after my return, I received perhaps my greatest honor: an invitation to dine at an imperial banquet
in the Triclinium of the Nineteen Couches. I sent for the tailor and commissioned a new tunic, and when the evening came I daubed myself with scent. As I was leaving, I could hear my mother in her room, murmuring her constant prayers. I ignored them, and once I stepped into my litter I slipped off my glove and tossed it to a servant. At the dinner I was given a poor seat, far from Heraclius—a hundred men separated us—and near the twelve paupers. But I was there. I belonged. The musicians played airy tunes, the tableware glittered in the lamplight, and the emperor, I was certain, had looked at me with approval.

  It was when the wine was being poured and I had begun talking to the youth on my right—the son of a Bithynian tax farmer—that one of the paupers, seated toward the middle of their table, leapt up and hissed at me. I had noticed him giving me twitchy glances and had hoped it would end there. His beard was matted, his skin burnt to leather, and after he hissed again he pointed at me with a pheasant bone and shouted, “Blood on his hand!” The entire room fell silent and stared. I sat as still as I could, and as my heart beat I felt each pulse’s tremble. Someone seemed to be squeezing my chest, denying me all but the tiniest spoonfuls of breath. The rumors of Theodosios’s gelding had grown more detailed in the recent days, and I feared that at last I had been caught out.

  But then a soldier pulled the pauper from where he stood. The next dish, turtles cooked in their shells, was brought. Everyone returned to their conversations as if nothing had happened. They were all well-practiced courtiers. A madman, two or three said. The Bithynian began rattling on about some gossip he’d heard concerning the Greens’ new bearkeeper, and at the next table a general from the east assured his neighbors that the recent Saracen unrest, during which they’d proclaimed a prophet (such an idea raised laughter), would be put down by winter. And yet I couldn’t return so easily. Those latest rumors held that Theodosios had retreated farther into the desert, and since that night there had been no new miracles. As I reclined, I saw again his twisted face. I heard his cries, felt his bloody manhood in my palm, and thought of what my mother had said. A curse.