Lord of Slaughter (13 page)

‘Let him try.’

Snake in the Eye’s head ached where he’d been punched and kicked. Why had the man only sought to hit him? Why not kill him? Because he hadn’t taken him seriously, because he held him in contempt as a boy.

His father would never see him triumph as a famous warrior now. He had been a smith, a profession that exempted him from fighting unless in dire need, too valuable to risk putting in harm’s way. Smiths were honoured, seen as magical even, so there was no question of his father being accused of coming too slow to the fight. Yet, Snake in the Eye now felt curiously free. His grandfather on his mother’s side had been the famous killer Thiörek. Had his father’s line brought the curse of cowardice to the family?

He would not mourn his father; he would avenge him.

‘Let me fight him,’ he said to Bollason.

‘You’re a boy. You cannot and you will not,’ said Bollason.

‘I am a man the same as the one who is dead on the floor here,’ said Snake in the Eye.

‘Do you want me to have your trousers stripped off to prove my point? You’re not yet a man and anyone can see it. You try to act like one but you fail.’ He addressed Arnulf. ‘The boy is not ready to face you in
hölmgang
. He is still a child by my reckoning and it would dishonour you to fight him.’

‘Then let him provide an uncle, or even a friend. I will have vengeance for the death of my son.’

‘His father lies dead.’

‘As does my boy. The original insult, the slur of cowardice, has not been answered yet. I demand redress. It is my right under the law.’

Bollason shrugged. ‘He’s right. Have you an uncle who can fight for you?’

‘I was here only with my father.’

‘Do you have friends here?’

‘He has no friends, that one,’ said a woman. ‘He’s a nasty piece of work who has been lucky to live so long.’

‘Then he must face me!’ shouted Arnulf.

Bollason shook his head.

‘No,’ he said, ‘there’s a whole stack of trouble if we kill him. The emperor favours him and he translates our words, which we’ll need when the emperor returns. But it is dishonourable to think only of the convenience of having him here when he has deeply dishonoured you, Arnulf, and caused you so much grief. There is a middle way.’

He pointed at Snake in the Eye.

‘You are banished from this camp, translator or no,’ he said. ‘You will return here only when you are a man and can fight Arnulf on equal terms or with someone who will fight for you. While you are away, try to grow up a little. The world sends us enough battles without us seeking them with each other.’

‘That is a shame to me,’ said Snake in the Eye. ‘I cannot stand such an injustice.’

‘Then I’ll gut you here and now myself,’ said Bollason.

‘I welcome it,’ said Snake in the Eye.

Bollason rolled his eyes to the heavens. Then his patience suddenly snapped. The Viking leader was famous for his short temper and now it seemed he had come to the end of it.

‘Get your sword,’ he said, ‘and let’s you and I do the old dance together. Hedin, give him his sword!’ He roared the last words into Snake in the Eye’s face so hard that the boy took several paces backwards and everyone around laughed.

The blond man passed Snake in the Eye his sword and he tried to strike Bollason, but the battle fetter still held him – he couldn’t make his arm do what he wanted it to. He came forward in a ridiculous way, his sword forward but his arm limp so the weapon’s point trailed on the ground. As he advanced, it caught in the mud, jolting the hilt up in his hand. Bollason, two heads taller than the boy, closed the distance in a blink and stepped on the sword with his left foot, his weight levering it out of the boy’s hand, flattening it into the mud. He shoved Snake in the Eye hard and sent him sprawling back. The Viking didn’t pause, walking forward to put his foot in the centre of Snake in the Eye’s chest, pinning him to the ground. Snake in the Eye put his hands around Bollason’s foot but the man was as immovable as one of the statues from the Middle Way.

‘Like I said,’ said Bollason, his face now impassive, ‘you are a boy. Come back when you have become a man, should that ever happen, and I will grant you your
hölmgang
.’

All around Snake in the Eye people laughed and pointed. Only Arnulf continued to rage. Dying did not bother the boy at all, but the scorn wounded him deeply.

Bollason released his foot and pointed to Snake in the Eye’s sword. ‘Use that to attack me and I shall use it to spank your bottom.’

Snake in the Eye boiled with embarrassment, his face red, his limbs stiff and tense. He picked up the sword and left the camp, heading in the direction of the city, taunts and jeers at his back. He wanted to turn and hack his mockers to the floor but knew he couldn’t. He may as well have been carrying a Byzantine lady’s fan as a sword. An enchantment lay on him, he was certain. One day he would break it and return to write his name in the blood of those who had mocked him. He just had to find out how.

12
An Invitation

The chamberlain had not answered Loys’ request to see him, and the scholar sat at his desk with his head in his hands. He’d heard nothing about any slaughter, and the guards on the palace doors had said no one had moved against the soothsayers. The streets were dangerous enough, purge or no purge. Venturing outdoors had become an unsettling proposition. Some were convinced the last days were at hand and had abandoned all pretence of civility, robbing and even killing. The city guard was struggling to keep anarchy at bay. In the palace, at least, he and Beatrice were safe. For the moment.

Loys tapped at the parchment. He needed to order his thoughts. In other circumstances he might have been excited by the project. He had been sponsored to undertake a great work, to bend his mind to one of the big questions of philosophy. There was nothing wrong with investigating occult and magical practices, as long as you kept to theory, but the chamberlain wanted a working spell. Did that blur the division between the theoretical and the practical? Loys felt in his heart that it did. Christ allowed no fudge or compromise. For or against, right or wrong? Which side of that divide was he on?

On top of this a more immediate anxiety gripped him. The penalty for failure would be severe. He could end up damning himself to hell and being dispatched there by the chamberlain in short order. He needed to go, to get away from this horrible city. Beatrice was a sensible woman and would bury her disappointment at having to leave the luxurious palace if he explained their peril. But could he leave? Everything was done for him here – everything: his food laid out, his bed freshened, books he requested delivered and scented herbs changed daily. He knew enough of men like the chamberlain to understand they would not invest time and money in him and then allow him to walk away. The man had known everything about him when he was living in a shack by the lighthouse; how much more would he know now he had him under his nose?

Loys had a chariot race of anxieties going on in his head. He had enemies, that much was obvious, and within the ranks of the palace bureaucrats too but he had merely been threatened as yet. And he had a protector. He thought of the chamberlain with his thin sleepy face, those eyes which seemed only half awake but missed nothing. He would not believe in chance if Loys was found dead in an alley.

Loys was inclined to begin his investigation by studying the demons, through the works of the learned men who had categorised and named them. He had always been taught to move from first principles, so he turned to astrology to begin with. Proclus said there were sympathies and antipathies in nature. Men’s destinies were connected to those of the constellations, to those of plants and animals, even tides. Astrology was Loys’ particular expertise, though he found it more useful for describing tempers and dispositions than he did for actually predicting the future. Still, he would need to consider all influences on the emperor before he could advise on how those influences might be dealt with. Books of ancient wisdom – the works of the Greeks, the Arabs and the Persians – were scattered about him.

He consulted his charts. The moon, Mars and Mercury were in conjunction. He took up a Latin translation of Haephestio of Thebes. ‘A conjunction between the moon, Mars and Mercury will produce men who are steeped in magic, knowers of secret things.’ He gave a dry laugh. He wished he knew where to find one of those now. He considered the planets: mother moon, Mars the warrior and Mercury the messenger and carrier of dreams.
The Vikings!
There were enough of those in Normandy – savage cousins of the local Norman nobility getting off their boats wet behind the ears, comically dressed but no less violent for it. They worshipped a form of Mercury – Odin – a mad god according to them. Mercury was coming to the ascendant. As were the northerners outside the walls. Mercury was the planet that ruled magic.

So what correspondence had afflicted the emperor? Loys used Basileios’ birth information to cast his horoscope, consulting the books for the position of the stars. It took him nearly all evening and revealed nothing. The emperor was blessed, according to the planets. Then Loys examined the last five years, to judge the particular influences and pulls of the stars there. Nothing. Fluctuations, difficulties but no grave disasters were apparent.

He began to read another book –
Ancient Blasphemies
– a record of the beliefs that had been discovered during local purges. He browsed through, turning up nothing in particular until he reached a certain page. Hecate, the goddess of the Constantinople. Was it possible she was a demon and God had struck at the city for worshipping her? He read on – goddess of crossroads, of the dead, of walls and borders, of the borders between the living and the dead – she was associated with dogs and with poison and poetry. As if by command two of the palace dogs set off barking, making Loys jump. She was worshipped at the end of each month, when the people sacrificed black lambs at crossroads and at holy sites.

So much information, so little use.

By the time Beatrice came back from visiting the women of the lower court, parchment lay all over the room and she asked him if she could tidy it up. He let her, then he held her hand as she stood behind him to look at his work.

‘Is the sky still dark?’

‘Still dark,’ she said.

‘What do the ladies say about it?’

‘It’s an ill omen, what else could they say? First the comet, now this.’

‘What do you think?’

‘Our fortunes have improved since its appearance. But God is angry with the earth, it must be so. Lady Styliane says so. The comet is a sign of that, according to the wisdom of the Arabs.’

‘Who is Lady Styliane?’

‘A lady of the court. The chamberlain’s sister, no less.’

Loys concealed his fear. ‘And she is wise in astrology?’

‘Her late husband took an interest,’ she said.

Loys smiled. ‘I hope you haven’t been consorting with witches, Beatrice.’

‘She is no witch. Astrology is the study of nature, don’t you always tell me?’

‘Yes. In the hands of learned men. Not bored and credulous ladies. There it can slide into sorcery.’

‘Lady Styliane is neither bored nor credulous. She is an amusing woman. You should meet her. Or perhaps not. She’s very beautiful and I would not wish her to meet you when dark stars are governing our fate.’

She kissed him.

He thought of the comet and shivered. That had heralded nothing good for sure – the disappearance of the sun and the birth of a lasting darkness. But that was not the cause of the emperor’s malaise. The darkness had happened only recently, and the emperor suffered from a long-standing condition.

Beatrice went to bed and he continued his studies through three candles. His head ached with the mental effort. Perhaps if he addressed the influence of the comet, then he would see something?

He consulted his books and worked his chart, tracing the comet’s path across the sky as best he recalled it. Abu Mash’r – an Arab mathematician – was very helpful here, and Loys calculated his angles and drew his charts according to the wise man’s prescription. He cast the seven hermetic lots, his pen marking the lines against the ruler in quick and fevered swipes. In the lot of fortune he saw minor problems, in the lot of spirit some difficulties. Nothing pointed to an illness striking at Basileios.

Beatrice stirred in her sleep. For a second he longed to join her but he had gone beyond tiredness in his desperation for an answer.
So work backwards
. When he did, he found nothing again.

Beatrice woke him at his desk the next morning, a pool of wax from the candles at his elbow.

‘How are you getting on?’

‘Well,’ he said, not wishing to alarm her.

There was a knock at the door and the eunuch servant entered.

‘Hello,’ Loys said.

Beatrice put her hand to his head. ‘You’re very nice, Loys, but this is a court. If you behave like that no one will respect you.’ He had forgotten it was bad form to greet slaves.

‘I have a message, sir,’ said the eunuch.

Loys glanced at Beatrice.

‘You can reply to that.’ She laughed and stroked his hair.

‘What is it?’ said Loys with exaggerated formality.