The Varangian (Odd Tangle-Hair's Saga) by Macbain Bruce

Author:Macbain, Bruce [Macbain, Bruce]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Amphorae Publishing Group, LLC
Published: 2016-11-28T16:00:00+00:00

22

Psellus’s Tale

The Throne of Solomon, borne on the breath of angels, descends slowly from the height of the ceiling and comes to rest upon its podium between the roaring golden lions. The blast of the organ, which masks the whirring of its mechanism, dies away.

“Constantine Psellus, elevated to the rank of Protospatharios and Senator, approach the throne.” The Master of Ceremonies taps his gilded staff on the marble floor and at once another thundering chord from the water organ reverberates through the vast hall. January the sixth, the Day of Epiphany, the day on which bureaucratic promotions are announced.

Psellus adjusts the new crimson cloak that hangs from his shoulder, touches the new ceremonial sword at his side, and advances through the throng of courtiers. They part to make way for him. Hundreds of curious faces watch him. Most of them don’t know him, but he knows them; he’s made it his business to. In a few of those faces he reads envy. He doesn’t mind. He expects, intends, to make them envious.

He casts a quick glance up to the gallery where spectators hang over the railing. Somewhere up there are his mother and father in their black robes, released from their monastic cells for this special day. And dear Olympia—fifteen years old, four months now his adoring bride and already pregnant with their first child; and her well-to-do parents, delighted to have this ambitious young man for a son-in-law.

Passing down the aisle, he catches the Logothete’s eye and his quick, encouraging smile. Only twenty-two years old, Psellus reflects with a rush of satisfaction, and I am now his Chief of Staff, First Secretary of the Office of Barbarians, with a fine new house, and a salary of seventy-two gold solidi a year, and much more than that under the guise of ‘gifts’ that a senior bureaucrat is entitled to collect. No one in memory has come so far so fast. And then he considers again, If only we lived in happier times.

He kneels at the foot of the throne where Michael and Zoe sit side by side, swathed in their brocaded wraps like a pair of elegant corpses. Michael sick unto death; Zoe, a prisoner in her chambers, paraded only on these few occasions in the year.

Then the Emperor leans forward stiffly—as he will do dozens more times throughout this long day—to kiss the honoree’s head, to fasten the collar of office around his neck, and hand him the ivory plaque inscribed with his name and title. It is all Psellus can do to suppress a shudder: those bloodless lips, those eyes swollen nearly shut with the dropsy, the breath—well, try not to breathe… He rises and steps backward from the throne, feeling the weight of the collar on his neck. Applause from the spectators. It is all just a piece of theater, in which they are simultaneously actors and audience. But where would the empire be without theater?

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