I turned up one of the side streets just short of the Church of the Holy Wisdom, then into another, passed under the striding arch of a white stone aqueduct, and found myself in a part of the city where I had seldom been before. A man in the doorway of a perfume shop told me which way to go, and so I came to a quiet street running uphill towards a slim pencilling of cypresses clustered about the pinkish dome of a church.
The Street of the Golden Mulberry Tree, said a passer-by; yes, this was it.
But I turned and drifted off again, up one street and down another; sat for a while on the steps of another church, watching the sparrows foraging among the dry horse-dung in the roadway, and listened to a travelling astrologer at one street corner and a seller of fermented mares’ milk at another, both crying their wares. And it was early evening when, despite myself, I came back to the Street of the Golden Mulberry Tree, and began slowly to make my way up it towards the last house on the right. The streets were already in shadow, though the upper storeys of the houses still caught the leas of the sunlight, thick as run honey. The last house of all, the House of the Physician, stood tall and narrow above the rest, even in the street of tall and narrow houses. Save for an arched doorway, it showed, like most houses in the city, only a blank wall to the street on the ground-floor and the floor above. One small window above that, and then on the two top storeys, broke out as a plant breaks into flower, into a riot of overhanging windows and delicate traceried balconies set with pots of trailing bright-coloured flowers that spilled over the balustrades. I stood beneath it, with my head tipped far back to look up, as though into the branches of a tree.
It seemed that I had a long journey behind me, and now that it was over, I did not know why I had come. It would be so easy to cross the narrow street to the arched doorway, and knock, and ask to speak with the Lady Alexia. But I could not do it. If I did, she would help me, I knew that; but she would think that I had come with my hands held out because I was down on my luck and hoped that she would think she owed me something for the day I had killed the cheetah. Worse still. I should never be quite sure within myself that it was not true. Next time she went out to the farm, they would tell her that I had been there asking for her; but that would not matter, because by then, I should be somewhere else. Where, I did not know, did not care; but I wouldn’t go asking my way in a church again . . .
How long I stood there, looking up, I do not know. Not very long. I suppose, for the sun was still bright on the upper windows reflecting back the western sky, and the shadows of flower-jars and iron-work tracery were still pencilled on the plastered walls. Once, I thought something moved behind the thick glass of that single lower window; something that could have been the pale blur of a face. But when I looked at it, it was not there.
I was just turning away, when the narrow door opened, and a little old woman, wizened like a last year’s walnut, came out. She looked across the street to me, and beckoned. Then, as I did not check, she came pattering after me, catching at my sleeve.
‘My mistress bids you to come in.’
I checked then, and stood looking down at her. ‘Your mistress?’
‘The Lady Alexia. She sent me to bid you –’
‘And if I will not come?’
‘She says I am to bring you!’ said the little old woman, looking fierce enough to drag me bodily up the street. Then she dropped her eyes. ‘My mistress bade me to ask you – please to enter, for she would speak with you.’
I hesitated, even then; but in the end, I went with her, across the street, and in at the small deep-set door.
20 Shade on a Dusty Road
BEYOND THE DOOR was a pillared entrance chamber, with stairs leading up from one side. I looked towards them, guessing that they must lead to the living quarters, and the window where I had glimpsed that flicker of a face behind the glass. But the old woman led me across – I had not noticed how uneven my footsteps sounded until I walked across that beautiful tiled floor – and through an archway on the far side, into a garden court.
A narrow slip of a garden, cool now in the rising shade, set about with roses and oleanders and small trimmed pomegranate bushes in narrow beds, water plashing from a lion’s mask on one wall into a sky-reflecting basin. And on the broad rim of the basin sat a girl in a straight dress of some dark stuff fringed with blue, her hair bound up, as the women wear it here in Constantinople, in a scarf of fine striped silk twisted about her head. There was red stain on her mouth, and her eyebrows were pencilled into fine arches of beetle-wing black over the green-painted lids; and in that first moment I would not have known her, save for the yearling gazelle that stood beside her, ears fanned out, dark eyes watching me for any sign of harm.
For a long moment she looked at me in silence, and I at her. And then she said, ‘So it is you.’
And the instant she spoke, her face became the face of the girl of the wild olive tree.
‘The small one has done well,’ I said, glancing at the fawn beside her.
She touched its head caressingly, and came a step towards me. ‘But not you, I think. What has happened? You have been wounded?’
‘In Thrace in the spring,’ I said. ‘They only turned me loose from hospital two days since.’
‘And you came here. How did you know where to find me in the city?’
‘I did not know. I was only passing – by chance,’ I said quickly. When she was next at the farm, I’d be somewhere else, and it would not matter her knowing that I had gone there looking for her. But not now. Dear God let her not know now!
She came close, looking at me very straightly. ‘Not by chance,’ she said. ‘You stood outside this house a long while, looking up, as though you were waiting. I watched you, because I could not be sure it was you, until Anna brought you in.’
I mind setting down my bundle, and rubbing the back of my free hand across my forehead with some idea that that might clear it. I was so tired that I could not think properly. ‘I – yes, I did know where to find you – I found out. I just wanted to look at the house before I went away from Miklagard.’
‘Away? Where are you going?’
‘I don’t know. A long way off.’
‘You’ve been a long way already,’ she said. ‘That’s country dust on your clothes. You went out to the farm looking for me, and Cloe or Michael told you where to find me. Only then you were afraid, weren’t you. Afraid and proud. How dare you be afraid, Jestyn Englishman?’
And at the instant I heard someone else come in through the street door.
‘Sit down there,’ said the Lady Alexia. ‘I will come back.’
I sat down where she bade me, on the rim of the fountain basin, propping my staff beside me. A great wave of weariness was flowing over me; stronger than pride, stronger than fear. What did it matter, after all, if she guessed that I had been looking for her at the farm? What did it matter what she thought about it? I was too tired to care. I remember, as in a kind of cloud, sitting slumped with my arms across my knees, staring at the ground in front of me; and that was all.
The chiming of the water from the mouth of the lion mask behind me deadened other sounds, and I did not hear her feet nor the sharp hooves of the little gazelle following her, as she went into the house, nor the heavier footsteps that, in a while, came back alone. Only suddenly, I was staring, not at the bare paving-stones, but at a pair of crimson boots; and I looked up, to find a man standing over me – a tall man, stooping a little under his own height, with a dark face that seemed all the darker by contrast with his greying hair and beard, and eyes that looked like a desert Arab’s with the sun behind them.
‘My daughter tells me that you are Jestyn Englishman of the Varangian Guard, who saved her from the Emperor’s hunting cheetah, last year.’
‘I am.’
‘Truly an unusual Varangian.’ The man had an extraordinarily deep voice, with a liquid note at the back of the throat.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘We are no gentle crew, but it is not our custom
to stand by and watch a girl mauled by a cheetah when a little thrust with a dagger is all that is needed.’
‘True. But not many of you, I think, could or would have brought a living fawn out of its dead dam by something very like the Caesarian operation.’
‘I have worked with cattle all my life, till a while back; and for a master who was the best cattle doctor in five manors. It is not the first time that I have done that thing, though I did not know there was a special name for it.’
I had begun to haul myself to my feet again, but he set a hand on my shoulder. ‘Bide still. You have walked over far on that leg, for one two days out of hospital.’
So she had told him that, too. I got to my feet all the same; what I knew was coming had to be met standing up, not sitting down.
‘Did you think that maybe we needed a cattleman on the farm?’
I looked him in the eyes. ‘I suppose so.’
‘And Michael told you he could not take on fresh hands without my word, and sent you here?’
‘I don’t know why I came,’ I said. ‘I was not going to ask entry.’
‘No. My daughter told me you were already on the edge of going, when she sent Anna after you; which would have been a pity, for I have wished sorely for the chance to show you my gratitude.’
‘I did not come seeking gratitude,’ I said, rather desperately. ‘Nor with my hand held out for the payment of a debt.’
‘Did Cloe put that into your head? A heart of gold, but a heavy touch.’ He smiled, a slow smile that seemed to creak a little, as though it did not come often to his face. ‘Jestyn Englishman, you saved for me the one thing in life, save for my work, that means very much to me. When the debt is great enough, there is no means of paying it; one can give only thanks.’
‘I accept the thanks,’ I said. ‘And I’ll be on my way.’
‘Not so fast.’ I found that his hand was still on my shoulder, and his eyes were holding mine so that I would have found it hard to look away if I had wanted to. ‘I have done you the justice to believe that you did not come here with your hand held out, seeking payment for my daughter’s life. Now do me the justice to believe that I do not offer the charity your over-hot pride will not stomach. You are through with the Varangians and you need work; no shame in that, surely. And presently we will talk of this, but it can wait. First wash off the dust of the journey and then we will eat. Anna will take you to the bath chamber and find you a fresh tunic.’
And so, without knowing quite how it happened, I found myself, an hour later, with the dust of my journey soaked away in hot water, clad in my one spare shirt, and a tunic of Alexius Demetriades’ that fitted me none so ill, sitting at supper with the master of the house, at a table set for coolness under the trained fig-tree behind the house.
Alexia served us, helped by Anna – it was a small household of few slaves, I had gathered that already – then sat down with us herself, while Anna scuffled off into the shadows. The gazelle lay like a slender alert dog at her mistress’s feet.
It was very peaceful, the pools of lamplight scarce moving on the table, no stir of wind among the broad leaves of the fig-tree overhead. We had just finished with the hard-boiled duck eggs, and were starting on the baked carp which old Anna had set on the table, when the faint sounds of tumult from the direction of the Hippodrome, which had been going on for some time, swelled suddenly louder. Demetriades sighed. ‘It begins. I wonder if there is a medic anywhere in this part of the city ever finishes his supper uninterrupted after a chariot race day.’
‘Patching up broken heads is a surgeon’s work,’ said Alexia. ‘You only have to refuse to soil your hands with it, and you can go on to the honey-cakes and figs in peace.’
‘Patching up broken heads is also healer’s work,’ Demetriades said. ‘I do not believe I would enjoy the honey-cakes and figs.’
And Alexia gave him a sudden glimmer of a smile. ‘I am very sure that you would not. Eat your fish, my father; the first of them will be on the doorsill at any moment.’
And sure enough, before the carp was finished, we heard a distant thumping on the street door. And a short while after, Anna came scurrying out. ‘It’s the Blues and Greens,’ she announced, as one who has announced the same thing many times before.
‘Does it look bad?’ asked Demetriades, already rising from the table.
She shook her head. ‘Who’s to say? His friends left him on the doorsill – there’s a deal of blood.’
‘You have taken him into the surgery?’
Alexia had risen also. ‘I will come and help – Anna, keep Maia with you.’ Then she half-turned back, and looked at me. ‘My father’s dresser left us a few days ago. And on race nights there is generally more than one knife-wound to be seen to. I can act as my father’s dresser, but I would be glad of another man’s strength in case of trouble. There is so often trouble. Will you come?’
I got up. ‘Surely, I will come.’
I followed her as she followed her father, back into the house and across the entrance chamber to a door behind the stairs. Beyond the door was a square room bright with hanging lamps, a table in the middle, chests and closets round the walls, and on a bench, a man sitting slumped, holding his head as though he were afraid that if he let go it would fall off. Blood ran between his fingers, out of his matted hair, and he looked very like somebody who has been hit by half a brick.
Demetriades went to him, and put a hand over his for a moment, before drawing it away. ‘Show me.’
‘One of those accursed Greens!’ said the man thickly. ‘May he rot in Hell!’
Demetriades parted the hair and looked at the jagged wound. ‘Aye, aye, a little more to the right, and you might have been rotting in Hell yourself – as it is, there’s no great harm done.’
Anna brought hot water in a bowl, and Alexia took it and set it down, then began to help her father, holding the man’s head while he clipped away the matted hair and bathed the gash. Clearly she was well used to such work, and at first I did not think there was going to be any need of me at all. Then, as Demetriades was cleaning out the wound with palm spirit, and the man bellowing like a bull calf, there came a second beating on the street door. And another man was hauled in by a couple of friends and dumped all asprawl like a shock of wet barley in the corner. All three of them were dripping drunk, but the two friends departed, after explaining – though indeed it was plain for anyone to see – that he’d taken a knife through his left arm just below the shoulder; and it was the wounded man himself who was spoiling for more trouble.
He took one look across at the fellow with the broken head, saw the draggled blue ribbons he wore knotted round one arm, and lurched to his feet again and started towards him. ‘Bastard! Trickster! Those horses were drugged, if ever I’ve seen drugged horses!’ And he was fumbling for the knife in his belt.
It’s not easy to handle a wounded man set on murder, if you’re not wanting to worsen the wound; but I managed to get hold of him – he was a runt of a man, anyway – and sit him down again without much trouble.
‘Look now,’ said I, ‘you’re here to get that hole in your ugly hide mended, not to make more holes in somebody else’s.’
And Demetriades, in a tone of quiet amusement, said without looking up from his task, ‘That is well spoken. Now cut his sleeve off for me – use his own dagger.’ And when I had done as I was bidden, the man glowering and mumbling threats and curses the while, ‘So – now clean it up so that I can see what the damage is, when I’ve done with this one.’
Old Anna had brought more warm water and sponges meanwhile, and I set to work, swabbing away the blood as it oozed from the deep gash.
‘Will I die?’ the man said, watching the water redden. I was going to say, ‘One day, and it might as well be now for all I care; but since you are here . . .’ But I saw the look in his eyes that he turned on me, and it was the look I had seen in the eyes of cattle I had tended – frightened by pain and strangeness, though they knew nothin
g of the fear of the unknown that men call the fear of death. So I said, ‘All men die, one day, but not this time, if you hold still.’
And I had the wound cleaned up and the bleeding almost stopped by the time Demetriades left the first man having his head bandaged by Alexia, and came across the room to take over.
We tended five men that evening, he and I and the Lady Alexia. One, who had been kicked in the groin and belly, was put into a small inner chamber for the night, since it seemed that there might be some hidden hurt within him; the rest patched up and sent on their way.
I mind when all was over, there was a kind of sigh in the lamp-lit room, like a man sighing when he straightens his back from a hard job of work. I had thought I was tired before, but I had not known how tired I was until that moment. ‘I’ve got blood on your tunic,’ I said. ‘I am sorry.’
Demetriades smiled his slow grave smile. ‘It happens.’
Anna had brought more water, for our own washing, this time.
‘Will you come back and finish your supper?’ Alexia said.
He shook his head. ‘I have notes to write up before I go to my bed, and it grows late.’
Alexia sighed. ‘Anna shall bring some soup and a dish of figs up to the study.’
‘Bid her bring them in here. I shall bring my work down, and watch for a while.’ He glanced towards the inner chamber.
‘Very well. Come you then, Jestyn Englishman.’
But I was almost past being hungry. Also I had a feeling of strangeness on me. The evening’s work had woken in me things that had been sleeping or almost sleeping, for a long while. Following Thormod, I had become a fighting man; that had been all my life, or so I thought, the Viking way had been my way; now, suddenly, I was another Jestyn, who had once been the best cattle doctor after old Gyrth, in five manors. I needed time to grow used to myself again.