43.
43.
Of course, just because I wanted to meet Árpád didn't mean I could find him right away.
We traveled by boat and camped out only on long journeys, but weren't those fellows the sort whose entire life was camping out?
They wandered the endless plains beneath the starlight, stopping where the grass grew thick to let their sheep and horses eat their fill, and among them they caught the sickly or feeble ones to make clothes, eat the meat, and make cheese.
...It could be seen as nomadic prejudice, but wasn't it roughly the reality?
So, just because I wanted to meet him didn't mean I could immediately speak with the prince of the Magyars.
And the same was true of the Khazars—those nomadic fellows whose main base lay far to the east in Itill—though in my eyes they were semi-nomadic at most—weren't about to suddenly pop out just because I wished to see them.
In the end, all I could do was wait.
Only, this time time was not on my side.
For a man had come seeking me, bearing Eudokia's third message.
"Well met, wise Knyaz of the Rus. My name is Damian. I have come here by the command of Lady Eudokia, Basilissa to Symbasileis Basil."
An old man who bowed his body in a posture I had never seen before in my life. His head bore the tonsure I had once seen in Britain. The head of a clergyman.
I didn't quite know why he recognized me as the Knyaz of the Rus, but I would learn through conversation.
"Well met, Damian. I am Helgi Ragnarsson, Konungr of the Danes and Svear, and leader of the Rus of Novgorod, Polotsk, and Kiyiu."
"Oh-."
Perhaps because of my introduction carrying more titles than he expected, a glint of surprise flickered for a moment in the old man Damian's eyes.
"I have been discourteous, Konungr. This unenlightened one, being ignorant of affairs beyond this place, made an error. I beg you forgive me with your broad magnanimity."
His pronunciation of Konungr was wrong, but I let it pass. More than that, from his speech and gestures, this man had clearly drunk courtly waters for far more than a day or two.
He gave off a feeling similar to Hrolf. A Hrolf more specialized in political maneuvering.
It seemed we would understand each other well.
"What is there to forgive? Damian. If you do not mean to make me out a petty man, rise from your seat. And let us raise a cup together."
"The Konungr's mercy is most exceedingly honorable. My thanks, Helgi Konungr."
Damian rose slowly and, just as slowly, seated himself cautiously in the place I had offered.
Jarl Haskuldr and Djur had already sworn their loyalty to me, and I had entered into an awkward companionship with their former comrade-in-arms and lord, Rurik, but that was a matter time would resolve. They were all under my nest now.
More than that, as I studied the face of Damian seated before me, his features were certainly different. He gave off a feeling somewhere between the Italians and Arabs I had seen in my previous life.
A Greek. A Roman.
"I had no notion that the Konungr possessed such profound mastery of the Roman tongue."
The sound of elegantly rolling speech flowed from Damian's mouth, and only then did I realize I was conversing with a Roman in the Roman language, without any effort at all.
'Huh-.'
Why had I not noticed it sooner in Britain?
If I could understand the content of a book filled with letters I was seeing for the first time in my life, though no one had ever taught me, wouldn't I be able to speak it too?
The reactions of my brothers, who had treated me like something inhuman, came freshly to mind, and I naturally took up the conversation.
"Though the west may have fallen, Rome still plainly exists. As one who sends my warriors there as mercenaries, should I not at least be able to speak its tongue?"
"Rightly spoken. Truly right and just words. Wise Helgi Konungr."
"Come, let us speak at ease while you eat."
"Yes, Konungr."
I urged the old man, whose skill at being a tongue in the mouth was extraordinary, to food and drink, and continued the conversation.
"So, you said you came bearing a message from Basilissa Eudokia. Might I know what circumstances are involved?"
A piece of meat, a piece of bread, a sip of water. Damian, who had been cautiously going through the motions of eating and drinking, answered as if he had been waiting.
"First, I must take the liberty of asking, but are you acquainted with matters concerning our imperial household of Rome?"
"Hm. What would be the liberty taken? To speak frankly, I know nothing at all. I simply came to aid Eudokia Yngvarrdottir, daughter of the Norseman Yngvar."
"Truly honorable. Helgi Konungr."
Of course, that praise was little more than rhetoric. Neither of us was naive enough to believe that the king of a realm would come running merely to answer the plea for aid of a single countryman.
We simply did not dig in and cause hurt feelings.
Damian's mind had probably already grasped that I wanted something from the Eastern Roman Empire.
He likely imagined it was about expanding trade and receiving gold and silver, but he would not yet know that my true goal was their library.
"Then, for the sake of the Konungr's precious time, I shall explain as briefly as possible."
Damian wrinkled his nose for a moment as if at a loss, then, as though having resolved himself, he downed the beer beside the water placed before him instead, and with an exclamation of "Puha-!", began to unfold an interesting tale.
"It is said a sage can grasp his counterpart with but three exchanges of words, Helgi Konungr. I am no such sage, yet I do possess the ability to grasp the Konungr's extraordinariness.
A barbarian who speaks the Roman tongue... such a thing simply cannot be. That a man possessed of both cultivation and virtue should have become the leader of the Rus—the prosperity of this land seems visible before my very eyes."
Had his tension eased because, having expected a barbarian king with a shaggy beard, gripping an axe and wearing a horned helm, he encountered a barbarian king speaking familiar Latin at a native level?
Damian spoke on smoothly, shifting the mood as if loosening a tightly cinched belt.
It was certain: this was a man who had long weathered the court. He minutely altered his tone and gestures from moment to moment, continually testing my reactions.
"It seems I must reintroduce myself. I was a Parakoimomenos who served the great Basileus Michael of Rome, and before him his father, Theophilos."
"Parakoimomenos, you say?"
"A position assisting the Basileus in all things. His court ceremonies, garments, meals, bedchamber—even his most private affairs."
This man was a eunuch, then. That explained the absence of a beard. A eunuch and a monk? One who had been a Parakoimomenos?
Roman politics were truly impossible to see even an inch ahead.
"Yet now you appear to be a monk."
When I cast a glance at Damian's head and voiced my question, Damian gave a bitter smile. A very, very bitter smile.
"For one who dwells beside the high, enemies are ever abundant as a law of nature."
"I understand. You have endured many hardships."
"It was something I had to brace myself for. Yet I came down with all my limbs intact, so I am among the fortunate. But this is not the place for me to unburden my circumstances to the Konungr. May I continue?"
"Pray do so, wise Damian."
"My thanks. Working for so long as Parakoimomenos, one comes to see what one does not wish to see, and hear what one does not wish to hear. The matter concerning Lady Eudokia, in a certain light, may be a disgrace of the current Basileus, yet it is also a story everyone in Constantinople speaks of only in hushed tones."
And the old monk's words that followed were enough to shake my head to its foundations.
"Lady Eudokia, the wife of Symbasileis Basil, is the paramour of Basileus Michael. And she is with child by him. By Michael, that is."
*****
What was this, a morning drama...
Afterward, Damian's expression as he recited the story with his eyes closed looked deeply relieved, like the man in the tale who cried out, 'The king has donkey's ears!'
Was I the first person he had told this story to?
Contrary to any pity I felt, I sensed all my illusions about the Eastern Rome and Constantinople crumbling in an instant...
To summarize,
The current Emperor Michael had had a lover he mutually adored since the age of twelve.
She was the daughter of the Varangian captain, Eudokia YngvarTyr—or in the Roman way, Ingerna.
The problem was that in the eyes of the regent and mother Theodora, who seized and wielded power in place of the young emperor, Eudokia Ingerna, who was an Iconoclast (religious matters aside for now), was displeasing, and so on the day Michael turned fifteen, through an event called a 'bride show,' she selected a daughter-in-law of her own liking.
She was Eudokia Dekapolitissa.
I did not know if it was the cruel mother's spiteful jest, meaning he should be satisfied since their names were at least alike, but would a young emperor already grown thick-headed comply?
Naturally, he married in form, but the married life sank lower than the lowest pit, degenerating into a show-window couple, and Michael continued his secret meetings with his childhood first love, Eudokia Ingerna.
Then, forsooth, a child was conceived.
This Basileus, who had already removed his uncle Bardas this autumn and did not wish to further shoulder the political-religious burden of a divorce, devised a stunning scheme...
He married Eudokia off to his close friend and political partner, Basil, and appointed him Symbasileis.
Then, sinking back into the bottle as befitted his reputation as a drunkard, Michael was gazed upon by Eudokia, who felt a mounting dread. Soon after, Eudokia sought out Damian, who had been defeated in the political struggle by Basil, and pleaded for help.
For Damian had long stood by and watched over her and Michael.
"Lady Eudokia's choice of me was a correct move, but her sending a letter to the Knyaz of Novgorod was, in truth, an act of little significance. How could a distant kinsman possibly block the banquet of daggers and poison unfolding just beneath the water's surface?
So, while I agonized over a plan, I received a message from Strategos Petronas Kamateros of Cherson. That something interesting was afoot north of the Crimean Peninsula, on the Dnieper River."
I no longer knew from where to where this was tangled up.
Was entering a library truly this difficult? I had a premonition that if I slipped up, I might be dragged right into the Eastern Roman court politics that were Sodom and Gomorrah itself.
No, had I already entered? If so, this instinct sounding the alarm in me might perhaps be speaking of civil war.
Forcibly swallowing the deep sigh trying to crawl up my throat, I calmed my rapidly spinning head—so at odds with my complicated inner thoughts—and asked Damian, whose own inner thoughts looked just as complicated as mine.
"If it was an interesting matter, it must have been news of a foreign Konungr who appeared out of nowhere from even farther away than far-off Novgorod. So, what does the Strategos of Cherson gain from this?"
"Petronas Kamateros is also, like myself, one appointed by the previous Basileus."
As if the court of the previous era had been chaos no different from the present, the face of the reminiscing Damian held more weariness than longing.
"He is a man exceedingly close to the rulers of the Khazars. He even built a city called Sarkel for the Khazars on the orders of the previous Basileus."
"The reach of Rome is formidable."
"My thanks, Helgi Konungr."
To build an entire city as a gift. Was this what it meant to be Rome?
"To that extent, Petronas Kamateros knows more about this surrounding region than anyone else, and cherishes it with all his heart. In guaranteeing the identity of Helgi Konungr and providing passage by ship, he wishes to have but a single condition promised in return."
There it was.
"And what might that be?"
"Whatever direction the affairs of Constantinople may end in, once the urgent fire is extinguished, he requests that you keep the Magyars to the west in check. As the Knyaz of the Rus, that is."
"Huh-."
Regardless of age or place, did human empires all think alike? This sounded very much like using barbarians against barbarians...
"I understand. I shall do so."
"A righteous decision, wise Konungr."
He had said 'keep in check,' not 'fight.' I would be able to decide more certainly once I met this fellow called Árpád later.
For now, I would dance to your tune, Petronas of Cherson.
Until our interests aligned.