A Burning Sea by Theodore Brun (i am reading a book txt) 📕

the city garrison, military logs, histories, annals, tax records, legal codes, edicts of the Church, administrative protocols, imperial doxologies. Anything that made reference to the land walls. A forest of words through which he prowled like a wolf hunting down his prey. He read till his eyes blurred, till his neck and shoulders were stiff as bark, and on the fourth night, in the dead hours before the dawn, he found it.

A simple note from the palace sakellarios to the deacon of the Church of St Mary of Blachernae, accompanying an endowment from the Emperor Justinian, second of his name, to that church.

To the Holy Virgin and Mother of God – who opened the gates to blessing and glory when all were sealed – His Imperial Majesty bequeaths this gift of five thousand solidi in furtherance of the Glory of Her Name and that of the Most High God and His Most Righteous Son Christ Jesus. . . etc., etc.

It was the date which caught his notice. Ten years previous, almost to the day, and within less than a month of Justinian’s restoration to the throne after he had been deposed and his nose had been slit. The mutilation was intended to disqualify him from the purple for ever. Justinian had refused to accept this limitation.

His return involved a rather obscure episode which Katāros happened to know. When Justinian had escaped his exile in Krim, he sailed in secret to the shores of Thrace, whence he travelled overland to the outer wall of the city and was then, somehow, smuggled inside, in time to lead the coup that put him back on the throne. The tale didn’t relate how he had entered the city. There were rumours – probably originating with Justinian himself – that it had been the Holy Virgin herself who had intervened, miraculously spiriting him through the walls. Manifest nonsense, Katāros was certain. Nevertheless, Justinian had got inside.

The cogs of logic began to turn in Katāros’s mind. A wildly inflated gift from a man hardly known for his piety. A pay-off, perhaps – but for what? ‘To the Holy Virgin, who opened the gates of blessing and glory when all were sealed.’ Given the timings, the timings—

The more Katāros thought about it, the more certain he became.

It was well before the first hour when he jumped down from the wagon and paid the driver. At the open cistern of Aetius, the great thoroughfare of the Mese forked. He had already resolved to cover the rest of the distance to Blachernae on foot, picking his way along the pathways that bounded the meadows and orchards carpeting the Sixth Hill.

He was dressed in a long drab tunic under a cloak of darker wool with the hood pulled well forward. Before he had left the palace his unpainted face had looked perfectly ordinary in the mirror, and with his hood up at this hour no one would pay him any heed.

The basilica of St Mary stood a little below the Palace of Blachernae, which sat perched on its rock in splendid solitude at the northernmost point of the city overlooking the headwaters of the Horn. The land walls ran down the ridgeline, blistering outwards like a carbuncle to enclose the palace within their protection, and rising not half an arrow’s flight away.

He went inside. The church was quite deserted. It was an hour at least before even the most devout would be on their knees. The still air felt cool but his mind was burning with uncertainty and impatience.

His gaze followed the green jasper columns down the central aisle towards the white marble steps and gilded iconostasis at the eastern end of the church. Above him, the sun was beginning to break through the highest windows, glinting off the silver mortar in the mosaics adorning the walls. He saw images of the Mother of God, of miracles from the life of Christ. The feeding of the five thousand. Lazarus raised from the dead. Aye, he needed a miracle himself, though he doubted his will was in alignment with that of the Christians’ god.

Two huge candles flickered either side of the double doors in the iconostasis. The doors to heaven. Well, heaven can wait, he thought with scorn. I’m seeking a different door.

His eyes shifted to the metal gate in the corner of the nave. He guessed it led to the crypt. If anything was to be found, surely it would be down there.

‘Can I help you?’ said a voice beside him. He turned and saw it belonged to a young monk smiling at him. Some pious fool. The youth’s tonsure was as fresh as his complexion. Just as well.

‘I am here for my mother.’ Katāros launched into a hastily conceived tale that his mother was buried in the crypt and he was here to fulfil a vow to pray for her soul at the beginning of each new year. The little cleric ate it up, nodding away earnestly, and before long he was holding the gate open and handing Katāros an oil lamp to light his way.

‘I’ll see that no one disturbs your prayers,’ he said softly.

‘God bless you, Brother.’ As Katāros descended into darkness, he couldn’t contain a snigger. At length he reached the crypt. In the puddle of wan light he noticed an unlit torch on the wall.

He lit it and walked on, grit crunching underfoot, the torch flame illumining the vaulted archways looping away into shadow. In each alcove he saw rows of shelving and each shelf was stacked with skulls. Hundreds of them, so that with the shadows dancing amongst them, he was struck with the notion that he was in the grisly hoard of some foul beast, not the resting place for saints in a holy church.

The gloom weighed heavy beyond his torchlight. Yet he was no stranger to darkness; his childhood had been full of it. Even so, with the close air, he felt the shadows pressing in. He scolded himself for a coward