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

‘The word from the land walls is that the Arab army has been drawing up its lines for an attack,’ went on Alexios. ‘The emperor expects them to test our defences any day now. The patriarch has called the whole city to a day of repentance.’

‘Re—pen—tance? What’s that?’ Erlan looked over at Einar for an explanation but the fat man only shrugged.

‘A mass. We humble ourselves before God,’ said Alexios. ‘Without his aid, the city is already lost.’

‘You mean a sacrifice?’

Alexios frowned. ‘I suppose. Of a kind.’

Unbidden, Erlan’s memory conjured those nine bodies hanging from the Sacred Oak in Uppsala, hoarfrost glistening on their lovely, lifeless faces. That had been Queen Saldas’s sacrifice – her ‘contribution’ to her king’s victory in those bitter days of winter.

‘What does it involve?’ he asked.

‘You’ll see.’

‘It’s all rather solemn, don’t you think?’ said Princess Anna in a conspiratorial whisper to Lilla.

‘Hush, daughter,’ murmured her mother Maria before Lilla could answer. Instead Lilla raised a complicit eyebrow at the young Basílopoúla and was rewarded with an elfin smile.

She couldn’t account for the way that the Princess Anna had taken to her. She had only met her twice. This was the second time. The first when the Empress Maria – doubtless to see this northern curiosity for herself – had summoned Lilla to her chambers. Lilla had passed a pleasant, if stilted, hour in their company, answering questions about her homeland and her journey and the customs of her people. She was happy enough to satisfy their interest and found herself curious in turn about what life was like for them, to live entombed in all this gilded splendour.

Princess Anna was a vivacious little creature, her attractiveness now in its full bloom with her sixteenth year, but Lilla fancied it would not endure. Her hair was dark like her mother’s, and her eyes still bright with innocence, but she had something of her father’s plainness about her too, her shoulders a little too broad, her legs a fraction too short. In short, she was still a girl. And her girlishness only made Lilla feel the guiltier for the secret she had to keep from her. Not that she would have acted any differently: Erlan was too important to her. Anyway, Anna would soon have to learn the ways of the world, as all women must. Or at least learn the ways of men. With a husband like Arbasdos, the lessons would not be long in coming.

The Empress Maria, on the other hand, was reserved and very proper in her speech and manner. A thin woman – once surely a great beauty – although she was hardly old even now. But she was one of those women whose beauty dried out of them a little more as each year passed like a tender piece of fruit, stretching her skin into a fine, fragile veil over her bones and what flesh she still carried. Maria did not speak unless each word had first been carefully considered. Perhaps she didn’t want to be thought a fool. But holding so obdurately to this line, there was something almost comic about the interplay between mother and daughter, since Princess Anna had no time for ceremony at all and frequently upset Maria’s carefully curated veneer. Poor girl, she had been born into the wrong life, Lilla reflected, since every day, from dawn to dusk, her existence at court was an endless succession of formalities.

Yet nothing Lilla had seen till now could compare to the ceremony being played out before her. She stood as a guest with the empress and her attendants – all female, naturally – in the upper gallery of the great temple the Christians called the Hagia Sophia, or Holy Wisdom. She had seen it before and been awe-struck by its cavernous domes and arches, by the magical veils of sunlight floating through its many windows, by the scattered shards of gold reflecting off the mosaics that covered its inner walls. But here she saw the building as it was surely meant to be: filled with people, the air swirling with incense, the marble columns echoing with the sound of the holy men’s chanting, a thousand candles dancing among the crowd and the procession of priests. She was glad of the imposition of silence. Brittle conversation with the empress would have been too stifling. Instead she wanted to surrender to her senses for a while, to the strangeness and gentle charm of the Christians’ ritual, although she understood it very little. Yet something in her spirit was nourished nonetheless. She found the relentless goad of her revenge, the weight of sadness in her womb, the raw wounds in her heart, the hollowness in her bones after her long fever, the obsessive thoughts and cares that turned and turned in her mind but never moved forward – all these receded into shadow for a while and something else drew forward. Something unnameable, something unknowable. Some thirst that cried out for quenching.

And here at last was water.

It was too much, yet not enough. Some secret hidden from everyone – or else some great pretence to which all were party. As if the ritual, the robes, the processions, the serious expressions on everyone’s face, from the emperor down to the beggars filling the square – all of it was some colossal joke, which would crumble into absurdity if only one person were to let the mask slip and laugh.

But no one did.

Erlan had marched in time – as best as his ankle would allow – in the emperor’s guard of honour, from the Great Palace across the Augustaion to the atrium of the huge church, parting on their way a sea of thousands – nay, tens of thousands – like the prow of a great longship, his entourage of officials and highborn nobles trailing in their wake.

There, under the eastern colonnade of the atrium, Erlan watched as the emperor bowed in greeting