The Belt of Gold (23 page)

“You may rise,” she said.

With the others, he lifted himself up onto his feet, grateful that she had recovered her temper; it unnerved him to see her unnerved.

Now, as was her custom, she came among them, going from man to man, greeting each, and touching each. She looked into Nicephoros's face, and smiled, and he lowered his eyes, warmed by her acceptance. Her touch on his arm was a pressure he felt long after she had gone past him.

She reached the Parakoimomenos. She did not lay her hand on him, nor did she smile.

She said, “My angel, was it not your idea that ibn-Ziad and I should wager on the outcome of the race?”

“Yes, Augustus, Chosen One of—”

“Then since you have an interest perhaps it would amuse us both to wager, each other, on the race?”

“Augustus—”

“I shall take Ishmael, and you the Caesarean team.”

“Augustus.”

“Yes. And the wager, my angel—”

She reached out and plucked at the belt around his waist, made of links of gold, the belt that signified his office in the Imperial service.

“The wager is your belt, my angel.”

“Augustus, I—”

She drew herself up, fierce. “Do you accept?”

“I—” The eunuch was white as ivory, and now suddenly red as a new baby. He whispered something.

“Louder!”

“I accept!”

“Excellent.” She turned again, going back to her place. Behind her the members of her council stood rigid, all eyes on the Parakoimomenos. As one man they shifted, moving away from him, isolating him as if he showed open sores and rang a little bell.

She faced them, an icon, glittering. “Let the Council begin!”

20

The Basileus blessed the people, and the parade to the first heat began. Smiling, she sat down in her chair at the front corner of the Imperial box, her women gathered around her, little Philomela on her lap.

Two pages with garlands of flowers came in through the door in the back of the box, and bowed and strewed the flowers over the floor, and with a flourish they turned to usher in their master. With a braying of horns, the Caliph's emissary entered.

He wore a magnificent long coat, with a sash of gold lace, a turban of many folds on his head. Prince Constantine, escorting him, seemed very plain by contrast, a figure of provincial nobility. The Basileus watched gravely as they filled up the box with their male talk and strutting. Their comradeship had made her more than suspicious. Three or four of the ambassador's own servants hurried around, putting cushions on their master's chair, and when he sat down they ranged themselves behind him.

All but one, who brought up a little casket of silver, which his master took and set upon his knee.

“My part of our wager,” he said, and tipped up the casket lid.

All who saw it gasped, all but the Empress. The box was top-full of jewels, mostly polished but unset, mingled with pearls as luminous as the moon. Irene put out her hand and dug her fingers into the glittering mass and, lifting her palm, let the gems trickle back into the box; it was a nice way to be sure the whole box was full. Across the lovely pile, the Caliph's man smiled at her, his eyes bright as the gemstones.

“Helena,” said the Empress, and raised her hand.

The waiting woman came forward, carrying something covered with a velvet cloth. Irene nodded, and the cloth was whisked away.

There on a branch of green jade sat a golden bird, its eyes made of ruby chips, and its beak and claws of alabaster; green and blue enamel covered the wings. Irene touched the key at the base of the branch, and the bird turned its head, spread its wings, and opening its beak began to sing.

The Caliph's ambassador forgot his smile. His eyes popped out of his head, and all his followers cried out in admiration, their hands raised.

“A miracle!”

“A small example of the work of our artisans,” said Irene. The little bird was winding down, and Helena turned it off and set it on the stool at Irene's right hand.

On the track, the teams were approaching the ribbon. Irene leaned forward to see, her hand on the rail. Through the tail of her eye, she saw how Constantine and the Caliph's ambassador gloated over the prize she was offering them. She smiled, for her people's sake, her eyes keen, unblinking, fixed on the teams below her.

Prince Michael watched the race from the stable gate. He hated to see other people race and usually did not bother, but he wanted to see for himself if Ishmael had been bribed to throw the race to the Caesarea team.

As they came up to the ribbon, his guts knotted with envy, his fingers twitched, and he almost turned away, unable to bear seeing someone else do what he so longed to do. He forced himself stolid. His moment would come. He stared at the teams at the starting ribbon until his eyes ached and each figure dissolved into a blur of dancing light.

“Yaaaah!”

The ribbon fell. As the horses lunged forward, the crowd let go a roar that seemed to rock the Hippodrome.

Michael shouted, unaware of it. With half the grooms and the apprentices, he rushed forward on to the sand to watch the cars fly away down the track.

The horses reached the curve and whirled around it and were gone from sight. Michael pressed his back to the wall, his gaze pinned to the near turn, where they would appear again. From the crowd came wave on wave of cheers. It seemed like hours before the horses thundered around the curve and shot down the straightaway again.

The Caesarea team was in the lead, racing on the inside track against the spina, the driver plying his long whip with a fury. Their pale manes and tails streamed on the wind; their red-gold hides were darkening with sweat. Half a length back, their heads even with the Caesarea driver, were Ishmael's flying greys and blacks.

Ishmael did not use his whip. He leaned forward over his chariot's rail, the reins gripped in his fists, his feet braced against the floor, and called his horses by name. They heard him. Their ears flicked back to catch his voice and, inch by inch, they gained on the golden chestnuts.

The other two teams were out of the race. But they did not pull up. One behind the other, they raced along the inside track in tandem, the ground widening steadily between them and the back of Ishmael's car. Michael gave a little shake of his head. The two slower teams would be a problem in a couple of circuits. Then they hurtled around the curve at the far end and were gone again from his view.

Michael swung his eyes to the near end of the track; he held his breath. The men around him were swearing in pleading voices, calling their teams around the track. The crowd screamed in waves. The roar of their voices dimmed a little, and swelled again until his ears rang with it.

Around the curve they came, the golden chestnuts still ahead by scant feet. Ishmael's team was surging. With strides that skimmed the sand they charged forward down the center of the track, bidding to take the lead.

The Caesarea driver flung a quick look at Ishmael, and he went to the whip again. His horses rallied. The spume flew from their necks; their heads stretched out flat, and they held off the blacks and greys into the next turn, where the change in the track gave them a moment's respite. Many lengths behind, hopelessly outdistanced, the other two teams struggled along.

“It looks as if the Caesareas are going to take it,” said someone behind Michael.

Michael said nothing. There had to be at least two heats, after all. The crowd was screaming again, and here came the leaders again, flying around the turn. If Ishmael were throwing the race, this was where it would be evident to the expert eye.

The Caesarea team bore out as they swung around the turn, and carried Ishmael out with them. They were head to head now. The chestnuts were tiring. They swung out into the middle of the track, down the straightaway, but racing on the far outside Ishmael could not seize the lead. Locked in their battle, the two teams wheeled into the far curve and vanished from Michael's view, and as they went, the other teams rolled around the near turn, their drivers whipping away.

They knew they had lost; they were slowing, taking it easy. Michael whistled under his breath. The howling of the crowd changed a little, sprinkled with laughter, buoyant with abuse.

With the two slow teams still wheeling down the straight, the leaders raced around the curve again, coming up behind them. The Caesareas had regained the lead by nearly half a length. Surprised, Michael let out a yell. Ishmael was throwing it; he was giving the race away, leaning back now, his reins slack, and his horses faltering off their top stride. The Caesareas shot out to the front, going like an avalanche.

But the losing teams now blocked his way. The black-bearded driver howled and lashed out with his whip, and the two slow teams swerved out toward the middle of the track, trying to give him room. The crowd shrieked. Michael whooped, delighted, seeing now what Ishmael did. As the two slower teams veered out, the Caesareas lost their rhythm; they staggered, and Ishmael, who had brought his horses down evenly, given them some rest, and gathered them up together again, suddenly reined them around to the inside track and shot between the spina and the Caesareas, between the fading last-place finishers and the curve, and seized the lead by six lengths.

Michael roared; he pounded his thigh with his fists. “What a driver!” He laughed and waved his arms, forgetting who he was, forgetting who might be watching, and when Ishmael swung around the near curve and raced the last straightaway, the clear winner, Michael started out to meet him.

He remembered; in time, he collected himself. He put his shoulders back and sucked up his gut and with his head high he stood there by the gate, while the grooms and apprentices streamed past him and ran crowing and leaping and cheering to meet Ishmael and bring him home again.

“Good racing,” Michael said evenly to Ishmael, and the other man grinned at him, baby-wide. They went into the stable.

The Caesareas came next, their heads hanging. Like all great racehorses, they knew when they had lost, and felt it sorely. Their driver swore and snarled at his grooms.

“He cheated. He cheated me! I want the race run over.”

“Win the next heat, then,” Michael said, and hiding his smile went away into the darkness of the barn.

The crowd was settling down. A troop of jugglers rushed out on to the track to entertain them during the interval between heats. Irene sank back into her chair. One of her women brought her a cup of wine, and she lifted it in a little salute to the Caliph's ambassador.

“A great heat,” said the emissary coolly. He threw an instant's harsh look at Prince Constantine, who was looking intently somewhere else. Irene's smile widened a little. She wondered what corrupted her cousin Constantine.

“Of course, this Ishmael is of Arab blood,” the ambassador said.

“He is a citizen of Rome,” Irene said.

“We shall see if it has diluted his ability.”

“Or concentrated it, perhaps?” Irene's eyes were on Prince Constantine. Smoothly she said, “Although Roman citizenship, or even noble blood, is hardly proof against bad judgment and sin and treachery.”

Prince Constantine cleared his throat. “It's just a horse-race.” He looked away over the rail of the box, toward the jugglers. “Here comes a Roman worth the name,” he said, and pointed.

The crowd had seen him, too, and lifted their great voice in a thunderous welcome for their darling. Prince Michael was driving his team out on to the track.

“The Golden Belt,” said Irene.

The champion drove his team with one hand. With the other he held aloft the insignia of his place, his belt of gold links. At arm's length over his head he held it. The horses snorted and frisked out with their forefeet, objecting to the sedate pace, and he let them out a little, sweeping down the middle of the track, their great necks curved to the bits, their tails high.

The crowd loved it. They screamed his name, and the names of his horses; they swayed and swung their arms as he passed, as if the wind of his passage bent them like young trees, and a rain of flowers pelted the sand in his track. He made one more circuit of the track and slowed by the gate, but the rapturous uproar of the people brought him back again, and again he gave them what they wanted.

“They say no driver in the memory of man can rival this one,” said the Caliph's man. “Would that I could see him race.”

“Stay, and you will,” said Irene. “When the qualifying races are done, and we have a field to send against him.”

“When?” Constantine said swiftly.

“I shall decide,” Irene said, smiling.

“Here they come,” the Caliph's man said, excitement in his voice, and craned his neck.

From the stable door the teams issued forth, all in a line; the last-place finisher came out first. Cheers greeted each of the teams, but the acclaim for the first three was nothing in comparison with the shrieks and pleas and screams of praise that thundered forth when Ishmael's blacks and greys appeared.

They lined up at the ribbon, and the crowd hushed.

The race began. The teams flew down the track into the first turn, and there the slower teams clogged up the inside going. The two outside teams surged forward into the middle of the straightaway, racing wheel to wheel, head to head.

The Caesarea chestnuts, inside Ishmael's team, had the short of the track around the curve, and came out on the other side leading by half a length. Ishmael's horses fought back, inch by inch, along the straightaway, and again, entering the curve, the teams were head to head.

Once more, the inside track carried the Caesarea horses into the lead; once more, on the straight, Ishmael's horses won back the lost ground. The other teams were out of it. This time, wisely, they pulled off to the side and let the leaders fly by them.

Twice more the two teams raced around the track, flying along side by side, stride for stride, the distance between them widening in the curves, only to shrink away to nothing on the straightaway. The crowd screamed and roared Ishmael's name. His horses responded, and in the fifth circuit, as they wheeled around the curve, Ishmael's horses lost only half a length. The chestnuts were lagging. In the next straightaway, it was clear, Ishmael's team would pull ahead.

The Caesarea driver saw that too; he looked around at the black and grey heads beside him, and raising his whip he lashed it once across the rumps of his chestnuts and then swiveling around he flogged Ishmael's horses across their faces.

The crowd shrieked in pain, as if the whip fell on their own eyes. Ishmael's horses staggered, tossing up their heads. Irene let out an oath, starting up from her chair, her hands clenched tight. Alone, the winner, the Caesarea team crossed the finish line, and Ishmael's horses walked across.

Irene sat down again. Hard-eyed, she glared at the Caliph's man. “What is this—to win at any cost?”

The ambassador shrugged. “It is a form of war, is it not?” Beside him, Prince Constantine edged away, his face averted.

“We shall see how well such tactics succeed,” Irene said. “My heart is still with Ishmael.”

“Yes,” said the Caliph's man smoothly. “Your wager, however, may soon have another owner—what horses could recover from such a blow?”

“We shall see,” Irene said.

The outside flanker, the dark grey, stood between Ishmael and its groom, its head hanging; the whip had laid open the skin of its face between the eyes. Ishmael stroked the trembling body with both hands. He had only a few moments to get the horse ready to race again.

“Get me a brush. Are the others recovering?”