The Colour of power. Marié Heese

track where the triple-headed serpent on the Column of Apollo bares its ferocious fangs. There was a pale sun and an icy wind.

      Before the first race could begin, the Green demarch, spokesman for the Greens, addressed the Emperor. “Thrice August,” he began, respectfully, “we wish you a long life and a victorious one. Truly you are God’s Vice-regent on earth, and you are all-powerful. We understand that it is your god-given task to uphold order in the kingdom. Yet we beseech you to show clemency this day.”

      As the sonorous, formal syllables resounded, a deep-throated roar of agreement rolled around the enormous stadium. The excubitor next to me straightened up.

      “Please, Thrice August, pardon the two fugitives in the church of Saint Lawrence. It is true that the Prefect Eudaemon condemned them to death, but they miraculously escaped execution not once, but twice. Surely we are meant to read this as a clear indication that God has pardoned them. Basileus, Despotes, we petition for clemency: please will you too pardon them?”

      Again the crowd gave voice: “Cle-men-cy! Cle-men-cy!”

      Justinian made no answer, staring coldly over the demarch’s head.

      Now the Demarch of the Blues rose to his feet. He reminded Justinian that the Blues had long enjoyed his support, that they reckoned him to be a friend, that they appreciated his patronage. He repeated the words of the Green’s representative: “Please, Thrice August, pardon the two fugitives in the Church of Saint Lawrence. Despotes, we beg for mercy!”

      “Cle-men-cy! Cle-men-cy!” The crowd stomped their feet.

      Still Justinian gave no sign that he had heard a single word. Despite the chilly day, I felt a trickle of perspiration run down my back. I understood that his refusal to respond was his way of emphasising his authority. Yet it seemed to me that the Kathisma shook, and not merely because of the pentup power of the horses milling about below.

      The Grand Chamberlain attempted to impose order on the threatening chaos by starting the day’s racing. Shouts, neighs, the snap of whips and the crunch of wheels: we smelled dust as the chariots rolled into position for the first race. The signal was given and the gates sprang open. The charioteers hurled their teams into the arena. But not even the most brilliant, death-defying dashes and hair’s-breadth wins could serve to distract the people from their grievances.

      At the end of each race, the demarchs rose and again put forward their eloquent pleas for the release of the fugitives.

      “Cle-men-cy! Cle-men-cy!” demanded the spectators.

      Race after race, they waited for the Emperor to respond through his own spokesman, the Mandator. Still: nothing. Justinian maintained his indifferent gaze over the heads of the crowd, looking like a bust of himself: hewn from granite, obdurately silent. The Empress Theodora clearly found this extremely hard to sit through. Though she held her head regally high, she appeared very small and pale, and her knuckles were bone white as she clutched her furlined cloak around her narrow shoulders. At times she cast agonised glances at her husband, as if she would urge him to speak. But his only response was silence.

      This continued until the twenty-second race: more pleas, delivered with increasing urgency. Sustained refusal to respond from the Kathisma. Frustration and anger smouldering among the people.

      Then, suddenly, before race number twenty-three could form up, a stentorian voice bellowed: “Long! Live! The benevolent! Greens AND Blues!”

      Shocked to hear the names of the usually feuding factions linked in this way, the excubitor unsheathed his sword with a hissing clatter. “Oh, my God!” he exclaimed.

      The rallying cry was repeated, with more and more people joining in. Tens of thousands of hostile voices roared their anger.

      “Must have been planned,” I said, seriously alarmed. The faction leaders had clearly decided in advance that if all else failed, they would act together to force the Emperor to grant a pardon. I signalled to the other guards. “Form a cordon.”

      The Emperor and Empress were swiftly surrounded by a circle of steel. Shaken, Justinian rose to his feet, ordered the Grand Chamberlain to cancel the remaining races and turned to leave.

      Suddenly a different battle cry resounded: “Nika! Nika!” But this was not, as usual, the opposing factions exhorting their champions to win. No, this day it took on a new and frightening meaning. It became a rallying shout for the disaffected. Alas, at the present time there are many such.

      Justinian hastily left the Kathisma, surrounded by his guards and trailing an entourage of senators and courtiers. We all retreated to the Sacred Palace, his safe haven.

      The crowd streamed to the office of the Prefect Eudaemon and demanded to know what he intended the fate of the fugitives to be. He too greeted them with contemptuous silence.

      That was the final, fatal error. That was the spark that set off the conflagration that has engulfed the city. The crowd became a mob, and the mob became a vicious creature bent upon destruction. And here we are, inhaling the smoke and bitter ash.

      “He should have spoken,” Theodora whispers to me. I note that her delicate, pale face is even whiter than usual. “He should have answered them. Silence is cruel.” She shivers in her fine cloak.

      “Wisdom in hindsight changes nothing.” I wish I could take her in my arms to comfort her. To smooth her ebony hair, to pat her back. I would hold her like a child, I would keep all harm from her. I have adored her ever since the first time I saw her venture into the opulent and hostile Imperial Palace: so small, so pale, so resolute. Of course I keep my arms straight at my sides.

      “You sent the messenger?”

      “He is on his way to Hieron as we speak, Despoina. Do not fear, Juliana and the baby will be kept safely under guard. Zeno will not bring them home till this is over.”

      “You have been outside, haven’t you? How bad is it? Will it burn itself out?”

      I tell her the truth. I cannot give her comfort, nor may I offer love. All I have to give her are words, but she knows she can rely on them. “I do not know. It is very bad.”

      “Hagia Sophia is ruined, isn’t it?”

      “Yes. The Senate Building also.” Well-chosen targets, I think but do not say. Both of them symbols of power: sacred and profane.

      The Empress steps over to a window, pushing aside the velvet curtain. Together we stare out at the angry scarlet glow lighting up the stricken city. Over all a full moon presides, glowering redly through the windblown ash and smoke. I hear her draw in a breath. A bloody moon. The earth burns; the moon bleeds. A cosmic catastrophe.

      How did it come to this? Where did it begin?

Part 1: The bearkeeper’s daughter AD 505-507

      Chapter 1: Exit Acasius

      Her very first memory was of a dancing bear. She loved going to the stable where the bears were kept to watch the training sessions, sitting quietly, entranced. The bear was taller than a man, taller than her father the bearkeeper; it seemed to loom almost up to the roof as it lumbered heavily to and fro, a dark, furred dancer, in a grotesque travesty of grace. The child did not think that, though. She thought that her father was a man of power, because he was the master of the bear. Clearly, the bear was very big, and very dangerous, but her father could make it do exactly what he wanted it to. So his power had to be even greater than the bear’s.

      She sat on a bale of hay, dainty little feet dangling, and regarded her father gravely with huge, dark eyes. He concentrated with fierce intensity on the animal, gesturing boldly to keep it moving in time to the merry dance music his elderly one-legged assistant coaxed out of a fiddle.

      “Hup!” he cried. “Hup, and two and three and four, this side, that side, hup!” She knew it was a black mountain bear from Illyria that had been trained by someone else before, and it was not easy to master an animal that you hadn’t trained yourself, her father said. But he had learned to work with bears when he was a child.