“None,” replied Basil curtly, his pale face flushing over the dark beard.
Basil’s supposed second son, Leo, is in reality the child of Michael, Bruno’s spies had reported. Basil killed the Emperor his master for cuckolding him. But in any case the Greeks needed an Emperor who could stay sober long enough to marshal an army. They are pressed by the Slavs, the Bulgars, even by your own foes, the Vikings raiding down the great rivers of the east. Not twenty years ago a Viking fleet menaced Constantinople, which they call Byzantium. We do not know why Basil allowed Leo to live.
“So. We are new men, then. But neither of us has old men waiting to challenge us. And yet both of us know we have many challenges, many threats. We and Christendom at once. Tell me,” Bruno asked, his face intent, “where do you see the greatest threat to us, to Christ, and to his Church? You yourself, I mean, not your generals and your advisers.”
“An easy question, for me,” Basil replied, “though I may not give the answer you expect. You know that your adversaries, the heathen of the North, the Vikings as you call them: you know that a generation ago they brought their ships up to Byzantium itself?”
Bruno nodded. “It surprised me when I learned it. I did not think that they could find their way across the Italian Sea. But then your secretary told me that they had not done so, had somehow brought their ships down the rivers of the East. You think they are your greatest danger? That is what I hoped…”
A lifted hand interrupted him. “No. I do not think that these men, fierce as they are, are the greatest menace. We bought them off, you know. The common folk say that it was the Virgin Mary who routed them, but no, I remember the negotiations. We paid them a little gold. We offered them unlimited use of the great municipal baths! They took it. To me they are fierce and greedy children. Not serious.
“No, the true danger comes not from them, mere pagani that they are, immature rustics. It comes from the followers of Muhammad.” The Basileus paused for wine.
“I have never met one,” Bruno prompted.
“They came from nowhere. Two hundred and fifty years ago these followers of their false Prophet came from out of the desert. Destroyed the Persian Empire. Took from us all our African provinces, and Jerusalem.” The Basileus leaned forward. “Took the southern shore of the Italian Sea. Since then that sea has been our battleground. And on it we have been losing. You know why?”
Bruno shook his head.
“Galleys need water, all the time. Oarsmen drink faster than the fish. The side that controls the watering-grounds controls the sea. And that means the islands. Kypros they took, island of Venus. Then Crete. After they conquered Spain, they seized the Balearics. Now their fleets press again on Sicily. If they take that—where will Rome be? So you see, friend, they threaten you as well. How long since their armies were at the gates of your holy city?”
Opening doors, raised voices, a shuffle of feet, said that the conference of Pope and Patriarch had broken up, that the Emperors of East and West must turn their minds again to ceremonial and treaties. Bruno groped for a reply, amid several. The Basileus is an Easterner, he thought, like Pope Nicholas whom we killed. He does not realize that destiny lies in the West. He does not know that the Way-folk are not the greedy children bought off in his father’s time. That they are worse than the followers of the Prophet, for they still have their prophet with them: the one-eye. I should have killed him when I had my sword at his throat.
And yet maybe there is no need to argue here. The Basileus needs my bases. I need his fleet. Not for the Arabs. Just to sweep the Channel so I can put my lancers across. But let him have his way first. For he has the one thing that the Way-folk do not…
The Emperors were on their feet, the churchmen approaching, all smiles. A cardinal spoke, bowing, the cardinal who had once been Archbishop Gunther of Cologne. He spoke in fluent Low German, his and Bruno’s native dialect, which neither Pope nor Patriarch nor any Greek or Italian would follow. At the same time one of the Patriarch’s staff broke out with a burst of demotic Greek, no doubt with the same intention.