Byzantium Read Online Free PDF Page A

is,” the monk translated. “I can see it in you.”
    “I tell you there’s nothing,” I said, but I rose. I had sent a message to my goatherd to have a horse waiting up the ravine. I could be in the crowds of Jerusalem, disappeared, by noon.
    Before I could take a step, Theodosios leaned forward and grabbed my ankle and held me fast. He uttered a long chain of hurried moans. “I see your father in the garden. He’s throwing his glass. I see you hiding and weeping and pitying yourself. I see the black knot within you. It was not tied by the devil and it was not tied by God—”
    I twisted free. “That is not why I came,” I said, struggling to keep my voice from shaking.
    Theodosios let out another string of moans. “You may hold on to your pains if you wish,” the monk translated. “I have been told your mission. They speak of me in the imperial court and have asked you to investigate my works.”
    I said nothing, only waited.
    “Listen,” the monk translated. “I have a message for you to take back. The people and the priests devote themselves to quibbles. They are old women arguing in the market as a flood rises to overtake the city. The emperor is a blind beast, thinking every trembling leaf the tread of a hunter, and he feels not the world shifting beneath him. We are at the gate of perdition. Our sins will be judged, and in these times we must all be brother to one another.”
    “Proof,” I interrupted. “I have come for proof.”
    And for a moment I believed this was my true mission. Theodosios remained quiet for some time. Then he closed his eyes and mumbled something the monk did not translate. When he finished, the monk—I never learned his name—went to the back of the grotto and fetched a small jar.
    “Give me your broken hand,” the monk translated as Theodosios held out his own hand, palm open.
    I hesitated. I had not expected this.
    “Give me your hand,” the monk repeated.
    I had no choice. I pulled my hand from my tunic and put it in Theodosios’s. With a solemn nod he sent the translator away, then peeled off the glove and poured ointment from the jar and began rubbing it into my skin. For ten minutes, he kissed the crook of my wrist, the knobs of my fingers. He scrubbed my hand with his hair, and the whole time moaned prayers. I watched his face and I watched my hand. When he ceased his efforts it remained as withered as ever.
    Theodosios studied my hand, his already misshapen face contorted in bafflement. He looked up to the grotto’s ceiling, moaned something, then rubbed more ointment into my fingers and wrist. He signed for me to wait and tried to communicate, with moans and shaking head, that he didn’t understand. But I did. I saw again the holy men who had humiliated me in my youth: their hollow smiles, their empty promises, their mocking eyes. Here was another with his finely honed act, playing me for a fool. It seemed Heraclius knew well what he was doing when he chose me. I burned with shame—for a moment Theodosios had gotten to me—and I felt no hesitation now.
    Before he could take my hand again, I leapt onto Theodosios and pinned him with my knees. He moaned; I covered his mouth with my good hand. He struggled, pulling himself up; I shoved him back to the grotto’s floor. With a jerk, I forced up his habit, then felt in my tunic for the knife, squeezing its handle between my stunted fingers. He was screaming and struggling. I had no time. Taking my other hand from his mouth, I gave him a cuff to quiet him and grabbed his testicles, lifting them from his body, and made the cut. With a single tug the knife sliced cleanly through the boneless flesh and it was done. Theodosios twisted beneath me, his bellowing mouth bent in a terrible grimace, but I felt a quiver of calm relief. It hadn’t been nearly as hard as I’d feared.
    The other monk had reappeared in the grotto’s entrance, panting and silent, in shock, and I was recalled to my senses. I stuffed