The Byzantine Wager

Chapter 21 - A Light Lunch in the Forum of Arcadius

Chapter 21

A Light Lunch in the Forum of Arcadius

Nestor the Storyteller yawned and scratched his ass as he surveyed the crowd in the Forum of Arcadius. It was a lovely morning with a fresh breeze blowing in from the sea. He hawked and spat on the cobblestones and wondered how he was going to get enough wine to get himself drunk this evening. Constantinople was no place to grow old and Nestor was most certainly old. He had celebrated the resurrection of Christ at seventy-one Easters that he could recall and there may have even been a few more which he had forgotten about. For many of those years Nestor had worked as a stevedore, loading and unloading ships at the Theodosian Harbor. Back then he had been known as Nestor the Gregarious, for he kept up a constant stream of conversation as he hauled baskets of grain, bales of cotton, iron ingots, wooden planks, bolts of cloth and all the rest of the goods which flowed into the markets, warehouses, and workshops of the city. He loved to chat with the foreign crews, conducting his own trade in stories and gossip, with dark Moors from Spain or red haired men from the land of the Rus.

Eventually arthritis settled into his knees and wrists, and there was no employment for a withered porter who could no longer lift. His wife had died long ago and Nestor had managed to outlive all of his children. Destitute and alone he had been reduced to begging - competing for alms with the blind, the lame, the leprous, and the scrofulous. His mind was still sharp, however, and he could recall every wonderful story he had ever heard; tales of witches in the Allemagne forests, tales of love and shipwrecks, stories of strange beasts in far off lands, short quick jokes for those with little time to spare, longer legends of gods and heroes for those with time to linger. Nestor sold stories to keep himself alive. That and a little thievery. For not all of his stories had happy endings. From time to time, if for instance his audience was a single person, or even a particularly vulnerable couple, they would find themselves surrounded by street children. The grubby urchins would crowd close to listen to the old storyteller for free. At a secret signal from Nestor, the clubs and knives would come out and the listener would be robbed and beaten to within an inch of their lives by the swarming attack of a feral army of orphans.

Nestor crushed a louse from the hair at the back of his head between his finger and thumb and noticed two men at the Portia Auria end of the forum making their way past a long row of fishmongers who bartered the morning's harvest from the Sea of Marmara to a crowd of monks purchasing for the pantries of their monasteries, stewards purchasing for the pantries of their mansions, and housewives purchasing for their families. These men wore red cloaks with white surcoats and Nestor could see that one wore a cross emblazoned on the front of his. As they made their way through the scrum, the Mese - the grand avenue - opened up into a massive forum dominated by a column of green stone which towered fully fifty meters above the street. The mercenaries, for Nestor was sure that was what they were, spent a few coins on some meat pies and a couple of loaves of bread for their breakfast. He was certain that they had money, probably quite a lot of it. There was something about the careful way each man carried the saddlebags which were slung over their shoulders. But whatever the pickings might be, it certainly looked like hard knocks to get at them. The older of the two, wore mail, and carried a sword and also had an axe tucked into his belt. The other, a brawny lunk with broad shoulders, trudged along with a pair of crossbows and a shield slung across his back, but he also wore a good sized dirk on his belt.

They stopped and sat on some low steps which ran around the red granite base of the column. The larger man craned his neck and gazed up at it. The column was the color of an angry sea and every inch of the exterior was covered with bas relief carvings depicting scenes from a war which had taken place long ago. A small wooden door opened into the base of the column, and a narrow set of spiral stairs inside led up to a platform at the top where a man with disheveled hair and a grubby brown homespun robe sat with his feet dangling over the edge. The mercenary appeared to be pondering if sitting at the base of the column was a good idea in case the man at the top fell or even jumped, but seeing that neither was likely to happen, he sat down and began to eat. Nestor, clutching his begging bowl, hobbled over.