Ghost Empire

by Richard Fidler

  Joe groans.

  ‘Do you know the original version of Little Red Riding Hood? The wolf comes to the grandmother’s house, kills her and eats her. He puts on her nightdress and gets into the bed. Then, when Little Red Riding Hood comes to the house, the wolf, in disguise, offers the girl a plate of blood and meat. So she cannibalises her grandmother without realising it.’

  ‘That wasn’t in the version I heard.’

  ‘Exactly. Then the wolf orders Little Red Riding Hood to remove her clothes and throw them into the fire. She does as she’s told. And then . . . he swallows her whole.’

  ‘What happens then?’

  ‘Nothing. That’s the end of the story.’

  ‘Hmmm . . .’

  ‘So let me try the story of Melusine on you. It’s a folktale from France, but the woman it was based on really did exist. She was born in Constantinople, just around the corner from here.’

  RAYMOND DE LA FORÊT was born into a noble family in France that had fallen on hard times. The Count of Poitou took pity on Raymond’s penniless father, so he adopted the boy and raised him as his son in his castle at Poitiers. In time Raymond grew up to be a handsome and charming youth.

  One day the Count invited Raymond to join him on a hunt for a wild boar. As they travelled deeper and deeper into the dark forest, they realised they had become separated from their servants. The boar had escaped and they were lost. The forest grew dark and so Raymond and the Count set up camp and lit a fire.

  The two men were warming themselves against the blaze when they heard a rustle in the undergrowth. Suddenly the wild boar leapt out and pounced on the Count. Raymond seized his sword and swung wildly at the beast, but his blade struck his master instead, hacking into his side. Raymond swung again and this time the boar fell dead at his feet. As he wiped the blood from the sword, Raymond saw that he had accidentally killed his master, a good and kind man who had loved him like a son. Raymond mounted his horse and rode off in a daze.

  Time passed strangely that night. In time, the dark forest opened up and Raymond entered a glade, illuminated by the silvery moonlight, where a pebbly stream ran from a bubbling fountain. Next to the fountain were three young women in iridescent white dresses. They were indescribably beautiful.

  One of the young women rose to her feet and gently advanced towards him.

  ‘Why are you so frightened?’ she asked.

  Raymond broke out in tears and he told her how he had unintentionally killed his master and protector. The young woman listened, and when he finished she said, ‘I think I have a solution. Remount your horse,’ she suggested. ‘Return to Poitiers. Act as though you have no knowledge of what has taken place. Then when the body of the Count is discovered, it will be assumed that he died while slaying the boar.’

  Raymond thought this was a very good idea and agreed to act on her advice. As they fell into conversation, Raymond was overwhelmed by the young woman’s beauty and charm. At dawn he realised he was in love with her, and made her promise to be his.

  She said, ‘I will do as you say. But in return I ask of you two things. Firstly I require you to obtain a grant of land for me around this fountain, but only so much as can be covered by the hide of a stag. Upon that space I will build a great palace.’

  ‘And what is the second thing you require of me?’

  ‘I will marry you . . .’ and here she paused to look at Raymond very earnestly, ‘but every Saturday, you must agree to leave me in complete seclusion. You must never intrude upon me on that day. For my name is Melusine and I am a water-faerie of great wealth and power.’

  Raymond agreed and returned to the castle. He obtained the grant of land around the fountain from his stepbrother Bertram. Raymond then cut the stag hide into tiny threads and succeeded in covering a much greater parcel of land than Bertram had expected.

  Now that the land was hers, Melusine erected a magnificent castle upon it. And in that castle she was wed to Raymond in a ceremony that everyone agreed was the greatest and most beautiful they had ever seen. At the moment they were wed, Melusine’s lovely eyes filled with tears of joy. Again she implored Raymond never to intrude upon her privacy on a Saturday.

  ‘Please do not ignore my warning, Raymond,’ she said softly, ‘for if you do, we will be separated forever.’

  Raymond swore to uphold her wishes.

  Melusine extended and improved the castle, making it the most beautiful in the whole of France. She called it Lusinia, after her own name (eventually it would become known as the Château de Lusignan and its ruins are still there today). Melusine and Raymond lived very happily together for six days of the week, and every Saturday she would withdraw into her apartments. Raymond took care to keep his promise and leave her to her privacy.

  In time, Melusine bore several children. The first was a son called Urian, who was born with a large mouth and long ears. One of his eyes was red, the other green. The second son, Cedes, had a scarlet face. The third, Gyot, was handsome, except that one eye was positioned higher than the other on his face. The fourth, Anthony, was covered in hair and had long claws on his fingers. The fifth son had only one eye. The sixth was known as Geoffrey-with-the-Tooth for the boar’s tusk that protruded from his jaw. More and more sons were born, but all were in some way disfigured.

  ‘Geoffrey-with-the-Tooth?’ Joe smiles. ‘That’s what they called him?’

  ‘That’s what they called him.’

  ‘It’s like a name that’s supposed to be scary, but doesn’t quite get there.’

  ‘It probably sounds more fearsome in French.’

  TIME PASSED, and Raymond’s father came to live with them in their castle, while his brothers were furnished with money and servants.

  One Saturday, Raymond’s brother took him aside and told him that Melusine’s weekly absences were the subject of idle gossip in town.

  ‘Brother,’ he said, ‘you should look into it. If only to set your mind at ease.’

  Raymond pondered on this, and as he did so, he wondered if Melusine was keeping company with another man. He burst into his wife’s private apartments and checked each room, but all were empty. Only one locked door remained: the entry into her bathroom.

  Raymond could hear Melusine singing from within. Slowly, he lowered himself to peer through the keyhole. As he spied on her naked form, he saw that from below the waist, Melusine took the form of a double-tailed fish.

  Raymond recoiled from the keyhole, shocked, but not in any way dismayed by what he had seen. He knew he loved her just as much as he always had, but he was ashamed of his rashness. He had broken his covenant with her and realised he must now lose her.

  As the days passed, Melusine showed no awareness that her true nature had been observed by her husband. Then one evening, as they dined at the castle with Raymond’s old father, they received news that their son Geoffrey-with-the-Tooth had attacked a local monastery, burning it to the ground, with a hundred monks trapped inside.

  Raymond wailed in horror at the terrible news. As Melusine rushed to comfort him, he pushed her away, shouting, ‘Get away from me, you foul serpent! You contaminator of my honourable race!’

  Melusine fainted with shock. Raymond, full of sorrow and regret, held her slumped form. As she awoke, she held Raymond’s face in her hands.

  ‘I leave you with two little ones in their cradles,’ she said softly. ‘Look after them tenderly, for they must now lose their mother.’

  Raymond nodded wordlessly.

  Then, with a shriek of grief, Melusine leapt from the window. As she did so, she left a foot impression on the stone floor. Raymond ran to the window ledge and saw that his wife had transformed herself into a fifteen-foot-long winged serpent. Melusine the dragon circled the castle three times, howling, and then flew off into the night sky.

  Raymond’s happiness was forever destroyed.

  But Melusine had not completely abandoned her children. On many nights, the nurses caught sight of a shimmering figure hovering near the cra
dles of the two babies, an apparition with twin fish tails, speckled from the waist down with blue-and-white scales. The apparition took the babes into her arms and suckled them until dawn.

  THE LEGEND OF MELUSINE was written in 1387 by Jean d’Arras. The tale grew up around the legend of a Byzantine princess known as Melissena of Constantinople.

  This real-life Melissena was the fruit of a particularly exotic family tree, born sometime in the middle of the ninth century as the granddaughter of the Emperor Michael I Rangabe, who was descended from the Khazars. Michael’s wife, the Empress Procopia, was part-Khazar too, but she could trace her ancestry all the way back to the Han emperors of China. So the twin streams of Byzantine and Chinese royal blood flowed through Melissena’s veins.

  Melissena was considered a very desirable potential bride until her family’s political fortunes collapsed. Her father was castrated by his enemies, and the poor girl was sent away to a convent. When Melissena came of age she was married off to a Viking warrior called Inger, a humble soldier in the Varangian Guard.

  Inger was well pleased with his bride, and brought her with him to the court of the King of the Franks, where he boasted of her double royal lineage. Word of the exotic princess from Constantinople spread through France, and Melissena became an object of fascination in the courts of western Europe. Her exquisite manners and cultural education set her apart from the crude westerners, and made her seem other-worldly.

  After she died, the story of Melissena evolved into the folktale of Melusine. The double fish tail of the water-faerie symbolises the twin streams of Melissena’s royal blood.

  THE WAITER BRINGS ANOTHER plastic basket of bread to the table. On the wall, old framed photos of fez-hatted Turkish men look down upon us as we finish our meal.

  Joe turns his head to the side and looks off to the middle distance, like he always does when he’s turning something over in his mind. After a moment he says, ‘I like how, at the start, you think Raymond is going to be the hero of the story, because he’s this good guy who comes from a poor family.’

  ‘Yeah, but he isn’t the hero at all. Raymond’s a blunderer. He accidentally kills this man who’s been like a father to him. He’s upset, but when Melusine tells him how he can wriggle out of it, he’s happy. Then Melusine creates this wonderful, happy life for him. And all he had to do was to leave her alone on a Saturday.’

  ‘It’s one of those stories you think is going one way, and then it goes somewhere else.’

  ‘All the best folktales do that. They wander off the path, even though the iron law of these stories is that you should never, ever stray from the path.’

  THE IMAGE OF MELUSINE was popularised in the Middle Ages, and several towns placed her distinctive likeness on their crests: a naked maiden with a crown and long tresses of hair, floating above the waves, holding her twin fish tails.

  Today Melusine can be seen everywhere, emblazoned on coffee cups all over the world, as the corporate logo of the US coffee chain Starbucks. Melusine, once an emblem of unearthly feminine power, has become the face of understrength, oversweetened American coffee.

  Melusine.

  public domain

  Born in the Purple

  CONSTANTINE,

  IN CHRIST THE ETERNAL EMPEROR OF THE ROMANS,

  TO HIS OWN SON ROMANUS

  THE EMPEROR CROWNED OF GOD AND BORN IN THE PURPLE

  SO BEGINS De Administrando Imperio – ‘On the Governance of the Empire’ – perhaps the most detailed manual of government created by an overbearing father for his son. The author is Emperor Constantine VII, known to history as Constantine Porphyrogenitus, ‘the Purple-Born’. Constantine is writing for a readership of one: his teenage son and co-emperor, Romanus II. He wants his son to sit up straight and pay attention: ‘A wise son makes a father glad, and an affectionate father takes delight in a prudent son . . . Listen to me, my son, and you shall be counted prudent among the wise and wise among the prudent’.

  The book was given to Romanus not long after he turned fourteen, Joe’s age now. It’s written as a kind of emperor’s manual, a useful compendium of advice that Romanus could consult after his dad was gone.

  Constantine VII was a popular ruler. He was a scholar, a painter and a patron of the arts. It was he who charmed Liutprand of Cremona at the Great Palace, seated on his mechanical throne, beside a gilded tree of automated singing birds.

  De Administrando Imperio brings together the strands of Constantine’s scholarship and his administrative experience. First, he advises Romanus to stay on good terms with the Pechenegs, since, like all tribes from the north, they are implanted with ‘a ravening greed of money, never satiated, and so they demand everything and hanker after everything’. It’s best to give the Pechenegs what they want in gold and gifts, otherwise they’ll go raiding in the Crimea and take the gold anyway. Far better to buy their alliance, then turn them around and point them at the Turks and the Slavs.

  If foreigners demand to be given the imperial robes or crown jewels, he advises his son to tell them they were given to Constantine the Great by an angel, and that the curse of Constantine would fall upon anyone misusing them.

  Constantine does a poor job of explaining the Muslims and how they came to be. He mistakenly claims that the Muslims pray to the star of the pagan goddess Aphrodite – they cry out ‘Alla wa Koubar’, which means, he says, ‘God and Aphrodite’. Islam was clearly a poorly understood phenomenon among the Romans at this time.

  On it goes. Constantine VII’s stated concern is for the welfare of the empire, but the candour and gentleness of his voice speaks of a fatherly love, and a worry that his son might be swamped by his imperial responsibilities. Romanus would choose to heed his father’s advice at times, and at other times to completely ignore it.

  CONSTANTINE PORPHYROGENITUS died in the autumn of 959, and the succession passed smoothly to Romanus. The new emperor was, at first, widely regarded as a lightweight, for his love of pleasure and for his insistence on marrying a low-born wife, an inn-keeper’s daughter named Anastaso, who was given the more respectable name of Theophano, which means ‘divine manifestation’.

  Fortunately for Romanus, his father had placed capable generals on the empire’s frontiers and the young emperor was quick to capitalise on their talents. But after just three years on the throne, Romanus was killed in a hunting accident. Suspicion fell on the dead emperor’s widow, but Theophano had nothing to gain from her husband’s untimely death and everything to lose. Shunned by the court as a vulgar upstart and encircled by scheming bureaucrats, she reached out for protection to the empire’s most brilliant general, Nicephorus Phocas.

  The Pale Death of the Saracens

  NICEPHORUS WAS THE MASTERMIND behind a string of stunning victories for the empire: he had driven the Muslims from Crete, and taken Aleppo in Syria by storm; here the Arab defenders were cut to pieces, earning him the grim nickname ‘Pale Death of the Saracens’. Nicephorus was said to possess great physical strength, able to thrust a spear so forcefully it could skewer an enemy soldier right through his armour. For all that, he was not a particularly appealing man: he was short and mole-like in appearance and humourless in temperament. Nonetheless his victories had made him the most popular man in the empire. When Nicephorus received Theophano’s plea for help, he rode to the capital at once and received a hero’s welcome.

  Theophano was described as the most beautiful woman in Constantinople. Nicephorus was the empire’s greatest military hero, but he was twice her age and physically ugly. Despite their differences, it seems the stony general fell hard for Theophano, and he swore allegiance to her and to her two sons. Nicephorus would remain devoted to her until the end, even though it cut across the grain of who he was.

  Nicephorus’s first wife, Stephano, had died years earlier while he was away on campaign. Overcome with grief and guilt, Nicephorus had taken a vow of chastity. Then, when his only son was killed in a horse-riding accident, he stopped eating meat. His asceticism was s
uch that he habitually wore a long black hairshirt to bed each night to show repentance for his sins. Nicephorus often spoke of his desire to eventually retire from army life and enter a monastery to end his days in prayer and contemplation. Marriage to Theophano would require him to surrender these earnest ambitions. And yet he did it anyway. The union was arranged by his talented nephew and chief lieutenant John Tzimisces.

  Nicephorus’s prestige in Constantinople was such that he easily prevailed over Theophano’s enemies at court and sent them into exile. Nicephorus was crowned Emperor Nicephorus II on 16 August 963 and he married Theophano in the Hagia Sophia the next day. But once on the throne, Nicephorus fell out with John Tzimisces and other former allies. The emperor’s brutal honesty and impatience with niceties made him a poor politician and an even worse diplomat.

  The Return of Liutprand

  IN THE SUMMER OF 968, Liutprand of Cremona stood on the deck of a Venetian galley as it cruised into the Sea of Marmara. Liutprand must have felt a pinch of excitement. Twenty years had passed since his first voyage to Constantinople, when he had come on behalf of King Berengar of Italy.

  Much had changed in the interim. The affable Constantine VII was dead, and Liutprand was now serving King Otto I of Germany, who had made him a bishop, and entrusted him with a delicate diplomatic mission: to arrange a union between the Holy Roman Empire and Constantinople through a royal marriage.

  Relations between the German king and Constantinople had been badly strained by Otto’s military conquests in Italy, in lands that the eastern capital of the Romans still claimed for itself. But Liutprand had advised Otto that peace with Constantinople would ultimately prove more profitable than conflict. To that end, he had been sent to arrange a union between Otto’s son and a Byzantine princess. The marriage would seal a treaty of peace between the two empires.

  Much depended on the attitude of the emperor. Liutprand was no doubt aware that Nicephorus was a blunt warrior from a famous military clan. Still, he hoped his diplomatic skills and evident goodwill could smooth over the tensions with Nicephorus. But when Liutprand presented himself at the Chalke Gate, he was told to wait until a court official could be found to welcome him. Hours passed and a light afternoon shower turned into heavy rain, drenching Liutprand. Still no one came to admit him.