The Lady for Ransom

by Alfred Duggan

  We were still fasting after our Easter Communion, and the fugitives also were hungry. We gathered round a table, munching bread and cold beef; just my lord and my lady, the Logothete and the Hetairiarch, and myself, the old friend of the family who was admitted to every council.

  The first thing to find out was how Botaniates had won the city. The Logothete told us, for he knew it is futile to open a council with lies; the time for deception is at the end, when you have persuaded your hearers that you are exceptionally truthful. The change had been effected by a typical Roman arrangement; the Patriarch had begged Michael to abdicate, while the Domestic pointed out that he was unlikely to win. After the Emperor had been persuaded it only remained to safeguard his dignity. He was the legitimate heir of Constantine Ducas, and everyone was anxious to ease his fall; he got an oath that if he went quietly he would be permitted to join the secular clergy, unmutilated. (These Romans keep their promises; Michael is now a respected Archbishop.) Even then it was considered too humiliating for a legitimate Emperor to hand power direct to a usurper; Michael abdicated in favour of his brother Constantine, who protested his unworthiness and abdicated in his turn, naming as heir the eminent soldier Nicephorus Botaniates. If you heard nothing but official proclamations you would never gather that this eminent soldier was encamped outside the Blachernae Gate, building siege-engines, when he was offered the Purple.

  What mattered to us was that Alexius Comnenus had played a great part in the change of rulers; the Schools of the Guard took orders from him alone, and he might have named himself successor to Michael; but he had chosen to serve the Emperor Nicephorus. When my lord heard this he said: ‘Alexius is my lord. He saved my eyes, and succoured me in prison. I follow where he leads.’

  ‘Very proper,’ answered the Logothete, ‘but I have not yet finished. Hear me to the end. There was no saving Michael Ducas, and Botaniates was at the gates. The Domestic submitted to the nearest claimant, but who knows which of them he prefers in his heart? I am a patriot, who submitted to a great deprivation that my mind should be undistracted in the service of the state. To me Bryennius seems the more worthy ruler. He defends Europe, while Botaniates sold Nicaea to the infidel. Besides, we have nothing to sell to the Emperor in possession. But Bryennius had a second-rate staff; many of them, I understand, are whole men, always trying to find jobs for their sons. He should welcome a trained eunuch of the Dromos. And he has not yet appointed a Domestic. There is not much money in this chest, but no one else has any at all. Send a messenger at once to Adrianople, and when Bryennius marches south I can buy a way into the city. I offer you the opportunity to be the first barbarian Domestic of all the armies of Romania.’

  ‘What about my lord the Hetairiarch?’ asked Matilda.

  ‘I am not ambitious, lady,’ David answered with a smile. ‘I am no warrior. What I really understand is keeping order in the city. I would serve under the Frankopole.’

  ‘You know, my dear,’ said my lord timidly, as though genuinely anxious to learn her opinion, ‘this sounds a sensible proposition. I cannot understand why Alexius always takes second place. I thought this scramble would end with him in possession of the Purple. But if he won’t move, Bryennius is the better master. He must buy my support at a good price, while Botaniates will merely continue to owe me the pay which Michael owed me already.’

  ‘There is one point to be cleared up,’ said my lady. ‘The Domestic still holds his office. Why must the Logothete and the Hetairiarch flee for their lives?’

  For the first time Nicephoritzes seemed embarrassed. ‘Oh well, when these changes occur there are always men to be rewarded. Someone wanted my place, I suppose.’

  But David, a stupid brute whose only qualification for his post had been his savage repression of discontent in the city, blurted out: ‘The scoundrels would not let us join their plot. They put a price on our heads without trying to win us.’

  ‘Don’t bother about that price,’ said my lord. ‘Times are hard, but I can get along without blood-money.’

  ‘Of course they are free to go,’ Matilda said sharply, ‘but don’t you see what this means? You never understand Romans. I tell you the only man they hate worse than David the torturer is his master the Logothete; if you can call that a man. Whichever side has Nicephoritzes automatically loses every other Roman. That’s why poor Michael was beaten, and if Bryennius accepts him Bryennius will be destroyed. You must tell the two of them to be out of Heraclea by sunset, though I agree that a gentleman cannot earn blood-money.’

  I could see that my lord felt uncomfortable. He liked to be liked, and it cost him a great effort to be stern in council. But he always followed my lady’s advice.

  ‘You see how it is, gentlemen,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I had one very lucky escape, and I can’t afford to be on the losing side again. You had better continue your journey. Since you have money I can sell you good horses.’

  The Logothete heard him with a fixed smile, but David’s face was a picture of consternation. These rogues were at the end of their tether. Their last chance had been to bring Bryennius a substantial reinforcement; if they reached his camp as helpless fugitives he could earn popularity by handing them over to execution. But no one rises in the tangled jungle of Roman politics unless he has the courage to face the consequence of failure. The eunuch struggled from his chair, and when at last his great bulk was upright he strolled over to a side-table and brought back a flagon of wine. ‘In these troubled times friends meet to part again,’ he said with a gallant effort at gaiety. ‘You will at least drink to our journey. Success to the Emperor Nicephorus, whether his surname be Bryennius or Botaniates. May the war be bloody, and the vengeance ruthless!’

  When he picked up the flagon it had been hidden by his bulk. I was slow to understand, but the Balliols were slower; Frankish assassins use steel, but I am half Roman. My lord drained his cup at one gulp, at the same time as I threw my wine in the eunuch’s beardless face, shouting ‘Don’t drink. It’s poisoned.’

  My lady leapt for the Logothete’s shoulders. She got him down and sat on his head, while I tapped the Hetairiarch over the ear with his own jewelled mace before the unmilitary creature could tug out his sword. But by the time the Romans were bound hand and foot my lord was dead.

  Matilda shed no tears. She herself unclenched the teeth and straightened the twisted body for burial, but all she said was, ‘Messer Roussel was lucky to the end. He was usually in mortal sin, yet death took him at breakfast after his Easter Communion. We may pray for his soul, confident that it is bound for Heaven. I’m glad he died with two hundred men under his banner, but really his life ended years ago, when he yielded to Artouch. My duty is finished. Now I may live to please myself.’

  Then she became very practical, giving orders for the safe keeping of the Logothete’s treasure chest, and mustering the band for their return to the city. We all had different ideas about what to do to the murderers; my own plan was to permit them to drink poison as they struggled to do, that they might burn for ever in Hell as suicides. But my lady insisted on handing them over to the new Emperor. He was as stern as a merciful Roman can be; first they were flogged in the Hippodrome, to make them destroy their own dignity by screaming in public; then they were taken to an island in the Marmora, where they died ten days later. Presumably they were tortured to death, but the facts were hushed up; for the Romans of the city dislike cruelty, and it might have made Botaniates unpopular.

  Our leaderless band dispersed in the city. Alexius continued my lady’s pension; she went back to St Thecla, and in the end made her vows there. Ralph enlisted in the Roman army, carrying a bow into battle as though he had never been a knight. Osbert went to sea; but he never came back, and I heard a rumour that he had wandered all the way to Scotland, at the other end of the world. Joan ran away with a Venetian sailor, though I don’t think he married her. I came here, to St Benedict. I had long sought the opportunity, but while my lord needed my service it was due to him.

>   If Messer Roussel had possessed half of his wife’s wisdom and resolution we might have founded a decent Frankish state, and kept the Turks from the Bosphorus. He was a very gallant knight, but the east cannot be ruled by courage alone.

  Historical Note

  Roussel de Balliol was a genuine historical personage, who performed all the exploits here narrated. Ducange, in a note to his edition of Anna Comnena, identifies him with a Norman conqueror of Sicily in the service of Roger fitzTancred. The contemporary Byzantine historians, Anna Comnena, Bryennius, and Attaliates, describe his actions as they occur; but of course what interested them was the downfall of Romanus Diogenes, and the exciting adventures that marked the rise to power of Alexius Comnenus; they do not give a connected account of the adventures of a barbarian mercenary. Thus we know that Roussel was blockading Chliat when the Emperor was defeated at Manzikert, and he subsequently seized Ancyra, rebelled against the Domestic Isaac Comnenus, proclaimed John Ducas and won a great battle at the Bridge of Zompi. His two captures by the Turkish leaders Artouch and Tutach are also historical. There are conflicting versions of his obscure death at the moment when Botaniates had achieved the Purple, and I have followed that given by Bryennius. The bogus blinding is mentioned by more than one contemporary historian.

  We also know that he had a wife and children; his wife was sent to make peace at Zompi, ransomed him from Artouch, and with her children arrested his murderers. But no contemporary bothers to give her name, or even to indicate her nationality; she may have been a Greek, or a Norman of Normandy. Thus Matilda is a character entirely of my own invention; so are her children, and little Roger the narrator. Every other character, except the Bishop of Amasia and a few minor members of the Norman band, is a genuine historical personage, who in fact performed the actions attributed to him in this fictional biography.

  Copyright

  First published in 1953 by Faber & Faber

  This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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  ISBN 978-1-4472-2880-6 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-2877-6 POD

  Copyright © Alfred Duggan, 1953

  The right of Alfred Duggan to be identified as the

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