by Judith Tarr
You followed me. Alf’s mind-voice was cold. You hid your mind from me.
Nikki paled even further. He was close to tears. I wanted to see where you went, he said. People always go out, but I never do. I’m tired of being locked up. I want to go out like everybody else.
“Sweet Jesu,” Alf said aloud. Nikki watched him with eyes gone huge, bracing himself for dire punishment. When Alf raised a hand, he fell back a step.
Alf caught his shoulder in a light strong grip. Of all times for you to turn rebel… He held Nikki’s eyes with a white-hot stare and spoke to him even beyond mind-words, a wave of pure will. As Nikki responded with acquiescence, he took the child in his arms under his cloak and plunged forward swiftly into the mob.
It was quiet in the palace, an eerie quiet like the deeps of the sea while a storm rages overhead. Alf passed as a shadow among shadows, unseen even by those few servants who, out of ignorance or courage, went about their accustomed duties.
In a hall all of gold with pillars of golden marble, Alf met one who had eyes to see him.
“Too late,” said the Varangian with Thea’s eyes burning in his Saxon face. “The young Emperor is taken. The old one—”
“Is safe enough. I know.” Alf spoke coolly, as to a stranger. “I was looking for you. I would prefer that you not risk yourself in this madness.”
“You would prefer?” The unfamiliar deep voice was rich with scorn. “You can have a preference? And stand here to tell me of it with the heir to House Akestas in your arms?”
“He followed me,” Alf said shortly. “Come home, Thea. This is no place for any sane being.”
Thea’s jaw set. “Here, my name is Aelfric.”
“Appropriate,” he observed, unyielding. “Come. Or are you going to wait until the battle comes this far?”
“It won’t,” she said flatly. “But you had better go back where you came from. It’s death for you to be seen here.”
“All the more reason for us to be quick.”
She made no move to obey him. In this form she was as tall as he, broader and probably stronger, and in power, for all his native strength, she had the greater skill. He met the eyes that remained hers for him whatever shape she took, and held them.
For a long moment they did not waver or fall. Then they slid away.
“Come,” he said.
When he turned, she followed him.
o0o
Mourtzouphlos inspected himself in the glass a servant held up for him. He looked well in imperial purple; the purple shoes of an emperor were an excellent fit. Better, he thought with the hint of a smile, than the green ones of the office he was forsaking. He adjusted his girdle slightly and smoothed his beard. “That will do,” he said.
His men ranged themselves about him, the vanguard of those who held the palace. Soon the Varangians would learn that they had a new emperor to defend. But the head did not matter to the Guard, nor the feet, nor the body between; only the crown and the buskins that marked the Emperor.
Torchbearers waited on the balcony, the mob below, in spreading silence. He stepped forth.
A roar went up, as sudden and as mindless as the cry of a beast. But the closest and the keenest-eyed marked the face of the man above them. His name ran through the crowd, a manifold mutter: Alexios Doukas, Mourtzouphlos. “Mourtzouphlos. Mourtzouphlos!”
He let them shout their fill. It was like wine, sweet and heady. He allowed himself a smile. The mob here, the young idiot safe in irons, the Senate bickering uselessly in Hagia Sophia; he had them all precisely where he wanted them.
The tumult had died to a mild uproar. Mourtzouphlos beckoned; a torchbearer moved closer, raising his brand high. Its light flashed upon the regalia of an emperor. Save the crown.
That, Mourtzouphlos held in his hands, raising it for all to see. Another shout rose, hushed when he lowered the crown and handed it to his elegant young chamberlain.
A thin wind ruffled his hair, struggling to lift his heavy mantle. He set his hands on the cold stone of the balustrade and raised his voice. Though rasping-harsh, it had power; it carried easily. “People of the City,” he said. “Romans. You know me.”
He paused to let them bellow their assent, and continued. “You know me,” he repeated. “I have served the empire for all the years of my manhood, and the emperors to the best of my ability. In this past grim year, I have done all that I may to protect the City from her enemies. I have fought in her battles; I have strengthened her walls. I have counseled her rulers and shown them the enemy where they looked for friends.”
The mob began to seethe again. “The Latins! The filthy Latins!”
Mourtzouphlos raised his hands but not his voice. “Yes, the Latins. The wolves are at the gate, the fire in the field. I have shown Their Majesties what their allies are. I have beseeched them to cast the barbarians out; I have implored them to destroy this plague before it destroys us all. And yet—” His voice thickened with emotion; he fought to clear it. “And yet, while they pretended to listen—while they smiled and promised to take thought for their imperiled people—all the while, they were betraying us.”
This was a lion’s roar, deafening and deadly. Scarlet flared in torchlight, the ranks of the Guard swaying under a sudden assault. But it wavered and dissipated before the threat of the Varangians’ axes.
“This very day,” Mourtzouphlos said, “the Emperor Alexios sent a message to the Frankish camp.” He had won silence, a multitude of ears straining to catch what he could tell. “He has struggled in recent days to make us forget who set him upon his throne. Yet the City has never forgotten. We, loyal to the City and the empire, have never let ourselves forget. And today, with our remembrance clear for him to see, he revealed his true allegiance. He sent to the Latins to ask their aid. Against the City and the empire he asked it. As surety” —Mourtzouphlos choked on the words he had to say— “As surety, he offered two things: this palace, home of emperors since the great days of the Komnenoi; and our Church. Not only our city but our very souls would lie in thrall to—”
What more he would have said was drowned in the people’s rage. It rose to a crescendo, so powerful and so prolonged that Mourtzouphlos began to be afraid. If this mob escaped his tenuous control—
He set his teeth. He held it. It raged, but it did not surge forward to overwhelm the Guard and the palace.
When at last he could be heard, he spoke again, hoarse with the effort of carrying his voice over that multitude. “I have served the emperors as best I can. But when service to the ruler becomes betrayal of the empire, then must that service end. You, people of the City, have seen this for long and long. I, blinded by my loyalty, have looked only now to the full truth. The Latins gave us their puppet and called him our Emperor. His father, once our rightful lord, has lost his wits with his eyes. And I have come at last to the end of my devotion. What have the Angeloi gained us? A hostile army outside of our walls, and half the City within destroyed by fire, and grief for all our people. It is time we remembered who we are. We are Romans, the sons of Augustus, of Constantine, of Justinian; rightful heirs to the empire of the world. Shall we permit a stinking rabble, a pack of unwashed barbarians, to trample us into the dust? Shall we bow to the Doge, whose eyes we took for his spying and his treason, and acknowledge him our master? Shall we surrender even our ancient faith to worship at the altar of the schismatic and the heretic, to yield our will to the Pope who tyrannizes over ruined Rome? Tell me, people of Constantinopolis! Must we do these things?”
“No!” they thundered back in one voice.
“No!” he echoed them. “No, and no, and no. The empire is firm, yet it needs a head. Those lords who are both loyal and wise have beseeched me to place mine beneath the crown. I know I am not worthy. But I am willing to take up the burden for the empire’s sake and with your consent. And I vow to you, whatever you choose, whomever you set up as your Emperor, I shall labor ever and with all that is in me to rid us of the scourge across the Horn. The La
tins shall fall; the City shall be free again, so help me God!”
He had them. Aye, he had them. “Mourtzouphlos!” they roared. And in counterpoint that slowly overwhelmed the rest, the acclamation of the Emperor: “Long life! Long life! Long life to His Sacred Majesty!”
Slowly, carefully, and with great satisfaction, Mourtzouphlos set the crown upon his head.
20.
“It’s done now.”
Alf did not glance back at Thea, who walked behind him still along the lighted ridge of the Middle Way. She had spoken in her own voice; a long stride brought her level with him and revealed her as herself, glaring fiercely at him. “The City has a new Emperor,” she said with more than a touch of sharpness.
“I know. The storm has broken; I can think again.” Alf halted and set Nikki down. The child stood unmoving, great-eyed with the wonder and the terror of all he had seen that night; as a wagon rattled past he started, reaching instinctively for Alf’s hand.
It shakes, he said in his mind. It hits the bottoms of my feet.
Safe in Alf’s grip, he surveyed this new and frightening world.
How ever did you manage to follow Alf so far?
He looked up at Thea. She frightened him no more than Alf did, for all her pretense of fierceness. I was busy, he answered her. I was following. I had to keep him from feeling me. But the people got to be too many and too—too pushing.
It’s a miracle you didn’t get trampled.
He shook his head. Not that kind of pushing. That wasn’t hard to get out of at all. But they were thinking so much. So many and so much and in so many places at once.
Thinking? Alf dropped to his knees, heedless of any who passed, and searched Nikki’s face with eyes gone slightly wild. You heard them thinking?
“That’s not the worst of it,” Thea broke in upon Nikki’s assent. “Humans can do that easily enough if they have to. It’s the least of our powers. But how did a human child manage to shield his mind from you for as long as he did?”
“I was preoccupied,” Alf said.
Thea made a sound that was neither delicate nor feminine. “You’re not a tenth as inept with your power as you want me to think, little Brother. He shielded from you. Which is something even I was far from skilled at when I was five years old.”
Nikki watched their faces. He could follow the thoughts behind their words, but he could not understand what they meant. They were excited and angry and puzzled and perhaps a little afraid, staring at him with eyes that were like no one else’s and looking up to glare at one another.
He reached for Thea’s hand. It was cold and tense. Carefully, covering up his thought with not-thinking, he brought their two hands together. They had clasped before they knew it, the glares turned to frank amazement.
“He did it again,” Thea said. “But he’s not one of us!”
“Are you sure of that?” demanded Alf.
“He’s human,” she said with certainty. “Do you realize what this means?”
Alf rose abruptly, letting go her hand as if it burned him. “I realize that we are in the middle of the main thoroughfare of Constantinople. And it’s begun to rain. Come, Nikephoros.”
Thea drew breath to snap at him. But Nikki shivered and sneezed. She took the hand Alf had not seized, and spread her cloak over the small cold body. Alf moved to do the same. They checked, eye flashing to meet eye; and relaxed all at once, advancing in step with Nikki warmly content between them.
o0o
Nikki accepted his punishment with new-won fortitude: abrupt separation from the two who had brought him home, a bath at Corinna’s hands, a bite or two to eat, and confinement to bed under her grim eye.
His mother, whose eye had been grimmer still, sank into a chair when he was gone and covered her face for a moment with her hands. When she lowered them, she was calm but pale. “I thought we’d lost him,” she said.
Alf paused in nibbling at the supper she had set before him, and touched her hand. “Before God, Sophia, I’m most sorry. If only I’d known sooner that he was following me—”
“How could you have known? It’s not your fault. lf it’s anybody’s it’s mine, for not realizing that he’d do such a thing. He’s not a baby any more, to hide in my skirts. And he’s not an idiot or a monster that I should keep him locked up out of sight.”
“He is certainly not either of those.”
She looked down at her hands. Without knowing it she had taken a bit of bread and reduced it to crumbs in her lap.
Carefully, fighting to keep her fingers steady, she brushed the remnants into a napkin, folded it, and laid it on the table in front of her.
Alf stopped even pretending to eat. “Sophia,” he said, “you have no cause to grieve for him. Or to blame yourself for anything he is or does.”
“He’s my son.”
“And one to be proud of.”
Her eyes blazed with sudden, uncontrollable anger. “Stop it, will you? Just stop it! I may be a weak and foolish woman, but I know the truth when it slaps me in the face. My son is a deafmute. A deafmute he was born, and a deafmute he will always be. And no amount of weaseling words can ever change it.”
“Maybe not.” His quiet voice shocked her into stillness. “But he is also a human being. I know it. I can talk to him; I can speak so that he can understand.”
“But not so that I can—” She broke off. “No. You said…of course. Being what you are, how can you not? And—can he—”
“Yes.”
That was hope, that frail battered creature which staggered to its feet and began feebly to crow. She had taught herself to forget hope. A morning of early autumn; three children with their teacher in the garden, and letters on a tablet. “All this time,” she said slowly, “and you never told me. You never even hinted.”
“It had to find its time.”
“Now?”
Alf nodded.
She had to take it in little by little. It was too much, losing her son and then finding him again, and learning that he had walked unprotected through a raging mob, and now this. “You aren’t telling me of a miracle. ‘The eyes of the blind shall see, and the ears of the deaf shall hear’—that’s not what you can offer. This is…plain…magic.”
“Power, we call it. Mind-seeing. For Nikki it’s speech.”
“But it’s not speech!” Her vehemence brought her to her feet. “It’s not speech. He’ll never talk as other people talk.”
“Maybe not.” Alf poured a cup of wine warmed with spices and set it in her hand. “He’s learning to read and to write. He knows what words are, and why people’s lips move so often and so strangely. He’s not the young animal all your wise men proclaimed him to be. He’s a boy who one day will be a man. A good man, if his promise fulfills itself. Can you ask for any more?”
“Can I—” She was perilously close to breaking. “Why can’t you make him whole? Really whole?”
Alf’s face was white and still. “I am neither a god nor a saint.”
“Then what are you?”
“I don’t know,” he said wearily. “I really don’t know.”
His words calmed her as no proper answer could have done. With calm came awareness of what she had said, of what wounds she had dealt him. He watched her with pale tired eyes, and waited for her to strike again, making no move to defend himself.
Sophia sat with care and drank deep of the wine. Its warmth gave her strength to speak. “Whenever you bare your soul to me, I trample it under my feet. How do you keep from hating me?”
“Why would I want to?”
“Oh, you are a saint!” She drained the cup and set it down. “I have to think. Will you pardon me if I go away to do it?”
“You needn’t. I can—”
“Don’t be noble. You’ve been ill and you’re still wobbling on your feet, and you have a supper to finish.” Once more she stood. She tried to smile. “When all of this has sunk in, I expect to be deliriously happy. Or absolutely terrified.”
“Of this whole mad world. I used to think I understood it, you see. I was very young then.” She leaned over the table and kissed his cheek. “Good night, Alfred.”
o0o
He was still there when Thea found him, the wine cold in his hand and the food untouched. His face did not change as she took Sophia’s chair and began to fill a plate, although he passed the bread to her before she could ask for it.
“Thank you,” she said, biting into the loaf. “Ye gods, I’m hungry. I can’t remember the last time I ate.”
There was no stiffness in her voice or manner, no hint of coldness. He gathered himself to leave her, noting meanwhile that she had bathed and washed her hair, and that she had put on a robe that precisely matched her eyes. Bronze shot with gold, that in certain lights seemed all gold.
Strange how very beautiful she was to look on, and yet how utterly of earth she seemed when she spoke. Such beauty should never speak, or should give utterance only to the sweetest of words.
“How unspeakably dull.” Thea filled a bowl with stew. “On the other hand,” she added as she reached for a spoon, “it would suit you to perfection. Mystic stillness alternating with verses even more mystic in the fashion of the Delphic Oracle…in no time at all you’d have people pouring libations to you.”
He rose somewhat more abruptly than he had meant to, lips tight. “It’s late,” he said. “I’m tired. Good night, Althea.”
“You see?” She downed the stew with relish, helping it on its way with bread and cheese and sips of wine. “Sophia says you hold grudges and I don’t. You can certainly sit on a grievance as long as anyone I’ve ever seen. Do you intend to detest me for the rest of your unnaturally long life?”
“I do not detest you,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Wasn’t I precise enough? Very well then: I irritate you, annoy you, and drive you to distraction. In that order. You’re a frightful prig, do you know that? And a bit of a pedant besides.”
“I’m very well aware of it.”
Her eyes widened, miming astonishment. “Who’d have thought it? Brother Alfred can see his hand in front of his face. Shall we try for the arm? You’re arrogant, too, assuming I’d come to heel in the palace just because you ordered it.”
