Adora

by Bertrice Small

  She stood behind him and spoke softly, sweetly, in contrast to the meaning of her words. “Do you know, my friend Zeno, what the penalty for murder is in our realm?”

  “M-Majesty?” His throat was constricted with fear, and he could barely force the word out.

  “The penalty for murder,” Helena continued softly.

  “Like the murder your good wife, Anna, committed. How old was your daughter, Zeno? Ten? Eleven?”

  What composure had remained in the servant now vanished. No one had ever suspected that Anna had smothered Marie. The child had been dying of a wasting sickness of the blood. The doctors had been quite frank. There was no hope. Day after day she had faded before their anguished eyes. Finally one night when Marie had lain half in sleep, half in delirium, Anna had silently placed a pillow over the child’s face. When she finally lifted it, Marie was dead, a sweet smile on her little face. Man and wife had looked at each other with complete understanding and never spoken of it again. How this devil-woman had discovered their secret he knew not.

  “The penalty for murder, Zeno, is death by public execution. It is not a pretty way to die, particularly for a woman. Let me tell you so you will understand what is facing Anna.

  “The night before she is to die, the jailor and his men, as well as the most favored of their prisoners, will take turns using your wife. I have watched such sport occasionally, though I doubt you would find it very diverting. Come morning, her head will be shaved. She will be bound to the back of the wagon carrying her torturers and the executioner—and forced to walk behind it, to the place of her execution, barefoot and naked while being whipped. The crowds love a good show, and she will be pelted with all matter of debris and spit upon—”

  “Mercy, Majesty!”

  Moving around to stand before him Helena purred on with her recital. “Anna will, of course, be denied the last rites of our church for murder is forbidden by God’s commandments. The murder of a child in particular is a heinous enough crime to ensure eternal damnation.”

  A sob escaped Zeno, and the empress smiled scornfully to herself. The plebes were all such weaklings! She continued.

  “Anna will be bound, spread-eagled upon a rack. Her breasts will be torn off, her womb ripped out, her hands and feet cut off. She will be blinded with red-hot coals. Lastly, she will be hung by the neck, and she will be left hanging until the birds have picked her bones clean. Then the bones will be ground into powder and thrown to the four winds!”

  Zeno finally dared raise his eyes to the queen.

  “Why? Why do you tell me this, Majesty? If you wish my dear Anna’s death why do you torture me?”

  Helena smiled her sweet smile, and Zeno was amazed. How could a woman who smiled so sweetly be so cruel? And then he saw her eyes. There was no smile in them. They were like polished blue stones. “What I have told you need not be, and your wife may yet live with you to a peaceful old age…if you but render me one small service.”

  “Anything!”

  Helena smiled again, this time showing her perfect little white teeth. “I am going to give you a box containing a small vial of liquid. In a few months’ time—and you will pick the time carefully—you will open the vial and begin to put a few drops each day into Alexander’s shaving water. Only his shaving water. Coat your own hands with scented oil so that, if the water should touch your own skin, there will be no harm to you. Wash them thoroughly immediately afterwards. When the vial is empty, throw it into the sea. That is all I require of you, Zeno. It is so little. Do it, and your wife’s, ah, indiscretion will be forgotten.”

  “Is it poison, Majesty?”

  She looked coldly at him. “Will you obey me?” Numbly, he nodded. “Very well then, Zeno, you are dismissed. Be sure that no one sees you leaving my suite.” He stumbled to his feet and fled toward the door. “Remember, Zeno,” she warned, “that Mesembria is yet a part of the empire, and my reach is a long one. My spies are everywhere.” The door closed.

  Alone again, Helena laughed to herself. She had won. The serving man was terrified and would obey. She would dispose of him later.

  On the following day Helena stood next to her husband and bade Theadora and Alexander farewell. She was calm and appeared most loving. Afterward Adora voiced her ever-present suspicion of her older sister, but Alexander laughed. “You will be far away from Constantinople to allay the royal virago’s fears. Soon something else will catch her eye—a fancied slight, or a young man with beautiful thighs.”

  Now she laughed! His easy assessment of Helena’s character made Helena seem so unimportant that her fears slid entirely away. He slipped an arm about her waist, and they stood quietly watching their little villa recede until it seemed no larger than a toy. Ahead of them the Bosporus widened somewhat as it opened into the Black Sea. Adora felt her heart quicken at the great expanse of rolling dark-blue water. Sensing this, Alexander turned her to face him.

  “Don’t be frightened, beauty. It is majestic and awesome and there are no tiny islands to give the comfort of constant land in sight. It is not like our turquoise Aegean. This great sea can be the most treacherous and wicked of bitches, but she can also be a good friend. The trick is not to take her for granted like a woman of the streets. But we will not venture out into her this time, my love. We follow the coastline to our own city.”

  “This time, Alexander? Then you do not mean to give up the sea?”

  “The sea is Mesembria’s lifeline, beauty. We cannot live on the profits of Phocaea forever. There are three trade routes across the Black Sea, the most important from my mother’s city of Trebizond. If I offer the merchant traders a better price for their goods than Constantinople and a shorter voyage to boot, they will come to me instead. We will then take these goods into Constantinople and they will have to pay our prices, for there will be no other choice.”

  Adora’s eyes widened with surprise and admiration. “Is this the sort of thing a loyal subject of the emperor should do?”

  “My first loyalty must be to Mesembria, beauty. For too long has Constantinople sucked her vassal cities dry and given very little in return. Young Emperor John has enough on his hands contending with the Turks. By the time Constantinople realizes what I have done, it will be too late for them to do anything.”

  “You are ruthless, Alexander,” she smiled. “I had not realized it before.”

  “I did not become the pirate king of Phocaea by chance, beauty. To survive in this world one must understand that it is populated for the most part by ruthless people. And one must think like them or else be eaten alive.” He fingered the silk of her gown, and his voice softened. “Enough of this debate, Adora. We are still on our honeymoon, and the ship is well captained. Let us amuse ourselves in our cabin for we are only in the way here.”

  “Ship’s cabins are small, my lord, and bunks are hardly conducive to the sort of entertainment you propose,” she teased. “After all, Alexander, you have not the privilege of the captain’s cabin this time.”

  “No, beauty, I don’t. I have instead the privilege of the prince’s cabin!” And he pulled her along up several steps to the deck above. The deck had only about six feet of open deck because a cabin took up the rest of the space. Two small arched doors of carved and gilded oak served as an entry. He turned the gold handles and ushered her into a room of unbelievable luxury.

  Above the room was a cloth of aquamarine silk, woven with pale gold and silver stars. It gave the ceiling the appearance of a tent. The lamps that hung by thin gold chains from this silken ceiling were of light amber-colored Venetian glass. A bay window with leaded-crystal diamond panes, also of hand-blown Venetian glass, graced the wall opposite the door and offered them a private view of the sea. Built into the window alcove was a great bed covered in a deep blue coverlet embroidered with gold and silver scenes of Neptune and all his court. There were nymphs riding seahorses, mermaids combing their long hair while their mermen lovers watched, leaping dolphins, and flying fish all merrily cavorting acros
s the rich dark-blue velvet. The deck beneath their feet had been covered entirely in the soft white fleece of unborn lambs. It seemed to Adora that she stood in a swirl of seafoam.

  At the foot of the bed were two small flat-topped twin trunks lined in fragrant cedar, bound in polished brass. Atop each in goldleaf was the royal insignia of the House of Mesembria. Beneath were the words “Alexander, Despot” on one and “Theadora, Despoena” on the other. On the wall opposite the bed was a long rectangular table that jutted out into the room. It was made of highly polished ebony, and its legs were heavily carved. A great silver bowl with a raised relief design of Paris, the three goddesses, and the golden apple sat in the center and was filled with large round oranges, fat purple figs, and bunches of plump pale green grapes. On either side of the table were matching arm chairs with gold-colored velvet cushions.

  It was an exquisite room and as her eyes swept over it they widened again and she cried out with delight, for on the wall to the left of the door was the most beautiful dressing table she had ever seen. Attached to the wall, it was an open, golden scallop shell. Its mirror, set into the upper half of the shell, was of highly polished silver. Its base in the shell’s lower half was carefully inlaid squares of pale pink mother-of-pearl. A smaller half-shell with a coral silk cushion filled with sweet lavender made the seat.

  “From your people, beauty. I understand they made two. One for the ship and another with a glass mirror for your rooms in our palace. They already love you for you are going to be the mother of their ruling house.” His deep voice vibrated with passion, and she felt herself growing faint with the longing she had begun to know so well.

  His aquamarine eyes held her spellbound, and she never even heard the doors to their little world close or the bolt click home. He reached out and drew her into the circle of his arms. She lay her dark head against the hollow of his shoulder—her breathing slow, but increasing in tempo as he began to undress her gently. When she finally stood naked before him he stepped back to view her, delighting in her rosy blushes. There were no worlds between them. The only sounds came from the distant voices and movement of those who ran the ship and from the slap of the waves and the gentle whoosh of the wake behind them.

  She stepped forward now and began to remove his clothes. He stood quietly, a tender smile on his, lips, his eyes alight. But when he stood stripped and she slid to her knees and bent down to kiss his feet, her long dark hair swirling about his legs, he broke the silence.

  “No, beauty!” He drew her to her feet. “You are not my slave or my chattel. You are my beloved wife, my queen, and my equal. We are two halves of a whole.”

  “I love you, Alexander, yet words are simply not enough to express how I feel!”

  “My foolish Adora,” he said tenderly. “What makes you think I do not know how you feel? When our bodies are one and I look into your beautiful eyes, I see all the love and hear with my heart all the words for which there are no words. I know these things because it is the same for me.”

  Then their mouths met, and they soared together into that tumultuous world where only lovers are allowed. Their lips still joined, he picked her up and carried her to their bed. Cradling her with one arm, he drew the velvet coverlet back with the other and then placed her between the cream silk sheets.

  She held her slender arms up to him, and he felt his desire quicken at the sight of her lovely body against the luxurious sheets. Her mahogany colored hair spread across the plump pillows like a floodtide upon the beach. Then he was astride her, his long legs with their soft golden down on either side of her. His hands played with her lovely breasts, touching with just the very sensitive tips of his fingers the smooth warm skin that seemed to vibrate beneath him. She placed her hands flat against his chest, rubbing lightly with little circular motions.

  His eyes narrowed and he chided her laughingly, “Adora! Adora! You are such an impatient little vixen!”

  She blushed furiously, but when she tried to turn her head away he caught it between his hands. With one smooth motion he thrust into her. “Oh, Alexander!” she breathed. “I am so shameless with you!” And he laughed happily. “True, beauty, but I am ever eager to oblige you in your naughtiness.”

  Slowly her violet eyes closed, and she let her passions rule her, sweeping her away into a world of hungry sounds, sighs, and pleasures almost too sweet to bear.

  Deep within her there lay the frightening sensation that none of this was real—that it was only a fantastic dream from which she would soon awake. She cried out his name and clung tightly to him, fiercely demanding reassurance. He gave it.

  “Beauty, my beloved beauty,” he murmured against her ear, and she sighed contentedly. When she finally slept, he walked across the cabin and, opening a cabinet near the table, drew out a decanter of red wine and a stemmed silver goblet. He sipped reflectively as he watched Theadora sleep.

  His first wife had been dead so long he could barely remember her. It had, at any rate, been a childhood romance.

  His harem, left far behind in Phocaea, were of another world. He had married all his women to the most deserving of his lieutenants before turning the city over to his two eldest, nearly grown sons. From the night he had seduced Adora, he had never really been content with the gentle girls of his harem. He had determined to make Adora his wife one day, and Alexander would never tell her that the strange dream she believed she had had in Phocaea had been real.

  The winds held fair and brisk and several days later the royal ship sailed into the walled harbor of Mesembria to be greeted by the cheering populace. The people stood on the shore waving colored silks and a small fleet of fishing boats clustered about the great vessel. From the rail, Adora had her first good glimpse of the city…her new home.

  Strangely, it reminded her of Constantinople although it had been in existence longer. It was a walled city, a city of marble and stone amid which she could identify several churches, some pillared public buildings, and an ancient hippodrome. “Alexander!” she pointed.

  He smiled down at her and then looked to where she pointed. Alexander swallowed hard, fighting back the tears. When he had left Mesembria the blackened ruins of the old palace had haunted him, sitting malevolently upon the crest of the city’s highest hill. Now the hill was crowned by a beautiful, tall marble cross, heavily gilded. It stood as a shining tribute to the memory of the Heracles family.

  The ship’s captain spoke. “The city wanted to surprise you, my lord despot. The cross sits in a new park which, with your permission, will be opened to the people so they may pray there for the souls of your family.”

  Alexander nodded, overcome. It was in that moment that Adora performed her first act as queen of Mesembria. “The people will have our permission, captain. We will so inform them, and we will publicly express our gratitude.”

  The captain bowed. His fears for both his city and his lord vanished. Theadora was a gracious and gentle lady. She would rule well.

  The barge arrived and bumped gently against the ship. Catching a rope, Alexander swung himself from the deck to the barge below. For Adora, however, a chair was rigged, and the new despoena of Mesembria was gently lowered from her ship into her husband’s waiting arms. Though his face was grave, his eyes brimmed with amusement, and she was hard-pressed not to laugh. Everyone about them was so serious, so carefully courteous.

  The royal barge was elegant yet simple in its design. Two small gilt thrones had been placed beneath an azure-blue-and-silver-striped awning. Only one other person was aboard the barge, and Alexander introduced him as Basil, the royal chamberlain of Mesembria. Basil was a courtly older man whose white hair gave him a patriarchal air.

  The rulers of the city seated themselves. Their chamberlain, standing, gave the command, and the barge moved toward shore.

  “Is it always going to be this formal?” Adora asked desperately.

  Alexander chuckled. “You have to understand, beauty, that receiving the new queen of the city, a princess of Byzant
ium, the daughter of an emperor, the sister of an empress—it is very heady for our people. They are, I am quite sure, terrified lest they displease you and make a bad first impression. Am I not right, Basil?”

  “It is so, Highness. They want very much for the princess Theadora to like them and to like her new home.”

  Silence descended again and Alexander noted with amusement that Adora’s brow was furrowed in concentration. He wondered what it was she was thinking about, but before he could ask, the barge arrived at the quay. He leaped to the steps and helped his lovely wife up. A beautifully caparisoned white stallion awaited him, pawing impatiently, and he saw a flower-decked, silk-draped cart for Adora. Beyond the end of the quay the first of the hushed crowds awaited them.

  He turned to hand her up into the cart, but she shook her head. “No, my lord, let us walk among our people.”

  His smile of approval warmed her. “You are the cleverest woman I have ever known, Adora. The people will take you to their hearts instantly.” He grasped her hand and they moved forward.

  An expectant hum was beginning to race through the crowds that lined Mesembria’s main avenue, The Conqueror’s Path. Led by a troop of the royal guard, Alexander and Theadora walked to their palace—to the stunned delight of their people. A pretty young woman held a plump, rosy-cheeked baby, and waved its tiny hand at the couple. Adora took the baby from its surprised mother.

  “What is her name?” she asked.

  “Z-Zoe, H-Highness.”

  “It was my mother’s name! May your Zoe grow up to be as good and loving as my mother was.” Adora kissed the baby’s downy head. “God’s blessings on you, little Zoe.” She handed the child back to its overcome mother.

  The people of Mesembria roared their approval as their rulers continued to make their way around the city to their seaside palace. They stopped many times to speak with the citizens. Alexander was amazed to see Adora reach deep into her cloak pocket and offer the little ones sugared almonds. There were toothless elders smiling broadly, wishing them long life and many children. Adora blushed prettily to the glee of the old ones. The callused hands of workmen and the smooth hands of young matrons reached out to touch them.