To avenge him? What could one man do, except remain blindly loyal to a blind man? Why do you do this, Leo? He could hear his mother asking that. In point of fact, he had asked himself the same question a thousand times. Because it's right. Because it's all I have. He took a deep breath to ensure that his voice would not break like a sad boy's.
“Rest, sir. Do you want more water?”
He laughed, like wind whistling through bone. “I will rest ... soon enough. But you ... you take care. Alp Arslan favors...”
Leo pressed Romanus’ hand. “I will not go over to the Turks, do not fear that.”
To his astonishment, Romanus squeezed back. “Rome needs her lions...”
“I will stay.”
He crouched there until the sky paled and Romanus fell into a murmuring, uneasy doze.
It was an effort to mount the next morning, as if Leo bore not only his own weight but Romanus'.
When he bent over to see that Romanus was as comfortably—now, there was an irony—settled on his mule as he could be, the orange morning light picked out movement within the folds of bandage that shrouded the Emperor's eyes.
Silently, Leo gestured to the surgeon. He approached, bent closer. What he saw made him gag and hold his breath until he could straighten again and the wind blew.
“Maggots.”
“They could at least have waited for my death,” said the Emperor. "Christe eleison." He had a thread of voice left. Now it wavered up and down in the chants of the funeral office.
“Damn you, you didn't have to say it where he could hear!”
The surgeon shrugged. What was one more dead man?
The day was hideous, made more so by the fact that the Emperor was still conscious. His fever had lifted somewhat. Either that, or a cruel fortune had blown the clouds from his wits. Later that day, his head turned toward Leo.
“Sir? Do you want anything?”
“Do I want?” Romanus’ voice cracked. “I would lament ... if I had tears. Did you read, ever, of Hadrian, he in the West? In a rage, he threw something ... and it put out a man's eye.”
“Please...”
“No, listen ... Emperor offered him anything ... anything at all ... and all the man wanted was his eye, his eye...”
His voice trailed off again. He had no tears, except the steady seep of blood and foul matter from beneath the bandages into his beard.
The night before they took ship for the monastery at Prote, the surgeon had soaked away the bandages over Romanus’ eyes. After the first glance—and smell—Leo had not been able to look, and had stumbled outside to vomit.
He rose from his knees and spat, then went in search of water to cleanse his mouth.
“Sir?”
Leo whirled. His hand reached first for the sword he had laid aside, then for the obsidian blade he still carried, unlucky talisman though it had turned out to be. The man who approached him, wary though Leo went unarmed, was a spatharios in Leo's uncle's service.
He saluted Leo—so even a renegade Ducas is worth that much! Eyeing him curiously, the officer produced a letter.
The letter was unsealed. Well, that could hardly surprise him. What was surprising was that any letter came at all.
“From the City,” he said. “For him." He pointed at the Emperor's quarters. “I was told to give it into his hand.”
“He's just got done with the surgeon,” Leo said. He gestured at his stained clothing. “Let me take it to him.”
“I was ordered: give it to him, or return it.”
Maybe Romanus would be unconscious and the letter could be left beside him, unless, of course, this newest gadfly insisted upon tormenting the Emperor by his speech as well as his presence.
Leo turned abruptly. “Follow me.”
The spatharios grimaced at the charnel reek beneath the fresh bandages. Have you seen what you came to see?
Romanus had nodded off into a fever dream. “Eudocia...” he murmured.
“What's that he says?”
“His own business,” Leo told him. “You've seen him. Now give him the letter.”
“It should be returned once he reads ... once it is read to him.”
“It will be.” The steel in Leo's voice surprised them both. Men who chose the wrong side should speak more softly. “Now, go!”
The spatharios went, glad to be gone. Perhaps a miracle of pity had occurred, and Caesar John and Psellus allowed his wife to write to him.
“Sir ... sir?”
Romanus jolted awake, stifling a moan as he jerked almost upright.
“A letter from Constantinople. Shall I read it?”
The horrible masked head turned toward him with more interest than Leo would have thought possible.
“Yes...”
He opened it, ran his eyes down the page. The hand was elegant, that of an imperial scribe or a trained scholar. The latter, he saw at a glance. The letter came from Psellus himself. Leo wondered that it did not scorch his palm.
“Michael Psellus writes you, sir,” he said. “Do you still want to hear it?”
To his astonishment, Romanus managed a faint bark of laughter.
“What else ... can he do ... he hasn't done...”
Hurt you. Scorn you. The letters wavered in the dazzling sunlight, or perhaps it was Leo's own anger that made them dance. He began to read mechanically, then brought himself up short.
“What is this ... ? Sir, he calls you a fortunate martyr! In the name of Christ and all the apostles, he says you are to be blessed because ... ‘deeming you worthy of a higher light, God deprived you of his eyes'!”
“Leo ... please God he's right...”
Against his will, Leo felt the tears come.
“What else ... have I to hope for, son?” Did Romanus speak to him or the boy whom they could but hope was safe in Constantinople?
“That God will have mercy ... what remains ... I must get home. Home, my son.” His voice trailed off in a mutter in which owls, Psellus, Eudocia, and cool water were jumbled. Perhaps he would enter a delirium from which, please God, he would never wake. If God were as merciful as Romanus hoped, his sleep would be pleasant and Judgment would rest easy on a man who had already borne too many burdens.
Leo bent his head. “Bless me, father.”
Romanus put out his hand and rested it firmly upon Leo's head.
Psellus’ letter dropped from Leo's hand.
Leo lay prostrate before his Emperor's tomb. The cold stone soothed his brow and lips. The deep-voiced sorrowful exultation of the chanting monks had subsided: even their echoes had died away. Now, only fragrant clouds of incense twined from the great braziers into the noble vaulting of the dome. Light pierced through the windows, dancing with the smoke and the beams of light that pierced through the lancets of the noble vaults.
Already, the incense had cast a faint dark pall upon the gold of the paintings and the mosaics, as if even the icons mourned in this church for the man whose gold had built it. Eudocia Dalassena had buried her last husband as befit an Emperor.
The peace of the monastery at Prote called out to Leo like water bubbling from a rock in a weary land. There was no haste here, no time but Heaven's own, but soon he would seek out a priest and shear his hair. Once he was a monk, he could settle himself faithfully at the tomb until his own life ended and he could be buried at its foot.
Summer had faded. Since no one had orders concerning him, he continued his self-appointed task of praying for the Emperor's soul.
“Leo Ducas. You were with him when he died.”
A woman's voice. It was not loud, not in this sacred space, but imperially confident, as well it might be. For it belonged to the former Empress Eudocia Dalassena. Romanus’ wife—widow—and now a nun.
Leo remained prostrate.
“Look at me, Leo.”
He rose to his knees and looked. The rough black swathings of her order could not conceal that Eudocia was sadly changed. Her body had sagged during her exile, and her face was
lined and pale. A short lock of grey hair escaped her veils. She no longer had the splendor she had once used as a weapon. But the hand she laid on her husband's tomb, workworn now from her convent's Rule, did not tremble.
“Leo, you were with him at the end. I would have given ... much to be. Will you tell me?”
Leo had thought himself wept out. Now his eyes filled with tears.
“Lady, we shall have forever. I will not leave this place.”
“No! You shall tell me now, this day, and then you shall return home. I know the temptation to renounce the world before you have played your part in it.”
Leo gestured silently: and have you not forsaken it yourself!
Eudocia inclined her head. Her smile was bitter. “I see my husband did not love and trust a fool. No: you return tonight. Apart from my command to you, I shall tell you why I stay here and you may not. I was wife to two Emperors and mother to a third. This death finishes me. I am tired. Do you know what that feels like?”
The long night after Manzikert when the stars reeled like a drunken trooper; the retreat after retreat; and the terrible defeat of Romanus’ death—oh, he knew. And now, with rest within his grasp, she denied it him? He raised his hands in supplication.
“You are young. Rest must be earned. I send you back so you may earn it. If you return, come back as a pilgrim, but come seldom! At the end of your days, you may desire to assume the habit of religion. If that is so, you will be welcome here. But I do not think you will. In fact, I hope you do not. Now, before you leave, come with me. I would hear of my lord's last days.”
Leo rose and walked over to Eudocia. Greatly daring for a nun or an Empress, she embraced him. For a moment, they wept together. Her robes smelled of incense, and there was no comfort in her. Then she turned away.
Leo followed her away from his Emperor's tomb. The echoes of their footsteps died. The incense and the shafts of light continued their dance of sun and shadow by the Emperor's tomb.
Eudocia would have accompanied Leo to the boat back to Constantinople, had she dared. As it cast off, he felt himself alone for the first time in years. An illusion, he knew. Doubtless, at least three sailors and two passengers watched him and would bear reports back to various masters. Still, it was an illusion to be treasured.
The dark water lapped at the boat's sides. Lights reflected up at him. The walls of Constantinople reared up before him; beyond them loomed the sullen bulk of Justinian's great Church of the Holy Wisdom.
Leo swayed with the motion of the small ship, the wind stirring his hair, cooling his eyes. Too soon, its hull bumped against its moorings. Sailors shouted, ropes flew through the air, and the trip from Prote back to his world was over.
The gangplank slammed against the dock. Nodding courtesy to the captain, Leo disembarked. He had his sword again. No one, robber nor other watcher in the shadows, stood in his way. The cats that prowled the harbor went silent. They pressed against the crumbling walls, their eyes lambent in the scanty torchlight.
Leo's clothes were poor enough to let him pass up from the harbor unmolested. If he wished, though, to disappear into the shadows, perhaps he might find a taverna where his meager funds would let him drink until a wine-red haze befuddled facts and where he might find some comforting, convenient female body to sink into and clutch against his dreams.
He remembered the fine eyes and finer courage of that girl—Asherah, her name was, an odd name—in Cotyaeum. He had taken courage from her presence and her hand, light upon his arm. She was a Jew. He would never see her again.
No, there was no point of thinking of a taverna. He walked up from the harbor. The shadows twined and danced behind him. The reek of fish lessened. It was better than rotting flesh, but only barely.
Up from the harbor, toward the quarter near the palace where the patricians, even poor ones, lived. The lights of the shops that lined the Mese had all gone dark. Leo kept his hand upon his swordhilt. He had heard the robbers of Constantinople had grown bold. No one spoke to him or stalked him for the little he carried. When had he become so formidable?
Even his feet recognized the way individual paving stones had been worn down in the narrow street he finally turned down. The walls of home, a shabby fortress, loomed up.
A torch lit the heavy door. He knocked. It groaned open, as if entrance were begrudged. From within, a light shone. A servant cried out in astonished welcome, and the door yawned wider. Footsteps pounded down the passageways before him.
His father reached him first, still holding a letter. Leo knelt to be blessed—Romanus’ fevered hand pressing against his skull, “Bless me, father"—but Leo's father was alive, was blessing him, pulling him up and into his thin arms, strengthened now by joy.
“This is my son who was lost and now is found,” his father cried. Rapid footsteps clattered behind him. Leo's father laughed and passed Leo to his mother.
Fiercely, she clasped him to her heart, then held him off. He felt the sob that racked her—just one; and she put on her self-control like a veil. But, under her cosmetics, her face had thinned. The light of well-polished polycandela revealed that she had begun to wash her hair with henna.
“There is grey in your hair,” she observed, and touched his cheek and newly trimmed beard. “Do you want something to eat? Will you wash first? Your room is ready.”
He had feared how she might greet him, but she seemed almost shy, concerned only with his comfort. Weighed against what he had endured, there was nothing to fear here. Was there anything for him at all?
Leo went silently to his boyhood room. It was smaller than he remembered, and it smelled empty. A few moments more, and he would have to go downstairs, force down food, and meet his parents’ eyes. He was not hungry, and his old bed looked inviting.
He took off his sword, placed it within reach, and lay down. Exhaustion drained from him into the familiar mattress; the old shadows from his childhood reached out to comfort him. He was aware of his parents standing at his door. He sensed their eyes upon him, their love and fear; and then he slept.
The Emperor screamed in mortal anguish. Nearby, another victim sank to his knees, the iron still in his hand, and wept for the crime he had been forced to commit. A young woman with eyes that hid old secrets knelt beside him and cleansed his beard.
Get her away! Leo hurled himself between weeping man and patient woman as the ground shuddered more and more violently. They vanished.
He ran through a wasteland of twisted stone. The wind howled through it, striking up a wailing from the rock itself. Something ... someone pursued him, a horned crown upon its ... no, upon her ... brow. And where the creature walked, the earth cracked. A plume of white smoke rose from the wounded land. Fire lay below. His breath was full of ashes.
Leo hit the stone floor of his room so hard that his jaws snapped shut, cutting off his scream. Too late: footsteps scurried through the house. A servant peered in but did not dare to enter. His mother, for the first time that Leo could remember, looked at his father for advice. His father, kneeling by Leo's side, did not see as he lifted Leo against his shoulder.
“They are all dead,” Leo whispered.
“Hush, my son.”
“I should be dead, too.”
He tried to ease Leo against his shoulder. “You are home. Let it be as when you were a boy. You will tell me what is wrong. We will reason it out and pray over it. And then, you will sleep.”
“No!” Leo forced himself away from the temptation of comfort. His father was old and innocent; and he should remain so. He had not lain out all night at Manzikert and watched the robbers strip his comrades’ bodies. He had not heard an Emperor scream as hot irons bungled away his sight. And God grant his father no idea, ever, of the dreams that haunted his sleep.
It was less trouble, in the end, to allow his father to sit with him for awhile than to persuade him to return to his own bed. Just so, Leo had watched over the Emperor: the illusion of protection, not the real thing. But there was love and
trust. Through slitted lids he watched his father bend his head over his clasped hands. The older man's disappointed face turned serene. After a time, he could even feel the virtue of his father's prayer seeping into him as water seeps into thirsty earth.
He slept again, almost a waking dream. Again, he saw the girl Asherah's face beneath her veil. It dropped from her hair and rippled on the grass until it turned into cool water that flowed from a cleft in gray stone, warded on both sides by poplars, their green and gold leaves swaying.
In the greyness of first light, Leo stood by his window and looked down into one of the gardens. The roses were but a darker grey in this light, and their petals fell like drops of blood upon the ground before the garden shrines. Haze lay upon the sea, hiding all but the masts of the ships in Byzantium's great harbor.
If he hurled himself from the window, would they think he fell? Or would they know? Christ would know; and Leo would be damned. It would be more familiar, perhaps, than the landscapes of his nightmares, but it would be hell, all the same.
As soon as he decently might rise, as if he simply were a young man home on leave, Leo dressed. The clothes of his former life were too loose, and their fineness offended him. What right had the likes of him to silk and fine wool? He chose the most somber and went down.
He sat himself at the old, scrubbed table with his family. Honey was on it, white cheese, and fresh bread, brought in by servants who had known him since his boyhood and whose eyes brightened—the more fools they!—at the sight of him.
Following his mother's example, Leo blessed himself and broke bread. He ate very little. She said nothing: merely watched out of those dark eyes of hers that missed nothing.
As his mother had always pointed out, they were not of the rich branch of the Ducas family. Father and mother had their appointed tasks. Leo busied himself in the garden as his mother supervised the cleaning of the shrines. The sun emerged as the last of the fallen rose petals were cleared away. The stone looked less as if it had been bled upon. He knelt before the shrine to pray and staggered when he rose.
“I beg your pardon,” he told his mother. “I am still very weary.”
Shards of Empire Page 10
