Shards of Empire

by Susan Shwartz

  “Alp Arslan?” he whispered back.

  How had Alexius heard?

  He must have given that question away with his eyes.

  “I have another friend named Leo, you know,” Alexius Comnenus said.

  All this time at home, and he had never thought to inquire how the dead Emperor's sons were faring.

  Alexius shrugged. “He will make a soldier.”

  Around them, the cheering rose to an even higher pitch. The victor held up his brass wreath so that the slanting sunlight of late afternoon struck it and made it flare up as if they sat under bright summer light.

  “Did he tell you what Alp Arslan said?” Leo regretted the question in the instant he blurted it out. He forced a smile, acknowledging that Alexius would not, could not answer him.

  “You met him, didn't you? He has more loyalty than I would have thought. I must remember ... in any case, he called us Romans atheists and declared...” He wrinkled his brow, looking for all the world like a boy being questioned about race winners in days gone by..."from today on, the peace with Rome is broken and the oath which linked them with the Persians no longer exists. From now on, the worshippers of the Cross will be immolated by the sword and all Christian countries will be delivered into slavery.”

  Leo blessed himself. “He is a man of his word. And he liked my Emperor.”

  “Quiet!” Leo's father did not lower himself to elbow either Leo or Alexius, but both fell instantly still. The older man looked pale.

  “Shall I have wine brought, sir?” Alexius asked.

  Leo slashed downward with his hand. He had seen his Emperor at Andronicus Ducas’ table, had nursed him through the stomach gripes—hemlock, he would believe until he died—that, even before he was blinded, might well have killed him. It was dangerous to drink wine when you had not seen the seal on it broken.

  All about the Hippodrome, sun glinted on armor. Surely, there were far more soldiers in the arena than there had been only moments ago. Trumpets blared out, overpowering the cries of winesellers, the cheers of winners, the howls of men who had wagered more than they could afford to lose.

  “The Emperor!”

  Leo's hands chilled again. His father rose to his feet as the Emperor and his suite entered the kathisma, the royal box linked by a covered passage to the palace. Leo rose, standing at military attention, Alexius quivering with eagerness beside him—or continuing to playact at boyish high spirits.

  There stood the Basileus: Michael, seventh of his name. A Ducas and, as he knew he should think, therefore worth all of the betrayals and sufferings that Leo had seen. But his last sight of Romanus, his seared eyes rotting out, made him want to weep. Even dying that terrible death, the Emperor had gained a majesty he had never possessed in life in his response to his torment. While, this Michael—Leo had never found the man, only a few years older than he, particularly prepossessing.

  Now, although Michael Ducas wore the purple and enough jewels, seemingly, to have paid an Emperor's ransom, he seemed even less impressive—as if somebody had dressed a scrawny pedagogue in silks and gold and commanded him to ape majesty. Michael, Pantocrator, isaposteles, Emperor of the Romans—for this, he had lost a ruler, Alexius had lost his freedom however briefly, the man's sons had lost their father, and now, it seemed, Christian Rome stood to lose its life at the sword and arrows of an outraged Alp Arslan.

  Michael shambled to the front of his box. Following them were men wearing the robes of peace and the arms of war.

  “We didn't know that he would be here, or even that he was in the City,” Alexius whispered. He grasped his companions’ arms. To his shock, Leo identified compassion in the boy's voice.

  Didn't they? Leo had heard the murmurs in his own home, seen his mother's discomfort about speculation on the Domestikos of the Scholae, who now stood, the mask of Caesar upon him, his searching eyes raking across the amphitheatre.

  Andronicus Ducas. At the sight of him, Leo's father stiffened. Leo had not been aware that bad blood lay between the two. Leo held himself proudly aloof. Let Andronicus see him. He had done nothing wrong.

  Leo scanned the kathisma for Caesar John, his father and, next to the Emperor, master of the Ducas family. He was nowhere to be seen. But there was no mistaking the man, with his fastidious grooming at war with his scholarly stoop, who entered the box last of all, with a show of humility.

  Psellus. Leo would have to concede that he was a handsome man, and his years scheming at the heart of Empire had given him undeniable presence. But if he saw him now, preening before a mass of men cheering their Emperor, he could also see him hiding in the crypt, awaiting glory or an ignominious end. A pity that the Varangians’ axes had not slipped that day.

  Michael seated himself, gesturing for the crowd to subside, to sit down, to let everyone get on with the business of entertaining himself. The sooner begun, the sooner over; and he could go back to his poetry, Leo thought. But Psellus’ clever eyes scanned the crowd, occasionally pausing as if to read the soul of someone in the audience or to calculate what share of the homage granted the Emperor might be for himself. His eyes met Leo's.

  Leo shuddered, feeling a cold that had nothing to do with the wind, and more with a sickness of spirit. Against his will, he thought back over the year or two since he had ridden out of Byzantium at his uncle's heels: rough hands seemed to poke through his memories just as a hoodlum might pluck his purse free and, in his own sight, turn it upside down to count his booty.

  It was a relief when the entertainers ran in. Michael might turn his face away from the dancers, their legs flashing beneath brief tunics; but the audience greeted them with ribald enthusiasm. He glanced back at Psellus, who shook his head. Let them dance.

  Races and dances finally finished, Leo was glad to go leave the Hippodrome. Servants and guards waited outside his house, armed and bearing torches to see Alexius safely home.

  That night, in Leo's dreams, Andronicus Ducas pursued him and his family over jagged rocks through which the wind whistled. Leo was sobbing; his throat was dry; and instead of rain, ash was falling from the sky. He bared his teeth in defiance at it, and the force of his rage blackened his sight.

  After a time, red and yellow streaks of fire lit the blackness, then formed themselves into a face with gleaming eyes and a scarlet mouth, drawn into a rictus that exposed sharp teeth. He wanted to whimper, but he was a man now, not a child; and there were children to protect. If he were not silent, the enemies would come with their arrows, and there would be nothing for any of them.

  Tears ran down his face. It was a wonder: they eased his pain. And, after a time, they touched his lips. A second wonder: they tasted not of salt, but of fresh water. His eyes did not burn as his poor Emperor's had; and the surprise woke him.

  Leo sat up in the darkness of his boyhood room. It was silent, except for the rain outside, spattering against the walls and upon the pavement of the inner courtyard. He sighed with relief, not so much at the soothing rhythm of the falling rain, but at his waking.

  For once, when the dreams struck, he had not waked screaming. But his cheeks were still wet from half-remembered pain. He touched them, touched tongue to the wetness: salt. How had he dreamed tears without salt? He had no idea, but the lassitude and comfort that they had brought him still hovered within reach. He settled back down, hoping that warmth and the rain would comfort him so that this time, he might slip into rest unblemished by fear or faces out of ancient nightmares.

  Instead, just as his eyes closed and his body slackened into total relaxation, he saw dark, long eyes, half-hidden by a veil shot with gold threads. The veil dropped. Coils of dark hair fell upon it, framing a face he had seen only once yet never forgotten. He even could put a name to it.

  “Asherah,” he said, and fell asleep upon the sigh that was her name.

  You might have told me Andronicus was in the City!”

  Hearing his father's voice raised, Leo paused outside the room where his father and mother sat. Lulled by hi
s memories of a woman he had seen but once, Leo had slept through the morning meal.

  A lesser woman would have asked how she might be expected to know the whereabouts of generals when her husband did not.

  “You have been much apart from us, husband,” Leo's mother replied instead. “Preferring, no doubt, the company of your books to the comfort of your family.”

  “The comfort of my family. Aye,” said his father. His voice carried an indefinable irony. “They stared at my son—Psellus—”

  “Hush! He has His August Majesty's favor!”

  “They both have my son's fate in their caprice, regardless...”

  “Leo is safe,” his mother blurted. “I was promised!”

  The pause drew itself out, became more painful than any silence Leo had felt since the time he had leaned over the stinking thing that his emperor had become and realized that, finally and thank God, Romanus had mercifully died.

  “You knew, did you not, Maria?”

  A long pause, even more excruciating than the previous one. A tactical error on his mother's part, trying to wait out his father, who had a scholar's patience.

  His mother's assent, when she gave it, came in a small voice.

  “You could have told me,” his father said.

  “I would not trouble you with every rumor,” she said.

  Leo heard his father sigh. Again, the silence. This time his mother filled it with talk of books, an outing Leo might enjoy. Her voice grew brittle, almost desperate.

  It was time to practice mercy. Leo entered the room. Both greeted him with ill-concealed relief.

  In silence, he was served. His mother, her voice still too bright and quick, insisted that he barely ate enough to keep a babe alive, that now that he had returned to Constantinople, it was her duty and her joy to feed him back to strength ...

  How else had she cared for him? Leo had seen the rage and helplessness on his father's face when Andronicus Ducas had entered the Emperor's box at the Hippodrome. Shame swept over him like a wave of fire. How contemptible you are, Leo!

  Smiling, the lady Maria watched her son choke down food he did not want.

  When he had struggled with breakfast for long enough to reassure her that he was still her obedient son, she smiled and, from her capacious memory, produced her great concern: the list of eligible daughters of noble houses with whom she might ally him—and her own fortunes.

  His father listened in silence only slightly less threatening than a storm.

  “There is a price for such a match,” he said. “How much do we pay this time?”

  “Not more than I can afford for my only son,” said Maria.

  “We have paid too much already.”

  Leo drew back from the table, even as his mother pressed her hands to her crimson cheeks. How had his father managed to insult both his wife and his son at once? As God was his witness, Leo came by his bad luck honestly.

  “No ... Leo, my son ... that is not what I meant. You are worth any price ... Oh, curse it...” His father rose and left the table. The sunlight that had sparkled on the pale-scrubbed wood and made the broken bread and honey glow seemed to diminish. Lady Maria cast a look at Leo, bit her lip, and withdrew in the opposite direction.

  Andronicus Ducas had been in the City, and neither Leo nor his father had known. His mother, however, had; and the ladies she knew had taxed her with it. Now, she carried herself with the angry dignity of one who hopes to use her manner to overawe questioners.

  The problem, Leo thought, had to have a solution. Abruptly, he was afraid to ask. He remembered Alexius’ eyes: the boy had pitied his Ducas kin.

  Leo left the table. With the door to his father's study already closed, the rest of the house seemed too small, too sweetly scented with care that had become a burden. He left that too, hoping thereby to shut his fears behind him within its massive door.

  He strode toward the Mese. The clamor of a hundred trades warred with the chants from the churches that he passed, but he heard none of them in his haste to get away.

  Leo had become adroit in avoiding precisely the sorts of meetings that the ladies of Byzantium thought would repair his credit—and his mother's—within the circles that revolved about the court. After all, he had just made a highly public appearance at the Hippodrome with his father and Anna Dalassena's son: that should content the talebearers, who might have been glad to say that he had withdrawn from the amusements of his class as well as its obligations; who might say he was ashamed to raise his head. There was truth in that—best not think of it.

  For today, he resolved, he would not think. Today would be his. He longed for a clean time, a clean place—well, Leo, why not head for the Baths?

  Because there would be eyes there, voices there, whispers and gestures there. In all the city, what could he seek that might be clean?

  Inspiration escaped from the back of his thoughts and seized him. He had left the house on a whim and in fear. Now, however, now, he knew what he must do. He would recapture that sense of comfort with which he had waked.

  Today, he would search for the woman whose face had eased him into the most restful sleep he had known for months. He doubted that the ladies of his acquaintance would approve of his plans at all. Certainly, they would not enhance his future, such future as he had. All the better. He straightened his shoulders and walked faster. A cook-stall drew his attention, and he devoured the coarse bread with more appetite than he had shown, even for his favorite dishes, painstakingly cooked, since his return to Constantinople.

  The chilly air swept across the Bosphorus from Asia like an outraged Turkish horde, or the way that the City might view such a force. The City saw the Turks, by and large, as barbarians and pagans. He knew better, remembering the formidably disciplined forces that Alp Arslan had wielded with such deadly skill.

  He was angry now, that courteous host and ruler who had saved Leo's life and given his Emperor at least a chance of regaining his throne. No, Alp Arslan was anything but a barbarian. But he was angered at the death of the man with whom he had signed a treaty and for whom he had truly felt some friendship. And he was right, pagan that he was, killer that he most certainly was—and all the sages and priests of Byzantium were wrong.

  There was no accounting for these things. Look at Leo himself. He should be in Hagia Sophia right now, praising God that his family had taken him back and sought to establish him within the city. Instead ... there was no point, he thought, in returning to the Spice Bazaar. He did not think that Asherah's father had been a spice merchant.

  Up the Mese he strode, toward the finer stalls. It was a risk coming here: this close to the palace, he would most certainly be observed. But he could always say that he wanted a gift for his mother, or the Lady Anna, or even for a future bride.

  Hours later, dizzy from the array of silks, patterns, and scents, Leo turned his back on the arcades filled with luxuries. The chime of coins, tested and stacked by the moneychangers, rang in his ears. Something—half monk, half madman—raved on a corner. From time to time, he edged against a wall: a litter pushed through, heralded by some August Lady's servants; or a noble rode by, eyeing him as if wondering whether or not to accord him recognition. Troops of soldiers marched by, deliberately not looking to right or left as they crowded merchants and servants from as far away as Egypt or Persia out of the street. They were bound for duty on the towers and walls that girdled the City. They had a cold day for it and would have colder days yet. Already, well away from the palace, officials had ordered the boards put up in the arcades, to give those beggars and paupers who overflowed the monasteries and workhouses some poor shelter.

  More soldiers shouldered by, one party leading a donkey on which, face toward the creature's rump, a condemned criminal jolted. His hands were tied behind him, and he had no defense against the lash that had already laid open his back.

  What crime had the man committed to be treated thus? Perhaps this man on his way to torment or execution had been a murderer o
r a traitor. Leo looked at the man's face, trying to read in it some evidence of evil, or of shame. He saw only the man he had tended so long. You will not have much longer to suffer, he thought and looked away.

  He was hardly what could be called a good Samaritan: if he were not careful, he might find himself facing a mule's ass and execution. Leo muttered a prayer—as much for possible onlookers as for himself—and turned away.

  He knew he wandered among pickpockets and prostitutes, both of which might regard him as rightful prey.

  Perhaps he was. He was a son of Eve as well as of his mother (best not think of his father now): they were sinners all. He quickened his pace.

  The information he sought might be found in the Mese among the merchants. But it would take him far longer than he wished to find it. And by that time—he did not want to think of why he had set a time limit on his search.

  But his wanderings had given him a better idea. He turned and headed down through increasingly narrow streets, balconies overhanging them and shutting out the light, to the wharves. The great walls that protected the imperial City loomed, shadowing him, and making him shiver with the cold despite his warm cloak.

  At Phosphorion harbor, near where the great iron chain shut the Golden Horn, a ferry took Leo across the water to Pera. Leo glanced about and saw no one who might be observing him.

  Here, hemmed in by laws as well as walls, lived many of the Jews of Constantinople, a separate and accursed nation within the Empire. If Leo thought he had been out of place in the Spice Bazaar, here, he knew, he would be as alien as if he walked about unarmed in the midst of a Turkish camp.

  They were a dark-haired, dark-eyed people, as sturdy as those he had seen in his campaigns East, and with a look about them of having outlived kingdom after kingdom. They went unarmed, and he knew the severity of the laws that guarded the Empire against the likes of them. But they did not look as if such laws were necessary. He knew the stories. He knew the reasons. But in a moment of desperate fear, he had glimpsed a woman's face, and the faith and courage in its eyes armored him.