Shards of Empire

by Susan Shwartz

  Compared with that, what were those stories and reasons? The Jews were deicides. But Christ had been a Jew. Why would they have turned upon their own? Politics, he decided. He wanted to spit out the idea, but caught eyes upon him and thought better of it. The politics of Empire. Perhaps it had been pagan Rome that executed Christ, and not the Jews’ fault at all.

  His quarry watched him as he approached. He grew conscious of his clothes. They were of good wool, if hardly ostentatious; but they were the garb of a Christian, a Roman of noble birth. They made him as conspicuous as if he bore a mark of Cain.

  Why had he come here? the silent faces asked, more than a hint of fear in them. They were wary, these folk. They had learned that a visit from one of the people under whose laws they tried to survive could mean them only harm.

  The answer was simple enough. Once, he had seen a face, heard a voice that had held more comfort in a comfortless time than, even now, he could believe possible. He remembered the upright figure of the woman called Asherah, her anger at being exempted from the dreadful lottery that turned one of her brothers in faith into a torturer, the way she had dropped her veil to give a man about to lose his eyes one last fair sight, the way she had used that veil only minutes later to wipe the face of a man revolted by what he had been forced to do. Cool water in a desert, yes; and courage.

  She was a Jew. Other women glided, modestly wrapped, past him. Without evident haste, they retreated. After Asherah's steadfastness, their departure struck Leo as worse than any court snub. Here were Jews. It might be that they would know of her and ... what was her father's name? God, he was forgetting things again—and not those things he longed the most to forget.

  He shut his eyes, trying to remember. The man's name, idiot! Joachim, yes, that was right. He must have heard someone say it. And the man who had—God have mercy upon him—been forced to put out his Emperor's eyes was Menachem. Surely, one person in this place might know one of those names. How many women like Asherah could there be in an Empire?

  It was hard to remember anything but the face of the woman who had haunted his dreams and had driven out the nightmares that made him wonder, truly, if he were mad.

  A tanner yelled abuse and hurled some sort of stinking offal at him. It missed, but he whirled, hand on his dagger in any case; and the wretch recoiled, as well he might. God send that he think twice the next time he taunt his neighbors.

  Into Pera itself he walked. It was poorer than the quarter in which he lived. And it was not just shabby, but constrained, restricted by walls and laws. Hard to believe; he had always thought—when he bothered to think of it at all—that the Jews were great physicians, great princes of trade. The Emperor's physician, alone of his people, had the privilege of riding a horse within the City. It was hard, too, to think that any people would have had less freedom than he, circumscribed as he himself was, by family, custom, and constant scrutiny.

  They might be watching him now. In that case, God help any man whom he addressed. The women might know more, if they were anything like the ladies among whom he had grown to cautious manhood. But speaking to them might start a riot for which all would pay.

  It had been a mistake to come here, but he could not turn and go home without at least some attempt at finding the answers he sought. He headed away from the water, up into the narrow streets. On all sides, young men, their heads bent together in the immemorial sign of concern, even of conspiracy, whispered.

  Yet these men, for all their stooped shoulders and long robes, looked strong. Their eyes, when they looked at him, blazed with outrage at what clearly was an intrusion. They were a turbulent people, these Jews. Doubtless, those earlier Romans in Judaea had found them so. Doubtless, they had gone armed and not alone into the Jewish quarters of the land they ruled. Patrician of this City Leo might be. But he was not welcome here. He saw the veiled figures of women urged away, into the nearest building. Most obeyed in haste: one lingered, and he half-heard the faint music of her voice; but even she ultimately yielded.

  Two of the young men slipped away from the crowd. Did they go to bring others—or to fetch weapons to wield against him? Why even bring weapons? Pick up a loose stone, a sturdy stick, thrust him in between two of the narrow buildings; and his brains would spatter the walls. Thieves, they could say. Terrible thing, thieves in Byzantium.

  Or perhaps they would blame it upon the tanners. In either case, Leo would be dead. It could happen. Keeping his hand away from his belt took all the courage he had.

  Swiftly the young men of the quarter returned. Unarmed, thank God; but other, older men followed them more slowly, but with equal determination. They gestured the young, angry men—sons? nephews?—to remain behind, then approached Leo. Like him, they took care to move slowly, to keep their hands away from belts that might hold daggers.

  The man who spoke first wore clothes finer than any Leo possessed. He held up a hand: well-tended, but very sure. Not a courtier, God knew. A scholar? A wealthy merchant?

  “I saw you in the Spice Bazaar,” he asked without elaboration of courtesy. “You should not have been there either. What have you come here for?”

  A merchant, then? No. Leo placed him. A physician. The man from the Spice Market. The Emperor's physician. In that case, the man knew him and knew better than to use names. Perhaps he thought Leo had come to implore him to treat his family? It was their souls that were diseased, afflicted with betrayal and despair, not their bodies, at least, not yet.

  Leo paused. Other men stalked up behind the physician. They too were older, and they wore dark, full garments. They had a look about them, a look of priests. He had not thought before that Jews might have priests, men they held in honor. Though, he thought how, how could they not? Aaron had been a priest, and before him Melchizedek had been priest and king. But these men's faces were closed as the city's walls when a war was feared. Oh, these people understood walls and protection. They were their own fortresses.

  Was this how Asherah had learned her strength?

  “I seek a merchant and his daughter whom I met in Cotyaeum in the army's camp. They had been brought there with others. I heard the name Menachem. The merchant had a daughter...”

  “Joachim...”

  “You know ... he traffics in dyes, in silks, in fine carpets...”

  “From the caravan routes, with the Radanites?”

  “Hush!”

  The physician held up his hand, restraining Leo's voice.

  “What need do you have of these men? And by what right do you even mention...”

  Leo met the older man's eyes. He was a physician; Leo was a soul in pain. Let him see that.

  “I was one who was in that camp. I saw...”

  “Let even the memory of those people and their names fade, August Sir.” The words were a command, but the physician spoke them in a tone more like a plea.

  “Their lives answer for this, as do the lives of every one of us in the Empire.” It was one of the dark-garbed men who spoke. His eyes flickered toward the house into which Leo had seen the women flee.

  “I beg you, young sir, if these people deserved well of you...”

  Leo began to speak of their courage, his remembrance of Asherah's eyes and her steadfastness, but the other man held up his hand.

  “If you think well of them, leave them, noble sir, leave them and their people in peace. I can swear to you by the Ark of the Covenant that the ones you seek are not here. Seek not to know more lest you endanger all. I beg you.”

  The tone Leo had heard in his father's words this morning acquired a name. Fear. Fear of him, what he might say, his very presence.

  Leo was not his father, though, to retreat into his study. He held out his hands, allowing the older man, the priest, to see the pain in his eyes.

  He shook his head in pity, but also in repudiation. “God pity you, my son.”

  How odd that “my son” did not repulse Leo as he would have thought it might. How very odd. People hurried down the narrow stre
et. No women could be seen now. Up and down the street, narrow windows, all but covered with shutters, lit. He heard chants rise from one old, low building, too humble and too battered to be a fortress, but hunched down on the street as if it were an old man protecting his head. Leo had not known that Jews had separate buildings for worship ... that is, he had not known that the Empire allowed them such buildings.

  “Reb Gamaliel...”

  “I know, I know ... it is almost sundown. But this young man is a soul in torment, and I cannot leave him thus—any more than I could leave one of our own people—until I know he...”

  Leo realized that he was still staring at the man. The “Reb"—why, that was like the word in the Gospels that they used for Christ! How right he had been; this man was a sort of priest.

  What if I knelt, what if I begged him to hear me?

  Something snickered at the back of his mind. Excellent, Leo: abase yourself in the middle of the street, as these men hasten toward whatever unimaginable rite ...

  They spoke of a Sabbath ...

  He glanced at Reb Gamaliel. Almost, he was moved to act on his desire to throw himself at the older man's feet.

  But Reb Gamaliel, with infinite sadness, was shaking his head.

  “God forgive me for being another such—what is that story of yours? The man who passed upon the other side? I would stop to succor you, I give you my word I would, had I not my people to protect. In doing so, I protect you as well. I beg you, for all of our sakes—yours as well as ours, go away.”

  The sky began to darken. Beyond the water, the churches lit. He would not be able to hear the monks chant from where he stood. Leo looked at the Emperor's physician. The man seemed genuinely agitated.

  Would he know if Leo had been followed?

  Very likely, he might even recognize the Emperor's spies. Psellus’ spies, that was.

  “Hurry!” commanded the older man. “It is almost the Sabbath. You would not care to eat with us, and it would be more than our lives are worth to constrain you to spend this holy evening with us. You must go ... now.”

  Against his will, Leo's gaze shifted to the physician. He shook his head with absolute authority and no fear at all. After all, he served a Ducas, had seen the head of that house, of the entire Empire laid low before him. He was valuable to the Empire as Leo was not, regardless of what bargain his mother had struck.

  “It is better so, young Ducas.” The physician's voice might as well have been a whisper over a deathbed. It was the death of hope.

  The elders gestured, and the young men disappeared into the various houses. Leo found himself heading back to the wharf. The sun as it burned upon the water, one last explosion of glory before it set, dazzled him, and he stumbled as he walked.

  As he boarded the ferry, he realized that he had bowed to Reb Gamaliel and to the Emperor's physician as if to his father's friends.

  But he had not found Asherah.

  And what had he wished to do? Asherah's tears had long dried, and the gold her father Joachim offered for water had been spent months ago. As for Menachem: Leo could say he forgave him for blinding Romanus, but could he ever forgive him for the pain his bungling had put the poor man through?

  Back over the water he was carried. Lights reflected in it, cast from lamps and polycandela in houses. Surely those houses contained people, simple people, please God, whose enemies lay outside their families. The shimmer of that light, distorted as it was, made his eyes ache as if he recovered from a long bout of weeping. To that extent, at least, he had not fallen. But his eyes burned, all the same.

  He flinched at that thought: he had seen what it was for eyes to burn. He had seen what it was when a man was forced to burn them, with his kin watching. It seemed hard that he would never again see the man and woman who had comforted victim and tormenter. He sighed. Only as the water carried him away from the people who might have brought him news did he realize how much he had hoped to find the woman of whom he had dreamed.

  And then what? Will you bring her home to your mother?

  The water looked dark and deep as the sun set and its reflected fire died. Drowning, they said, was an easy death. He had but to hurl himself over the ferry's side. Aye, but how many of the crew, how many passengers who milled about the boat, might stop him? Leo drew his dark cloak more closely about his shoulders and shuddered, not from the cold.

  All that winter morning, Justinian's great church of Hagia Sophia had filled. The heavy furs and brocades Leo's mother had chivvied Leo into wearing had sustained him as he had had to wait outside in the courtyard with what felt like half the City.

  First, the Emperor had arrived. How cold the stone felt against Leo's lips as he reluctantly prostrated himself, colder than the earth on which he had lain that long night of Leo's lost Emperor's defeat, more than a year ago. Although the dome and lower roofs were still coated with snow and the trees still sparkled with it, at least, the ice on the paving stones had melted.

  Michael looked spindly and almost lost in the gold-embroidered richness of his robes. His shoulders hunched beneath their weight. The strength of his guardsmen, grinning and ruddy in the snow, robust in crimson silk, made him look even more pallid.

  Yes, His Exalted Majesty had never looked more splendid, Leo agreed—and hated himself for it. Here he was, outside the greatest church in the Empire. All his thoughts should be gathered into the contemplation of God, and instead, he must serve Caesar, even if Caesar were hailed as vicegerent of heaven.

  Chants and prayers rose on the other side of the church as well. Led by a deacon with Gospel and censer, the clergy arrived, their gowns brushing the stone. Patriarch and Emperor met in the vestibule and proceeded through the Aurea Porta beneath a mosaic of Christ, before whom an Emperor Leo prostrated himself, and into the high nave of the church.

  Leo had always thought Hagia Sophia a testament as much to the wisdom of mathematics as to the wisdom of God. Just entering it satisfied something within him. It had a rightness of proportion—galleries and nave were precisely the right dimensions to enable him to partake of the immensity and grandeur of heaven, while not reducing him past the (admittedly tiny) stature of a man. A man, not an insect: no matter how humble mankind was in the sight of God and His angels, Christ had become Man; and men had designed and built this place.

  The pale light of winter crowned the nave, glowing above it like a diadem of aquamarines and casting a luster upon the thin panels of porphyry that clad the walls. And floating a hundred and fifty feet across the floor, like a celestial version of the Emperor's crown, was the great vault of Hagia Sophia's dome. Beneath it, worshippers were subtly contained, yet liberated as if they stood under a sky that was not of this earth, a sky that glittered and shimmered with the flecks of light from thousands upon thousands of golden tesserae that adorned the mighty church.

  Across the nave swept the patriarch, past the circular pulpit where a guard of honor attended him, toward the sanctuary at the east end of the nave, down the carpet to his throne. A rustle sounded, oddly loud in the noble space, as the clergy took their places in banks of raised seats. The fumes of incense rose into the air, dancing with the dust motes that slanting rays of light caught and seemed to hold aloft forever. Incense—a millennium ago, it had been frankincense brought the length of the caravan routes, along with myrrh and gold, offered to the infant Christ: splendor, worship, and a preparation for the sorrowful mystery that must inevitably follow.

  He knew that in this season of the year, sorrow should yield to adoration and joy. The congregation seemed especially rapt this morning: God knows, the City felt it had reason to rejoice.

  For the same reason, Leo felt a traitorous desire to mourn. News had come, delivered by an exhausted man on a horse steaming with sweat and trembling with the effort not to collapse in the cold. Not “rejoice, we have conquered,” and death to the messenger; but “rejoice, he has died.”

  Alp Arslan, the Enemy of the Empire, the man who had sworn to unleash his hor
des upon it after Romanus was done to death, had himself died at the hands of a rebellious subject.

  Was it wrong to mourn the death of an enemy? Alp Arslan, the mountain lion, as he had been called, had dealt with Leo more fairly than many a Roman. And—Leo had to admit it—he had respected the man, liked his fairness, the largeness of soul that could enable him to toy with an Emperor, then set him at his right hand and even advise him on the conduct of his armies. Alp Arslan had called Leo “lion's cub” and spoken him fair. And now he was dead, at far too little of the threescore and ten that, surely, God meant even Turks to have.

  They would think Leo a worse traitor than ever they had if he admitted he mourned the man. It would be terrible timing: his mother had been proud of him this morning. When they greeted friends, neighbors, and relatives (far too often, not the same people), no one had looked at him askance or even hinted that he might well walk small. He was a Ducas son; he was home; it was right and proper that he appear in Hagia Sophia where his cousin sat enthroned. Doubtless, his mother was watching from the galleries right now—and being dissected by the other ladies.

  At least, Andronicus had left the City, Leo thought. It was an unworthy thought. He was unworthy.

  Best not think of that, not here in this church. Here, even he might release his spirit, let it soar like the fumes of incense, the deep-throated, multi-voiced chant, the light as it lanced from the windows below the dome onto men's faces so that the lines of care and fear that scarred them smoothed out for a time in worship.

  And if, in that moment, he bent his head and breathed a prayer for the soul of his City's enemy, who would know? Only God and His Son. Alp Arslan had shown himself more forgiving than an Emperor. Surely, God would show himself more merciful than a Turk.

  It was right to love one's enemies. God would not begrudge Alp Arslan a prayer in the center of an Empire that should have been his ally. Another thought insinuated itself, as subtle and seductive as the fumes of the incense that twined about the rays of light in the great church. After Leo had prayed for an enemy's soul, when his mind was most composed and pure, surely the Bearer of God would not object if he breathed a prayer for the well-being of the woman he had tried to find.