Anna of Byzantium (17 page)

“You dare!” I gasped. “You dare lay a hand on the
daughter of your emperor, Alexius Comnenus! He will have your head!
I
will have your head!”

“Not likely,” said a thin voice from the doorway. There stood two figures, both robed in silk, both crowned. The smaller one, who had spoken, was my brother; the larger, my grandmother. Anna Dalassena wore a gleeful smile, and her wrinkled hand grasped the boy’s shoulder.

“You forgot your bow to the heir,” she said.

My head whirled and my stomach churned, and I suddenly felt I was going to vomit. I fought it back, fiercely forbidding myself to show any weakness. A bow was what they wanted, and a bow was what they would get—but I would face an executioner before I would prostrate myself full-length on the floor. It is proper for a sister to nod to her brother, so this is what I did.

“I hope I find you in health, Little Brother.” If they had forbidden the guards to address me by my title, no power on earth could make me call the monkey Your Majesty.

He looked at our grandmother, evidently confused. Good, I said to myself. You thought I would refuse. I know how to play chess, too, Grandmother. Only you would do well to plan your moves further in advance and expect the unexpected. And even though you’ve found someone to be your puppet, don’t count on this half-wit to make any moves without your help.

Before he had a chance to regain his composure, I asked, “What is the meaning of this? At whose orders will the guard not let me pass? Yours?” I addressed my grandmother.

“No, mine,” said John.

“Yours?
By what right—”

“By right of proclamation,” replied my grandmother. “Your father, as always, has decreed that while he is away at war I am to decide all matters as though I were emperor. I have decided that the heir to the throne must start to learn his duties now. It is up to him who attends audiences, and he has decreed that you are not permitted in the throne room. You may return to your books.”

Without doubt, I was in check. But it was not checkmate. Surely, surely, my father would return soon—he had said that this latest trip was merely a short campaign to quell unrest along the borders. When he came back he would make all right again.

But this time he was gone two long years. And when he finally came home, I was not permitted to present my case to him, for he returned ill, borne on a litter by four slaves, and for days lay near death in the Pearl Palace, attended constantly by my mother and grandmother. I wanted to help, but my grandmother would not let me in the sickroom.

It was a long, weary time. Anna Dalassena retained power, since my father was too ill to hold audiences or even see petitioners, and his decree making her regent while he was away was held to be in force until he could regain his strength. I was still barred from the throne room, and was too distracted to spend long hours at my books. Simon was too busy for stories and would send me away. I was left with no one but Sophia.

Sophia usually accompanied me to the library. I was under no illusion that she came for the joy of my company.
I knew that she hoped to catch a glimpse of Malik, whom she rarely saw. At these times, I would pretend not to see them when they exchanged smiles, or even touched hands when they thought I was not looking. But he usually would be called upon to move a box, reach a book on a high shelf, or travel into the city to pick up something that Simon had ordered, and Sophia would join me at my worktable.

She, of course, could not read, but she would turn over the pages of the books and look at the pictures while I studied. One of her favorites was a psalm-book my father had had a Frankish monastery create for my mother. I could understand my maid’s fascination with the book. The letters were more beautifully formed than I had seen in any other work. Most marvelous of all, every page was illustrated with paintings of angels, shepherds, mountains, blue skies, castles.

I looked over to see what page held her interest so long. She was gazing at a scene richly illustrated with an angel, golden wings spread wide, hovering over a city. Even though the whole picture was no larger than my hand, I could see the town walls, and towers, and even tiny windows in the buildings. In the field outside the city, small people in clothes of many colors were bent over the ground.

“What are they doing, Sophia?” I asked.

“Those are farmers. They’re planting crops,” she answered.

I looked closer. So that was what the farmers who came to plead with my grandmother were talking about. I had seen gardeners growing flowers and ornamental shrubbery
but had never seen “crops.” In the picture I didn’t see anything I recognized as food. Then I noticed that some of the figures wore long dresses.

“How odd! There are women outside, in front of men, with no veils on their faces!”

“Most women wear no veils, Your Majesty. It is only in the palace and among the nobility that women must cover their faces.”

This was a strange thought. I had never been outside the walls of the city, and rarely outside the palace, except when we moved to the Daphne Palace in summer and back to Balchernae in the winter. And in the palace, a woman would just as soon appear in public without her clothes on as without a veil covering her face.

“This is Constantinople,” Sophia said. She went on, “See—here’s Balchernae Palace, with your bedroom window that faces the ocean. There’s the Daphne Palace, and the church of St. Sophia, and the horse field. And you can see all the other buildings inside the compound.”

I bent closer, looking for a picture of myself. But I could not see any figures inside the walls. Hovering directly over the palace was an especially beautiful angel, long wings gleaming with what had to be real gold. This angel’s arms were spread wide over the city. I said, an edge of contempt creeping into my voice, “And I suppose my mother would say that this is the guardian angel who is always over the city, looking after us and taking care of us.”

Sophia looked surprised. “Of course. Don’t you believe in angels, Princess?”

“I am a historian. I believe in what I can see,” I sai “I
have never seen an angel, nor have I read of any in my histories. And if there are guardian angels, why do they allow evil to happen? I should think that you, of all people, would know that.”

Sophia flushed. “I have had doubts,” she said, “but I know that someone is helping me. How else could Malik have found me?”

“Why would he have had to look for you if your village had not been destroyed?” I countered. “Where was your angel when your little sister was killed or enslaved? Where was mine when my grandmother convinced my father to name John his heir?”

Sophia set her jaw stubbornly. “I don’t know the answer to that,” she said, “and I hope you don’t let Father Agathos hear you say such things. I am not a Christian, but he says many wise things, and your mother thinks that everything he says is true. Surely you don’t doubt your own mother?”

I did not like being interrogated by a slave, so I turned back to my book.

That night I slept fitfully. I woke up with a start in the darkness. What had I heard? Could it have been the rustle of angel wings overhead? I sat up, careful not to disturb Sophia, who was sleeping on a pallet at the foot of my bed. I listened again. Nothing. But I wanted to be sure, so I slipped out of my bed and stole to the door. Holding my breath, I carefully pushed aside the heavy hanging and slipped through the opening. I moved down the hall, my bare feet almost noiseless on the stone floor. The last time I had been in the corridor alone had been the night Malik
had come to the palace. But I was older now, and moved with less fear. Still, I was careful not to be discovered. I had no idea what would be my brother’s reaction to this nighttime excursion.

I soon found myself outside on the high battlements. A breeze stirred the air and cooled my moist cheeks. Keeping close to the wall, I craned my neck backward, scanning the sky. There was nothing. The calm stars and the moon shone steadily, with no hovering angel to block them from view. I stayed as long as I dared, slipping behind stone battlements every time I heard a guard go by. Finally, shivering with cold and disappointment, I retraced my steps.

As I lay awake for the rest of the night, I wondered why the psalm-book had pictured something that did not exist, and why my mother spoke of our guardian angel. All I could think was that everyone had lied, and that no one was watching over me.

y father’s health was much improved. When the news reached me in the library, I jumped up, uncaring of the self-restraint due my position, and clapped my hands. At last my father would be back, sharing meals with the family, exercising his horses, ruling from his high throne.

But I would have to wait. The emperor was weak, and required a great deal of rest before resuming his duties. As for soldiering, it was doubtful that he would ever go on another campaign. Aside from this latest illness, he had long been troubled with gout and arthritis, making riding on horseback excruciatingly painful. And while earlier rulers had been carried to battle in a litter and observed the action from
afar, my father had been a soldier for years before being proclaimed emperor, and I knew that he would never consent to such a humiliation.

It was a joyous afternoon when the emperor’s family was allowed to visit him. I was ushered into the sickroom, which was dark, with windows closed to keep off the injurious aspects of the outside air. The room smelled like illness, and like medicine, and it took a few minutes for my breathing to adjust to the close air, and for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. When I could finally see, my heart sank at the sight of my grandmother sitting at the head of my father’s bed, John standing at her side, as always.

I knelt by the bed, and felt my father’s hand on my head in blessing. I did not trust myself to raise my face, which I knew was shining with tears. Sophia, who had followed me closely, knelt by my side, and surreptitiously pressed a handkerchief into my hand. Taking advantage of the darkness and glad that the high bed partly hid me, I quickly wiped my eyes and passed the handkerchief back to her, then awaited my father’s words.

His voice was weak. “I am glad to see you, my daughter,” he said. “Are you impatient for the return of your betrothed?”

I raised my head and looked at him. He was thin and his skin looked yellow. I could see that under the blanket his legs and feet were terribly swollen. I was spared the necessity of answering (for what could I say, that I hardly noticed Nicephorus Bryennius’ absence?) by my grandmother, who said, “The princess finds consolation for her solitary state in the study of history.”

“My scholar,” said my father fondly. He started to raise himself up on his pillows but was seized with a fit of coughing. The physician and his assistant hastened to the bedside, and while the physician held my father upright, the younger man poured red wine from a beaker into a small cup, and then carefully poured into it a drop of liquid from a small flask. The physician took the cup and said impatiently, “No, no! That is far too much! Do you want to kill His Majesty?” He poured half the medicated wine into another cup and filled it with more wine, thus diluting the medicine by half. He went back to holding my father up while the assistant helped him drink.

“What are you giving him?” I asked.

“It is a medicine against the cough,” he answered curtly. As if I couldn’t have deduced that for myself! But if he didn’t want to tell me the name of the drug, there was nothing I could do about it. Physicians are notoriously jealous of their knowledge.

Everyone was occupied with my father. Before I knew what I was doing, my hand had flashed out and seized the flask of medicine. No one saw my impulsive action, as it was dark and there was so much confusion brought about by my father’s desperate attempts to breathe. All eyes were on the bed. All but Sophia’s.

My father finally stopped coughing and lay back on his pillows. Gently my mother wiped a thin stream of spittle from his beard and laid a cloth on his forehead. She said, “You must leave now; His Majesty needs rest. You may give him one kiss before you go.”

I panicked. How to explain the flask in my hand? But
before I could drop it, Sophia’s strong fingers removed it. I felt dizzy, as though time had reversed its course and I was once more a little girl in the hot courtyard, and Sophia was taking the chalice from me. Saving me. With an effort, I acted as though nothing had happened, and bent to kiss my father on his cheek. I bowed to my mother (ignoring my brother and grandmother as I did so) and led Sophia out of the room.

We said nothing until we were back in my chamber. I made sure the door-hanging was spread tightly across the opening, and then pulled Sophia as far into the room as I could.

“Why did you take that?” I asked.

“Why did
you?”
she retorted. I was too upset to object to her insolence. In any case, I didn’t know what to answer. I had seized the flask on an impulse.

“I thought it might be useful,” I said.

“Useful in what way?”

I sat down on a stool, suddenly weary of everything; weary of what my life had become, weary of waiting for my father to recover and rescue me from my humiliation, weary of having no say over my own destiny, and suddenly weary of the endless books and stories that seemed more real to me than my life.