Anna of Byzantium (2 page)

I had already learned that the mother had long trained her face not to show emotion, so I could not tell if she was surprised. She merely replied, “We would be grateful for your assistance and I would gladly grant you permission. But as you know, I must consult with the emperor before approving any change in your daily routine.”

As she said this, I was glad that I was no less disciplined than she, for if my face had shown what I felt, I would have terrified the meek little women still lining the hallway with the sight of the bitter hatred that welled up in me at the mention of my brother. For it is his fault that I am here; his fault that my intelligence and my training are being wasted within these stone walls; his fault that I am not sitting on the high throne as empress of the
Byzantine Empire. For I am Anna Comnena, and I was born in the purple chamber, where the heirs to the throne of the most powerful empire in the world first see the light.

fter the noon meal today, Mother Superior informed me that she had received word that “the emperor” had no objection to my copying manuscripts. He also sent me his prayers. Not that I want them.

So in the afternoon I left my room, and with a little nun as guide, made my way to the scriptorium. This convent is really just a large farmhouse, but it is old, and the wooden floors creak underfoot as you walk. My guide led me down the dark hall. The mother superior rarely allows either candles or torches, and the weak winter sun is not enough to illuminate these rooms.

Down the hall we went in silence, and then up the narrow stairs to the
scriptorium, a small room on the corner of the building with window-slits facing west and south. What little sun there was shone through more brightly here, and a small fire burned in the hearth. I sat on a vacant stool. As no one paid me the least attention, I had leisure to look around.

Four nuns were perched on high wooden stools, bent over tables littered with paper, inks, pens, and short knives. Their sleeves were rolled up for greater ease in writing. Since they usually hide their hands in their wide sleeves, I was almost startled to see that they indeed had hands and wrists. I could not see their faces, and only occasionally would one shift position, heave a sigh, or rub her fingers, which must have been cramped from the work. A young novice in a white robe darted from one to the other, filling ink-pots, sharpening pens, cleaning brushes, all without saying a word. I wondered how she knew which sister needed attention.

For two hours I sat on a hard stool, hands folded on my lap, waiting for Sister Thekla, who is in charge of the scriptorium, to assign me a task. This sister walked up and down in front of the tables, occasionally pointing at something on a page without saying a word. The nun whose paper had been indicated would nod, then reach for the sharp knife kept handy to scrape off mistakes.

I had never spoken to Sister Thekla, but had ample opportunity to observe her as she walked up and down, pretending not to notice my existence. She is short and plain, with a mustache, and eyebrows that meet above her nose. She was evidently pleased to be able to make an imperial
princess wait for her convenience. But I am patient. I know how to wait. I started learning patience before I was born.

As a child, I often heard my mother tell the story of my birth. Two days before I was born, in the year of Our Lord 1083, my mother, the Empress Irene Ducaena, felt me stirring in her belly and was worried that I would appear before my father came home from war. So she made the sign of the cross over me where I lay in her belly, and said, “Wait, Little One, until your father returns.” Her mother told her she was being foolish, for what if my father were delayed for a month or more? Could she bear the pangs of labor that long? But fortunately for both of us, just two days later the emperor returned in triumph, and I was born in the great bedchamber hung with imperial purple, where all children of the emperor come into the world.

Now, I told myself, if I can wait two days to be born, out of respect for my mother’s wishes, surely I can wait a few hours while a homely nun pretends to ignore me as I sit quietly on a stool.

I did not much mind the wait, in any case. It was good to smell the ink and hear the scratching of the pens once more. I have always loved learning, and as a child was the prize pupil of the imperial tutor and librarian, the eunuch Simon, a small man with no hair and a round belly. When he discovered my passion for the chronicles of our ancestors, he set me to memorizing large portions of the
Iliad.
“You can learn everything you need to know about life from this book, Little Beetle,” he said to me. “It’s all
there—love, hatred, life, death, immortality—everything you humans find important.”

“
We
humans? But surely you are human, too, Simon?”

“Not really. Not anymore,” he said. “A slave is not a human being, Princess; or were you not aware of that?”

I didn’t like it when he talked like that. Father Agathos said that we should all be content to be where God had placed us. I had been born in the purple, and I was to marry the man my father had chosen as his heir, so I would be the next empress. Simon had been born the son of a schoolmaster in a village that had revolted against the rule of my father’s family, the Comneni, so he and his family became slaves.

According to Father Agathos, this was logical, and a good instance of God’s plan; for how could I be empress if there were no slaves? For me to fulfill my destiny, Simon had to fulfill his. I accepted this without question, as my mother had told me that Father Agathos was very wise. But it still made me uneasy.

My memories of Simon were interrupted by Sister Thekla, who suddenly appeared before me and glowered into my face. When I looked up at her, she turned on her heel and marched down to the end of one of the copy-desks. I assumed I was to follow, although at another time of my life, a common woman who turned her back on me would have been instantly banished from the empire. But I care for these forms no longer, and followed her to the place that had been recently vacated by one of the nun-scribes.

Sister Thekla nodded to the little novice, who scurried
up to my spot with a pen, a bottle of thin black ink, and a piece of parchment that had been used and reused so many times that the constant scraping had worn it almost away. Sister Thekla pointed to the top of the page and said,
“Alpha.”
She then turned on her heel and marched away once again.

I burned. She had set me the most elementary writing task, one that I had accomplished with skill and ease at the age of five. Yet if she wanted rows of the letter
alpha,
the first letter of the alphabet,
alpha
she would get.

As I clenched the pen, thinking how to begin, the novice appeared at my side. In front of me she placed a straight piece of wood and a pointed stick. These were for me to make straight lines across the paper, pressing the point of the stick into the paper to make a dent that would gradually disappear after I had written. As I reached for them, the girl gave me a shy smile, blinking at me with lashless eyes above a pink nose that ran. I did not return her smile. Did she not know who I was? Who was she to offer friendship to me? After all, I had learned what friendship meant, and did not trust it anymore.

For an hour I sat at my bench, making rows of
alphas.
The first ones were simple, like those of a child, but I gradually embellished them, adorning them with curlicues and extravagant ornamentation. By the time I got to the bottom of the page, a reader could hardly tell what letter he was looking at, so hidden in the depth of the flourishes was the original
alpha.

When I finally realized that I was cold and looked up, I saw that I was alone but for Sister Thekla, who was now
seated at the end of the room. The other sisters had slipped out while I was working, and the small fire was reduced to embers and ashes. Not wishing to carry my work to the nun like a small child to her teacher, I folded my hands in my lap and stared straight ahead. Sister Thekla also sat with her hands in her lap, although she looked down at them and not at me. I could see her fingers moving over the beads of her rosary as her lips moved in prayer.

In silence we waited. I could tell that the sun was sinking ever lower, as the room grew darker and chillier. I was glad of my woolen cloak and wondered how the nun was standing the cold on her stone perch. Longer and longer we waited. I grew hungry and started to feel the need to visit the privy. Still we waited.

At last, I heard the convent bell begin to toll. I knew that Sister Thekla had to present herself at prayers, and that the mother superior was expecting to hear how I had performed at my task. Sister Thekla knew it too, and finally rose to her feet and came in my direction. She bent her head and looked at my writing. Without glancing at me or saying a word, she nodded, turned, and left the room.

I sat for another minute, so as not to follow Sister Thekla too closely, and then as I walked down the now-black corridor, I almost laughed out loud. I had triumphed, indeed, but what a triumph! A nun had tried to humiliate me even further than I had already been humiliated, and I had resisted. But what an enemy on whom to practice my long-studied arts of diplomacy and cunning.
I should have been dealing with a foreign prince, a bishop, a sultan, not with a little woman of no importance save in her own small world.

How had I fallen so far? Why were my feet not ringing on the polished marble floors of the palace in Constantinople? Why were servants not running to bring me delicate foods, to light a roaring fire in a tapestry-hung hall? Why were my feet covered with coarse shoes instead of silk slippers, and my hair gathered up in a loose knot instead of woven into complicated braids and lightly patted with perfume?

A small voice kept saying in time to my footsteps, “You did it yourself-yourself-yourself—you did it yourself-yourself-yourself,” but I hushed it. If I had succeeded—if my mother and I had managed to accomplish what we had set out to do—if we had not been betrayed by those we most trusted—I would now be seated next to my husband in the imperial throne room, and that small, ugly man who calls himself the emperor and my brother would be buried in the cold, dark ground of Constantinople.

here is no reason I should find it so hard to sleep; my bed is comfortable enough, and it is quiet. I hear the ringing of the bell summoning the nuns to prayer, and the rustle of their robes as they shuffle to the chapel. If I listen hard, I can hear their faint voices chanting downstairs, and then their footsteps as they return to their dormitories once more.

Some nights, as I lie here in the quiet, I look up at the low ceiling, then around at the bare stone walls, the narrow windows, the meager furnishings. My table is near the larger of the two windows, and when the moonlight is strong I can see the inkwell and scraps of paper that Sister Thekla has allowed me to take
back to my room, to “practice my writing,” she says. I did not tell her what is obvious to both of us: that my handwriting is clearer than that of any nun in the convent. As I left today she handed me a sheaf of old, torn paper, a worn-out pen, and some poor thin ink.

“Take these to your room,” she instructed me. “While we sisters are praying, practice your letters.”

Practice my letters, indeed! I have in mind a much better use for these materials. Since I cannot sleep, I will sit at my little table, and by the light of the moon, write down as many of my memories as come to me. I started with an account of my life here and my visit to the scriptorium, but these memories are nothing when compared with my life before I came to this barren place. It is these images that I wish to put on paper before they fade.

I am more recently arrived at the convent than are most of the sisters. Their recollections of their former days must be dim by now, and what they have to remember is probably of dreary lives on farms, or occasionally a small manor. My mind is filled with more glorious images.

Of course what I remember most is my family. My father used to joke that someday people would find it difficult to understand how we were all related to each other, especially after I married, because then our already complicated family trees would be intertwined. My betrothed, Constantine Ducas, came from royalty. His father had been Emperor Michael VII, and his stepfather Emperor Nicephorus III. His grandfather had also been emperor, and was also named Constantine, the tenth emperor of
that name, and that Constantine’s wife had been named Eudocia Dalassena.