Anna of Byzantium (22 page)

“I have no need of a maid,” I said. “But I do need a friend.”

Before I knew it, Sophia’s arms were around me and we were both laughing and crying at the same time. We stood so for a few moments, and then Sophia pulled away. “Have you heard the latest news from the palace?” she asked.

“No,” I answered. “I hear nothing from there. What has happened?”

“Your grandmother,” she said.

I turned away as a bitter taste rose in my mouth at the mention of that woman. “What about her? Has she finally died?” I asked when I could control my voice.

“No,” said Sophia, “but I wager she would rather be dead. Your brother has divested her of all power. She stays only in the women’s wing now and daily petitions him to return her to her position as chief counselor. But I understand that he refuses even to see her.”

Well, that was something, anyway. Maybe there was hope for John. Although I doubted it.

Sophia suddenly smiled and reached for my hand. “Come—there is someone here who wants to meet you,” she said.

“Who?” I asked.

“Come see,” she replied, and pulled me through the doorway. We descended to the courtyard. It was the only place in the convent where men were allowed, and I was not surprised to see Malik, who was sitting on a box. He was holding a bundle in his arms. Sophia dropped my
hand and took the bundle from her husband, passing it on to me.

Wrapped in the blanket was a tiny baby. It had Malik and Sophia’s light-brown skin, and curly brown hair covered its head. It was a wonder to me. “A girl?” I asked.

“A girl,” Sophia replied. “Our daughter, Anna.”

For the second time that day my eyes clouded over, and a large tear splashed on the baby’s face. Sophia reached for her. “Malik,” she said, “the box.”

Malik, silent as always, stood up and bowed shyly to me, motioning to the box he had been sitting on. I went to it and removed the top. There, arranged in neat bundles, were the papers I had been working on that last day in the library, along with my pens, bottles of fine ink, and many books. I picked one up. It was a chronicle of the Crusade, and would provide me with many of the names and dates I needed to complete my story of our father.

“How did you get these?” I asked Malik.

He looked at his wife, who nodded impatiently, saying, “Go on, husband; tell her yourself.”

Malik cleared his throat and started, “When the emperor told me to destroy your books and papers, I put them in a box, preparatory to burning them. Forgive me, Princess, but I knew that my life would be forfeit if I disobeyed his command. I carried them outside and was preparing to light them, when …”

Again he looked at his wife, who once more said, “Go on, husband.”

“When Simon—” I winced at the name, but wanted to hear the rest, so said nothing. “When Simon came
bustling up, you know, that funny little run—” Again I winced, but motioned at him impatiently to continue.

“Well, he saw what I was doing and bade me stop, saying that he would do it himself, that when books are burned someone knowledgeable has to supervise to make sure that all the pages are consumed by the flame. I gladly left the task to him, and assumed that he had carried it out, until last year, when I was summoned to his deathbed.”

“What?” I broke in. “Simon has died?”

Sophia took over. “Malik and I knew where in the city he had hidden himself,” she said softly. “He was never the same since you were sent away, and when a sweating sickness went through the city last year he was felled by it and lived only a few hours. He knew he was going to die, and called Malik to him. I came too, to see if I could help.”

“I wish—” I said, “I wish I could have told him—” I broke off, unable to say what I wanted. That only now did I realize how he had loved me. That I wished I could have told him that I loved him, that he had been my real father all along, and that I now realized he had not betrayed me, but saved me. Sophia took my hand.

“He knew,” she said. “As he lay there, struggling to breathe, he said to me, ‘If you ever see my little beetle again, tell her that I always loved her as a daughter. Remind her of Agamemnon and Iphigenia, of Atreus and Thyestes. Tell her I was keeping her from their fate.’ ” She stumbled over the unfamiliar names. “Do you know what he was talking about?”

I nodded, tears blurring my vision. Malik spoke up:
“And then Simon told me that he had never burned your things but had preserved them, knowing that if the emperor ever found them he would be tortured and executed. That was why he ran away before his room could be searched. He kept them carefully as a memory of you, and with his last breath he begged me to take them, and asked that if Fate ever brought us together, to give them to you. And here they are,” he concluded simply, waving at the box.

And there they were, indeed. I pulled out the pages of fine bombazine, my fingers rejoicing in their feel after the rough parchment I had been touching that morning. I saw my own handwriting on the first page:
Alexiad,
it read.
The Deeds of His Majesty Emperor Alexius Comnenus.
At the bottom of the stack were many, many blank pages waiting to be filled.

I stood marveling, pulling out books, notes I had written, diaries I had kept of those days. With these I could write my history. I could tell the true story of Alexius, of my mother, of the great deeds of my family. I would mention Anna Dalassena and John, of course, but only when necessary. I would not allow them to tarnish the glory of the true Comneni, those whose name they had defamed.

As I examined my papers and books, the mother superior came bustling up to greet the newcomers, her usual welcoming smile on her lips.

I turned to her. “Mother,” I said, “I would like you to meet my family.”

he real Anna Comnena lived from 1083 to 1153. Her father, Alexius I, came to power as emperor through his military might. When the Seljuk Turks threatened his empire, he asked Pope Urban II to lend him some soldiers to repulse them. The pope instead decided to ask all the forces of Christian Europe to band together to expel the Turks from Jerusalem, and the First Crusade was launched.

After her father’s death, Anna and her mother tried to assassinate her brother John. They were caught and sent into separate exile. The convents were actually very comfortable, and scholars and philosophers gathered there. While in exile, Anna wrote
The Alexiad,
an eleven-book epic about the
life of her father. Today this book is the major source of information about that period in Byzantium. Although Anna paints vivid word-portraits of many people, including her parents and Anna Dalassena, she mentions John only when strictly necessary. She never tells of her attempted assassination of him.

After the death of Alexius, John ascended to the throne and became one of the most beloved rulers of the Byzantine Empire. Although other historians agree with Anna’s description of him as homely, he became known as John the Beautiful because of the good works he did for the people he ruled.

I have changed some of the facts of the story, mostly by compressing the period in which the events took place, eliminating some characters, and inventing others. There were more Comnenus brothers and sisters than just Anna, Maria, and John, for example, and Anna was not only engaged to Nicephorus Bryennius but actually married him, and they had several children together. Sophia and Simon are inventions, but I hope Anna had someone like them in her life.

Most people, including some historians, assume that women in the Middle Ages were even less literate than the men of the time. So it might seem surprising that a woman who lived in what some still call the Dark Ages was a respected historian, and that some medieval nuns spent their time and earned money for their convents by copying manuscripts. But although we will never know for sure, it appears that medieval women were about as literate as the men of the time, and educated nuns could certainly
copy texts. Some women wrote their own books, as Anna Comnena did. Most of these women’s works have been lost, and many books, not bearing the name of any author, are assumed for no real reason to have been written by men. It is to these forgotten women writers that this book is dedicated.

racy Barrett is the author of numerous nonfiction books and short stories for children. She has researched medieval women writers, among them the Byzantine princess Anna Comnena, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She lives in Nashville with her husband and two children and teaches at Vanderbilt University.
Anna of Byzantium
is her first novel.