Anna of Byzantium (5 page)

“It’s so hot,” I complained. “Why does the sun have to be so close? If it were farther away we would be cooler.”

“It’s close indeed,” Simon said, “as Icarus found out. Do you remember that story?”

“Well enough,” I answered. It was not my favorite story, but anything was better than geometry. “Icarus and his father Daedalus were imprisoned in a tower—I forget why—and his father made them wings out of feathers and wax. They flew away from their prison. Daedalus told Icarus not to fly too high, but he disobeyed, and the sun melted the wax, and his wings came apart. He fell into the ocean and drowned.”

Simon nodded. He looked thoughtful, although I could see little in the story to think about. Icarus had been a foolish and disobedient boy, and had been punished—what was there to say?

“May I go outside now?” I asked. I could hear someone playing in the courtyard and burned to join in.

“In a moment, Little Beetle.” Simon was still looking thoughtful. I hoped he wasn’t going to turn that simple story into a lesson. But of course he did.

“Why do you think Icarus had to die?” he asked me.

“He disobeyed his father,” I answered.

“But his father wasn’t the emperor, merely a common man,” he said. “Wouldn’t death be a harsh punishment for so small a crime?” I shrugged, not really interested.

Simon kept on. “What is the sun?” he asked.

This was getting even more tedious. “Heat …” I hazarded, but Simon frowned and shook his head, so I went on. “Light, the source of life, power …” I kept talking, hoping to hit the right answer. I must have found it with my last guess, for he nodded.

“Exactly. The father saw his son approaching manhood and was jealous of having to share his power. He tried to keep the boy a child too long. Icarus tried to become a man before he was ready, making up his own mind about things better left to his elders.
That
was his crime, and death was his punishment.”

I nodded impatiently, trying to see out the window. Simon seemed about to speak again, but instead he sighed and dismissed me. My sister, Maria, was waiting for me faithfully, as she always did, and together with our cousins we ran out to the polo ground.

We had crossed the compound and entered the field when suddenly a huge brown horse came galloping toward us, so close that I could feel the hoofbeats in my chest. The other children scattered, but I froze. Just as I was sure I was about to be trampled, I felt myself being swooped up and realized I was seated with my father on his great black charger. He held me so tightly that the heavy gold ring on his right hand bruised my upper arm. But I didn’t mind; he had not been holding me on his lap of late and I had missed it. I sat rigidly, wishing I could melt into him
the way Maria did. But my long legs hung down the side of the horse, reminding me that I was not a little girl anymore. I looked up at my father, hoping to see his rare smile, but found that he was looking not at me, but at the disappearing brown horse.

“Constantine!” he shouted. The rider of the brown horse glanced back over his shoulder, then turned his horse in our direction. He slowed to a trot and approached. I saw a handsome young blond man, with a straight back, and freckles. He carried himself with a grace and ease that were familiar. I was puzzled; who was he? I liked his smile, and the way he managed his horse. But there were many Constantines in our palace, and I had no idea which one this man—a boy, really, I saw as he drew nearer—was. Then I realized where I had seen him before.

“Do you know me, Princess?” the young man asked as he approached. I looked up at my father, and he nodded, giving me permission to speak.

“I think you are my mother’s cousin who stands next to my father in the throne room,” I answered.

The young man glanced at my father.

“An observant one,” he said. “I didn’t know if she would recognize me out of court.” Then to me, “Yes, Princess, I am your cousin Constantine Ducas. I am pleased you recognized me.”

My father gave a little snort of laughter. “Next time, be more careful when you race over the field where the children are playing,” he said to Constantine, but I could tell he was more amused than angry. “You don’t want to trample
your future bride in the dust!” He gave me a kiss, then swung me down off the saddle. I stood in the middle of the field, all alone, ignoring the shouts of my cousins who were calling me to join them.

Future bride? The thought made me stand still. So this was the man I was to marry. I knew that my father had decided that one of my mother’s cousins was to be my husband. It had something to do with the problem of my father’s right to the throne; some people thought that a Ducas should be in power instead. But it had never occurred to me that the blond young man was my betrothed. I considered my father’s choice, looking after him as he disappeared around a building. Constantine looked like the ideal husband: Evidently he liked to play games, and he was a good horseman. He was also very handsome. I suddenly pictured him on my father’s cedar throne, myself on my mother’s throne next to him. Would he smile at me when he thought no one was looking, the way my father did to my mother? Would he speak to me in a low voice, his face next to mine under our heavy crowns?

I did not know many young men. I knew that my father had chosen Constantine Ducas for my husband, so he had to be a worthy person. But I knew many worthy people. Would I want to be married to them? My husband had to be a good ruler, an honorable person, and a strong soldier to protect our empire. But I knew I wanted more than that. The young man’s smile stayed with me as I stood still in thought, in the middle of the field.

My cousins and Maria were calling me. But I ignored
them. After all, I would be married within two or three years, to a soldier and a counselor of the emperor. I decided that my days of racing and playing tag were over. I walked slowly back to the compound, suddenly conscious of my bare legs, my loose hair, and the lack of a veil to cover my face. I felt naked, where ten minutes before I had been perfectly comfortable. I needed to seek out my mother and get properly dressed.

As I stepped through the arched doorway, I thought I had made a mistake and entered the wrong building. Instead of the usual calm, all was confusion. People were bustling around, giving orders, obeying orders, carrying bundles, opening trunks and moving their contents to boxes. I stood with my back to the wall, watching and listening. People were talking, and it was hard to understand any one voice among the many. But soon one word fell on my ears: “War!”

This was news indeed, but not unexpected. The Seljuk Turks had been attacking the empire with ever-increasing boldness, and the emperor had asked the pope for troops to help subdue them. The pope must have agreed, and my father must be getting ready once more to set off for battle. Within a few hours they were gone—my father, Constantine, and hundreds of soldiers. The palace seemed empty without them, but we were used to the emperor’s frequent absences. He always came back weary, travel-stained, sometimes with a battle wound, but glorious in victory, and bearing presents.

But what of Constantine? He did not look old enough to have been in any battles yet. Would he know what to
do? Would he be able to defend himself, and acquit himself honorably? I knew that my father, despite being emperor, still rode in the first ranks of the soldiers, fighting as hard and as bravely as anyone else. Would he protect Constantine, an unproven soldier? I shuddered as I remembered that my father had been only fourteen when he had fought in his first battle, and Constantine looked older than that.

I needed to do something to help him. When we were married, I could go along on the campaigns with him, and see to his wounds, and make sure that he was comfortable between battles. But now, I was helpless. The best I could do was to pray to St. Irene, my mother’s patroness and the saint of peace, to stay by him, and to make the war end soon.

I was not to have much time to worry, however. Diplomatic duties did not end with my father’s absence. Instead, I was required to attend even more of them. My father’s mother, Anna Dalassena, commanded my presence whenever dignitaries were in attendance. My father owed his throne, at least in part, to her intelligence, and he trusted her more than anyone else. My mother never showed any interest in statecraft, so it was to Anna Dalassena that the emperor turned when in need of counsel.

The war lasted far longer and was more complicated than anyone had thought, and was grandly called a Crusade, or war for the Holy Cross. This Crusade would turn out to be just the first of several, although we did not know that at the time. Foreign soldiers, rulers, ambassadors, and traders of all sorts flooded the city as they
prepared to join my father’s troops, and we were forced to deal with them.

My grandmother sat in my father’s high throne, wearing imperial robes. The differences between them became even more obvious when I saw her in my father’s accustomed place. She was tall where he was short, and she had large, slanted eyes, where his were round and open. His hair was short, and simply dressed, as befitted a soldier, whereas her long black hair was arranged in the most complicated coils and braids I had ever seen. I would spend long minutes during these audiences trying to trace one strand of hair as it wound through a braid, across her head, down a tress, behind her ear. I would always lose the strand and have to start over. This practice would make me so sleepy that I would have to stop and pay attention to the speeches in an attempt to keep awake.

One day the baron of some small province had come to ask my grandmother for a reduction in taxes. As I listened to his pleas, and to my grandmother’s skillful way of rejecting them, I began to see the encounter as a kind of game. A new game called chess was wildly popular in the palace. The rules were not very complicated, but there were endless strategies for dealing the death blow to the opponent’s king. I pictured the baron, dressed in his shabby best, as a weak little pawn on a chessboard as he pled his pitiful case.

“Your Majesty,” he said, facedown on the floor, “the crops have been poor after a long drought in our province. My people have been starving. Most of the men have left for the war, and there are few to work the fields. The foreigners
have brought illness with them, and many of my people have died. What little they have managed to grow, they have eaten, with nothing left over to pay taxes.”

“This is not the emperor’s concern,” responded my grandmother. “Your farmers must have committed some sin for God to punish them by withholding the rain.” Aha, I thought—her bishop has attacked the pawn.

“Indeed not,” protested the baron, daring to look up. “We are a God-fearing folk.”

“Then why do you ask me to reduce your taxes at a time when the emperor needs all the funds he can raise to win the Holy City of Jerusalem back from the infidels?” she questioned him. Now her knight was on the attack. The baron was silent. I wondered if, like me, he could see chess pieces, one by one, being swept off the board.

“And besides,” added my grandmother, “I have no power to reduce the taxes. This is in the emperor’s hands, and I would be stealing from him if I allowed you to pay less than your requirement.”

Shah mat,
I thought. Checkmate. The king is dead. The baron probably knew as well as I did that whenever my father left the country, he signed a proclamation giving my grandmother imperial powers. But the baron did not dare contradict her to her face, so he left defeated.

After this I started looking forward to the audiences, to see what weapons my grandmother would pull out. Sometimes she was a chess player, and other times she reminded me of a fencer, probing the enemy’s weak spots until she could lunge in with the kill. But no matter what tactic she took, she always won.

Once, as I was leaving the audience room, she unexpectedly called me over to her. I approached in a seemly manner and knelt at her feet. She pulled me up, putting her hand under my chin and forcing me to look at her. She stared into my eyes with her dark strange ones until I squirmed inside. But I did not look away.

“What do you think of all this?” she asked, waving her hand at the huge room, the thrones, the tapestries, the glittering mosaics on the walls and ceiling.

I shook my head, not knowing what to say.

“Come, child,” she said impatiently, her bony hand still clutching my chin. “Surely you have some opinion.”

I opened my mouth, not knowing what I was going to say until the words spilled out. “I think it’s
wonderful
,” I answered.

She barked a short laugh. “Wonderful, is it?” She finally let go of my chin. “And what is it you find so wonderful?”

“The throne—the p-p-power—” I stammered. “When I am empress, I will be able to deal with people the way I want to. I won’t have to listen to anyone.”

“Anyone? Will not your husband have something to say about it?”

I shrugged, feeling myself relax as she seemed interested in what I had to say. “Constantine will be emperor only because he is married to me. If he disagrees with me, I will still be able to have my way.”

“And other counselors?”

I considered the question seriously before answering. “I
suppose I’ll listen to their advice and then make up my own mind.”

She stared into my eyes still, tapping her hand lightly on her knee. Finally, “Leave, child; go back to your studies,” she said, and turned away.

I bowed again, rose, and walked away, managing to keep from running until I was out of the room. Once out of her sight, I tore to the library, where I found Simon at his books, and breathlessly related the conversation.

“What do you think she meant?” I asked.

He looked away from me and was silent for so long that I thought he hadn’t heard me. At last, “Don’t fly too near to the sun, Little Beetle,” he said.

ow my lessons with Simon became even more important to me. I knew that my grandmother had never learned to read, but she had not been raised in a palace, as I was, and so had not had the opportunity. But if I were to learn the wisdom in Simon’s books, and could combine that with the wisdom of my grandmother—ah, there would never be a wiser ruler!