Byzantium's Crown (29 page)

As the high priest entered the room again, Marric sprang to his feet. Ignoring a brief dizziness, he stalked past him down the corridor. At this very moment the actors would be rehearsing.

Marric might not have gained the powers he sought, but he was still a fine strategist. So Irene had revived the Dionysia as a way of reaffirming the old ties binding the empire to the gods? Two could play that game: Marric knew how easily Ion, the last play scheduled for tomorrow's festivities, could be manipulated into serving as a way of announcing himself to the city.

Attempting to push defeat, anger, and shame to the back of his mind, Marric strode toward the Hippodrome. He would persuade the actors to fall in with his plans. He had to.

The scheme was dangerous. All the better. He would show the Osiris priest that there were other ways he could cope besides long study and entrance, alive, into the tomb.

Then Marric shivered despite the hot sun. Certainly the Hippodrome had made men emperors before. But it had also served as their death place.

"Too many things could go wrong if my lord plays Apollo tonight," Stephana repeated.

"But I tell you, we cannot afford to wait?" Caius Marcellinus stood up so fast that his chair fell crashing onto the floor behind him. "It's well enough for you both, lady, that the man who detained you at the Hippodrome was loyal to me. But can't you understand? The prince was seen! That puts all of us at risk!"

Stephana's face was very white. Her hands, which had been clasped tightly in her lap, came up to her throat, then dropped. She didn't take her eyes from Marric.

"Look you," Marcellinus said. "The actors are willing. Nicephorus has altered the speech, and there isn't a false word in it!" Stephana looked at him briefly, then dropped her eyes. Marcellinus had always treated her with the grave courtesy he could accord a woman of his own rank, at first for his prince's sake, and then for her own.

"Is it Prince Marric's safety that troubles you, lady?" he asked in a much gentler voice. "The ropes are sound. And I will have guards stationed throughout the Hippodrome."

"We will have no better opportunity," said another man. "All the people we must influence will be there. And the mob: we give them a show, the appearance of risk, and they'll adore it. But there will really be no risk at all."

Stephana rose from her chair and folded her slender arms about herself, as if chilled by something other than the breeze from the courtyard.

"I am worried for my lord's safety," she said, almost in an undertone. "But not that way." She was silent for a long time. Finally she burst out, "You see this as a calculated act, an act of desperation. I say simply that I fear acts of desperation. You tell me, 'You are a woman, and so your fear is understandable . . . for you.' But I have fought, and I have lived . . . very hard. And I tell you, I fear what consequences this show of yours may create."

She took Marric's hands. "Irene is desperate. Look what desperation has done to her—forced her into madness and mad pride. The way she had the Varangians arrested and butchered proves that. Now, this travesty of a festival . . . Marric, can't you see? Assume the mask of the god, put words into his mouth, and you share Irene's hubris. Have you forgotten everything you have learned? This time your penalty may be harsher."

"It's the ends and the means again," Nicephorus spoke up. "If you assume the god's mask, you become the god. That will mean a price to pay."

"Then I will pay it!"

Stephana drew her hands from Marric's. "I fear that you will."

Marric began to pace. Up and down the carpet and the stone floor he walked restlessly. He had seized on this plan as something he could do, a useful action that could salve his inadequacy. Stephana might be able to wait for Isis to descend and crown him: he could not.

"The choice is mine," said Marric. "I will go through with tonight's spectacle."

"I will stay here," Stephana said suddenly. "Not because I refuse to watch, but because you must not be distracted."

"I think that is wise," said Marcellinus.

Marric was surprised by his own ambivalence. Yes, he wanted Stephana there to witness his triumph. But he also wanted her safe. Her misgivings unsettled him; he had never gone against her judgment before.

"I understand," Stephana said. "Marric, I do understand. You feel that the time turns against you, that Irene will either attack and win, or be deposed, but that it must be now. But"—She made a gesture of rejection, of shutting herself off from the discussion—"I am only what I am: a former bondsmaid with a faint gift for interpreting the Goddess' will. If you say that I do not understand statecraft and strategy, you are quite right. But in that case, why ask my advice at all?"

She left the room quickly. Marric watched her as she walked through the garden, her head held a trifle too high.

"Do you wish to alter plans, my prince?" asked Marcellinus.

Marric shook his head. "Caius, I will need you in the Hippodrome. Nicephorus, you too. Be certain that you have a weapon ready for me too. I have no wish to precede Irene to the horizon."

Marcellinus and his men saluted. Nicephorus contrived his own disappearance. Marric went to find Stephana. He discovered her searching through chests of clothing with such determination that he knew that she was still far from calm.

"At least," she said, trying to laugh, "I shall see you dressed as an emperor tonight. I have long wished to."

"Sit down, Stephana," Marric said. Slowly he knelt before her and cupped her shoulders in his hands. "You," he said. "My very dearest. Why were you not my kinswoman? You should have been empress, far worthier to rule than I." The day's humiliation bowed his head. He was glad to lay it in her lap. Stephana's hand stroked his hair, traced over his ears and began to ease the tension from the knotted muscles of neck and shoulders. Marric sighed.

"So the temple refused to receive you," she said finally.

"The priest took me down to see the sarcophagus. I suddenly . . . I was falling, falling out of my body. I panicked." He pressed his face against her legs, glad she could not see his face. He could feel her reach out to soothe him, the touch of the priestess as well as the lover. He shook his head. Unfit, unworthy.

Stephana slid cool fingers inside the neck of his tunic.

"You saw the watcher, did you, and feared it? How not? Marric, would you set a boy still unable to lift a shield in the forefront of a cavalry charge? I tell you, in facing such creatures as the watcher, you are just such a boy, and not the prince or the general. There is no need for this shame." She tugged Marric's hair and he raised his face.

"Do you believe me?" Marric admired the hollows and curves of her face, drawn fine with concern. He had trusted her unreservedly from the moment when her voice had drawn him back from death.

He nodded, and she kissed his forehead.

"Must you do this thing tonight?"

"Yes. Not for pride, love, but because I can truly see no other way." He stood and pulled her up against him. "You will be safe here."

"Do not fear for me," she said. "I no longer do."

"After tonight there will be no reason to fear," he promised.

"I know." Her hands cupped his face and drew it toward hers. Urgently she kissed him. As he embraced her, she melted against him until he lifted her off her feet and held her. Her arms pressed him even closer.

"I love your touch," she said against his mouth. "Have we time now?" She caressed him with an abandon new to Marric. She was tense: had she chosen this as a way of easing her anxiety? It didn't matter. Her desire would be his joy to assuage. Marric lost himself in the rose scent of her hair, the softness of her lips, and the instinctive movements of her body as it received him.

"I do not want to leave you," he whispered much later, then kissed the valley between bet breasts. Lazily he fondled them and laughed softly as her nipples stiffened again. He slid his hands down over her belly, between her thighs for the pleasure of watching her react, then of responding to the demands her body made. Abandoning herself, she cried his name, and fell back almost unconscious.

Finally Marric drew apart from her and raised himself on his side. He kissed her eyes, heavy-lidded from ecstasy.

"When I return tonight, we will finish what we have begun."

"I will wait for you," she promised. Languorously she watched him wash and dress, smiling sleepily at the splendor of violet silk he wore.

When he knelt by her side to kiss her again, she seemed to have drifted into sleep. Marric touched her face, wishing they had a child, then turned away. Swinging a dark cape over his shoulders, he left for the Hippodrome.

I have led armies in the field! Again Marric reminded himself. His palms were sweaty, and he twisted in the harness that stagehands adjusted about his body, concealed it under the robes of the god he was to represent, and left him alone. He forced himself not to move. If the harness were not perfectly adjusted, he might fall.

To fall in front of the whole city: Marric preferred an honest battle. At least, if you took a sword thrust or an arrow, you died fast among men who understood what was happening. You didn't have to think of the long drop to the spina—or the arena floor itself—to lie broken, possibly screaming in pain as Irene looked on, highly entertained.

The actor playing Xuthus, the foreigner who adopts Ion, stalked by, tall in the high boots of ritual drama. He held his mask like a helmet in the crook of his arm. Incredibly, he reached out to touch Marric's shoulder.

"We've all felt what you feel now, Prince. I imagine it's like before a battle. The ropes are sound, and our stagehands know their business. Just remember: before you begin the god's speech, breathe deeply."

Prince or no prince, at that moment Marric loved the actor like a brother. Ion walked past him and nodded. He was followed by an actor masked as a priestess and the file of the chorus.

"Born of a mortal father or of Apollo Loxias," a man in a rumpled tunic hissed at Marric for the fifth time that hour. "That's your cue. Prince, Prince, will you hold yourself like a god and not a tyro! Remember, you begin your speech after Ion finishes his. Do not look down or at the audience, or you will forget your lines." The man turned away, muttering something about amateurs.

At least Marric's voice was trained on the parade ground. And there was a speaking trumpet built into the mask of Apollo that fit his head far less comfortably than his helmet. Marric held the mask in his hands and looked at it: a handsome thing, richly polychromed, its features chillingly, inhumanly regular.

It was almost time for the god to speak.

Marric put on the mask and waited for his cue.

" . . . born of a mortal father or of Apollo Loxias."

The machine swung him into the air, and the harness tightened about his body. When the god in the machine appeared, the audience always hushed in awe. But this time the mood spread even to the actors. The chorus' disciplined line broke, Creusa recoiled before the god who had been her lover, and Ion made as if to run. The actors knew that Marric's speech was more than a ritual representation of the god to mortals. And they were frightened: Irene's vengeance was swift and terrible.

Why had they helped him? Conviction? The delight of achieving a spectacular effect on stage? There was no time to think. High in the air, Marric kept his body immobile, held his masked head high, and began to speak.

Nicephorus had adapted the words from the Ion of Agathon, sweetest of the ancient Athenian playwrights. Strain roughened Marric's voice; he had none of the melodious diction of the actors. But the horn in the mask carried his words to the uppermost rows, and thrust them into the ears of Irene. She sat in the royal box across from him. They were almost on a level. Red-gowned and glittering, she twisted some gauzy white fabric or other in her hands. Naturally she wouldn't believe in this sham, but her subjects must be impressed.

"Do not look at the audience," Marric had been told. But as he spoke his first line, something made him gaze out over the crowd. "I am no enemy that you should flee from me, but gracious toward you."

The audience seemed like some pain-ridden beast, crouching as a newcomer approaches it, not certain if it will be a hunter to kill it or its keeper, to bandage its hurt and reassure it before taking it to a safe home.

"Hear you the will of the gods."

As the audience gasped, the receptivity to mood for which all actors pray fell upon Marric. Just so, he remembered, had the combined will of the priests on board ship channeled through him to call down lightning against his enemies. The audience wanted to believe him, wanted truly to witness the god's descent to announce his will. And it wanted to end the torment of blood and doubt that the red empress inflicted—even for an hour.

They wanted it fiercely. Marric's voice became more resonant and took on the reassuring overtones he had used to hearten recruits or comfort Stephana.

"Take this youth and go to the city of Empire. Set him on the throne," proclaimed the god.

In a play the god could restore order so easily. The audience sighed in wonder. They wanted more. Their need made Marric draw on reserves of strength and spirit. These were his people, his empire, and he would save them. Who needed the priests? These actors had a magic all their own.

Now his speech told not of Ion's misfortunes, of how he had been left swaddled on a hillside to die and been rescued by a prophetess, but Marric's own story: captured, enslaved, sent far from home, but returning.

In the royal box Irene stiffened, her ringed hands tearing the white gauze they clasped. Around her whispered the patricians, forming into small groups that dispersed and reformed into new sources of new whispers. Among them, Marric knew, were aristocrats whose favor he had to have. Throughout the Hippodrome Marcellinus' men would he reaching for their weapons in case Irene set her own troops on the crowd.

But still the audience leaned forward, enthralled and unsatisfied. More still? What else could Marric give them? His speech was ending, and they were still not satisfied. Their longing tore at him.