Anticipation, page 12
As he was escorted into the emperor’s audience chamber, he tried to hide his disapproval of the golden throne, wide enough for two. These heretics actually believed that each Sunday Christ himself would join their emperor, sitting side by side as equals! Smooth-faced eunuchs prostrated themselves before the emperor in rhythmic rows. Perforated brass lamps swung from the high ceiling of the throne room, illuminating the emperor’s gold diadem and gem-encrusted scapular. The garment was so stiff with embroidery and pearls that it could stand on its own.
“Behold the Emperor Michael Palaiologos the Eighth, son of the Megas Domestikos Andronikos Palaiologos, Oh Sublime and Wonderful Splendor, His Serenity, His Outstandingness.” The chief minister prostrated himself and kissed the emperor’s red-slippered feet. Guillaume had never kissed a man’s feet and had no intention of doing so, but he bowed in his own fashion.
The emperor had a long angular nose, and his eyes were deep-set and sharp. A thick beard and mustache framed an unforgiving mouth. But his mellifluous voice surprised Guillaume. The emperor’s power came from control, not the loss of it.
“Prince Villehardouin, my prisoner.” The reminder was unnecessary. “I shall tell you what I want from you. Grant it or you will never leave this prison. You must give me the Morea peacefully, or I will take it by force. This would be easy, since you and your most trusted lords are not there to defend it.” The emperor cleared his throat. “I am a reasonable man, and I will give you enough from my treasury to enable you to return to your country. France.” The emperor nodded, giving the signal that his prisoner might respond. A scribe scribbled madly.
Guillaume spoke slowly. “Lord Holy Emperor, La Morée was conquered by my kinsmen. If I, to save my own liberty, were to disinherit the descendants of the Frenchmen who won the land through prowess in war, I would be committing a terrible wrong. I implore Your Holy Crown to speak no further of this matter. Release me and my companions for a ransom, as is customary.”
A slow flush rose on Michael’s face. Guillaume felt stirrings of alarm. Guillaume imagined himself blinded, disemboweled, and castrated, in that order. Michael rose, and four imperial guards stepped forward, weapons drawn.
Michael spat his words. “You are so clearly French. You believed you could escape through arrogance, but instead you have doomed yourself and your followers. You will never leave here.” The emperor waved his hand to his chief minister. “Take this man back to his cell, along with his lords.”
Prince Guillaume returned to prison with his barons, wordless for the first time in his life.
chapter ten
CHRYSE BORGHES
Late October 1259
Mystras
Even on a diet of only porridge, Jéhan spluttered, as if he had forgotten how to swallow. One day he began to cough, complaining of pain in his chest, and the next he grew flushed with fever, his breath coming short and fast. Chryse sent for the doctor, a skilled Romaioi iatros, who worked in the valley.
“Your husband inhales his food and spittle. It has lodged in his lungs, and he burns with the fever of it.” Whether the doctor’s interpretation was correct or not, within a week, Jéhan was gone. Even through the agony of loss, Chryse wondered whether it was a backhanded gift from God, for him to be spared more suffering.
So she was alone when two men arrived at the house in Mystras late at night, carrying Elias in a makeshift litter. Chryse knew Demetrios Asanes from La Lacedemonie; the Monemvasiot was a stranger. They’d left before the battle’s end, Demetrios said, and did not know the outcome. They carefully lifted Elias into his bed. There was no hospital in Lacedaemon, so Chryse told Demetrios to fetch the doctor who had treated Jéhan before his death.
The doctor cleaned and dressed the wound, then felt Elias’s pulse at each crucial point. When he was done, he shook his head, his face etched with sympathy at the condition of the soldier whose father he had just seen buried.
“I am sorry. I have treated your son’s injury as best I can, and I shall give him a medicine for the derangement of his inner organs. But his condition is grave.”
Chryse did not need to be told. “What more can be done?”
“Any further help must come from God,” Kalopheros said, but then he saw Chryse’s face. She was a healer in her own right and a parent. “And from his mother, of course.”
The Monemvasiot fell asleep on the floor, but Demetrios stayed awake with Chryse. They sat together on stools at Elias’s side, watching the rise and fall of his chest. Finally, Chryse put her hand on Demetrios’s shoulder. “When was the last time you slept?”
Demetrios could not recall. Chryse made a bed of blankets on the floor beside Elias and led Demetrios to lie down.
“I brought him home,” Demetrios said as he closed his eyes.
“Yes, you did,” Chryse answered. And then, “You brought him more than that.” But Demetrios was already asleep.
* * *
He may be changed when you see him next.
Is this what the prophet had promised? This weakened, silent shell of her son? Chryse prepared to leave the house with Elias in the dark, just as she had twenty-two years before. This time he could not be bundled against her chest, but he balanced on the same precipice, between this life and the life beyond. Lives.
She leaned forward to kiss his damp forehead, and he opened his eyes.
“Mitéra.” His voice was rusty, like an unused hinge.
“I love you,” Chryse said, knowing it might be her last chance to tell him.
“I love you. Where are we going?”
“Can you walk?”
“No,” he said, but she took his hands to pull him up.
“We are going up the hill,” Chryse said. She managed somehow to make it out the door with him, carrying most of his weight. It took more than an hour to climb the hill. The road was shorter than the one she had taken from the valley two decades before, but today her load was heavier. They struggled on the winding path to where the kastron loomed in the dark. There, though the shrine was gone, Chryse could still find the spot where the prophet had spoken.
Elias folded to the ground, and she sat, too, breathing hard, so he could rest his head in her lap. A light rain began to fall, the gentle sound of drops on the grass. She waited—minutes, hours. The damp seeped into her cloak and robe, and Elias’s head grew heavy on her thigh. She was on the edge of sleep when she heard the prophet’s voice in her head, quiet as a whisper.
You did not forget.
Elias went still, his breath tapering to silence.
DEMETRIOS ASANES
November 1259
Mystras
Demetrios barely spoke for days after Elias’s death. His mother cooked with saffron, filling the house with its uplifting scent, but Demetrios did not eat. His father, Paulus, made unsuccessful efforts to cheer Demetrios, bringing the best cuts of meat from his butcher shop, and his sister, Ireni, insuppressible about her upcoming wedding, showered Demetrios with words he could not hear and ebullient embraces he returned mechanically. His family believed they understood—he was a soldier shocked by war—but they did not know the extent of his loss.
Over the next weeks, the remnants of the prince’s army straggled back to Mystras telling tales of horror and despair. Their prince had been taken prisoner. Romaioi leaders were known to blind their own family members to win the throne; who knows what they might do to an avowed enemy.
Few survivors of Pelagonia escaped, and many were lost on the route home. Some succumbed to festering wounds and the demands of the steep Pindus mountain gorges, while others fell prey to bands of outlaws who took advantage of weakened men. Pantaleon had not returned. No one knew if he was rotting on the battlefield or shackled in a dark Nicaean prison. Demetrios heard that Marceau had made his way back to Mystras, alone on a stolen horse. Demetrios did not seek him out.
Demetrios listened to his comrades’ stories as they returned, but he could not tell his own. Spyridon had left for Monemvasia—in name, like Mystras, still the property of the absent prince, though none knew whether he would ever return home to reclaim it. Knyaz Dragovic came back with a battered remnant of his forces and reclaimed his holdings in the Taygetos. Demetrios was alone with his grief.
One late November day he awoke at dawn, unable to go back to sleep. He dressed and left the house. A chill wind picked up leaves outside the door. Demetrios moved slowly, thinking of the night he’d held Elias’s feet in his hands and crossed from longing to love.
He took the path up the hill to the kastron’s north gate, where he and Elias had walked years before. He remembered their conversation as if it were yesterday: Elias’s ability to break through Demetrios’s shell, their talk of hidden fears.
Demetrios could almost hear Elias’s quiet voice, his words carefully selected and slow to emerge: Fear is worse alone.
Since the last time he had walked this route, someone had built a fountain at the path’s edge. It was made of stuccoed stone with a pointed arched roof, carved with flowers and birds. Demetrios thought of the stoneworker who had poured his heart and soul into this structure, knowing it would give pleasure to the ordinary folk who came to drink. He stepped along the freshly laid flagstones to the fountain’s enclosure. A pipe protruded from the wall from which fresh spring water flowed into a basin. The water rippled, and a single leaf floated upon its surface, turning slowly. Demetrios bent to take a drink and splash water on his face. It was bracingly cold and tasted faintly of rock.
Perhaps it was the way of all mourners, to imagine those they loved were close enough to touch: in the wind, the birds, the earth, even the stones of Mystras’s kastron. The wind lifted, caressing Demetrios’s cheek like an unseen hand. Later, his despair would turn to fury. But for now, the rock-cold water, the wind stirring the fallen leaves, the swell of memory, gave Demetrios an inkling of relief.
GUILLAUME VILLEHARDOUIN
Summer 1261
Nicaea
Guillaume had never imagined his life would include years in a Nicaean prison. At night he lay awake, limbs tense and head full of what he had lost. Some nights he sang to himself to keep demons at bay, songs from the book that had graced his wedding day. He learned that his wife had delivered their first child and named her Isabelle. To have his firstborn come into the world while he was a captive in another man’s kingdom was like a knife in his chest.
It became increasingly clear that Michael Palaiologos would not accept Guillaume’s offer of ransom. He wanted the land, not money, and no sum could change his imperial mind. Still, Guillaume held out hope—for the sake of his daughter, and her descendants. The final blow came one mid-August morning when Guillaume was sweating in the oppressive heat of his cell. The door swung open, and two guards entered, gripping spears. One of the men was so hairy that curls from his chest bristled over the neck of his tunic.
“You and your barons are going on an outing,” the guard announced.
Guillaume hoped this news heralded a change of his captor’s mind. “I expect a more thorough explanation. This is no way to treat a prince.” Dignity was essential.
The guard spat on the ground, barely missing the toe of Guillaume’s boot. “Here’s your thorough explanation, prince. Constantinople is ours again. And you’ve been invited to watch our emperor—God grant the Megas Doux long life—accept the empire’s crown and scepter. Front-row seats.”
So Guillaume and his barons were allowed to leave prison, only to watch at sword point while their enemy entered the Golden Gate, hailed by a cheering crowd. The trip from Nicaea to Constantinople was torture. Ragged and miserable, Guillaume and his companions followed the tail end of the great procession through the streets of Constantinople behind the new emperor Michael and an ancient icon of the Virgin Hodegetria, Orthodox protectress of the city. When Michael and his wife, Theodora, were crowned, Guillaume watched grimly as their two-year-old son and heir toddled about the apse of the Church of Saint Sophia.
That night, his dreams were full of detail, down to the earrings Anna had worn on their wedding night. She held a baby girl swaddled in hazy gold who smiled up at her father, a fuzz of pale hair on her head. But her eyes were gouged out, sockets hollow. When Guillaume woke sweating, he called the guards to request an audience with the emperor.
Guillaume’s clothes fit loosely, and his face was dark with an unkempt beard. Emperor Michael Palaiologos had, in those years, not changed at all.
The emperor’s voice was deceptively mild. “Prince Guillaume. I trust you enjoyed your visit to the capital. Soon we will be moving to the court of Constantinople. After all these years of incompetent Latin rule, the jails are not so pleasant as in Nicaea. You might do well to orchestrate your release before you learn it firsthand.” He looked down his long nose to Guillaume’s kneeling form.
Guillaume knew the emperor had been asleep when the city fell to his military commander, but he smiled blandly. “It is truly fortunate you have such accomplished generals in your employ,” he said instead.
“God delivered the city to us,” Michael said without a trace of emotion.
“God is great and deserving of praise,” Guillaume said. On this, at least, the two could agree.
“Why have you come, Prince Guillaume, other than to congratulate me on my coronation?”
“To request my liberty, Basileus Palaiologos.”
“The terms have not changed, Prince. You must give me land in return for your freedom. But as I am now in possession of an entire empire, it is easy to be generous.” He ran one finger down the ridge of his nose. “I now ask for only three castles from you, Prince Guillaume. Does that not seem eminently reasonable?”
Guillaume felt his pulse accelerate; three castles was less to lose than the entire peninsula. “I am eager to hear more, Your Excellency.”
“In return for your and your barons’ freedom, I ask first for the kastron of Maina, in the Mani peninsula. Second, the rock fortress of Monemvasia.”
“And the third?”
“The kastron at Mystras. Those three, and you shall walk free.”
The Maina, Guillaume’s first castle; Monemvasia, hard-won and nearly impossible to take back; and Mystras—his great triumph, his kingdom, and, with La Crémonie nestled in the beautiful valley below, his home.
“There is no point in bargaining, Prince Guillaume, for I shall not bend again.” Michael rose to leave. Guillaume’s head buzzed.
“Megas Doux,” Guillaume said, finally, to the retreating emperor’s back. “I accept your terms.”
chapter eleven
MARCEAU LUSIGNAN
Early Fall 1261
Mystras
Two years after his return from Pelagonia, Marceau spilled soup into his lap. The memory of the day he ridiculed his grandfather for the same clumsiness flooded into his mind. Père Lusignan was gone now; he’d died writhing in his bed. His father, Evrard, now gripped the rail to climb the stairs of their house, and lately he’d begun to come back from practice skirmishes with inexplicable wounds. What if the beast resides in me, too? Marceau thought as he watched his father bandage his latest injury.
“Prince Villehardouin has sold not only his castle, but his loyal subjects, in return for freedom. Already the Greeks are building houses on the hill, as if they own the place,” Marceau said bitterly at the evening meal with his father. Ordinarily Marceau loved louanika, the smoked sausage his mother made, laced with cumin and pepper. But today the meat stuck in his throat. If the news was true, Mystras would soon belong to the Greeks. The Franks, his family included, would be interlopers rather than leaders, as was their right. “I want to slice the smiles off those smug Greek faces.”
Lately, his anger spun beyond his control, like a weapon let fly too soon. Was that, too, a sign of worse to come? “The gasmoules are so pleased with themselves now that Mystras is destined to change hands. They ought never to have been trusted. I knew those boys could not fight loyally.”
Evrard grunted, mouth full. “The gasmoules in your little company fought bravely. In any case, all but Demetrios are dead, and he and his family have always been loyal to the prince. You’d best be, too. Our leader will be back soon, and your disrespect noticed.”
There was clearly no point talking to his father about anything of import. Marceau turned his head away as Evrard jammed a too-large heel of bread into his mouth. Marceau scanned the room for anything else to look at—the wooden ladles hanging beside the hearth, the barrels of wine—anything other than his father’s wet lips.
Elias’s disappearance added insult to injury. It should have been easy to do his grandfather’s bidding and carry out the prophetess’s command. The blood of the boy is life… But at the crucial moment, Marceau had lost his quarry.
After the battle, as he’d made his way home with the few men left of Prince Guillaume’s army, Marceau imagined that Elias must have died on the battlefield. When he heard that he’d died in Mystras, brought home by other deserters—Demetrios and the Monemvasiot pirate—Marceau had asked around the village where he might find Elias’s grave, claiming grief. The family had not held a public funeral, though, and no one knew where the body lay. Marceau imagined digging up the corpse and bringing a severed limb to the prophetess in the night. But even that grisly possibility was denied him.
Evrard finished off the sausage and thumped up the stairs, tripping on the top step.
EUDOXIA
The sons of sons come with their questions, generation after generation.
She could hear the visitor’s impatient steps on the stones of the path. He entered, bringing the rancid scent of fear.
“Tell me whether I carry the curse,” he barked.
A jingling sound, a coin in her hand. She dropped it on the floor.
“Not enough for you?” Two coins this time.
Give me something you hold dear.
