Her assailant was suddenly holding her with his left hand only. In the period combat training that is a requirement for all DOers, we are taught to be extremely conscious of when the opponent makes a move for his knife, since that is the single most dangerous moment in hand-to-hand combat. Chira reacted with a wrist-lock technique that forced her assailant to drop the knife. He reached down for it, giving her the opportunity to spin away from the stone balustrade. Now furious and no longer content with merely terrorizing her, the assailant aimed a wild slash at her that produced a shallow but bloody wound on the outside of her right thigh. In so doing he became imbalanced. Chira stepped in and took advantage of this to throw him, planting her left hip under his buttock and shoving hard on his chin. Spinning away from her, he sprawled over the balustrade, balanced for a moment, then fell, plunging approximately five meters onto a wrought iron fence which impaled him. As this was happening he screamed in a way that drew attention all over the courtyard.
Various other Varangian Guards came to investigate, then, seeing the wound on her leg, summoned female servants to come and attend to her. The incident was singular enough that word of it spread through the royal wing of the palace within a quarter hour, and through the entire palace compound in an hour. I heard of it from fellow guards, who were reconstructing what move Chira must have used to get him to drop the knife. On the excuse of needing to relieve myself, I made my way to where she was being comforted.
This was a small antechamber outside the bathhouse. One of Basina’s attendants was there, holding Chira’s torn and blood-soaked dress. Chira was by this time in a fresh robe. She had been washed clean of the blood and her thigh had been bandaged. She appeared shaken. (Although when I spoke to her later, she said she just wanted to get on with her DEDE in hopes of preventing a repeat of the assault in another Strand.)
A contingent of four Varangian Guards appeared in the doorway. Naturally, given what had just happened, I assumed their intent was hostile. I interposed myself between them and the women and placed my right hand on the handle of my seax.
Their leader was Magnus, who was known to me by reputation, being one of the most senior and respected of all the Varangian Guards in the city despite his relative youth (early thirties?) and outlier status as a Norman (most of the VG are Anglo-Saxons, and in this era the Normans and Anglo-Saxons are frenemies at best). He may have recognized my face, but we had never conversed. Magnus is a tall, lean, broad-shouldered bearded man with long brown hair and blue eyes. He entered first, displaying both hands, palms out, in a gesture of peace. Behind him were three other men, I would guess of the same kinship group. They muttered together in what I recognized as Norman French. One carried a pile of men’s clothes; one carried an ornate wooden box; the third carried a small leather bag. All four were unarmed; they must have checked their weapons outside.
“It’s all right, brother, I am here to make this right, as best I can,” Magnus said, speaking in Anglo-Saxon. I nodded and stepped out of his way.
Magnus stopped just in front of Chira. The other three approached, went down on their knees, bowed their heads, and held up the objects they were carrying.
“I am Magnus of Normandy,” began Magnus in stilted, accented Greek. “The man who assaulted you is my distant kinsman. He has no other family and so it falls to me to offer you the weregild for his offense. He did not have much but now it is all yours. There are clothes, ornamentation, and money. You will receive it, please.” He gestured and the men held the items closer to her.
Chira could not hide her surprise. She glanced at me briefly, and I nodded, so she accepted the offering with thanks. Basina’s attendant and a young servant woman relieved the men of their load—and then gave them a look suggesting they should leave now. Magnus saluted Chira with a fist to his chest. His men rose, turned on their heels, and marched out.
Since I had seen for myself that Chira was safe, and it would have been awkward for me to remain as the sole male, I left with Magnus’s group.
As soon as we were outside the bathhouse, Magnus turned to me to ask my cause for being here.
Seeing an opportunity to forge a connection, I said, “This woman has done me a kindness in the past and I am concerned for her well-being”—and I said it in Magnus’s own dialect of Norman.
He was pleasantly surprised to hear his mother tongue spoken. “What is your name?” he asked. “You have a familiar accent.”
“My name is Tristan of Dintagel,” I said. “I spent a year of my youth in Normandy seeking my fortune, before coming east to join the Varangian Guard.”
He gave me a peculiar look. “Tristan of Dintagel?” He glanced over his shoulder at one of his men, who was simultaneously exchanging looks with the other two men. “Are you a man of great exploits?”
“You must ask the Emperor his opinion on the subject,” I said, “as his is the only opinion that matters to my salary.”
Magnus stared at me a moment longer and then laughed along with his men. “It is a pleasure to meet someone who speaks as we do,” he said, and held out a hand to exchange peace with me. I returned to my post having agreed with him that we would break bread together the next time our duties allowed it.
Later that day I found access to Chira again, to find her resolute to finish her DEDE on this Strand, and as I had finished my own DEDE I returned here while she was still in Constantinople. She should be home within a day. The wound on her thigh will probably require modern medical treatment and leave a permanent scar, but seems unlikely to cause permanent disability.
Respectfully submitted,
Lieutenant Colonel Tristan Lyons
Exchange of posts by DODO staff
on “Constantinople Theater” ODIN channel
DAYS 1790–1797 (LATE JUNE, YEAR 5)
Post from LTC Tristan Lyons:
Gang, I wanted to raise a topic of interest in case anyone else being Sent to C’ople can confirm what I just saw, or gather more info.
Long story short is that I was hanging out there with Magnus of Normandy, whom many of you will have heard of as one of the more senior Varangians. Not so much in terms of formal rank as the respect in which he’s held by the other VGs, which is saying something given he’s a Norman. I had crossed paths with him a couple of days earlier and he had taken an interest in me and suggested we dine together.
As everyone knows, it’s against SOP to make casual social connections with historicals, since only bad things can come of it (unless you’re a Lover or a Closer, in which case it’s part of your job description). So I was hesitant to accept Magnus’s invitation. But as I said, he’s a respected leader in the VG ranks, and I’m pretty junior. So the invitation was an honor, and it would only have raised more questions and suspicions if I had just blown him off.
Further complicating the scenario is that Magnus (who, for all his status in the Guard, has a vaguely manic “ah, WTF” aspect) decided we should dine not in the VG mess hall, nor even in the taverns the Guard tended toward, but that we should head down to the Venetian neighborhood because he “liked the smell of maritime industry” or something.
I went with him, just the two of us, and we got a lot of freaked-out looks from the Venetian traders and their families because we were, you know, the Emperor’s Guards, coming into a Venetian neighborhood while the Venetian navy was parked across the Bosporus threatening to attack the Emperor . . . but obviously nobody was going to mess with us. We sat down at an outdoor table overlooking the harbor, and had a conversation that on the surface seemed like just polite “get to know you” stuff. My cover story was designed to stand up under exactly this kind of testing. It is that I came from a pretty obscure location in England, that I had family connections in Normandy, and had spent some time there when younger, which was how I came to speak the dialect. He probed me a little on that. This made me a little nervous since I’d been in that part of the world (Collinet, specifically) 150 years earlier and so I couldn’t cite specific names or incidents to ba
ck up my story. But “my” village and his are some fifty kilometers apart, which is enough separation to blur things quite a bit, and he had left when fairly young, so there weren’t any smoking guns. Basically, the cover story seemed to pass muster and we moved on to other chitchat about the day-to-day workings of the VG and rumors about the Crusaders and what they were up to.
After we’d had a few drinks and a good dinner we stood up and began to head back to the barracks. But we’d only gone about a hundred strides when he turned to me and said, “Would you like to go see your namesake?”
Having no idea what he was talking about, I agreed. We were near the border of the Venetian quarter, but now he led me back into the heart of it. We walked for about a hundred yards through winding streets. The sun was setting (time of year was midsummer, sunset was late). We came to a Roman Catholic church where vespers were under way. This is the Church of St. Bartholomew for those of you who would care to visit it. Later it was destroyed on all of the Strands I’m aware of, so it doesn’t exist in our present. Point being, for purposes of this story, its west entrance was lit up by the sunset when we arrived.
He led me into the church, both of us crossing ourselves in the traditional manner as we entered (I doubt Magnus is a practicing Christian of any stripe, and when the VG guards the Empress at religious services, it’s an Orthodox church, so he must have vestigial muscle memory from childhood re: how to behave in a church).
We went inside just far enough that we could turn around and look at the stained glass windows in the west front without drawing the attention of the congregants or the priest. There’s a big round window in the middle and some smaller ones to the sides. As is typical of churches like this, the big one depicts scenes from the life of Jesus, with emphasis on St. Bartholomew (one of the twelve Apostles), and the peripheral ones depict various other saints.
One of the stained glass windows depicted a knight with yellow hair holding what appeared to be a boat oar. Scattered around him on the ground were the supine forms of what I took to be defeated enemies. Behind him was a crude rendering of a church. A scroll above his head identified him as St. Tristan of Dintagel.
As you can all imagine, I was astonished and speechless for a minute. I became conscious of the fact that Magnus was studying my face intently. When I finally came to my senses, I said, “I had no idea that my saintly namesake had been commemorated in a church so far from home!” and thanked him for making me aware of it. I fell to my knees in a show of piety, offered up a prayer to St. Tristan, and purchased a candle, which I lit and placed beneath the window in question.
Magnus and I then walked back up to the barracks without further discussion of this incident. As far as I can tell, he accepts my story, which is that I was named after a saint who dwelled in my part of the world 150 years ago.
But until this incident I had no idea that there was such a thing as a St. Tristan of Dintagel recognized by the Catholic Church. Since I came back I’ve found traces of him on the Internet, but it’s all pretty sketchy and obscured by GLAAMR. I’m guessing that St. Tristan became a thing on certain Strands but not others. Any ideas, people?
Reply from Dr. Melisande Stokes:
On it. Will get back to you with any findings.
It kinda sounds like Magnus set you up. Any worries on that front?
From LTC Lyons:
He didn’t call me out. But I won’t BS you, Stokes, it’s worrisome and I think he senses something’s weird about me. On the other hand, it’s only two weeks until the Crusaders storm Galata Tower and then we’ll be going our separate ways, so I intend to go back to the DTAP on schedule tomorrow. For me to just disappear would confirm any suspicions he might be harboring.
From Dr. Stokes:
Can you delay your return to C’ople? A bunch of us are working this and coming up with spotty/fluctuating results. There is heavy GLAAMR around St. Tristan of Dintagel and so we’re seeing entire Wikipedia articles warping in and out of existence. Some risk that merely Googling the name is tending to make it more real.
From LTC Lyons:
So what is the point of my delaying return to C’ople? Shizzle’s about to go down, you know this. We’ve been working toward it for three years.
From Dr. Stokes:
We can get better answers by sending some Sages back to other Strands where we think that the St. Tristan legend is more firmly entrenched. We need to know more before Sending you into a potentially messed-up situation.
And by “messed-up situation” I mean “alternate universe in which you are a two-hundred-year-old warrior saint.”
From LTC Lyons:
No research needed. St. Tristan is damn well entrenched in the Strand I’m working—I already told you he has at least one stained glass window. So we have to stick with the story I told Magnus, which is that I’m simply named after him. Stokes, this is ubiquitous—almost everyone back then is named after a saint.
LETTER ON PARCHMENT, HANDWRITTEN IN LATIN BY PROFESSIONAL SCRIBE, CONSTANTINOPLE
JUNE 1203
Brother Ando:
May the Lord find you and our mother well. Upon receiving this letter please respond as swiftly as you may. I have met a valiant warrior here in Byzantium, a Varangian Guard like myself, but of a name too familiar, that is Tristan of Dintagel, which lies in England. The rantings of the Frankish priests are gibberish to me, so I care not for their saints. Nor was I ever one to listen to the songs around the hearth, but I know you were. Do you not recall a song about a great hero who hailed from a remote part of England and who had appeared suddenly in our region and fended off a tribe with whom we feuded? He was credited with saving the village and made a saint by the Christians. It strikes me as a remarkable coincidence to meet another man with such a name. There is some quality to this man that I cannot quite describe, but he seems like a man apart, as belonging to some other race.
I wonder if there be miracles and if so, how may I make use of this one—that a hero of legend has seen fit to manifest himself within my ken, just at the moment when we are under siege by the Franks! Please respond to tell me if my memory is correct, and say as much as you can of the old legends concerning this hero. Also send news of our mother and the village if there is any.
YOUR BROTHER,
Magnus
Exchange of posts by DODO staff
on “Constantinople Theater” ODIN channel
DAYS 1798–1805 (EARLY JULY, YEAR 5)
Post from Historical Operations Subject Matter Authority (HOSMA) Dr. Eloise LeBrun:
I’m just back from 1232 Paris with some results concerning “St. Tristan of Dintagel,” which I will post on this channel as I’ve time to write them up, but the executive summary is that I don’t think LTC Lyons should go back to C’ople. Has he been Sent yet? I can’t make heads or tails of the DEDE scheduling app.
Reply from Dr. Melisande Stokes:
He was Sent eight hours ago, and isn’t expected back for two weeks—this is where we complete the DEDE, during the Crusaders’ attack on Galata Tower @ Constantinople. What did you find?
From Dr. LeBrun:
Ugh, I just missed him:(
Well, it’s all academic now, I guess.
What I found is that on some of these Strands an oral tradition developed in the vicinity of Collinet in which the story of Tristan got inflated into a bigger and bigger yarn and eventually turned into a chanson de geste sung by various troubadours. Apparently it was popular enough that the church decided to capitalize on it by trumping him up enough to canonize him (even though there are no miracles or martyrdom attributed to him)—which is how he found his way into a stained glass window.
From Dr. Stokes:
On multiple Strands? But he only hit the burglar with the boat oar on one Strand!
From Dr. LeBrun:
Crosstalk between Strands apparently.
From Dr. Stokes:
Is that a thing!? Would one of our magic experts please enlighten me?
From Rebecca East-Oda:
We’ve seen it before in creative arts settings, especially storytelling. If you think about what is going on in a storyteller’s mind when he or she spins a fictional yarn, what they are trying to do is to come up with a story that did not actually happen, but that seems as if it might have happened. In other words, it has to make sense and to be plausible. Typically such a story makes use of real places, historical events, characters, etc. but the events of the story itself seem to take place in an alternate version of reality.
The conventionally accepted explanation for this is that storytellers have a power of imagination that makes them good at inventing counterfactual narratives. In the light of everything we’ve learned about Strands at DODO, however, we can now see an alternate explanation, which is that storytellers are doing a kind of low-level magic. Their “superpower” isn’t imagining counterfactuals, but rather seeing across parallel Strands and perceiving things that actually did (or might) happen in alternate versions of reality.
I think you can see where this is going, Mel. Even if Tristan smacked the burglar with the oar on only a single Strand, it’s possible that storytellers in other, nearby Strands were able to sense it or perceive it and tell the story in a compelling, convincing way. From there, the story could propagate to other Strands—including ours, where just this morning I found an entry on St. Tristan of Dintagel in Alban Butler’s original (1759) edition of Lives of the Saints, which is in our library.
From Dr. Stokes:
Holy crap he’s on Wikipedia now too.
NVM he’s gone now.
From Dr. LeBrun:
I don’t have time to translate all of the documents from Latin and medieval French into English, but I’ll post a few snippets.
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. Page 45