Zombies of Byzantium

by Sean Munger

  “Oh, so you’re a grand strategist now too?” Leo retorted. “Okay, great. When the Caliph’s army of 80,000 troops draws up against the walls of Constantinople, which could happen at any moment, I’ll seek your expert advice on how to repel them. Kouropalates Artabasdos! Draw up an edict immediately relieving all senior military personnel of their offices. Foot soldier Camytzes here is promoted to Grand Domestic of the Army. We’ll all be following his orders from now on. Oh, and don’t forget to send our best legions down to the Mt. Olympus region with orders to exterminate all undead ghouls on sight. Our new Grand Domestic informs us that this move is crucial to the survival of the Empire, as well as the preservation of holy Christendom against the Mohammedan hordes.”

  Camytzes looked stunned, and I can’t say I was ready with a reply that wouldn’t get me beheaded. At that precise moment, however, the necessity of a response evaporated, for a feminine voice boomed into the chamber. “Leo! Are you in here?”

  From one of the elegant arched doorways at the rear of the room a woman suddenly swept inside, and instantly all attention was on her. “Oh, you are. Good.” She wore a very brightly colored gown, brocaded in gold, and her neck, wrists and earlobes dripped with jewelry. She had very long, silky dark hair and vivid sea-green eyes. Her nose was slightly aquiline but it didn’t detract from the geometric perfection of her face. She moved so quickly that she’d planted herself next to the Emperor’s lunch table before I realized that I was staring open-mouthed at the Empress of Byzantium. I’d heard very little about the Empress Maria, and given the way she looked at the moment, I was surprised that word of her beauty hadn’t spread far and wide across the Empire.

  Now face-to-face with her husband—the Empress was taller than he was—she drew a little breath and then blasted, as if Theophilus, Camytzes and I weren’t even there, “You absolutely must speak to Anna. She’s being perfectly impossible. We just got that whole new crate of gowns from Cilicia and she refuses to try on a single one of them. She threw her hairdresser out again this morning, and says she won’t even go to the reception for the senators this evening. I told her that if she persisted in being ornery, the Emperor would have to speak with her, and so she says, ‘Fine, let him’—I mean, the insolence of that child! You really must speak with her right now—I know you’re busy, but…” Her voice trailed into a cataract of recriminations. The way she emphasized certain words, with a kind of ostentatious flutter, was really unusual. After a while I couldn’t even follow what she was saying, and then I realized she’d lapsed into another language, Arabic perhaps, which she spoke even faster.

  For his part, Leo kept cracking pistachios, popping the nutmeats into his mouth and flicking the shells onto the floor. At an arbitrary point he interrupted his wife and said in Greek, “Maria, dear, I fully understand your predicament, and I sympathize. What you don’t seem to have gotten through your head, though, is that she’s totally beyond us now. The girl turned twelve and became Princess of Byzantium on the same day. Now, I can do one of two things. I can be Emperor, or I can control Anna. I can’t do both. Which would you rather have me do, with the Saracens about to batter down our doors at any moment?”

  The Empress looked up at the kouropalates hovering above her husband’s chair as if expecting help from him. “Well, how about you talk to her?” she said insistently. “You’re only her future husband, Artabasdos. You’re going to have to deal with her sooner or later.”

  “Madame,” replied the kouropalates, “I know better than to venture into the den of the lioness so much as one moment before my duty calls me to.”

  The Empress rolled her eyes. Shaking her head, she said, “You two are pathetic. Fine. If you want to parade the Princess of Byzantium in front of the Senate in her old Isaurian rags, what skin is it off my nose?” With this, Maria drew her skirts up around her and started to make her exit. As she did, she finally threw a glance at Theophilus, Camytzes and myself. “Sorry to interrupt your business,” she said. Instead of looking at her husband as she said this, however, her eyes were fixated firmly on me.

  “Oh, no bother, dear,” said the Emperor in a patronizing tone. “We’re finished.” Having eaten the last of the pistachios, he brushed shell fragments off his hands and rose from his chair. “Well! This has been very entertaining. I enjoy comic theater while eating my lunch. I’m told that a jester hasn’t been employed at the court since the time of Justinian the First. If I decide to revive the office, I’ll give careful consideration to you three for the position.” Leo paused to flick a fragment of pistachio shell from his purple robe, and then said sharply, “High Chamberlain, please show our guests out. Maria, if you insist on me speaking to Anna, I’ll reluctantly agree to try to change her mind about the reception, but I don’t know why you expect her to mind me any more than she does you.”

  The interview was over.

  The eunuch Eutropius looked positively incensed as he guided us through the colonnaded corridor back toward the antechamber. “You three should be horsewhipped for wasting the Emperor’s time in such a manner,” he grumbled. “How dare you come here at this busy time and distract our venerated ruler with such childish trifles?”

  I’d remained reluctantly silent in Leo’s presence, but being dressed down by this nutless lackey got my hackles up. “He didn’t listen!” I protested. “We saw these things with our own eyes! If you’d seen what they did to that village—”

  “Brother Stephen, quiet,” said Theophilus, his first words since entering the palace.

  “Heed your elder,” the eunuch growled. When we came to the main door leading to the gardens, flanked by two soldiers, Eutropius merely motioned to them and then outside. He turned on his heel and walked back toward the palace complex, and Camytzes, Theophilus and I were jostled roughly by the sentries until we stood outside the main gate in front of the Great Palace, back on the bustling streets of Constantinople.

  “That could have gone better,” said Theophilus.

  “Well, I didn’t hear you jumping to our defense!” Camytzes roared. “We didn’t even get a chance to ask him about the taxes!”

  “You heard him,” I replied. “His daughter’s dresses are more important to him than anything we had to say.”

  Camytzes shook his head. “It’s so unfortunate. Sooner or later the Emperor is going to have to deal with this problem. I only fear that by the time he takes it seriously it may be too late to defeat the ghouls.”

  Theophilus grasped his walking stick and looked out over the busy street, teeming with horse carts, merchant stands, donkeys laden with cargo and hordes of people rushing to and fro. “We must trust that the Emperor knows best,” he said. “Even if he doesn’t, we have nothing to say about it. Let us return to our humble professions and hope that God will look after us.”

  Camytzes looked for a moment as if he was going to argue. I felt for him. He obviously cared about the people of his father’s lands, and his argument about the ghouls potentially distracting the military from the very important job of defending us against the Saracens seemed very logical to me, even if it was comical to the Emperor. But Camytzes seemed to be thinking the same thing I was—We took our story to the highest level possible. Nothing came of it, but there’s nothing more we can do. Finally he nodded, and as Theophilus stepped in the direction of the Monastery of St. Stoudios, Camytzes and I followed him. The episode involving the Undead Ghouls of Domelium was, for all intents and purposes, over.

  I was staying at St. Stoudios permanently, but I expected Theophilus and Michael Camytzes to be leaving shortly. I would be sorry to see them go. Their stay was not an uncomfortable one. The huge complex, built as all monumental structures in the capital of gray brick striped with reddish-brown, easily put Chenolakkos to shame. In addition to the lovely gardens, colonnaded cloisters and tall arched windows it had a vast library tower and a colossal and well-appointed church. The cell which Hegoumenos Rhetorios assigned to me was three times as large as my quarters at Chenolakkos and had a r
eal bed as opposed to a pallet of straw. The arched windows and elegant pavilions offered stunning views of the city, which glittered like jewels spilled on the jumbled grassy hillsides. I could see the domes of St. Sofia—the Church of the Holy Wisdom, which I had not yet visited—and the vast white horseshoe-shaped edifice with four glinting gold specks on its front that was the Hippodrome. Constantinople was dazzling, vibrant, opulent and lavish. It was also, as I was to discover, intensely boring.

  “Yes, well, this is where you would be working,” said Father Rhetorios, showing me around the long cluttered room that was the iconographers’ studio. It was a busy jumble of easels, tables and desks, and I marveled at the many shelves filled with brightly colored powders and roots. “That is, if we had any work for you. Our studio has been virtually shut down since Emperor Leo’s coronation last March. Most of the monks who worked here have since been put to operating the wine presses, or to copying manuscripts in the scriptorium.” Rhetorios, a paunchy middle-aged fellow who was far more agreeable than Eunomios, smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Brother Stephen of Chenolakkos. I’m sure we’ll find a job for you.”

  I was overawed as I looked about the room. No paints were mixed, no half-finished icons were propped up on the easels, and Rhetorios and I were the only monks in the entire place. “Hegoumenos, I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I said. “Father Eunomios told me that you’d written to him begging for another iconographer. He said the new Emperor threw away all the old icons in the imperial chambers, and you couldn’t keep up with the demand to replace them with the new ones he ordered.”

  “I did write to Father Eunomios, on the very day of Leo’s coronation in St. Sofia,” Rhetorios replied. “And yes, we were told that one of his first commands was to strip the Great Palace bare of all icons, which is a very unusual and curious order—I don’t think any previous Emperor has ever done that. Since Brother Isaac died in February, I feared we’d be unable to keep up with the demand of restocking the entire palace with new icons, which is what I assumed would be the result of the Emperor’s housecleaning. But we didn’t anticipate that Leo wouldn’t order new icons at all. He threw away all the imperial icons because he doesn’t believe in icons. He wanted them all out of his sight. After we learned this, I wrote a second letter to Eunomios, telling him we had no need of one of his iconographers after all, but the letter evidently never reached Chenolakkos. Nonetheless, since he sent you in good faith, I will not refuse you a place in this order.”

  We withdrew from the silent studio and made our way through a stone corridor, brightly lit by the late June sun. I was very disappointed. “How can the Emperor not believe in icons?” I asked, shaking my head. “I’ve never heard of that before. Is it some new teaching?”

  “I think it’s based on the Ten Commandments,” Rhetorios replies. “‘Thou shalt not make any graven images.’ We’ve never interpreted that to prohibit icons, but evidently the Emperor does. It is not yet Church doctrine, but perhaps someday it may be.”

  “But that would put iconographers out of business forever,” I protested.

  Rhetorios turned on his heel and fixed me with a disarming stare. I immediately fell silent. He paused a moment, and then started down the stairs.

  After the midday meal and spending much of the afternoon at prayer—a boring but necessary task that I’d neglected sorely during our adventures with the undead—Father Rhetorios came to look me up. “I bring good tidings, Brother Stephen!” he said. “We’ve found a position for you. You can start right away.”

  The position was in the tannery. By dinner time I was stripped to the waist with a rag tied around my nose and mouth, my body covered in blood, cow hair and fat, scraping stretched hides with a piece of bone and walking on sand sprinkled on the floor to avoid slipping in the shit and rotting cow entrails that littered the place. The other monks who worked there kept up a constant chorus of holy chants as they went about their grisly tasks. The chanting fortunately drowned out the curses I muttered under my breath. First ghouls, now this. I was an artist trained by the great Rhangabé, and now I was splashing buckets of human piss over stretched hides and picking moldering bits of cow intestines out of my hair. I wished God would let me know what I’d done to deserve this.

  Camytzes and Theophilus remained guests of the Monastery of St. Stoudios for nearly two weeks. Theophilus didn’t want to stay that long, but Camytzes refused to let him go back to Chenolakkos unescorted, for fear of the ghouls that were (presumably) still out there. Camytzes’s father had told him that he was on his way to the capital and Michael was not to leave Constantinople until he arrived. Unfortunately I saw little of my friends during this period, and frankly, given the way I smelled after working in the tannery, I would have been embarrassed to be in their company. But one evening in mid-July Camytzes sent me a note stating that he and Theophilus were departing for Chenolakkos in the morning. Camytzes had met his father and received new orders. Brother John, who headed the tannery, graciously released me from my duties after supper that day so I could say goodbye. I took a very long bath, washing myself thoroughly with lye soap, but embarrassingly I could still smell cow guts and piss in my hair and on my cassock. Hopefully Camytzes and Theophilus wouldn’t notice.

  As it turned out, Camytzes was my only companion; Theophilus was at prayer. We strolled in the lavish gardens that filled the courtyard of St. Stoudios. Many flowers were then in bloom, and the evening was beautiful, with the setting sun painting the sky over Constantinople orange pink. “So, I suppose your father is accompanying you back to the country?” I asked Camytzes. “That’ll be good for Theophilus to have two experienced warriors escorting him instead of just one.”

  “No, my father’s staying here in Constantinople,” the soldier replied. “The Emperor has ordered all the thematic commanders to remain in the city to help defend against the Saracens. I’d be staying too except there’s nobody left in our district for local defense.”

  I felt my stomach sink a little bit. “So the Saracens are coming, then?”

  Camytzes nodded. “Oh, yes. They’re coming. They crossed the Dardanelles from Abydos just a few days ago. Eighty thousand strong, marching this way. I’m a little worried about running into Saracen raiding parties on the roads back toward Domelium. I’m going to try to stick to the back roads, the less-traveled ones, for Theophilus’s safety.”

  “Why hasn’t the Emperor sent an army out to defeat them? He could destroy them before they even get here.”

  “Evidently he feels more confident of taking on the Saracens here, against the walls of Constantinople, than he does out in the open country.” Camytzes looked at the ground as we walked. “The truth is, Stephen, he doesn’t have much of an army. As angry as I was when he refused my request to do something about the ghouls, I understand his position. My father is now under the command of regular army officers. He tells me the regular army’s been totally demoralized by all these revolts over the past few years. Leo keeps his loyal troops here in the capital, to protect his crown against usurpers as much as to defend the Empire from the Saracens. He can’t count on many more troops than the ones he has here. If he tried to call up every available man in the Empire outside the capital, maybe a third at best would actually show up. The Caliph’s army has met with virtually no resistance. They’ve marched all the way from Syria and into Thrace, and to almost the gates of Constantinople, without having to unsheathe their swords.”

  “I don’t know much about military matters, but that sounds pretty pathetic to me.”

  “It is.” We walked a distance farther. Sounding a bit sheepish, Camytzes said, “It may be blasphemy to utter this within the walls of a monastery, but, if it comes down to it, I would probably convert to Islam.”

  I was shocked. “It is blasphemy,” I said. “I’m not a very good monk—I think everybody agrees on that—but if they conquer us, I hope they kill me quick because I couldn’t live under the swords of heathens.”

  �
��Oh, it wouldn’t be so bad. You can’t eat pork or drink wine, but life among the Saracens isn’t so awful. They’re a very advanced and interesting people. Their art, their music, science—every bit as good as ours. I’m told Baghdad is even more beautiful and magnificent than Constantinople. Probably in many ways they’re more like us than they are different. I never understood why this God business is worth so much blood. I’m a soldier out in the frontier. I can understand fighting for grain, for water, for livestock or other resources, or to hold a border. But which God you worship? That just doesn’t seem worth fighting over.” He wore a little smile. “There, now you’ll have to denounce me as a heretic.”

  I smiled. “I wouldn’t think of it. I owe you my life.” I patted his arm. “God bless you, Michael Camytzes. Be careful. Watch out for those ghouls.”

  “You too, Stephen. We’ll probably never meet again in this life. Good luck to you.”

  I went to bed that night feeling very uneasy about everything. With his quiet contemplations on life under the Saracens, it seemed that Camytzes had pronounced the epitaph for the Empire. The news that the Caliph’s army was on its way, soon to besiege Constantinople, filled me with dread. I remember hearing stories about the last siege, forty years ago when the Persians tried to conquer the Empire. It had lasted five years and caused untold amounts of suffering among besiegers and besieged alike. Was that my future? Years upon end of enduring battles, battering rams, projectiles, siege engines, possibly eating rats and straw in order to stay alive? That night I said a private little prayer in my chambers, begging God for the deliverance of Constantinople and the salvation of Christendom. I wondered which would be worse, Constantinople being conquered by the Caliph or being overrun by undead ghouls. It’d be hard to choose between those fates.