by Sean Munger
The kouropalates wore a grave expression. “That will be ultra-hazardous duty,” he remarked.
“Aye. But I don’t see that we have a choice. It’s either that or we hunker down for weeks waiting for the ghouls to finish the job for us.”
I winced, just thinking of the horror the corpse detail would experience. They’re going to have to literally tear bodies out of the hands of the ghouls, I thought with a shudder. Probably many of the people on that crew will wind up being ghouls themselves. Once more I damned the pestilence of the ghouls. Every time you thought of a move against them, some other and more terrible consequence that you hadn’t thought of before loomed up as still another obstacle. I wondered if we would ever be rid of them.
Thinking this, I was suddenly quite disgusted with the whole thing. “Sire, I think I may retire for a while,” I sighed.
The Emperor had resumed his seat at the map table. “Very well,” he said casually, reaching for more flags. “Rest up. You’ll need your strength soon enough.”
It was only after I had walked out of the conference room and started down the steps toward the palace quarters that I realized what he’d said. I’ll need my strength? What for? I paused in mid-step, wondering if the Emperor had something else in mind for me. Just as quickly I put the thought out of my mind. There was no need to throw yet another worry on top of my already crushing burdens. If Leo did have some special mission planned for me, I’d know it soon enough, and there would be nothing I could do about it.
“Brother Stephen.”
I turned. I had just reached the door of my chamber and was about to open it when the voice diverted my attention. The Empress was standing at the end of the hallway, her face and the silk veil over her hair softly backlit in the dancing fire of a nearby torch. In the dimness all I could see of her besides her silhouette was the glinting of the brocade threads in her dress.
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” I replied. “I’m very tired.”
She moved forward. She didn’t touch me, but she stood very close. “We didn’t get a chance to really talk earlier.”
“This crisis with the ghouls has consumed the bulk of everybody’s attention.”
“I’d like to ask you something, if I may. In private.”
Maria looked up at me with her deep inviting eyes as she said this. With a twitch of her head, she motioned toward my door. Please, no, not another seduction, I protested silently, but how can you say no to an Empress? Finally I grasped the door handle and pushed open the door. I stepped inside and the Empress followed, her silky dress billowing.
The room was even dimmer than the hallway. The dusky light coming through the window was fading. Some servants had lit candles earlier, but by now they had dripped away to almost nothing. Maria stood before me, a dark shape with a charged and exciting aura.
She is beautiful and alluring, I thought. I’m tired and sick of everything, but if she did want to seduce me now, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad.
“What’s your question?” I asked her.
“I was wondering about the icon. Where is it now?”
I shrugged. “I guess it’s still in my cell at St. Stoudios. I haven’t been back there since the ghouls got loose.”
“Do you suppose it survived?”
“I don’t see why not, unless the monastery itself was burned or otherwise damaged. We have no way of knowing.”
“I hope it’s all right. I think we need the intercession of the Virgin more now than we ever did.”
“I won’t argue with that.”
She turned away from me, toward one of the candles. Her face was momentarily illuminated, just her chin and the end of her nose. It looked as if her features were carved from the finest marble.
“I fear what will happen if we do survive the ghouls,” she sighed. “Let us suppose my husband’s plan to defeat them succeeds, and by some miracle we manage to avoid being captured by the Saracens. Leo has become a fanatic about icons. He probably hasn’t said anything to you about it, but he believes God sent us the plague of ghouls to punish Byzantium for idolatry. This crisis will make him even more determined to rid our lands of the sin he thinks we all committed. He’ll tear the Empire apart over it. There could even be a civil war.”
I could scarcely believe this. “Over icons?” I scoffed. “I can’t believe he’d push it that far. They’re just pictures. They can’t substitute for the true worship of God. They were never intended to.”
“My husband doesn’t see such subtleties. To him everything is black-and-white.”
“I think you’re worrying unnecessarily. Anyway, why bother thinking about that now? The ghouls are still running wild out there. Haven’t we enough to worry about without compounding our troubles by speculating on what might happen down the road?”
“But you see, I have thought about what might happen down the road. I’ve been struggling many months to think of what I would do if it came down to a choice between my husband and my beliefs. When the ghoul outbreak started, I felt almost—well, I hate to say it—relieved. But if we do come through this, that ugly choice will still be out there. Only it’ll be worse, because Leo will be even more hell-fired to rid the Empire of icons.”
The word relieved communicated perfectly what was on the Empress’s mind. She thought he might be killed, I realized. She expected him to die fighting the ghouls and she’d be absolved of having to split up with him over the icon issue. Now she’s afraid he’ll survive!
I reached forward and touched her shoulder. “If you don’t want to be with him,” I said, “then don’t. You have a choice. God gave us free will for a reason.”
“Oh, Stephen, be reasonable. Do you know what happens to empresses who fall out of favor? They get packed off to nunneries. If I refuse to give up icons, I could see Leo doing just that. I’ll end my days on the Isle of Lesbos, maybe, or perhaps even farther away. I’ll never have my own life.”
I was at a loss for words. “Well,” I sighed, “there’s not much I can do about that.”
She looked up at me again. I sensed there was some dark political machination swirling around in her head. I wanted nothing of it, but on the other hand I felt it was my duty to be there for her. This wasn’t the first time she’d sought me out as a confidante.
“Perhaps there is,” she said softly. “I’m not entirely helpless in this situation, and neither are you. If something were to happen to the Emperor, we’d be looking at a whole new game. If, say, I remarried—and, more particularly, if I remarried someone who was firmly in favor of icons—then this whole nasty civil war business could be avoided.”
My first reaction was fear. “Stop it!” I whispered harshly. “If you’re talking about some kind of plot against your husband, I can’t be a part of it. I don’t even want to know about it. He could have me blinded, or thrown in a dungeon or tortured to death—”
“No, no. Nothing like that. I’m not planning to poison him or something. Do you take me for a conspirator? I’m just saying that things could change. The situation could change. If he died in battle, for instance, fighting the ghouls—”
“I can’t listen to this. I can’t even believe you’re thinking about things like that. Whatever’s happening behind the scenes, keep me out of it. Please. Keep me out of it.”
“You’re already in it, I’m afraid. If I were to confess to Leo what happened between us…”
I clapped my hands over my ears. “I’m not listening!” I cried.
At last she relented. “All right. All right. I was just thinking out loud.” She paused, and then moved toward the door. “Anyway—I just wanted you to think about it. That’s all I ask. Think.”
I felt like I’d missed something. “Think about what? Joining some palace coup to murder your husband?”
“No, I told you that wasn’t the plan,” Maria grunted. With her hand on the door handle, she shook her head in apparent exasperation. “You monks are awfully dense sometimes.” With this, she opened the door, s
wept out into the hallway and closed the door behind her. The puff of air from the door caused the thin flames of the dying candles to dance.
What the hell? I was thoroughly puzzled. If Maria hadn’t been hinting at some sort of plot, whatever it was she had in mind was lost on me.
It was only after I sat down on the edge of my bed and began to pull off my boots did certain of her words come back to me.
“If, say, I remarried—and more particularly, if I remarried someone firmly in favor of icons…”
I gasped out loud.
If Leo dies and she remarries, her second husband becomes the next Emperor. And if she wants to prevent a split over icons by firmly embracing them, who could she count on to do that more reliably than a former iconographer?
I looked down at my hands. They were shaking.
A few months ago I’d been a simple monk, an artist at a third-rate monastery in the sticks. Tonight I had just been offered the crown of Byzantium.
I was so exhausted that I slept all the way through the evening and the night. When I awakened it was daybreak on the third day of the battle. Peering through the window while fastening my tunic I saw much less smoke hanging over the city. Indeed, things looked almost normal, and I dared to hope that we might be making progress against the ghouls.
Could it be? Has God seen fit to redeem us? Are our troops scoring victories against the demons?
I bounded up the steps to the war room two at a time. The guards outside the door knew me well enough by now; they moved aside and one of them swung open the thick heavy door to admit me. I was surprised to find the room as silent as a tomb. Chairs were scattered haphazardly about and the stone floor was strewn with parchments. Every table in the room save for the map table was piled with dirty plates and drinking vessels. In a corner I saw Artabasdos slumbering silently on a couch. Eutropius was slumped in a chair. I saw two more adjutants lying on a blanket in the corner. The drapes over the Emperor’s camp bed were drawn. As I approached it quietly, I heard very faintly the grating of his snoring. One big knobby toe stuck out of the crack between the brocaded drapes.
Looks like they were up all night, I thought. I must have missed the climax of the battle.
I turned toward the map table. I had no idea how old the last intelligence on the ghouls was, but as I looked over the map my dare of a hope blossomed into something more.
A cluster of red flags littered the southwestern corner of the city, near the Golden Gate. A smaller grouping, encircled by the green of Maslama’s forces, was on the other side of the wall. A line of red flags led between them, indicating that the evacuation of the civilians and our troops had begun.
The bulk of the green flags were concentrated outside the wall near the Blachernae Quarter. On the other side of the wall, gathered together in the far corner of the city, was a great mass of gray. There were a few other gray flags in various other locales—it looked like the ghoul infestation of the Church of Christ Pantepoptes was still a problem—but it was obvious that the counterweight had finally begun to work. The ghouls were, at last, congregating where we wanted them.
“God be praised,” I whispered.
I heard a sudden snort from the Emperor’s camp bed. The big hairy toe withdrew, and there was a brief rustling as Leo stirred and composed himself. A moment later the curtains parted. A very strange-looking head poked out between them. Without any crown or helmet, the Emperor looked strange. Twin curtains of long dark curly hair hung on either side of his face. His beard was more scraggly and unkempt than usual. His eyes were bloodshot and sleepy. It took a moment for him to recognize me.
“Oh, Stephen,” he said. He stuck a fat-fingered hand out of the drapes and pointed at one of the end tables. “Would you bring me my pistachios please? They’re in the silver dish over there on that table.”
I fetched them, stepped over and handed them to him. He set the dish on the floor, took a few pistachios in his hands and began to crack the shells open.
“I saw the map,” I said breathlessly. “It looks like we had a breakthrough.”
“Ghouls in full retreat,” replied the Emperor, before tossing two nutmeats into his mouth. “That corpse detail made all the difference. The sons of bitches finally started to smell the counterweight. Now with the Hippodrome area cleared, Michael Camytzes can set the Greek fire canisters and rig the fuses. The bricklayers have already started building the bunker on the floor of the arena.”
“That’s terrific news. Now what?”
The Emperor crunched more nuts. “Now we put the human bait in position at the Hippodrome. I have decided there will be two. No sense risking more than that, and we need to keep the bunker small if it’s going to be finished in time for this to work. See, the damn thing is, in order to make the bunker impregnable from the literally thousands of ghouls that’ll eventually converge on it, there can’t be any doors or windows. The bricklayers are going to have to literally build the bunker around the occupants—wall them up alive.”
“Like a mausoleum.” I swallowed hard. “That’s grisly.”
The Emperor smiled. “Ah, well,” he shrugged, “most of the other emperors are buried in the rotunda over at the Church of the Holy Apostles. My tomb will be a novelty, a tourist attraction. When they rebuild the Hippodrome they’ll probably turn the bunker into a monument. I think that’s rather neat—cheering crowds with chariot races orbiting my last resting place for the rest of eternity.” He casually spat a fragment of nutshell onto the floor.
My eyes widened. “You’re going to be the bait?” I gasped.
“Of course.” He motioned to the sleeping figures around the room. “Do you think I’d let any of these pathetic yes-men soak up all the glory? Besides, it makes me look selfless. In centuries to come the bards will sing that I refused to put any of my subjects into more danger than I was willing to face myself.”
I was aghast. “Sire, we can’t spare you,” I said. “The Empire needs you. Once the ghouls are dead we still have to make sure Maslama retreats like he agreed. Who can negotiate with him if not you?”
“Don’t you worry about Maslama. And be careful that you don’t look too eager to see me dead. After all, I might just survive!” At this Leo laughed and winked at me, but I didn’t think it was very funny.
He’s planning to bring Maria into the bunker with him, I thought grimly. She doesn’t even know about it yet, I’ll bet. In light of this revelation, the fact that she’d hinted that I should marry her and become Emperor seemed positively macabre. It made sense, though, that Leo wouldn’t want to tell her until the last minute.
“So that’s why you sent your daughter out of the city,” I said softly. “To make sure she survived to carry on the dynasty once you and the Empress are gone.”
Crunching another pistachio, Leo regarded me with a cocked eyebrow. “The Empress?” he said, puzzled. “What makes you think she has anything to do with this?”
“You said there’ll be two people in the bunker. I can only assume you want the Empress to die by your side.”
The Emperor laughed again, loudly enough that he caused Artabasdos and Eutropius to stir. “Oh, my!” Leo snorted. “You do have quite an imagination, don’t you, Brother Stephen? The Empress isn’t coming with me into the bunker. You are.”
Chapter Fourteen
The Bunker
In the small private chapel just down the hall from the Emperor’s bedchamber, Theophilus blessed me and recited the last rites. Dressed again in my cassock—I wanted to die a monk and an iconographer, not a warrior—I knelt, received communion, and listened to Theophilus mumble the ancient Latin words that would herald my entry into Heaven. I knelt there, my knees on a velvet pillow, staring up at an ornate gilded cross on the Emperor’s private altar, and I felt completely dazed.
I can’t believe this is happening. This makes no sense at all. Why does the Emperor want me to accompany him? He didn’t tell me, and I dare not even ask—it’s my place merely to obey—but it’d sure be ni
ce to know what possessed him to think that I was the guy for the job.
Another part of me said, He’s punishing me. He knows I slept with his wife, and he wants me to die in retribution. If he can’t have her, maybe he figures he’ll make sure I won’t either once he’s gone.
“Stephen?” Theophilus was tapping my shoulder. “Stephen!”
I jarred myself back to reality. “Oh…yes?”
“We’re finished, Brother.”
I rose and bowed my head. “Thanks.”
Theophilus clasped my hand. “I have no doubt that the Lord will receive you as one of His own,” said the old monk. “And I want to say, it’s been an honor and a privilege to serve God—and to fight evil—by your side.”
Our handclasp turned into an embrace. “It’s an honor for me too,” I said, feeling tears welling up. “If you do make it back to Chenolakkos, tell everyone there goodbye for me.”
“I’ll do that.”
I parted from my good friend and fellow ghoul-fighter. “Oh, there’s one more thing,” I whispered, after glancing over my shoulder to make sure none of the Emperor’s lackeys were listening. “In my cell at St. Stoudios, under my sleeping pallet, you’ll find an icon I was working on. It was commissioned by the Empress. If St. Stoudios hasn’t been totally destroyed, please go back for it. Have someone finish it—Gennadios, perhaps, if he’s still alive. Make sure it’s delivered safely to the Empress. I don’t know whether icons will still be forbidden after tomorrow, but if they are, be sure to take care that no one finds out she has it.”
“You have my word on it,” said Theophilus.
We exited the chapel. In the hallway, lit by a sunbeam slanting through a half-moon window in the great porphyry wall, Empress Maria stood there. She wasn’t wasting any time. She was already clothed in mourning black. With the ebony veil across the bottom half of her face she looked eerily like a Saracen, save for her intense sea-green eyes. Theophilus glanced at me and then at her. He patted my shoulder. “I’ll leave you two alone,” he said, and tactfully drew himself away into the corridor.