He retreated indoors. He heard voices, quickly hushed. Even the servants, scrubbing down the stone, seemed subdued.
The door opened, then closed with a reassuring strength like the gates of a fortress. He heard a shout, followed by the rhythmic tread of litter bearers. His mother, he knew, had dressed as finely as she could and gone to the baths of Zeuxippos, there to speak to other women of her rank. In her own way, he supposed, she went to do battle.
He chose out a book from his father's collection and felt the older man's eyes upon him. Psellus had said Leo was no scholar. Psellus had said a great deal. He retreated into his room with it and waved away the servant who came to summon him to a meal. The small, clean chamber had the feel of sanctuary now, and he read until the light faded. He laid the book aside, rose, and stretched, preparing his mind as, in what seemed like another life, he had prepared his body to do battle.
The polycandela, freshly polished, gleamed. His mother, fresh from the baths, had a radiance of her own. Steam rose from a great silver platter of baked fish, pungent with liquamen; and Leo smelled the fragrances of his favorite lamb dish, fresh bread, and honeycakes rising from the kitchen.
How long had it been since he had sat down to a meal without the reeks of myrrh or rot or blood or dust in his nostrils? Not even when he had been a prisoner of Alp Arslan: the lamb at the sultan's table had been strangely, richly spiced. This ... tears rose suddenly to his eyes. This was home.
“Good,” said Lady Maria. “You are eating with more appetite. You were wise not to stay on Prote any longer. I ... oh, I have so many people to speak to.”
So Leo had been right, and his mother had gone to the baths as if into battle. His mother's original marriage plans for him, as he was not surprised to learn, had had to be scrapped. Already old to be betrothed—for it was hard for relatively poor aristocrats to marry off a son who had lately been set to the profession of arms and might be dead in the next battle—Leo could not expect a great match. But if a Comnena or Dalassena were out of the question ...
He met his father's eye. His father shook his head. His mother would give no quarter. She had a son to protect, whether he wished to be protected or not. He was glad when his father retired to his study and invited Leo to retreat with him.
“Your mother,” said the older man. “She took this hard.”
“I am sorry to disappoint you,” Leo said. He missed several volumes and a fine ivory that he recalled that his father had especially loved. Sold? And for what—bribes to officials?
“You are my son, not a disappointment!” His father was uncharacteristically fierce.
“And my mother's?” It was a swift, shrewd blow, and Leo was sorry.
His father shook his head and turned away. “You have no idea how much she loves you.”
That night, again Leo dreamed. This time the figure's breath burned on the back of his neck before he screamed and woke.
The next day, wearing his darkest clothing, Leo ventured for the first time outside the walls of his family's home. The street twisted, carrying him like a spring stream into the Mese. Here, trade and people flowed, and the scents grew sweeter the closer you ventured to the palace. Here the finest of the silks were exhibited, here the jewelry, and here, the stalls brightly lit at all times, were the sellers of fragrances.
Men and women thrust past him, the busy, quarrelsome people of Byzantium, as quick to bless themselves as to curse when they got the worst of a bargain; moving fast, always, with their eyes darting about even faster. You had to keep your hand on your purse and your mind on the soundness of your doctrine, or the markets of Byzantium would strip you of money and soul alike.
Shouts rang out on the street: soldiers marching on endless rounds of duties on the city's great sheltering walls; boys calling out at the latest prodigy—this time, a troop of amber sellers, their hair as ruddy as the ropes of amber they bore. Someone tripped a wine merchant. Idlers laughed as beggars pulled out cups from their rags and tried to scoop up what they might before it grew too foul. Up by the palace, the streets would be swept.
Shouts rang out. Leo dropped into a fighting crouch and saw men back away from him. A woman shut down her stall, at least for the moment. One or two people signed themselves, and parents pushed their children behind them. Silence, more oppressive than the noise of the market, fell; and in Byzantium, silence could be a prelude to riot.
Do try not to act like a madman, Leo. He could hear his mother's cultured voice, edged with the deadly irony of the ladies of Byzantium. All this madness because of some outcry in the Hippodrome. Leo fought his breathing back under control. He consoled himself that it was not, after all, a total overreaction to be wary of the Hippodrome and anything that went on in it. Tens of thousands had died in an afternoon in that place because of the flash of a charioteer's color; and now people stared at him as if he were about to add them to its toll. Another shout rang out, the massed voices of 60,000 men of the city, from the lowest laborer to the Emperor himself. It was a game, only a game, he reminded himself. And he did not even have a bet on any of the events.
Leo moved his hands carefully away from his weapons: see? No danger. He dashed one shaking hand across his brow. Then he moved on, more careful now to slouch so he would look less like a soldier.
Spices prickled at his nostrils. Ah. The Spice Bazaar. Here the most wizened and wisest of Egyptian merchants hunched over their counters in tiny, airless quarters, lest a draft waft a few grains of precious spice away from their scales. Here the physicians of the city came for herbs and drugs and who knew what else? They appraised him from the wizened corners of their eyes. A man as young as he might be fool enough to seek out love potions: in that case, he was certain they would charge him handsomely or jeer him away.
It was not a potion that would win him a wife, he was certain. Unless, of course, there was a potion to bring power, which was in itself a potent drug.
One man met his eyes candidly. The colors and scents of a sun-baked land surrounded him, but, at his glance, the air turned chill.
You do not belong here. Go away.
Leo was easily a head taller than most of the people he passed, and his good dark wool garments were conspicuous in this covered arena of deliberately shabby robes. Nevertheless, he obeyed. As he left, only a man he recognized as the Emperor's physician dared to meet his eyes. A Jew, as the imperial physicians often were; and as shrewd as court politics made them. He eyed Leo, assessing him to his last coin and family connection. He bowed slightly, appropriate courtesy for even a disgraced member of the Ducas family intruding himself in matters that should not be the least concern of the likes of him; and then he, too, turned away.
Leo sighed. Even if he dared ask for drugs to ensure deep, dreamless sleep, he would find no potion ready mixed here for him to take away. The likes of him must see their doctors or their priests—or find an old woman, kin to those he had seen throughout the Empire, squatting by the roadside, gathering herbs.
Voices greeted him from the women's rooms as he returned home, high-pitched, excited, speaking the elaborately courteous Greek that aristocrats taught their daughters as well as their sons. The great ladies of Byzantium were visiting his mother. He thought of retreat, but their eyes were too keen to permit it.
“Oh! Is that your son, Maria? He is so pale now, so thin!”
His mother straightened her formidably straight spine at that covert assault. Even the air seemed to crackle with tension, like the moment before a charge is ordered.
“Nonsense, he looks like a soldier-ascetic. A young Saint Michael.” This woman smiled kindly at Leo, and he found himself smiling back, bowing to her. Some sort of cousin to the Empress—the former Empress—Eudocia, he recollected. Had she been kin to the bride his mother had schemed to win for him; and did she regret the breaking of the contract?
“It is a pity, Maria,” that lady went on with more kindness than discretion. “Your son is so handsome. Now, his Most Sacred Majesty, if he were no
t Emperor...”
“He would look like a little old man!” whispered a very young woman, who suppressed a yelp of pain from where her mother pinched her. After all, Michael was a Ducas, and this was a Ducas home—even if it held the likes of Leo, a mad poor relation who had turned, actually turned, on Caesar John's son.
“A pity indeed,” his mother replied. “But Leo may choose as he sees fit.” She smiled as she spoke, showing a faint edged glint of teeth. The other ladies nodded, as little as they believed it. None of the people in this room had ever had the right to choose as they saw fit. “We do not know whether he will return to the army. Perhaps some post in the City...”
Now, there was an absurdity. Psellus was proedrus of the Senate. Caesar John pulled the Emperor's strings. Leo as a civil servant? Perhaps—let us make this truly ludicrous—serving beneath the Master of the Offices. What better way for them to spy upon him than to seem to employ him?
“It is possible,” said his mother, “that something may be done. A pity that the most excellent proedrus Psellus has no living daughter.”
Leo suppressed a shudder. Reward a client's daughter with the hand of a son of what was now the Imperial house once more? If the son were disgraced, the bargain was too mean; if he were not, it was too costly. And Psellus would calculate either event to the last grain of gold in the family settlements.
Another woman with her hair henna-washed beneath her veils whispered something. Well-bred shrieks of laughter replied. I am too old to be cut, Leo thought at her. Leo's mother raised an exquisite eyebrow; the room chilled; and the woman left shortly thereafter.
In a dream, Leo said what he must, held himself as befit a Ducas in this assembly of silken, formidable ladies. Their laughter and whispers pulled at him like a perfumed undertow.
Raptures rippled about the Basilissa..."So lovely, so modest; but she is so silent!”
“That comes, my dear, of turning a deaf ear to her husband's verses!”
“And, of course, we are urged to imitate it and call it holy.”
More laughter. Comments, claws sheathed in silk, about other women who turned deaf ears to their husbands’ words. Lady Maria ordered more cakes to be brought.
Leo had the distinct impression that, were he absent, the conversation might turn disastrously candid in an instant. It would be courteous to withdraw, but he caught his mother's glance, barring his line of retreat.
Complaints about the price of gold and silk; Leo observed that in the market that day, he saw merchants biting gold and silver coins, grimacing with disgust that was less than half feigned.
Sidelong glances followed at Leo's mother—at Leo himself.
“Is it true,” the woman who had glanced at Leo asked, “that the Domestikos of the Scholae will winter in Constantinople this year?”
Lady Maria raised an eyebrow, then shrugged elegantly. Why ask me? the gesture clearly asked.
Nettled, the woman replied, “One would think that you, of all his kin, would know. At least, one would have thought so last year.”
The silence that fell was even more horrible than that in the market when Leo had dropped hand to weapons. A tactful request for another cake from the lady who had compared him to a warrior saint broke it. Lady, if you have a daughter of suitable age, I would gladly meet her, Leo thought at the woman. If you are certain you cannot do better for her.
In this silken ambush, Leo dared not answer at random; he had the sense that if he placed a foot wrong, he would find himself swept up in that undertow and carried out into deeper waters than any he dared try. His mother knew the order of this battle, and he looked to her. He observed its tactics: the elegance of the language, the sweetness of the voices, the overpowering scents, and the clear-eyed ferocity of the ladies to whom he offered wine and sweet cakes in such a way that his mother smiled victoriously—would your grown sons show you such respect by serving your guests so well?—made his head reel.
Then the door opened, and the greatest of the City's great ladies entered: Anna Dalassena, returned from exile. An icon gleamed on her breast, but could not rival her eyes, or the warmth of her smile when she saw Leo.
His mother let out a tiny gasp of relief. Leo rose in instant deference. Both he and the Lady had been exiles on account of Romanus; and now they were both restored to their homes.
She smiled a private smile, just for him. “My son will be glad to see you,” she told him. “I shall bring him, the next time I call.”
“I beg you, bring him soon,” Maria Ducaina said, smiling with her lips closed. Her color looked natural now, and she raised her head in a triumph Leo did not understand. “The sooner we all go back to living our lives...”
Anna Dalassena observed her with her wise, veteran's eyes. She held out a hand to Leo, as she had done ever since he was a boy. He went to her as if seeking anchorage. For a time, he actually found it in her presence.
That night, he did not dream.
Sooner or later—and sooner rather than later, if he were wise—Leo knew he would have to show himself in public places as befitted a son of his house. He was not sure that he wanted to. The people of New Rome might stare at everything, but he felt as pierced by their eyes as a dead soldier by arrows. Sudden noises still had the power to startle him in a way that could have proved positively disastrous in a better soldier.
Still, every day, after finishing her duties, the Lady Maria made herself sleek, veiled herself, and was carried out of the house to battle for her family's future among other great ladies. Leo had always thought her beautiful; now he saw how fragile the illusion was above the bone—how bravely she preserved it, and how it wore upon her.
Ducas they might be; but they were poor for patricians and, without money or standing, could easily be exiles or—worse yet—forgotten here in the City.
A sudden irony made him chuckle. Ladies in Byzantium were daughters of the Church and its teachings about women's place. They sat apart from men in church, left their homes veiled, when they left at all, and were legally subject to their husbands in all things. But when the ladies spoke among themselves—or in a certain way to the men whose word, presumably, controlled their lives, those men hastened to do their bidding. And, in many cases, walked very small, wanting more peace in their homes than ruled outside them.
Thus it was, at a word from his mother, Anna Dalassena's eldest surviving son presented himself at Leo's father's house. It mattered not at all that, clearly, he considered himself old enough to take up arms. He bore an aristocratic name. He had won through a monastic exile of his own. And he had come to nearly a man's growth.
Alexius would never be tall, Leo thought, as he embraced his friend, but he was very sturdy. Leo could only hope that Alexius would ask no questions that he did not wish to answer. Probably, his mother has warned him about that.
What impressed Leo most about his young friend was that, in the time since he had last seen him—well over a year—Alexius Comnenus had developed a poise that outdid an aristocrat's courtesy as much as a Varangian's courage outmatched that of a street fighter. He had always been clever. Now, beneath dark, arched brows, his eyes were full of life and thought; and he seemed ready ... was the only way Leo could describe it, as if on a moment's notice Alexius could assess a situation and react correctly to it without turning a hair. Perhaps he would indeed have survived Manzikert.
I am glad he did not have to, Leo thought.
He met his friend's eyes and was again shocked at the intensity of the spirit that gazed out at him.
Then, out from the scholarly distractions of his books came Leo's father. The intensity Leo had sensed subsided into the deferential courtesy of a very young man greeting a friend's father. Lady Maria nodded as the three left the house, as satisfied as a strategos at the deployment of her forces.
The common sort had thronged before the Hippodrome since dawn. The instant that the gates were open, they had surged inside, scrambling for places in the tiers of stone seats of the arena. Not so Le
o, his father, and his friend: for them, there was a box with a door that could be shut, off a passageway that could be—and doubtless was—guarded, not just from the mob, but from the aristocratic occupants of other boxes. For himself, Leo would have preferred a place less conspicuous: he felt displayed within the box like an ivory within a frame—as much under observation as he had been when his mother's friends came to call. But his father and young Comnenus struck up an easy conversation on the Gospels (to no one's surprise, Alexius’ mind was wise beyond its years, and possessed a supple vigor of argument). Gradually, Leo was able to unclench his hands and lean back into the cotton and silk of the cushions that covered his chair.
The reeks of sizzling oil, of cooking lamb and fish and onions, of sweat, and of animals combined with the bray of horns and the roar of 60,000 men cheering as the quadrigae, with their matched teams, careened about the central spina of the great racecourse.
Today was a day for racing, not for animal hunts or bear fights. Leo did not think he could have borne a hunt, and he would have seen his dead Emperor in the baiting and suffering of any bear lured out into the vast oblong of the arena.
Alexius leaned forward, pointing at a chariot drawn by bays, their coats darkened now with sweat and dust. As the quadriga rounded the spina for the sixth time, he shouted like a much younger, much less self-possessed boy, leapt to his feet, and then seated himself once again. Leo's eyes flicked to the men seated nearest him. They too had favorites to cheer on, but time too for a quick, appreciative grin at the fine, enthusiastic boy's delight at picking what—yes, now the bays thundered past the spina for the seventh and last time—turned out to be the winning chariot.
Alexius let out one last cheer. With an uncharacteristically boyish bounce, he brought his head close to Leo's.
“Did you hear,” he whispered fast, “what the Turk said when he heard about Romanus’ death?”
At least, Leo had enough self-command not to recoil. Alexius and his mother had spent months in exile when Anna Dalassena had been accused of passing letters from Romanus. Had that, in fact, been truth—or did Alexius begin to intrigue for himself? He was a boy, only a boy—but what noble son in Byzantium was ever just a child?
Shards of Empire Page 11