“Speaking of thanks,” he began, “I owe you mine for pulling me out of the cistern.”
Alexius gestured briefly and with surprising elegance, turning Leo's words aside. His eyes lit with curiosity. I could tell him about my vision, Leo thought. But it is a heavy burden for one so young.
Granted, it could be said that a boy with Alexius’ talents and upbringing could not be considered particularly young, ever. Leo had always thought some fate surrounded him, like the halo on a mosaic saint. It was no real surprise that Alexius had rescued him. Leo's story would be safe with him. He longed to tell it.
But Romanus’ son stood before him, and it would take torture with hot irons before Leo told the boy how he had seen the Pantocrator reflect his father's torture.
Leo's eyes slid to his namesake. Alexius nodded. The moment for confidences passed.
“Sit down, both of you,” Leo asked. “When you are discovered, I shall say I heard you and invited you in.”
“For which I thank you,” Alexius said. “We are all grateful today, aren't we?”
That earned a smile from young Leo. “Will you tell me about my father?” he asked. “No...” He held up a hand himself in a studied, elegant gesture. “But about him and the Turk, Alp Arslan?”
Leo took a deep breath, as an ache he hadn't known he had eased somewhat. “How long I can speak, with this throat on me, young sir, I don't know,” he said. “But I will try.”
He more than tried. Ultimately, his success proved the undoing of all three of them, as their laughter and raised voices brought his mother and the August Lady Anna Dalassena to the door of Leo's room.
The battle was brief, its outcome never much in doubt. At its end, two chastened youths made their apologies to Lady Maria and somewhat hasty farewells to Leo. His mother escorted them to the door, though Leo knew she would rather have stayed. Their accounting could not be long put off: he knew that, too.
Vision, panic, and the shocks he had suffered in the cistern of Justinian, followed by the long, warm rest, had left Leo weak, but with a curiously clear mind. He rose from his bed and threw on the first clothes that came to hand. The floor was warm against his bare feet.
For once, miraculously, his father was not cloistered with his books. Leo seated himself in his father's customary chair and reached for pen, ink cake, and parchment. He drove his pen over the parchment with more assurance than he had done anything for years. He had been lost for so long, and now, finally, he had found himself a path that might lead, if he were luckier than he had been, to peace of mind.
He remembered that much from his vision in Hagia Sophia: the blessed silence beneath the earth.
Swiftly he wrote. The more rapidly he performed this duty, the more rapidly he could search for the peace and silence he knew how and where to seek. The scratching of his pen lulled him into ... it was beyond resignation: acceptance. He should have thought of this earlier.
He had, in fact; but the Empress Eudocia had thrust him back into the world. Rest must be earned, she said. He had taken that as a command. Well, he had earned it now. It was not as if he had a great number of possessions to dispose of, but those few of value must be distributed in a worthy, responsible fashion. Arms and horse were luxuries, vanities, but he would need them if he were to reach his destination. Otherwise, Alexius should have them—not that the boy did not already possess far finer. A few books—for his father. A keepsake here and there ...
“What do you write?”
Ever since his childhood, Leo remembered, his mother had the gift of soundless motion. He started, then sank back into his father's chair. She had arched her dark eyebrows, always a sign that she faced battle; and her eyes held the look he remembered from the day he had been carried home, half-drowned.
He laid down the pen. Soon he would have God's time—all the time in the world: he could well afford the virtue of patience.
“I am making my will.”
Up came her hands, clasping as if in prayer, then dropping, twisting in the heavy fabric of her garments. Her face flushed. As if the sudden heat of her skin freed them, tears slid down her cheeks.
“So I lose you, after all,” she said. “All I did to bring you safely home, and now...”
Her hands released the silk of her gown. Her face went suddenly gaunt. Leo had seen soldiers look like that after a defeat. He had felt it on his own. After Manzikert. When Romanus finally stopped breathing while Leo knelt beside him in his cell, but had no eyes left for him to close.
“I was not worth the sacrifice,” Leo whispered, averting his eyes. It was the only kindness he could muster.
“So now you cannot even look at me?” Her voice was still low, but it had the intensity of a cry. “I wanted my son back, do you hear? I would have done anything to save you, far worse, even, than I did. And I would have thanked God for the chance!”
“In the name of God, Mother, why?" Leo demanded. So far removed from the world, are you, Leo my lad? he thought. So remote that she can catch you, snare you, and draw you back even more swiftly than the Basilissa? “Why not just leave it to God's will that I would have returned?”
His mother shook her head. Even in her tears, she could still be exasperated by what she considered stupidity; and, clearly, she considered Leo's question to be profoundly, hurtfully stupid.
“You were at risk, son,” she told him. “A man of the same blood, the same generation as His Exalted Majesty. You might not have known what it meant when the Proedrus Psellus refused to teach you further, but I did. And I was afraid.”
Leo let his pen drop to the table. Psellus had rejected him. That had meant, Leo feared, that he was a fool, that his understanding was childlike, that he had no future in a City that valued a keen, wily intellect almost as much as it valued faith.
“Kyrios forgive me,” Maria said. “You thought it ... you, foolish, Leo? To think thus is the only stupidity you have ever committed. There was a test. He...” A gesture of his mother's chin in the direction of the palace left no doubt of her meaning. “...had what was required. Which is to say, very little at all. You, however, you never yielded. Ever.”
She sighed. “Thus, they feared you. And your father and I feared ... this City is full of dangers. We prayed for you and we thought, since you were not to be a scholar or a logothete, that your strength might well make you a soldier. And it was in my power...” She shrugged.
Did my father know the bargain you struck?
Now that his mind was no longer crippled by the belief he was less able than other men of his age and station, Leo could follow her reasoning: The boy was bright and willful—far too strong. Best not advance him. Best, perhaps, eliminate him altogether. But if there were a reason why he must suffer no convenient accident, well, let him make war his career. He could go East, a veritable haunt of dangers; and he would go supervised by one of the men least likely to advance him. And why? His mother wished him to live and she had a claim—best not think of that.
“Why not one of the others?” he asked. “Caesar John himself, his sons...”
“They were too strong,” his mother said. “And too well known. They would appear as usurpers. Though, when Eudocia married, I would imagine it was thought of...”
“None of the men,” Leo mused. “And all of the women...”
"Hush!" His mother's elegant hands (do not think of those hands, Leo, caressing, cajoling, or you will surely run mad) reached out to shut his lips. “That was the problem. Not just a wayward mind, one immune to his tricks.” She sighed. “It was hard...”
She loved him, had sacrificed for him, had suffered, and he had condemned her. Even his father had not judged her that harshly. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
His mother met his eyes with the courage he remembered from when he was a child. “We wanted to preserve our son's life. Sometimes,” she added, “you win only by appearing to surrender. Now, it seems, we surrendered; yet even more is asked.”
Her hands went
up, covered her face; and her shoulders shook with her grief.
Almost against his will, Leo rose from his father's chair and put his arms about his mother.
“I do not go to die,” he promised her, “but, for my life's sake, for my soul's sake, I go to seek a place where I may live in peace, without assaults upon my mind and heart. Alp Arslan called me Lion's Cub: you are the lioness who gave birth to me and sheltered me—bolder than any lion. Can you not understand that and forgive it?”
“Shall you go...” Her face lit. “You were at Prote, where ... Romanus is buried. And Her Exalted Majesty the Basilissa Eudocia is there. It would be shrewd...”
She sank into a trance of connivance, both political and social.
Against his will, Leo found himself laughing. Whatever else might befall, his mother was herself again.
“Mother, I do not seek out the good monks for political advantage.”
“You, a monk, withdrawn from the world?” His mother marveled. “A stylite, perched upon a pillar in the waste?”
Leo shook his head. “I have lost all my taste for heights.”
“Then, where do you go? And why?”
“Because I have seen a sign, truly, I saw one in Hagia Sophia, Mother. The Pantocrator appeared to me. His eyes were full of fire, and I saw countless spires of rock in the waste ... Perhaps it is just a fever dream or the vapors of a diseased mind and soul. But I believe, truly I believe, that there is a purpose for me to leave the City.
“I shall go to Cappadocia and make myself useful there. I have no vocation, it is true; but my back is strong. I can hew wood and draw water for the monks while they praise God.”
His mother's eyelids flickered. A true sign was a true sign: it could not be gainsaid by even the most skeptical, which no one in Byzantium dared be.
But Cappadocia was also Romanus’ birthplace.
Leo nodded. “Yes,” he said. “My emperor's home. There, I shall make my soul.”
“But you will die in a cave! And I will never see you again!”
“It is as I told the Basilissa. It may be that I shall spend my life praying. But be assured, if I can come back to you, I shall; and I shall send word of my well-being, such as it is. Will that content you?”
He knew her so well, he thought, then realized that he had scarcely known one aspect of her at all. She wanted to say “no.” “Yes” was too costly, but “no” was a lie; and there had been too many lies, spoken and unvoiced, between them. So, his mother said nothing for a long moment, followed by “I shall pray for it.”
“And I. Give me your blessing,” said Leo. “I have far to go.” He held out his will to show her. “I must thank you, you know, for taking me back.”
“You are our son! And you will always be our son. I beg you to remember that, even if you turn to lifelong holiness.”
Leo promised what he must for his mother's peace. That he loved her and his father. That he forgave her. And that he would return to Byzantium and his position as a scion of the Imperial Family—however undesirable—if he might.
But he had not lied. Within the Pantocrator's eyes, he had seen the magnificent desolation of the cave monasteries of Cappadocia: the silence and the stillness; water running beneath the sun over rocks and into unimaginable crevices; the sanctuaries of faith and the darkness beneath the earth.
Heart and soul, he found himself homesick for a land he had never seen. For now, however, he let his mother rest her head against his shoulder and forgave her for helping save his life.
Clouds hid the peaks of the Taurus range still far to the south. The moon cast a silver track across the salt lake and traced the contours of the land. With the spring greens of the ground cover hidden by the night, Leo could imagine this entire land as the bed of some long-dried-up ocean, of which only the salt lake remained a prisoner, shackled by earth.
All the elements were mixed here: the water glittered, stirred by the restful night air. He had found slick black stone like his tiny knife scattered about by some subterranean crucible that had exploded, hurling fragments high into the air. Gazing out across the salt water, Leo found it hard not to think of a sunken sea waiting for flame to gout from the mountains.
A burst of noise from merchants and guards clustering around the fire disturbed the ancient peace of the night. Some fool had drunk too much—which could be fatally stupid out here, should bandits or Turks be riding on the lookout for easy prey. He had ridden with these men from Constantinople to Ancyra to Caesarea Mazaca. He would be glad when he could ride away on his own.
It would be good to walk now by the salt lake, perhaps to test whether the water were as buoyant as he had heard pilgrims claimed about the Dead Sea in the Holy Land: they said you could not sink. He would write of the lake, if he were permitted letters, to Alexius. After his labor in pulling Leo from the cistern, the boy would no doubt be relieved. Would Leo ever see Alexius again, or his home?
Constantinople is no longer my home. By the time spring came and Leo could leave the city, it was hard to say who was most relieved: the Emperor and his servants—for their power; his mother and father—for his continued survival; or he himself.
Out of fear, the unlikeliest assortment of travelers huddled together on the road. Leo was certain he saw Armenians. Traveling at the back of the troop rode Jewish merchants, who had paid handsomely for the privilege, including a veritable army of guards.
Emperors weren't the only ones who hired mercenaries. He himself could well have sold his sword. As a young man with army experience, he too would take his place among the fighters.
He would have preferred to walk in the caravan's dust, a nameless penitent. But “excessive humility is a form of pride,” his mother had reminded him, her brows winging up ironically.
Meanwhile, the captain of the merchants’ guard asked no embarrassing questions about why a man with no visible flaws of age or person was no part of an army. Most of his other men were older, glad for the pay and the reduced risk of caravan duty. One or two, watched askance even by their fellow soldiers, were Pechenegs. And one, who kept much to himself, had the long, fair braids, the pallor, and the blue eyes of a Northerner.
That man did not so much walk as march, his shoulders braced as proudly at the end of a day as at dawn, when the wagons first rolled. He had the discipline of an Imperial, right enough, but he did not bear the axe that unfailingly marked Varangian guardsmen; and Leo asked him no more questions than he wished asked of him.
The Northerner was of an age to have served in the East—to have served at Manzikert, even; he had sufficient scars and the withdrawn, over-the-shoulder look about him that Leo had seen in his own reflection. Once or twice, his and Leo's eyes had met. The man had run his eyes over the worn, finely crafted cataphract's armor that Leo wore when he must. They had no need to speak.
Uproar from the camp shattered the night's peace. Hard for Leo to believe that any of the guards could get that drunk on the swill that had been served out to them. Or perhaps it was the merchants, quarrelling. Was he their keeper? Soon, it would be Leo's watch. It would be better thought of, he knew, if he reported early. But his mind had strayed, and he had not yet completed his prayers.
He bent his head but a footstep brought him instantly alert. He crouched, his sword out, startling the merchant who approached him, backed by a guard.
“Sir...”
Leo straightened. “I know. I am due on watch,” he said.
“Can you ... young sir, it is one of the guards. We need you to talk to him. To control him.”
The merchant glanced about, clearly perturbed at straying, even at need, so far from the camp where from all they could hear, all hell was breaking loose. No hoofbeats: no Turks. What had caused the uproar? Some blood feud suddenly erupting after generations among the merchants?
Leo raised a brow, inquiring of the guardsman. The man shrugged. “It is the big man. The Northerner.”
“It is my duty to do what I can,” he said, in his guise as
pilgrim. “But surely, the captain...”
But the merchant was scurrying back toward the dubious safety of the campfires, not even waiting to see if he were followed.
“The Northman got drunk.” The guardsman shrugged. “Can't imagine drinking enough of the swill they give us to get that drunk.”
Leo raised an eyebrow, trusting to the moonlight that the guard would see it.
“He wasn't on guard. Ordinarily, the captain would fine him, or have him beaten, depending. Assuming he could. But ... then he got strange.”
More shouts, followed by the glint of moonlight on a sharp blade, caught their attention.
“So he did have his axe,” Leo muttered.
“You think he was in the Guard? Why would he leave?”
“I think he has a right not to answer questions if he doesn't want to. If your captain had doubts, why did he hire the man?”
Too arrogant by half, Leo. Try to be a pilgrim for once, not an aristocrat, even a disgraced one.
“It's not hard to recognize a Varangian, even without his crimson tunic. They're good fighters; Captain jumped at the chance to hire him—until he started shouting and swinging that axe.”
“Why ask me?” Leo asked. That was the real question. “I'm hardly a match for him even without that axe.”
The man gestured at Leo's armor. “You didn't get armor like that just to go hunting. It's seen hard use. Rumor is, you can reach that Northerner. Maybe the two of you haven't spoken, but maybe you don't have to.”
Ducas. His name went unsaid once again.
“Rumor talks too damned much,” Leo said. “I'll speak to the captain before I go on guard if he thinks I can do anything he can't.” Slowly, he started toward the camp. His overly aristocratic armor rustled and chimed about him, distracting him from the peace he had sought.
Behind him, the salt lake glittered beneath the full moon.
* * * *
The moonlight glinted off the big Northman's conspicuous plaits of hair and his harness, half as broad again across the shoulders as Leo's. And, most to the point ... and flat ... and blade ... the moonlight struck sparks from the axe that the man now bore. He spun, threw, and caught the deadly thing with the deceptive ease of an expert. He brought it down on an imaginary skull with such speed that it whistled as it cleaved the night air.
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