The Bucoleon Palace, Constantinople, Capital of the Eastern Empire
Dim yellow candlelight illuminated a smooth wooden wall. The close-grained surface was carved with rows of curling flowers and vines. Fat-tailed sheep, heads low, alternated with stiff figures of hunters and farmers, frozen in the field or at the hunt. A thick Serican carpet hung from the wall, covering most of the panel.
It creaked and moved, sliding open, revealing darkness. A hand came into view, stubby fingered and webbed with scars and old cuts. A man followed, stocky, broad shouldered, with lank dark hair and the ghost of a beard on his chin. His eyes were narrow and cautious, surveying the room carefully before he set foot within. He moved with the ease of long practice, his feet bare, avoiding those tiles that might creak or make a noise. Behind him, equally quietly, came a taller man, younger, with long blond hair tied back in a single plait behind his head.
Set into the far wall of the room was a sleeping platform draped with silk and linen. A figure lay there, asleep, though the sound of breathing was labored and thick with a watery cough. The dark-haired man approached softly, his nose wrinkling at the thick smell that hung in the chamber. He was used to the stench of the battlefield, the raw-sewage smell of corpses bloated in the sun, the buzz of the flies. This seemed worse, for the man in the bed was still alive.
Is this the punishment of the gods? Are these whispers in the Hippodrome true?
Rufio, captain of the Faithful, the red-cloaked barbarian guardsmen of the Emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, knelt on the woolen covers, his face pensive. Here, in the darkness, where there was no one to see, not even Sviod, who shared this secret, he let some of the worry show in his face. The man in the bed, his master, Emperor Heraclius, avtokrator of the Greeks, was dying. He was not dying of a spear thrust taken on some battlefield, or even of old age, with his grandchildren about him. He was not dying facing his enemies, the men of the Legions at his back. The Emperor was not dying the death Rufio desired.
This was a cold and lonely death, suffered in silence and isolation. A slow, wasting disease ate away at the Emperor from within.
This, they said in the markets and the streets of great Constantinople, is what comes of flaunting the laws of the gods, of flying in the face of decency!
The illness had come suddenly, striking the Emperor down as he returned in triumph from the eastern frontier. Peace had been forced upon the ancient empire of the Persians. The mad king Chrosoes had been cut down, his capital of Ctesiphon burned to rubble. Vast sums in coin and bullion had been taken from the golden palaces, from the rich houses of the nobles and the merchants. The vaunted Persian army, which had previously besieged Constantinople itself, had been smashed at the Kerenos River. The great nobles that formed the backbone of the Persian state squabbled amongst themselves. Chrosoes had left no living male heirs. Rome, at last, after a thousand years of conflict, was triumphant.
It was the Emperor himself who was failing. Some decay had come upon him as the army had marched up out of the plains of Syria into the high Taurus Mountains. His flesh swelled, distending with clear, noisome fluid. His limbs betrayed him, failing to support his weight. Skin bulged and grew thin and transparent, strained by the water that accumulated in his flesh.
And the smell… always the smell.
Rufio grimaced again but put these thoughts aside. There was delicate and careful work to be done. He focused his mind, blocking out the rasping breath of the man lying before him. First, with a delicate hand, lighter than a feather, he opened the Emperor's lips. A bubbling sound rose from the throat. Rufio reached behind him and felt Sviod press a small glass vial into his hand. It was closed with a cork and Rufio thumbed it out with care. It made a popping sound and he palmed the stopper. A fresh smell of juniper and pine cut into the thick air. Rufio kept his mind on the task.
With the swelling of the flesh, the Emperor had conceived a terrible fear of any kind of liquid. He would not drink, seeing that his flesh pouched and distended with bile. In his extremity, for he was tormented by thirst, he would sometimes take small sips of wine. He would take no medicine or potion offered by the Imperial physicians or the priests of Asklepius. Even the master of their order, summoned up from their sanctuary at Pergamon, had been unable to halt the disease.
After that sour incident, the Emperor had banned any priest or sage from his side. He had never trusted them and now held deep hatred for their kind. Rufio, who had seen men laid open by the blow of an ax restored by the powers of the ancient order, did not think this was wise.
But Rufio was not the Emperor. Indeed, he was oath-sworn to execute the Emperor's orders instantly, as were all of the Faithful. On that day, when the Emperor had screamed insults at the old, white-haired priest, if he had been ordered, Rufio would have cut the elder down. This was the burden laid upon him, to serve at the right hand of the Lord of All Men, Augustus Romanorum.
Yet, in all this, Heraclius had never ordered Rufio to cease trying to save him.
So, here in the darkness, in secret, the soldier crouched in the bed of the Emperor, urging single drops of aromatic fluid from the glass vial, letting them fall one by one into the Emperor's slack mouth. This was a distillate of juniper berries and parsley seeds, made by Sviod in a hidden room in the barracks of the old palace. Rufio had served with the northern barbarians who formed the bulk of the Faithful Guard for many years and he trusted this one, this blond youth, more than most.
Besides, he thought bitterly, this is his grandmother's recipe! Why not trust the Empire and my own neck to the wisdom of a woman likely dead and moldering a thousand miles away?
The glass vial was empty, the last drop trickling down the Emperor's throat. Rufio let out a thin, controlled breath and began to ease his way off the bed. In such tainted air, Rufio's nocturnal visits would be considered treason, and more than one captain of the Faithful had ended his days in the small Courtyard of the Ax, his sightless eyes staring up at the sun. The Faithful Guard had sworn an oath to the Emperor, not to their captain.
"It is done," said Rufio softly, rearranging the bedclothes to cover up the dents his knees had left in the sheets. "Let us go."
Sviod was already at the panel and it closed softly after them, sliding flush against the wall. Behind them, in the dark room, the Emperor stirred, moaning in pain. His guilt and fear tormented him, even in sleep.
– |Another sliding panel revealed another room, and Rufio stepped out into a well-lit space filled with fine oil lamps. The chamber was slightly smaller than the Emperor's bedchamber, but it was vastly better smelling, with the scent of rose and jasmine touching the air. He took a deep breath, hoping to clear the reek from his lungs. Tall, narrow windows let in cool, northern light by day and were shrouded with tapestries by night. Stacks of papyrus scrolls and parchment books buried the sleeping couch set into the wall. A large acerwood table dominated the room. It too was covered with papers and tablets and maps. More boxes of wicker and wooden slats covered the floor, containing Imperial tax records and audit reports. Behind it, curled up in a large wing-backed chair, her feet tucked under her, sat a young woman with long, tousled brown hair.
"It went well?" She looked up at the sound Rufio made, crossing to the table. Her light green eyes were smudged with exhaustion and worry. He nodded and put his hands on the back of the chair.
"No one saw us, Empress. Sviod is disposing of the evidence."
Rufio had parted from the Scandian in one of the tunnels that bored through the heart of the Bucoleon. Sviod had found a rubbish pit in the upper city, hard by the street of glassmakers. The bottle, washed out with springwater and then broken, would be cast away there, lost amongst a million fellow shards of glass. Rufio hoped that he was not marked by any of the spies that thronged the city.
"Is he any better?"
Rufio roused himself from his thoughts and met the woman's eyes. Her face was fixed and calm, like a mask. He knew that she had tried to put the pain of her husband's decline and his rejection of her aside. She carried a heavy burden well, but it was beginning to tell. The pert, open features and the ready smile that had endeared her first to her uncle and then to the palace staff were shrouded by exhaustion.
"Empress, I cannot tell. He was in pain, suffering from evil dreams. Sviod says that his uncles, when they suffered this ailment-"
Martina raised a hand.
"I know," she said, her voice weary. "They drink gallons of this concoction of their granddames. And it takes a week or more to show an effect." She put down the Anatolikon tax record she had been reviewing and rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands. "While we, in this hornet's nest, are forced to get by with a drop or two a day, should we be so lucky. It might take months, should he live so long, to cure him."
Rufio nodded in resigned agreement. It was a tricky situation. The Empress sighed and stood, stretching her arms over her head. Rufio looked away quickly. Martina, as was her wont after "retiring" for the evening, was wearing a soft plum-colored tunic that barely reached her knees and fleece slippers. At first it had troubled Rufio even to be in her presence; it was a crime to be alone with her, much less while her husband was sick abed two floors and a hundred feet away. Now, since he had compounded that crime with treason and conspiracy, he just tried to ignore that she was a pretty young woman.
"Should I leave?" Martina faced him, hands on her hips, watching him with a serious expression on her face. "I am sure, for the black looks that Bonus gives me during temple services, that the high priest of Zeus Pankrator would gladly countenance my divorce. Within a day I could be safely away, within a week I could be home in Africa. Within the month, if need be, I could be in Mother Rome. I know a woman there, she could help me."
Rufio shook his head slowly, though what she said was true.
"And your son, what would you do with him?"
Martina pursed her lips and looked away, her gaze straying to the crib in the corner of the room. In it, sleeping deeply-at least for this little while!-was her son by Heraclius. Little Heracleonas had come into the world early and roughly, in a tent in the mountains of Armenia, but had seemed a hale child. Now, nearly a year later, he was troubled by vague illness. A priest of Asklepius came every two or three days and looked upon the child, but it seemed that nothing could be done to make him strong. He could not even walk yet.
Like my husband, brooded Martina. Hidden powers move against us, denying us happiness.
"I do not know," she said, turning back to Rufio. "One of my stepsons has already died by odd circumstance, and the other, poor Constantius, fears to be seen with me. If I flee, taking Heracleonas, he may die before I can find refuge. What will happen to Constantius then? While his father lives, while I am here and my son is alive, he is safe from the attentions of these parasites."
Martina glared at Rufio, who spread his hands, showing his agreement. She bit at her nail, then picked up one of the long quill pens that lay on the countertop. She needed something in her hands.
"If I go, then Theodore will return. Papers will surely appear, making him the heir, the regent of his invalid brother. He will be Emperor, if not in name, then in fact."
Rufio watched the Empress carefully, for she had begun to change under the pressure of her situation. When she had first been brought from Africa to live in the house of her uncle, to be tutored in art and literature, she had been quiet and demure. Compliant, even. Far more interested in the doings of books and painting, of sculpture and the theater, than the tawdry business of who stood closest to the Emperor. The guard captain sighed quietly. Heraclius and his niece had married out of love. Such things were not done, particularly among the nobility. Certainly never the Emperor!
Yet, he insisted. Even his closest allies argued against the match… and now, here we are.
Martina had shed her compliance, her naivete, in the harsh training yard of the palace. Life in the Bucoleon was simple-if the Emperor smiled upon you, then you prospered. For this moment, while Heraclius lay between life and death, everything was out of balance. While he lived, Martina could continue to exist, even when the great lords and priests were dead set against her. Once he died…
"I will not let that fool replace my husband." Martina's voice was hard.
Then too, there was a deep and abiding hatred between the Empress and her other uncle, Prince Theodore. Rufio did not know where it had sprung from, but from the first day that the little girl had been in the palace, that tension had existed between them. Only the love that both parties shared for Heraclius had kept peace in the house. Now that they dealt directly with each other, the dislike had deepened. Rufio was well aware that Theodore held no love for him either. Should the Prince become regent, he would be lucky to escape with a head on his shoulders.
Martina smiled coldly, her fingers smoothing the quill down on the pen.
"Captain, we will persevere. Tell your young Scandian to make more of his potion. I will find a way to see that my husband takes more of it rather than less."
Rufio nodded and rose, hearing a tone of dismissal in her voice.
Very Empresslike, he thought to himself, pleased.
"Wait." Martina sat again at the desk, turning one of the lamps so that it gave her better light. A cup of red ink sat close at her hand. She dipped the quill and then, with a quick motion, scribed a signature on the scroll in front of her. "These papers are ready-place them on the logothete of the treasury's desk before you go to sleep."
Rufio grimaced, but he took the papers. They were neatly lettered, and not by any scribe in the palace. Those fellows needed coin as badly as any did, and were notorious for making extra copies of interesting things that passed over their writing desks.
Three crimes against the state in the passage of one day, he thought glumly to himself. My record improves.
Without looking at the fresh signatures, he placed the drafted laws into leather slipcovers and bound them up with a special dark red twine. Martina bent close, her head almost touching his own, and dripped wax onto the knots. Her small, creamy-white hand stamped down hard with the sigil. Rufio tried not to breathe, but the heady aroma of the Empress' hair, perfume and hot wax filled his nostrils.
"Done," she said smartly, tucking a strand of hair back behind one ear. There was a smudge of ink on her cheek. "Good night, Rufio. I will return the ink and the binding twine to their proper places."
Rufio did not answer her smile or the wicked gleam in her eye. The patricians who held the esteemed and noble offices of the Keeper of the Imperial Inkstand and the Holder of the Legal Binding were corrupt and venal men. It pleased the Empress that she, or her servants, could make free with their signs of office in the depth of night. It made Rufio nervous, for those men already held Martina in contempt. Slighting them in this way only bred more ill will.
He bowed and went out through the panel in the wall.
Behind him, Martina stood at the crib, one slim hand brushing the sleeping face of her child. She was terribly lonely, bereft of husband and family, but she dared not keep Rufio with her long. His discovery with her, particularly without a proper escort, would mean his death and her disgrace. This galled her, for she knew from the histories that previous empresses had entertained whole troops of gladiators, grooms, foreign princes, even chariot drivers and street sweepers in their chambers. But then the Empire had been at peace, or their husbands had countenanced such behavior in the interests of public image.
Or they were powers in their own right.
Moodily, she stared out the window. The moon was high enough to illuminate the crowded maze of buildings, some new, some decrepit, which made up the palace.
I am in a not particularly well kept up cage, she thought, not for the first time. I need an advantage, an ally, something to hold back these jackals and wild dogs… I need a friend.