Queen of lies, p.2
Queen of Lies, page 2
And they would be right!
Chapter 2. The myth unfolds
Late fall, 842 AD
The myth still lingers in the murky past, at a time when my Peasant is still barely aware of his toes, let alone me, or even us. Let’s give him his proper name – Vassilis. He sits on the back of their old mare as Marianos guides it around the herd, doing his best not to startle it. Marianos wants him to let the horses get accustomed to having men nearby before striking – perhaps a good lesson for the future!
A sudden lunge into the center of the herd sends the rope spiraling out, the noose mesmerizing a stallion into brief immobility. It heaves, tearing at the rocky ground as it tries to twist free. Marianos digs heels in and winds the rope around his arm. Seconds grind past.
Then he is on its back, calling out in victory, pulling its head down as it tries to rear. Vassilis circles around on their mare, desperate to be a part of the new catch.
A solitary peal of thunder rolls in from the distance toward them. The herd bolts. Marianos sees Vassilis racing away on their panicked mare, toward rising smoke on the horizon. He takes the stallion by the mane and forces it into a gallop.
Over the hilltop, the town comes into view, swarming with men on horseback, thick limbs waving firebrands, braids flying out from under iron helmets. The Bulgar colors of red, black, and white burn Marianos’ heart. I’m sure the thug resorts to peasant curses at this point.
Marianos panics as hears Vassilis scream. He spots him vanishing on their mare into a forest. An age seems to pass as Marianos catches up to where he last saw him. He picks his way through the trees but Vassilis is nowhere to be seen. Like the peasant that he is, Marianos feels instinctively the need to return home, to return to look for the boy later. After all, he expects Vassilis to know the lie of the land well.
I imagine the town ablaze, perhaps a collapsed wall lying across a bridge strewn with people scrambling, screaming, some in burnt horror, dizzy with pain, clutter everywhere, hens underfoot. Where is Vassilis? Perhaps the mare has taken him home.
Marianos gallops down the main street, then into a maze of alleyways. The Bulgar are already at the marketplace – going straight for the livestock, of course!
He leaps to the ground and charges through the shambles to the hovel that he once called home. On his knees, he tears away at the rubble that covers tattered limbs. Blood drips from his father’s face. Next to him their mother groans in agony, badly burnt.
Marianos roars with rage. His wife screams his name. The smoke is perhaps too much and he passes out for a moment, but then the ground thuds against his head. He fights to get up. Where is she? A flaming beam picks her out as it topples to the ground.
Now he is pushing and kicking, doing anything he can to get the burning wood off her. She frees herself but – a loud creaking overhead – he leaps aside in time to avoid a collapsing timber pinning him to the ground. The whole place is on fire. He pulls her away, thoughts racing. What to do first? Where is the little one? Where is their dim-witted mare?
The call of a horn echoes across the town. What now? Romans as well?
Back out on the street, a clear view of the hills opened up by the toppled wall shows Cataphracts pouring through the gates. Pennants fly the Iconoclast‘s black cross. This is as much the fault of the Romans as the Bulgar, Marianos rages. He prays for the arrows flying across the streets to find their target in the rears of the fleeing men.
Animals mill about. The smoke drifting across the town adds to the confusion. He hides behind a smoldering pile of rubble; waiting for a chance to … he knows not what.
Then he lunges out at a passing Cataphract, toppling him from his horse, pinning him easily to the ground, thanks to the Cataphract’s heavy chain mail. A moment later he draws the Cataphract’s sword across his neck.
“Tell me what is going on before you die,” Marianos hisses.
“No need, we are just in time, you are safe,” chokes the Cataphract. He tries to get up.
Marianos forces him down again and shoves a knee in his throat. “How can we be safe? Where do you come from?”
“The City …” the Cataphract chokes. “This area returns to Roman rule.”
More invaders, under the mask of freedom. The myth that Photios has built on is that their father’s father had been forced to settle in this land by the Romans and had died at the hands of the Bulgar, who dragged Vassilis’ father to this town. Perhaps Vassilis hadn’t even been born yet; let’s say that Marianos, his senior by some seven years, had been very young when the barbarians threw their family down on the rocky ground, leaving them to struggle for survival.
Marianos brings the sword hilt down on the Cataphract’s exposed cheek, leaving a bloody gash. A burning fence nearby starts to collapse and they both jump away just in time.
But Marianos is back on him again, pinning him down in a crushing hold.
“Which city … Constantinople? What do you want here? Why don’t you bastards leave us alone?”
A horn sounds again.
“My commander calls,” the Cataphract splutters as Marianos tightens his grip. “Kill me or let me leave.”
Marianos lets go. The Cataphract scrambles for a horse.
Marianos watches him ride off, the sweat drying coldly on his back in the rising wind, the smell of death and chaos choking him as he struggles to decide what he should do next.
† † †
Theodora the Regent awakens in the Imperial quarters, the afternoon sleep dropping away from her eyes. But there is no peaceful calm to be had. In the long moments at waking, Theophilos’ wordless pleas fade like tired stars into dusk. His agony has returned. Their embraces over the past months have become fewer, the nights of suffering longer and more painful for both of them. Now, encased in bedclothes, only foreheads and fingers touching, not even a kiss is exchanged. His incontinence and fever are a constant, relentless battle against himself, subjugating his once fierce pride.
I imagine Theodora cursing the miserable rascal as much as she feels his pain. She had once been so gullible, this pig-farmer’s daughter from the provinces. In her youthful naivety she had lavished adoration on this most noble of living Romans, convinced that the light that poured from her young Emperor was that of the Savior himself! He had rewarded her by crowning her Augusta.
Then she had watched him throw himself away, mostly on campaigns, trying to set things right, driven by guilt, by his desire for justice. The vanity of men such as him is also their greatest asset. Having taken all the faults of his predecessors on his shoulders, he felt he had to sacrifice every vestige of strength to make the Empire stand firm again.
But why squander himself on her attendants? She forgave him because, as Emperor, he gave everything of himself, and so she felt he was allowed small indulgences. But how could she forget the affronts to her family, such as the time when Theophilos humiliated Petronas, her brother, for building a house that obstructed a widow’s sea view? He had ordered Petronas’ mansion torn down, awarding the property and the left over building materials to the widow, and had Petronas flogged in public. Dear Leo, that was your grandfather!
But it wasn’t just the dallying with her maids that left a bitter taste in her mouth, like aubergines badly prepared for a stew. His raging against her Icons, so unbecoming to an Augusta, made her love for him dissolve into contempt at his single-mindedness.
The last few weeks pass before her eyes as Theophilos tosses and groans. She had been called away on several occasions, first to meet with officials, then to announce to the people that little Michael was to be crowned, and then to the Senate that Theoktistos, the Logothete, would assist her in watching over the little Emperor until he could be let out of his cage. What pleasure was there in it for her, I wonder, to watch all those grand counts and generals scraping the ground, the senators pledging allegiance to Theodora the farmer’s daughter? She would be able to bring men up or push them down, issue decrees, even engage in war. But for her it is all duty, not power.
The court officials had been terrified of Theodora from early on. She would find them hiding behind their sheaves of documents, behind their bowing and bustling, all covering intricate plots to implicate each other while really doing as little as possible to satisfy Imperial whim. Then their scorn and arrogance would wilt under her gaze. Even before Theodora was appointed Regent, legend has it that she challenged the Comptroller and his officials openly when he couldn’t explain payments that had gone astray. She tallied up the figures in her head as Leo the Mathematician had taught her; which troops were stationed at which outposts, and the costs involved, and the results disagreed with what she saw in the papers before her.
I laugh aloud when I imagine the waxen smiles of officials melting as they back away from her presence, dripping excuses as they flee. Theophilos had to acknowledge her quickness then, as well as in her private business pursuits, pursuits that he despised in an Augusta. But how he humiliated her over these later!
So what does Theodora feel when she places her hand on Theophilos’ swollen, feverish belly and slides it up to his chest? Suspicion laced with pity rather than fondness? Perhaps there is a touch of nostalgia for the once handsome cheeks, now gaunt under a fragment of beard. Who can ever really know?
Someone pulls a curtain aside. Theodora nods in response. The final Lenten vespers are upon them. The court will take it amiss if they do not see the Emperor lead the procession, even if he is at death’s door. Theophilos knows as well as she does the consequences of the slightest show of weakness.
† † †
So here is Theophilos’ last Lent, in the darkness of the Virgin of the Lighthouse chapel, bursting with plagal chant, and in the winter of his life. Like the senators gathered behind the Emperor, and indeed like all our people, Theophilos was still trapped in the austerity of spirit that the Iconoclasts – even my own mother – once approved of.
Of course, later on Michael had the Chapel filled with every imaginable form of ornamentation. So much so that it seemed to glow with its own light when Photios officiated at Michael’s union with Vassilis. This chapel is where Photios hid this volume. We ripped his own library apart at first, to find the records of the final acts against the Pope. But who would have thought of looking for a book beneath an altar, until one of my eunuchs stumbled upon it one day, and brought it to me.
A simple cross etched into the ceiling looms over the endless bows and turns of black, purple and white robes, as sandals and soft velvet boots slide over the cold stone. A cloud of smoke coils away from a censer swinging in Patriarch John‘s hands. Photios writes that John the Grammarian was an intelligent man whom he would have respected much, if only he had not devoted himself to defending the Iconoclasts as much as he did.
Theophilos’ lean shadow hunches in prayer and crosses itself, his mumbled prayers barely audible over the Patriarch’s chant. Theodora is at his elbow as he struggles to keep on his feet, while a wooden staff strains under the weight of his other hand.
John trips over the usual words as he rushes to finish the service. “We pray for our mother and father in Christ, the Augusta and the Emperor, may they live long and carry our burdens through adversity into prosperity.”
With a final “God have mercy on us” and sweep of the censer, the Emperor turns and shuffles, three-legged, out of the chapel. Do the shouted commands of a cohort of the Palace Guard assembling outside – once a source of pride to Theophilos – now startle him? To Photios he seemed very nervous near the end.
Outside the chapel, the blinding sun burns down on the Mese, the road that connects the heart of our City for seven miles to the Gates and the great walls that protect us. The guard is changing, as is usual at the sixth hour, before entering the larger formation marching toward the Gates. I imagine the midday sun making long shadows of the guards’ beards on the chain mail over their broad chests, while their sweat-soaked shoulders yearn for the whisper of a sea breeze. Some of them are my people, far from Thule, home of the Norsemen. They will endure anything to find a better life in the City.
A towering brass gate swings open at the walls to reveal a moat. I have seen the midday sun strike right onto the water and watched it glisten in the bright heat. If the guards were off duty, I am sure that a quick, naked plunge would definitely be in order, though it is strictly forbidden.
Let’s imagine that calls and hooves echo across the walls today. Curtains of dust make way for the pummeling of horse’s hooves, perhaps the very same Cataphracts who are returning from Adrianopolis, perhaps even from Vassilis’ village. It is conceivable that one of these knights rubs his neck gingerly, still recalling his encounter with Marianos.
Now the lead Cataphract emerges from the dust and reins in his mount at the gate. He takes off his helmet, revealing a bald, long head and marble-chiseled chin, in sharp contrast to the thickset, bearded men who ride past.
“This is the Logothete,” Theoktistos the Eunuch says. “Stand down. We are needed immediately at the Emperor’s side.” He shakes the dust from his cloak. I smile as I imagine the pompous tones, reeking with contrived precision that accompany this declaration. Such a show-off!
The guard at the gate probably greets the Eunuch with something like “Good news for the Emperor?”
Perhaps exhaustion makes the Eunuch even more annoyed at the over-familiar greeting. He ignores it and dismisses the commanders, before easing his mount into a trot, hooves crunching the broad path, lined with fruit trees, huts and vegetable beds receding into the distance.
Surely he must be satisfied, perhaps even proud, at what he has done. Compared to the grinding failures in recent months, in particular the campaign to rescue Crete from the Emir of Córdoba – whose forces never cease trying to secure every island in the Mediterranean – this campaign has delivered a modicum of success. He knows we can never give up our struggle to preserve the City from the loss of more lands. At least his Augusta, Theodora, knows and appreciates how difficult it has been for them, and for what we now know was their hidden cause – the Icons.
The route that Theoktistos must have followed that day is a breathtaking one: along the hills of Thrace, the horses racing behind him, the great Aqueduct never far from sight to the north. How I would love to see this marvel, built nearly five hundred years ago by the Emperor Valens, its monstrous arches and pillars, like some gorgon of old, straddling forests and valleys for more than a hundred miles as its watery load races down to the bowels of our thirsty City.
Now, with the Aqueduct still on his left, close cobbles eat up the path as horse and rider sweat their way through the crowds, along the Mese, and up a gradual but long incline. The vegetable gardens have deferred to rows of orange brick homes under a sea of flat roofs.
At the top of the hill the Palace complex erupts into view below him. A familiar sight, but one that always makes my heart stand still, a frozen topple of white marble cascading through pockets of green, up and over the next hill, to a cerulean sea flecked with white. The Ayia Sofia, toward which all good Christians are compelled to genuflect, squats in porphyry on the left. The vast expanse of the Hippodrome lies straight ahead. He casts an eye to the chariot boxes at the far end, and perhaps a gleam of sunlight from the giant copper horses above fires the illusion that they are springing into action toward him? They certainly do that to me sometimes.
Exhaustion finally catches up with him. The chill of the late afternoon breeze stirs him into motion again, and he leads his perspiring mount down the slope to the stables. He must get a fresh cloak, report to the old tyrant, and then, God willing, get home quickly to a delicious bath and his sweet bed.
Chapter 3. No way back
Late fall, 842 AD
Everyone knows that Photios’ learning knows no bounds. But how many know how well he can fabricate? No doubt all his reading provides fertile ground for this tale. But what he writes about our story is only half the story. The rest is really my story.
So mark well the pages that I have torn from the binding of his codex, my fine boy. I will take up Photios’ mythology here, and tell the plight of my Vassilis, those many years ago, the one that Photios calls the Usurper in his version of this tale. I hold the power now. I have done so for the past twelve years – since your father died. And the stories of the women in this tome will be mine as well. Somehow that is very fitting – one might even say that Vassilis has taken on the nobler role of a woman himself in some circumstances!
His faithful mare gallops for what seems like an age, leaving my young Peasant nodding off, as he grows tired. He awakens to find himself lying on the ground and that his horse has vanished. Does he weep and thrash around in fear and frustration?
Of course not! He enjoys the time alone at first, playing in the streams, eating berries and trying to catch fresh fish as his brothers had taught him. He climbs trees, looking for the occasional egg, leaving many a confused nest behind. After the first few days of doing this, he stops wondering about his family, at least in the beginning. For my Vassilis is very pragmatic about these things.
I have always marveled at his simple, quiet awareness of God. It often confuses me, even terrifies me. For me, God is – to be frank – somewhat irrelevant. Why does He care about what we do? Surely people should matter more.
But Vassilis can now wander where his heart most wants to be, freed from the clutter of village life, alone amid the forests, the plains and the peaks where only the rustling trees break the silence. For my Vassilis prays without words. Even now, when he holds me in his arms, I wrap myself in the peace that surrounds him like a comfortable blanket. He says that God has no need of babble or priests. I agree completely. So why would it have been any different back then?
Here then is my Peasant, learning to be old at twelve, lost in the dark forest yet content with his lot, in spite of the cold. Though being alone for too long must fill him with some sort of dread, especially when he remembers that soon it will be his name day. Maybe that day is even today? How his brown eyes sting! Where are his parents, not to mention his aunts and uncles? Who do they gather around, singing the songs of the arrival of Saint Vassilis from Caesarea, bearing parchment and quill to write blessings for the start of the New Year?
