s was customary, Bryennius and I saw little of each other. Not that I would have wanted it otherwise; my betrothed was a pleasant enough person, but so dull that I had no desire to spend more time in his company than was demanded by our social duties.
My father had given me a wing of Balchernae Palace, my favorite of the residences in the imperial compound. I was able to put into practice the household arts I had been learning for several years. After all, I wearily reminded myself as day followed day in tedious sameness, my mother says that a palace is just a large house. I was mistress of the house, and was responsible for all its inhabitants, princess or no.
I had a small consolation when I found that of all the domestic arts I was now called upon to practice, I most enjoyed my skill in medicine. I treated the fevers people came down with in the summer, and children came to me with all their scrapes and bruises for me to anoint.
One afternoon all my tasks had been completed. The servants were sleeping, and I was too restless to lie down. Simon was working in the library, and I wandered through the room, looking for something to read. I pulled a book off the shelf and read the title. To my annoyance, it was a collection of hymns. I was about to find something more suited to my taste, when Simon spoke behind me.
“You might learn something from that book, Little Beetle,” he said.
“Why?” I asked, pausing with the book in midair. “Those are the hymns of Kassia. Do you not remember her?” he asked.
“Kassia?” I remembered the name, but little else. “A little nun who wrote pious verses, was she not?”
“I thought you knew better than to judge without seeing for yourself,” he said. “A fine historian you are. Read one and then tell me what you think.”
I opened the book at random to a hymn to St. Barbara. I read the opening lines aloud:
“The evil one has been dishonored,
defeated by a woman,
because he held the First-Mother
as an instrument of sin.”
Astonishing. This wasn’t the usual little nun. Nor was it pious, as I had expected, but a severe condemnation of those who committed wrongs. I turned a few pages and read a poem about Christina the martyr:
“Christina the martyr, holding the cross
in her hand as a mighty weapon,
with faith as a breast plate, hope as a shield,
love as bow, bravely overcame
the punishments of her oppressors,
divinely defeated the evilness of the demons.
Christ provided strength along with your beauty,
that proved unconquerable against both enemies and passions.
It remained firm under the bitter assaults and the most savage tortures.”
I closed the book and held it to my chest. Kassia obviously knew all about injustice, and the importance of remaining strong in the face of your enemy. “I didn’t know there were women who wrote like this,” I said. “I thought it would all be about forgiveness and accepting your place in the world.”
Simon nodded, pleased to have been proved right. “Didn’t I ever tell you the story of Kassia and the apple?”
I shook my head and sat down on my usual low stool to listen. I had been missing Simon’s stories.
“Kassia,” he began, “was a noblewoman. She lived in this city—oh, about four hundred years ago. The custom at that time was for the emperor himself to choose his own bride. All the most beautiful unmarried women would gather in the palace and the emperor would walk among them until he saw the one he wanted. I suppose his advisors would tell him ahead of time which one was the most suitable, so he would not unknowingly choose a woman deficient in morals or in wit, but in any case the choice was his alone.
“In his hand, the emperor carried a golden apple. When he found the woman he was to marry, he would hand it to her. When the emperor of four hundred years ago saw Kassia, he was smitten by her beauty and grace, and handed her the apple. But he wanted to make sure she knew just how small was her importance compared with his, so as he gave it to her, he said, ‘Through woman has come all evil,’ referring, of course, to the mother of the human race, Eve, whose eating of the apple caused mankind to fall.
“Kassia handed him back the apple, refusing the offer of marriage to a man of such small comprehension and one who obviously did not value womankind. The fact that he was emperor did not sway her. She said to him, ‘But also through woman better things began,’ speaking about Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. She left the city and became a nun, founding an abbey and writing hymns to the end of her days.”
A satisfactory story, I thought, until the end. Only a fool would choose to live in an abbey when she could have a palace!