Now that the ‘Paphlagonian scum’ were gone, the Empress Zoe lost no time in restarting her perfumery. Once again the copper cauldrons bubbled in the big, high-ceilinged room next to her bedchamber, and the heavy aroma of attar and aloes and sandalwood seeped into every corner of the Daphne palace. The first guests whom she invited to visit her there were Selene and Olympia.
It was nearly five months since the mad escapade when they had disguised themselves as nuns and smuggled Zoe out of the palace to make a last appeal to her dying husband. What a disaster that had been, and Zoe might have resented it but instead she conceived an almost pathetic affection for these two brave young women. They were now her favorites among the court ladies, her ‘daughters’, as she was wont to say.
Psellus took a cynical view of this: Zoe understood where power lay. Selene was the wife of the new Commandant of the Varangians and Olympia the wife of the new Logothete. Zoe needed our loyalty, and the way to that, in her mind, was through our wives.
But Selene had a different view, and I think she was right. The sad woman, who all her life had been terrorized and imprisoned, neglected by her father, deprived of the chance for motherhood, and abused by one husband after another, had an enormous need to unburden herself now, to defend and explain herself, and—yes—to mother someone.
‘Wear light and comfortable clothing,’ the invitation read. It was quickly apparent why. (I recount the scene now from what Selene and Olympia told us afterward.) The two friends were brought to the door by a young eunuch. Both were both nervous. Until that day they had met the Empress only at receptions or banquets where they were among a mob of court ladies. This was the first time they would be in a room alone with her. Of course, they knew all about the notorious perfumery from their husbands, and they weren’t looking forward to it. Selene whispered a silent prayer to Thrice-Great Hermes and touched the amulet that hung between her breasts under the thin fabric of her dress. She and Olympia exchanged a quick smile to give each other courage. The door opened, letting out a rush of pungent, torrid air. Selene swallowed hard.
“My dears, such a pleasure to see you,” Zoe burbled, as the two women were ushered inside. She was dressed in a plain linen shift that clung damply to her rounded figure, her sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, and a scarf confined her grey-blond curls. Her face, still preternaturally smooth, was glowing. “You come at a critical moment, I shall want your advice. We’re mixing a new skin lotion, my own recipe.”
“Your Majesty is very kind to invite us,” said Selene.
“Majesty? Oh, no, no, my dear.” Zoe seized her by the hands. “After what we have been through together! We are equals here. You may call me ‘ma’am’—kyria—as you would your own elderly aunts. You know, I’m old enough to be one, though no one would guess it.” She touched her buttery cheek and smiled archly. “And when we’re among ourselves we will use the familiar esu. Come along, now.”
She led them to a vat in which some white and viscous liquid bubbled gently. A sweaty female slave clad in an apron stirred it with a long-handled paddle. Elsewhere in the room other women and men stirred other kettles, while along the farther wall still others worked at a long bench, filling and stoppering glass flasks. “Rub a little on your palms,” Zoe urged. “Tell me your opinion truthfully now.” Obediently, the women dipped their fingertips in, rubbed them together, sniffed.
“Lovely,” Olympia exclaimed.
“I’ve never felt anything like it,” said Selene—which was the truth because none of this stuff was to her taste. Her young skin needed no lotions, and she rarely wore scent.
For the next hour Zoe led them in turn from cauldron to seething cauldron while she recited in exquisite detail the ingredients of this and that potion. “Spikenard … myrrh …” A sudden crash of breaking glass interrupted her in mid-word. A clumsy slave had dropped a whole tray of flasks and a puddle of perfumed ooze spread over the floor in one corner of the room.
“Dolt!” Zoe shrieked, “Idiot!” She struck the woman across the face with the back of her beringged hand, leaving a red welt. “I’ll have you whipped. Clean this up!” The unfortunate woman fell to her knees and began to mop with the hem of her dress, while others ran for pails and rags. Selene and Olympia exchanged tense glances while their host was distracted.
Zoe returned to them, composing her face with an effort. “You see what I have to contend with? That monster John killed all my old staff, or drove them away, and now I must begin all over again with these unskilled people. It’s hard, very hard.”
Suddenly Selene felt as though she were going to faint—the heat, the smell, and maybe the fact that she was newly pregnant with our third child. She tottered and grasped Olympia’s hand to steady herself. “Oh,” cried Zoe, full of consternation, touching her pale cheek with moist fingers, “forgive me. You ladies want a cold drink, don’t you, and something to eat. I’ve kept us here too long. We’ll go out into my little dining room.”
They sat around a small table, sipping chilled white wine and eating pastry stuffed with dates and nuts. The heat and the smell followed them even here, but compared to the mixing room it was bearable. When, Selene wondered to herself, did those unfortunate slaves get to rest and sip a cool drink?
“You see why I told you to wear light clothing, my dears,” said Zoe. “I always do, when I can. I hate court costume, so heavy, so confining, I’m sure you agree with me. And don’t ever swaddle your children the way I was, wrapped in brocade so stiff I couldn’t move. I’ve hated it all my life. But, of course, one can’t always choose for oneself.”
The two women murmured agreement. No, thought Selene, this was a woman who had had very few choices in her life, and none of them good. What if she had tried to poison John, or her first husband, as rumor had it. Could you really blame her?
“I hope your children are well?” Zoe continued amiably, pouring herself another glass of wine. “They say there’s fever in the countryside, I do worry. And your husbands? Fitting well into their new positions? Both so young, but so capable. Thank God for them. Psellus’s wise counsel and Odd’s martial valor. Where would we be without our Guardsmen and their brave captain, whom we had not known above a month ago?”
Did the woman not realize, Selene wondered, that she had met Odd five years ago when he came to them posing as the ambassador of Rus? Or again, when he and Harald and the others ransacked these very apartments and arrested her servants on John’s orders? Did she really not know that this was her husband? Or was it something else—the convenient amnesia of a ruler who has survived a revolution?
“The Varangians are devoted to your dynasty, ma’am,” Selene replied fervently, “and my husband will lay down his life for you.”
Zoe smiled sweetly, then raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Selene, my dear, we’ve known Olympia’s family for years, of course—very prominent in the city. But you are a mystery to me. Where do you come from? Who are your people? How did you meet your husband? I know you’ll pardon my curiosity…”
This was the question she had hoped would not be asked, but there it was. Lie now, she told herself, and you’ll go on lying forever. She looked at Zoe levelly. “I met my husband in a taverna where I supported my family by gambling. We come from the countryside, out on the Mese beyond the Church of the Holy Apostles. My mother was a healer, a midwife, and had some skill in reading the future. Some unkind people called her a witch. My father was a physician, a man who sought to penetrate the mysteries of the cosmos, a student of alchemy. He spent his life trying to turn base metal into gold—without success, I’m afraid.”
Olympia shot her friend a panicked look. To be interested in alchemy in a theoretical way was one thing, many people were, but to actually practice it—that smacked of paganism.
Zoe’s smile congealed. There was a long moment’s silence.
And then Zoe leaned back and let out a full-throated laugh. “Alchemy! But it’s exactly what we do here. Mixing, heating, distilling, purifying, all to turn something base into something perfect of its kind. It’s a noble pursuit. It’s how I worship God. I’m sure it was the same with your father.”
Selene let her breath out slowly. “He was a very religious man.”
“Then I am sorry not to have known him. More wine, my dear?”
They sat together for another hour, while Zoe drank glass after glass of wine and gave voice to a rambling monologue. “Let me speak to you as a mother, I feel that I am—yours especially, Selene, since you have none. We women are weak, we must use all our wiles, all our weapons. I’ve learned that lesson in a long and unhappy life.” She dabbed at her eyes with a corner of her napkin.
And what about her sister Theodora’s long and unhappy life, Selene thought, in that nunnery to which the young Zoe had condemned her? No mention of her.
“It’s only faith in Christ that has sustained me through the dark times,” Zoe went on. She crossed herself and her eyes turned momentarily upward. “He and I talk, you know. One day I will show you my own little Christ, he tells me things, warns me of danger by changing his color. It’s the truth, you’ll see. But the dark, dangerous days are over, aren’t they? Now, at last, I look forward to a little happiness, to finding a true man who will love me—dare I hope for it? I’m not so old yet, am I? Still desirable? But it’s lonely here at best, you know. I would rather have been some tradesman’s wife, living in honest poverty, than Empress of Rome. I envy you your freedom, Selene. Gambling in the taverns—what an exciting life you’ve led.”
Selene, in spite of herself, felt a growing sympathy for this vain, eccentric, vulnerable woman. Still, she would never be at ease in her company. She had seen that flash of rage, of cruelty. Never forget, she warned herself, that this is a woman with the power of life and death over us all.
“And now, my dears,” said Zoe, setting down her glass and snapping her fingers for the servant, “I will let you go home to your husbands. I must take my bath and then I have other business to attend to. The Empire doesn’t run itself, you know.”
As they departed, she planted a motherly kiss on their foreheads and gave them each a basket filled with bottles of scent and lotion. “You’ll visit me again, of course. We women have so much to talk about.”
They had arrived in mid-morning and it was now it was well past noon. Outside the gate, before they mounted their carriages, the two friends embraced. They hardly knew what to think about this strange morning. Were the dark days over? For Zoe, for the Empire, for their husbands, for themselves?