The din is nearly unbearable—drums and flutes and voices, raucous, thick with wine, belt out songs from the pantomime stage, mingling with the laughter of men and women. Pretty Zoe and her two younger sisters—homely, timid little things she despises—are led in by their nurse and made to stand in a row in front of the banquet table with its wreckage of food and spilled drink. Her father, Constantine VIII, co-Emperor of Rome, just thirty years old but already grossly fat, belches, loosens his sash, and waves his guests to silence. The room is full of charioteers, actresses, and slim young eunuchs, powdered and rouged. They pay little attention to him. They know he is Emperor in name only. At this moment his grim, blood-soaked brother Basil, the real ruler of the empire, is marching across some distant frontier, slaughtering Bulgars, or is it Pechenegs? But here stand the three little girls, commanded to recite some verses of Homer they have memorized for the amusement of their father and his friends. The two younger ones are tongue-tied, almost in tears. Zoe, in a trembling voice, begins, but suddenly her mother, Helena, bursts into the room, weeping, screaming, her hair down, half-hiding her face. But not hiding enough of it. Her husband hates her, hates her hideous face ravaged by smallpox. He has not slept with her in years. What man would want to put his lips on skin like rhinoceros hide? Helena curses. Constantine laughs. The guests look away. Helena stands her ground for a moment, then rushes out again, colliding with the doorjamb, almost knocking herself senseless. Zoe runs after her, down the corridor, into the bedroom—gorgeous, hung with purple silk—climbs up on the bed to comfort her mother. Helena holds the girl’s smooth, tear-wet cheek to her own rough one and Zoe, even Zoe, who loves her, shrinks from the touch of it. Never, Zoe swears to herself, never will she let herself look like this.
Bari, Apulia. The mansion with its whitewashed walls and red tile roof, formerly the home of a Saracen grandee, commands a view of the harbor. Zoe gazes from the balcony at the ships riding at anchor: the flotilla of transports and warships that have brought her, her retinue of women, eunuchs, guards and priests, and her immense dowry here to the heel of Italy. So eager is her uncle Basil to consummate this union that they have braved the storms of winter in the Aegean and Adriatic and God has granted them a safe voyage. Today is cold, gusty, spitting rain, but nothing can dampen Zoe’s joy. In another day or two she will meet her husband-to-be. Otto the Third, King of Germany, King of Italy, Holy Roman Emperor. He is only nineteen years old and already his fame has spread across Europe. She has seen a portrait of him—a beautiful young man with large eyes and a firm mouth. And, of course, he has seen a portrait of her and fallen in love with her at once, they assure her. When they wed she will be queen of a realm that reaches from the Rhine to the Tiber. But politics doesn’t interest her. Simply to be free! Away from Constantinople, away from the disgusting spectacle of her father’s debauchery and her mother’s sour despair. To be her own woman at last, embarked on this new adventure.
Sgouritzes, the young eunuch who loves her with a canine devotion, is busy laying out her jewelry. Zoe is by far the most important visitor this little city has ever entertained, and a long line of tradesmen waits outside, eager to show her their wares. A dark-skinned Saracen merchant with a curling beard is admitted, a dealer in unguents and perfumes. Zoe has studied her mirror and is not entirely pleased with what she sees; the salt air, the raw winter wind has dried her skin on their long voyage out. At twenty-four she is still young and beautiful, but ever since childhood she has been haunted by the fear of losing her looks. What if her bridegroom is disappointed in what he sees? She is already three years older than he is. The Saracen proffers a jar of unguent. She rubs a little of it into her cheeks. It comes all the way from India, he tells her. She loves the feel of it. She has nothing so fine at home. He has perfumes, too, like nothing she has ever smelled before. She must have more of it. She will make him tell her the ingredients. If he is unwilling, she’ll threaten him with blinding.
Now what is all that racket down below? A clatter of hooves in the courtyard. Half a dozen armed men, mud spattered on sweating horses, one of them carrying Otto’s banner. They’ve come to take her to him. Quick, pour wine, lay out food. Make them welcome. But these men, as they crowd into her chamber, are not smiling. Their captain kneels before her with tears in his eyes. They have ridden from Viterbo, day and night without resting, to bring her the tragic news. Otto is dead. A sudden fever—or poison—no one is sure. That young, strong, vibrant youth, dead within twenty-four hours of falling ill.
Hands reach out to catch Zoe as she falls. Darkness closes around her.
Zoe, naked, lies on her bed, her arms crossed over her breasts, trembling. The air is cold at this hour of the night, between midnight and cockcrow, when spells have their greatest potency. A sudden draft makes the candles gutter and flare. There is no sound save for the hissing and moaning of the witch who recites the xemetrima, the incantations, in a mumbling singsong. While she sings, the old woman touches Zoe’s arms, her belly, her thighs, between her thighs, placing the smooth pebbles, the bits of chain, the tufts of wool soaked in the milk of a farrow sow, the splinters of holy wood, the pieces of stale Communion bread, all the charms and amulets for conception that she has brought with her tonight.
Zoe’s father, is two years dead. Likewise gone are her mother and her uncle Basil. On his deathbed Constantine had commanded Romanus Argyrus, the City Prefect, a shriveled old man of seventy years with patchy hair and a dripping nose, to divorce his wife and marry Zoe, his spinster daughter. The punishment for refusal was blinding. Naturally, the Prefect agreed and, as Constantine gurgled his last breath, he became Emperor Romanus III. There was no other way to perpetuate the dynasty. Of Zoe’s two sisters, one was dead and the other a nun. There was no male heir. After her sad return from Italy thirty years ago, Constantine had been so careless a father as to never arrange another marriage for his eldest daughter when she was young enough to bear a child. Possibly it was because she looked so young that the passage of years had not quite registered on the foolish man. And now plainly it was too late. The dynasty would end here. Romanus had done his best in the beginning, played his manly part as well as he could, but it had been pointless, and not only pointless but ridiculous. He knew he was laughed at behind his back and it drove him wild with anger. Like any man, he blamed his wife, not himself for their failure to produce a child. And now he treated Zoe like an enemy, couldn’t stand to be in the same room with her, forbade her to draw money from the treasury to lavish on her friends and flatterers.
So now poor Zoe, desperate and abandoned, lies shivering on her bed in the dark while the wise woman labors over her with her spells and charms. “Will it work?” Zoe whispers at last. But the wise woman, who is more honest than she is wise, shakes her grey head and replies: “Empress, nature can only be forced to far.”
Zoe screams, leaps up in a shower of pebbles and bits and pieces, snatches up a jeweled belt from her heap of clothes, and strikes at the woman, cutting her on the face. The woman flees and Zoe falls back, burying her face—her preternaturally youthful face—in her pillow.
Zoe is excited. She loves the chariot races: one of the few occasions nowadays that she is permitted by her husband to appear outside the palace, except to go to church. She sits in the Imperial box and looks out over the vast oval track of the hippodrome, its central spine bristling with statues and obelisks, its stands filled with thousands of cheering spectators. It is intermission. Four courses have been run, there will be four more. Meanwhile, acrobats and trick riders perform on the track and the circus factions, each in their color—blue, green, red and white--stand up in their seats, chanting and waving their colored handkerchiefs. Romanus Argyrus, her husband, sits as far away from her as the confines of the box allow. Racing bores him. He is eating a pomegranate, spitting the seeds on the floor, the juice running down his chin while a servant hovers over him with a giant white napkin. Romanus no longer cares if his whiskers are stained, or his coat front. Around them stand the grandees of the court wearing spotless white cloaks, pinned at the shoulder with golden brooches.
And who is approaching now? Oh, Christ in heaven! Zoe thinks. That man. He makes her flesh crawl. John, the Guardian of Orphans, dressed in his black robe and hood. He bows deeply before the Emperor, who favors him with a toothless smile. Romanus likes the man, or finds him useful anyway, as did Constantine before him and Basil before him. Oh, John is a man of many parts—none of them, however, a pair of testicles. (Zoe is surprised at her own witticism; a pity she can’t share it.)
But John has someone with him, a youth whom he is pushing towards her. Zoe has been talking to the patriarch, making a small wager on the next race. She glances up. “Empress,” John says, forcing his thin eunuch’s voice down to its lowest register, as he always does, “may I present to you Michael, my youngest brother, just up from the country, from our village in Paphlagonia, so anxious to see the races. He is hoping for a place at court. Bow to the Empress.” He pinches the boy’s arm. The youth ducks his head at her and smiles—a bold, confident smile, almost insolent. And, for a moment, her breath catches. His hair is black and oiled, his skin white as milk, his cheeks rosy, his clothes decently cut, though cheap; his boots are scuffed, he wears a ring on his finger with a vulgarly large stone, surely fake. His chin is smooth. She holds out her hand for him to kiss. He doesn’t merely brush it with his lips and release it. He holds her fingers tightly, longer than he should, and presses his lips hard to her plump, unwrinkled flesh. She is momentarily flustered.
“Are you a eunuch, Michael?”
“No, Lady.”
“How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Sixteen, a sweet age. What a good-looking boy you are, and you know it too, don’t you? I’m sure you have many conquests among the village girls.” She’s flirting with him, she realizes with a shock. A boy young enough to be her son.
Michael lowers his eyes becomingly, his cheeks flush. And then again that bold smile.
“Oh, he has the looks in the family, he has,” John interposes, attempting a laugh. John’s laughter is blood-chilling.
Zoe ignores the Guardian of Orphans. “Michael, what would you like to do in the palace? What education have you had?”
For the first time the boy looks unsure of himself. “I can read.”
“And what do you like to read?”
Michael is silent.
“He’s a very bright young man,” John breaks in hastily. “Writes a good hand, he’ll make an excellent clerk. He can work for me for a start. I’m overwhelmed with work, as you must know, Empress. The accounts, the tax registers—”
“Michael,” she interrupts John without looking at him, “I am sure the Emperor will find something suitable for you and, in the meantime, you may come and visit me in my chambers, if you like.”
“In her Chamber of Stinks, if you can stand it, I swear I can’t.” Her husband’s harsh laugh startles her. She didn’t think he was listening. His cackle subsides into a phlegmy cough.
And now the crowd roars as the next four chariots approach the starting gate. John bows himself away, pulling his young brother with him. She follows them with her eyes. Just that morning she had taken out her little figurine of Christ to pray to it, and it had turned from silver to gold in her hand! A good omen, she was sure of it. And now this beautiful boy kisses her hand as if he would devour it. She pulls her attention back to the chariots, but her heart is beating fast.
It is still early morning and already the Golden Hall is jammed with officials, senators, clerks, messengers, guards; the women of the court fill the rotunda above. The proclamation went out at dawn in the Empress’s name. Psellus and his friend, another young clerk in the Logothete’s office, elbow their way as close to the dais as they can. (Rude, but Psellus has only been in the palace a month and everything excites him. Whatever this is about, he’s determined not to miss a thing.) Snatches of hushed conversation echo from the glittering walls. He stands close to two officials, senior men judging from their jeweled collars, and strains his ears.
Romanus dead? Yes, some time yesterday. Went for his bath, I heard, and they drowned him. Well, tried to. They pulled him out, half-dead, he lasted a little while, couldn’t speak, coughing up blood, and then he died.
Who? Who tried to drown him?
Michael’s friends, who else? Well, I mean, everyone knows they’ve been poisoning him for months now, Michael and Zoe. Finally got tired of waiting for the old codger to die.
Careful, keep your voice down, you want some Varangian to overhear you?
Those brutes, they don’t know what we’re saying. Anyway, everyone’s saying it.
Well, he has looked like a walking corpse these past months. Face swollen like a blood sausage, hair and beard all fallen out. Where is he now?
On his bier in the chapel, already forgotten, like a piece of rotten fruit, which is what he looks like.
Shocking, the way they’ve carried on, the two of them. Kissing and petting and making love right under the old man’s nose, what was the stupid bitch thinking of? Sex-mad is what she is, and at her age!
And Romanus, well either he didn’t know or didn’t want to; more likely the latter, because didn’t people try to warn him?
Of course, there was no love lost between him and Zoe, so what did he expect?
The organ thunders. The golden doors swing open. A troop of the Emperor’s Wineskins race in and form up on either side of the dais, holding their long-handled axes across their chests. Other Guards regiments follow them, driving the crowd back. Psellus is elbowed in the chest, his foot is trodden on, but he manages to hold his place near the front.
The Empress Zoe appears in the doorway, seeming tiny in that huge space. On her head is the diadem with its ropes of pearls hanging down either side, and in her hand, the scepter. Over her shoulders, she wears the brocaded robe crusted with gems, and one step behind her comes her lover, young Michael Paphlagon. Psellus listens to the whispers.
A nobody, from a family of nobodies.
Good-looking boy, though, give him that.
Yes, but not quite right in the head. You’ve heard the talk. Has fits, falls down in a faint, foams at the mouth, they try to keep it quiet.
Shush!
Zoe has seated Michael on the throne next to her. They wait. The crowd waits. Some delay. What is it now? His Holiness Alexius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, is coming in. His robes are askew, he looks like his legs won’t hold him up. The poor man is frightened to death. Two of his deacons half-carry him to the foot of the dais. Psellus presses closer to see. The patriarch is shaking his head, saying something. And now Zoe is saying something, but Psellus can’t make out the words. Zoe stands. One of her people holds out a diadem, she takes it, holds it high for all to see, and places it on the head of Michael, her child lover. The organ pours out its thunderous sound. The Guardsmen clash their weapons on their shields. The courtiers, who know their parts well, begin to chant, “Worthy, worthy. Many years, many years.” The echoes bouncing back and forth until it is all one roar. The Roman Empire has a new master: Michael the Fourth, may Christ protect him. Now the patriarch joins Zoe’s and Michael’s hands together in holy—or is it unholy?—matrimony.
And now the senior courtiers, the Grand Chamberlain, the Logothete, the Master of the Wardrobe, the Grand Domestic, dozens of others, are being brought forward one by one to fall on their faces before Zoe and to kiss Michael’s right hand. This will go on for an hour, and finally even Psellus, near the end of the line, will have his turn. Psellus risks a long look; he has never been this close to royalty before. Their new Emperor is no more than a boy, younger than himself. His face is expressionless, a mask—what thoughts are swirling behind it? But Zoe’s face is radiant, supremely happy. Hard to believe she is old enough to be her husband’s mother. But what a brief time that happiness will last. Poor Zoe, so unlucky in her men.
†Reader, some of what Odd told me—stories that he heard from Psellus and others that do not fit neatly into his narrative—I have thought to present in these separate ‘tales,’ the better to help you understand certain things that Odd learned only later, sometimes much later. Previously I have been a mere grudging recorder of Odd’s story but somehow, during the weeks and months of our acquaintance, my feelings toward him have undergone a change and I want to contribute my own small effort toward making this a better book. - Teit the Deacon