CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

“HE WAS NO LONGER A CHILD”

That afternoon, for the first time in many months, the Metropolitan Athanasios found his way back to Land’s End in the maze at the heart of the Hanging Garden of Queen Landizábel. The air was warm and still, the skies clear. The weather mages had been busily at work during the preceding week to make certain that the girding of King Arkády with the sword would proceed without difficulty on the morrow. Tucked under the priest’s arm was the folder containing the results of his family research.

This annus horribilis was finally, mercifully wind­ing to a close. The year that had seen so many deaths, as well as the deposition of a king and the passing of a revered patriarch, was about to become history.

He looked back upon the past twelve months with almost a sense of amazement. So many friends gone, so many new ones made, his carefree existence vanished, and new responsibilities added. And, finally, a possible ending to his quest for himself and his origins.

Athanasios sat down on the stone bench under the queen’s statue and opened the folder, spreading his work around him.

What did he really know? he thought to himself. What could be inferred?

His mother, the Princess Mösza, had been with child during the year 1164, as a generation of handsome young Kórynthi soldiers was marching off to another, ear­lier war in Pommerelia. Then had come the disaster at Dürkheim—how familiar this sounded!—and the news of the deaths of King Makáry and his two eldest sons, both without surviving heirs.

The third son, the young Prince Kyprianos, had been made king under the joint regency of his grandmother, Dowager Hereditary Princess Zubayda, and his great-uncle, the Prince-Bishop Víktor, until he had come of age some five years later.

Princess Mösza’s condition had then been uncovered by the regents—it could scarcely be hidden—and she had been packed off to the Emir of Tôrtous, where she had borne a male child, Maksím. The boy had been taken from her several years later by Arik Rufímovich (now the Patri­arch Timotheos), while in the service of the state, and then deposited at Saint Svyatosláv’s Monastery, where he had been given the name Afanásy.

This much was certain.

But why? Why keep everything so secret? Plenty of illegitimate Tighrishi had been sent to the abbey or the convent, without so much as a comment being expressed by anyone in the royal family. What made the difference in his case?

It had to have something to do with his father. He reviewed his original list of soldiers from the Gardes Élites, and decided that the only two who might have mattered were Prince Néstor or King Karlomán, the elder two sons of King Makáry. If Mösza had had an incestuous rela­tionship with one of these boys, her nephews, who were only a few years removed from her in age, then any male offspring of this couple, illegitimate or not, would have had a claim to the throne of Kórynthia in advance of King Kipriyán’s.

He re-examined the evidence of the torcs. The only names from this short list that matched the symbols he had seen on his torc was that of Néstor, then Hereditary Prince of Kórynthia, and his wife, who would have been the logi­cal recipient of Néstor’s memorial. Athanasios tried to re­call what he remembered of the fate of Princess Diávola. She had suffered an accident of some kind, of that he was cer­tain, a fall perhaps, or something else very unusual.

He sighed. The only way that Mösza could have gotten the memorial meant for Diávola was to dispose of her rival for Néstor’s affections. Perhaps that was the real reason for her exile.

And had Athanasios been acknowledged at that time by the palace, then the priest would have been declared the true king of Kórynthia, not King Kipriyán, his uncle. He shook his head in sorrow. All of this—the great war, the deaths of so many men, the deposition of the king—had oc­curred because of one woman’s pride and fear and desire for revenge. Her anger had eaten out her insides, and left nothing but a shell of hate behind. She had never even been willing to acknowledge her son directly, although she had carefully positioned herself, in the guise of Doctor Melanthrix, to nurture his career and take her vengeance upon the man who sat in the place her son should have oc­cupied.

The priest felt suddenly nauseated. He had never desired such a role in life, in fact would now find it utterly abhorrent to his existence. He had neither the temperament nor the patience to rule a kingdom, and he was wise enough to know that much about himself. Even now, he feared being inadequate in his new role of administrator of a major archdiocese. He would do the best that he could, but he was no Timotheos.

He gazed into the serene eyes of Queen Landizábel, and he realized that his real father, by any measurement that could be made in life, was Arik Rufímovich, he who had taken the boy Afanásy by the hand, and who had kept him from straying down the path that Mösza had wandered. Arik had watched over him, nourished him, cherished him, given him advice, showed him the way, had spent time with him whenever the boy needed it, even when the sol­dier-monk had had very little latitude of his own. Arik had been his father and the Church his mother, and Athanasios felt no regret at the thought. He had been blessed by God as few in the world ever have been.

The hieromonk picked up his papers, and put them back in the folder. He had no need for such things now. He was no longer a child, and so he should put away the conceits of a child. It was time to be about his father’s business.