Chapter 30
I have a strange dream in which I see four Black-Chested Snake Eagles sitting on a solitary tree on a rocky hill. The smallest one has a headless snake writhing in its beak. Wherever the blood from the snake hits the ground, Yadey Abeba flowers began to sprout.
Probably it’s just the stress getting to me.
The combination of getting older and the accumulated tragedies I have endured has finally caught up with me. I look much older now.
My dynasty is shrinking rapidly, so I must take whatever steps I can to ensure its survival. I talk with Chancellor Demetrios about possible bethrothal options for Tesfaye III. Demetrios also reminds me that my sister Genat’s older husband has died. If she could be persuaded to return to Sennar we could arrange a matrilineal marriage, as in her thirties she could still have children. I resolve to write to her soon. I probably shouldn't mention the murders, though.
Just before Demetrios leaves, as an afterthought, I ask him to talk to Spymaster Demissie and have him search through the previous Spymaster Anastasios’ desk to see if anything helpful about the murderer can be found.
Stephanos then comes to see me, as requested. I have always liked Stephanos. He never pretends to be much good at anything other than being a warrior, at which he is a master, and being raised in Sennar he never picked up some of the difficult-to-decipher Byzantine Greek habits. In Sennar, if someone hates you, they walk over and punch you in the face, and you must use your skills at intrigue to figure out why they hate you as they are giving you a thrashing. In Byzantium, I gather, if someone hates you they smile to your face and serve you wine. Then later an assassin tries to murder you while you sleep, and you use your intrigue to figure out which of your “friends” is out to kill you.
This morning, though, Stephanos seems agitated. He tells me that he must confide something in me, something that he wished could remain secret until forgotten. But he must tell me because he desperately wants the murderer of his parents to be discovered and dealt with, and he doesn’t want anything that would be relevant to go unnoticed. He too feels that not only his father, but his mother as well was murdered. While she had been very sick, she had started making a miraculous recovery before she died suddenly.
I am excited by this, for it all sounds very promising. He describes how difficult his parents’ relations were after Nikodemos converted to Monophysiticism, while Nikodemos’ wife, Eudokia, remained Orthodox. The secret that Stephanos reveals is that his mother was having an affair with someone. I am disappointed by this revelation. Juicy gossip is interesting, but my priority right now is finding a murderer.
He says that a further tragedy in all this is that when her illness was at its worst, she had said she had a dream about a Monophysite Coptic cross shining light all over her body. When she woke from that dream, her fever had broken and she started making her recovery. She had told her happy Monophysite husband and son that as soon as she fully recovered, she would embrace their religion, as her dream was a sign from God. “I believe that she would have mended her relationship with my father,” said Stephanos, “And then I would have hoped she would have ended her affair.” I was getting tired of the conversation, but I asked, “Do you know who she was having the affair with?” Stephanos said he did not—he had learned about his mother’s affair from previous Spymaster Anastasios, and he had not said. I thanked him for his time and dismissed him.
Anastasios had been a masterful Spymaster. Why had he been wasting his time messing around with issues like this?
Later Spymaster Demissie dies. Not surprisingly, he has also been murdered.
