Chapter 67
I instruct my spymaster to talk with my wife and dissuade her from her plot to murder me. It would probably be more productive if I confronted her myself, but my nerve has failed me.
Nothing personal, but I can't help realizing that recognition of you was the straw that pushed my wife over the edge.
Konstantinos Zagwe—the elder product of my adulterous romance with my mistress—is at the age where I must find a tutor for him. Unfortunately, little Konstantinos must take from his mother’s side more than his father’s. He is… well, he is not the sharpest dagger in the armory. I will have his mother tutor her son. She will have the most patience of anyone.
My daughter Duchess Dionysia has taken a husband. Since I’d not been consulted on this match, I was anxious about who she had married. By the God! She has given away our dynasty’s rights to land to some oaf from a smaller duchy. How could see do this? None of her children can inherit her duchy or counties in this marriage. The first thing I think of, of course, is murdering the husband.
I instruct Spymaster Artemios to organize a plot amongst the elements in my daughter’s court that are amenable to murdering my daughter’s husband, whatever his name is. It turns out that nobody is willing to help. Nobody really likes him much, but nobody really dislikes him either. My daughter comes to closest to being willing—she is obviously not head over heels for her new spouse. I am beginning to suspect that this was Regent Bagrat’s doing while she was still a child.
After I think about the plot on my daughter’s husband, it occurs to me how futile it is. It took years for my plot against Georgia to come to fruition. My daughter and her husband are 16 and 18. Within a couple of years the damage will already have been done and my daughter will have had several children. And in any case, my daughter can replace him in less than a month with someone else willing to give her a child and take my dynasty’s land. Assassinating the spouse is risky and will not work. I must find another way.
Brilliant but cold. Very cold.
I visit the genius Spymaster Artemios. He is exceptionally talented in so many ways—it puzzles me that he would want to waste that talent in Sennar. But it is my gain, for whatever his reasons. I explain my problem to him. He doesn’t even think about it. His immediate response is to betroth my younger daughter that is in line for the Armenian duchy for a matrimonial marriage, and then murder my older daughter, the duchess, before she gives birth. If she manages to have a child, kill that first. My younger daughter will inherit the duchy and when she comes of age will marry the safe choice I’ve picked. I am speechless with horror at his cold and relentless logic. Artemios mistakes my speechless gaping as interest. He mentions that he has thought about this problem already and has three different ways he could assassinate my daughter—would I care to go through them with him now? I coldly inform him that he must never speak of this again to me, and he should forget all his plans to murder my eldest daughter immediately.
I go next to speak with Chancellor Demetrios. He is a Monophysite, but he is known for being kind and honest, so I can hope that he will be open to solutions apart from murdering my daughter. Sure enough, he has some sage and non-murderous advice: convince my daughter to change her succession laws to Elective, just as we in Sennar have done, and then she can elect someone from the Zagwe dynasty. On her death, her children with the oaf will inherit nothing from Dionysia’s lands, while they will still be eligible for inheriting on their father’s side. Wonderful! I thank Demetrios profusely and leave. On my way out, I notice strange instruments, similar to the ones that I had seen depicted in my Great-Aunt Ganet’s journal. I think nothing further of it and leave.
I try to plan ahead for contingencies by arranging for my daughter who is next in line for Armenia. At least this part of Artemios’ plan was sensible. If my older daughter dies unexpectedly, at least then my next daughter will have an appropriate
matrimonial marriage already set up. I am looking for someone of similar age or older, as I do not want to waste precious years of potential childbirth waiting for some boy to reach 16. An alliance with a Byzantine duchy would be a plus. With that in mind I have Demetrios send me some potential husbands. He first reports back with David, a courtier in Cephalonia. David is the son of the current Duchess of Calabria, and so would bring an alliance with that duchy. Unfortunately, as a father I cast a disapproving eye on some of his other traits for my daughter: underhanded rogue, wroth, arbitrary, slothful. He is also fairly much an idiot in diplomacy, administration, intrigue, and book learning. While he looks like someone I would not be surprised to find leading one of my army’s columns, he is not suitable material to marry any daughter of mine. I pass on him.
Later Demetrios reports on Georgios Doukas in Thracesia, son of imprisoned Duke Athanasios of Thraceia. While deceitful and arbitrary, Georgias is also humble, charitable, and temperate. But here is where things become interesting. Georgios father is imprisoned by my liege, Empress Ioanna the Great—he must have been one of the many Doux who rebelled against Ioanna since she assumed power. That is not necessarily a sign of insane ambition. Ioanna the Great has a tendency to revoke her subjects’ duchies, which they often refuse, triggering a rebellion. Fortunately Sennar is nothing anyone would bother about. Georgios’ eldest living brother, Anastasios, is regent for his father while he is in prison. Anastasios is also heir to the Duchy of Tracesia. As Primogeniture is the succession model that this duchy follows, neither Georgios or the two middle brothers stand to inherit anything. But if all three of his older brothers met with an unforeseen accident, presumably Georgios would stand to inherit… and pass on to his own heirs. I also note that the brother right before Georgios, the 16-year old Alexandros, is the new husband-Emperor Consort to the 40-year old Empress Ioanna. This is a family with connections. I instruct Demetrios to reach out to this family and request a betrothal between my second eldest daughter and Georgios.
Doux Anthanasios sends his approval from prison. Or perhaps he is too busy being tortured by my enlightened liege—daughter of the Impaler, after all—and the Doux has to let Regent Anastasios give the approval on his behalf. Regardless, Caesar’s dynasty is becoming further embedded in most powerful families of the Byzantine Empire. Things are starting to look up.
That night I receive a surprise and shock. A sudden acrid smell wakes me from my sleep and I gasp awake. I find in my bedchamber five hooded, red-robed individuals standing in front of my bed. One of them is backing away from my side, replacing a tube into his robes, apparently the container that held the acrid smell. My mistress Konstantine is lying next to me. I am not sure she is breathing. “Don’t worry,” says the hooded figure in the middle. “She is perfectly fine. She, as well as your guards, will wake shortly with no harm done.” His voice is very rough. I nod, aware that they could easily have murdered me while I slept if that had been their design. “Why are you here?” “We are here to warn you that your life is in danger.” Being woken like this is causing me fear—that new sensation aroused by my wife’s wrath that I had not felt since a boy—but their response causes the serious fear to again form like ice in my belly. “My wife?” I ask. The hooded figures look at each other and pause. “You are in danger from your wife as well?” This is not going well.
The central hooded figure explains that no, they were unaware that my wife wants to kill me. They are bringing me a warning that my court has become host to a cabal of Orthodox religious zealots that is hostile to my dynasty. They are known as the Brotherhood of True Romans. All of the new Greeks, led by now-Spymaster Artemios, are True Romans and are here for three things: to find a Monophysite relic—some sort of saint’s knuckle bone, to find Ganet’s journal, and to murder me. “But that doesn’t make any sense,” I say, “Why would they want to murder me?” The hooded figure says that the Brotherhood regards my dynasty as inseparably intertwined with the Monophysite religion. “Their core belief is that blood, religion, and kingdom are all part of the same thing. With your roots in the Monophysite Kingdom of Abyssinia, you are in their eyes once and forever a Monophysite heretic, despite what you happen to believe now.”
It turns out that the group before me is not so different in opinion if not in specific outlook. They are the Order of the Coptic Goat Herders, and they are committed to protecting the Monophysite religious tradition and relics. They view me as a vital part of that tradition, despite my abhorrent current views. They have worked tirelessly to protect me and previous Zegwe rulers, even when the actions of some previous rulers… made protecting those individuals more difficult than others. The man tells me that they have been able to convert one of the Greeks, and so they have advanced warning that the Greeks will soon be planning against my life. The man urges me to throw the Greeks out of Sennar immediately for the safety of myself and my dynasty. Whatever I decide, they will do their best to protect me and my family, but if the Greeks are allowed to remain, they cannot be confident that I can be protected. Their warning given, they solemnly begin to withdraw out of the room.
Before they leave, however, the leader of the group turns back and asks, “Do you wish to see it? That which we preserve? Its fortunes are closely tied to that of your dynasty’s. It would require a few hours of your nighttime sleep if you are interested.” I am curious, so I agree. They sneak me out of the castle, past drugged guards sleeping fitfully, through a secret tunnel shockingly close to my bedchamber. I am put on a horse and blindfolded, and they lead me in a circuitous path evidently designed to mislead me as to which direction we are taking. Eventually we stop and I am helped off my horse and over a short wall into some sort of rope contrivance. Once secured in this, I am lowered down into a cool hole about twenty feet down. While dangling there I can feel that an opening is available, and it is through this that I am drawn and taken out of the ropes. I am led down a narrow passageway, which eventually opens up. I hear a door close, torches lit, and then my blindfold is removed. And then I behold the secret of Sennar.