The Byzantine Wager

Chapter 5 - The Mission

Chapter 5

The Mission

When Pons entered the hall he could immediately see that the lord and his sons were at prayer. He removed the leather cap which covered his balding head and stood quietly in the doorway. When they were finished Conrad helped his father to his feet. At sixty-seven, Guilhem was still a formidable man in good health, but his joints ached. The old man's face glistened with tears. Boniface adjusted an icon of the Holy Virgin. His hand was sheltering four white wax candles which sat on top of a small shrine. A cool breeze had sprung up as dusk turned to dark. The hall was drafty. Marius had been praying with the others but he now retired to a seat near the window.

"Pons, please join us for a cup of wine." Margrave Guilhem motioned to a jug on a nearby table with several cups. Boniface crossed the room and began pouring. "We are going to drink to his memory, having just now prayed for his soul."

Pons nodded and accepted the wooden cup which was offered to him.

"What did Marius tell you?" Guilhem asked.

"Only that my Lord Renier was dead."

"Did he tell you that Renier was murdered? Did he tell you that after my boy was slain his body was dumped in the sea to be cast upon the shore and eaten by crabs?"

"Cruel, my liege. Wicked and cruel." Pons replied gravely.

"He lies in an unmarked grave on unconsecrated ground."

"Treacherous Greeks, my liege."

Conrad was sitting by Marius at the window casement now. He idly fingered a rosary. "Pons, we need you to travel to Constantinople and find out what Renier had gotten himself into." At thirty-seven, Conrad was the Margrave's heir. He was of a slightly sturdier frame than his brother Boniface, but both of them were handsome men in their prime. They had inherited, like all of their siblings, their mother's Austrian blonde hair. Conrad wore a neatly trimmed beard which came in slightly more reddish than the yellow hair on his head. Boniface went clean shaven in the summer. "With a handsome face like mine, why hide it?" he would say.

Pons scratched the stubble on his own chin but said nothing. Even before Marius' arrival today the news from Byzantium for the past several months had not been good. A year ago there had been some sort of trouble between Renier's wife and her stepmother, the Emperor's widow.

Pons turned to the tall herald. "What do we know?"

Marius gave a half shrug of his shoulders. "It is complicated. Where to begin?" He paused while Boniface handed him a cup. "After the Emperor died, his widow, Maria of Antioch, became a nun and changed her name to Xene." Pons recalled hearing that when the Emperor had fallen ill and realized that his own time was short, he began to wear the habit of a monk and changed his name from Manuel to Mathew. When Renier had married Maria, they had insisted he change his name to Ioannes. Peculiar thing these Greeks did.

Marius continued, "She did not, however, behave like a nun. She almost immediately began to have an affair with the First Sebastos, Alexios." Pons was not completely sure what a sebastos was. The Byzantines had a huge, complex, and highly stratified imperial court and bureaucracy. Every long bearded minister and palace functionary had some grand title - loved to give titles the Greeks did - which did little to explain what, if anything, the person actually did. Pons thought that a sebastos was some sort of chamberlain.

"Was she not supposed to be acting as regent for Alexios, her son?" Boniface asked.

"Yes, she was, but she and her lover, Alexios the Protosebastos, set out to fleece the whole empire. Do you have a position at court? Would you like to keep it? Pay up. Have a government job of any sort? Baking bread for the army? Cutting planks for naval ships? Shoveling shit in the Imperial stables? Want to keep it? Pay up. Don't want to pay, or can't pay - no problem - out the door with you - we have friends who will pay. Lots of jobs went to people from Italia."