The Byzantine Wager

Chapter 68 - The Empress of Hens

Chapter 68

The Empress of Hens

When Pons awoke he was all wrinkled and pruney. Hours must have passed. The baths were empty save for a few old men who kept odd hours. I am an old man myself, he thought, keeping odd hours. He dried himself off and dressed in the clothing he had brought. His shoulder felt better.

A steady north wind blew as he made his way through the streets - wet from the rain which had abated. At the gates, he was told that the brothers Angelos had returned and sent the Emperor's sons back. No word on what was discussed. There was to be a general muster at first light.

This only increased Pons concern. Either there was to be an attack at first light or a surrender. It wanted an hour of dawn. He returned to the barracks. Cyn needed to be ready to move, but he was not in the bunk they shared. Someone else was.

* * *

It had been a day of high drama for Lady Euphrosune Katamontissa, widow of the late Admiral Angelos. As the sun's chariot crossed the sky every human emotion had flowed over her, into her, and through her.

Eos "the Dawn" had brought Phobos "Fear." She had been awash in dread since she was arrested at the family villa north of Constantinople earlier in the week and taken - not to court, not to a nunnery, not even to the Anemas dungeon; but to a siege camp several days uncomfortable travel east of the Bosphorus crossing. Until that day her life had been filled with more customary family dramas. The quietly placid pageant of births, weddings, deaths, small scandals, infidelities, and the like. Those calm days were over.

Lady Euphrosune came from a family, not Imperial, but of the bluest blood. In her youth she had been chief lady in waiting for Emperor Manuel's frigid, foreign, first wife Irene. The Patriarch of Constantinople, Kosmas the second, had cursed the Empress's womb when he was convicted and deposed for heresy. Therefore Manuel would have no male heir. Empress Irene was unable to carry a child to term after the difficult birth of her second girl, Anna (who died young of the winter cough). The Empress became increasingly irritated and jealous as her first handmaid was forced to step back from her duties to tend to her pregnancies which came along regularly, even as she herself remained barren. That Lady Euphrosune produced sons followed by daughters only increased the Empress's envy.

Sadly Lady Euphrosune's arranged marriage had not been to the eminent statesman, bureaucrat, and agriculturist John Ducas, but rather his inept younger brother. Undaunted by the dolt she was saddled with, she used her influence and charm to pull enough strings, whisper into enough ears, and cross enough palms with silver to have Emperor Manuel ennoble her husband, despite his having done nothing of note. This meant that he no longer used the cognomen Ducas, but revived an older family name - Angelos; thus beginning his own noble house and lineage separate from his elder brother's.

The Empress' first maid was pretty, popular, and witty. Lady Euphrosune was the grand matron of the Byzantine court that Empress Irene could not be, and which none of the Emperor's string of mistresses dared to be. Everyone who was anyone stopped in to visit her as they were traveling in and out of the city to catch up on the latest gossip. Emperor Manuel, cock of the walk, ruled the world of men, but Lady Euphrosune ruled the ladies court.

This situation lasted even after Empress Irene took ill and died. Pious bitch. God rest her soul. In later years Lady Euphrosune would have cause to be grateful to this devotion to holy vows until death - in Emperor's Manuel's own marriage. It would be held up as a shining example in Lady Euphrosune's defense when her husband attempted to divorce her in favor of a younger mistress. Ungrateful idiot. After all she had done for him.

Emperor Manuel still longed for an heir. Immediately after the required mourning period (and dowry negotiations) he remarried. Another foreign princess was sent for - this time to the constantly vacillating vassal state of Antioch. Beautiful, blonde (from her Norman lineage) Maria (a name that would not need to be changed) took Irene's place as Empress and as Xene - the noble but friendless foreigner. Lady Euphrosune continued to hold sway with the women's court for seven more years until the Empress was finally able to bear a live son. Even then she was able to maintain position as chief broody hen with a foot in each nest, insinuating herself as a confidant with Maria of Antioch, while roosting as godmother to Maria Prophorygenita.