Enchantress Mine (23 page)

“This is not the city I remember as a youth. Perhaps, though, my young eyes saw only the beauty of Constantinople. Now I see its decay. It will soon be spring, Eada. Take our daughter and travel with the troop of Varangian Guards who are returning to England for home leave. I will make all the arrangements.”

“But what of you?” she asked. “Can you not come home with us? Surely under these circumstances you can leave the delegation in other hands, Aldwine. Your work here is almost done. You have said it yourself!”

“That is true, my love,” he agreed, “but hammering out the last bits of a trade treaty is perhaps the trickiest part of all. It is what I was sent here for, and I cannot go until it is done. The latest messages from Brand say that as the king grows weaker, the queen continues to agitate for the succession of her brother. I would prefer that you and Mairin were safely at Aelfleah should Edward die. Brand has done well, but in my absence he will need your guidance should he be forced to defend our holding.”

“But if the king dies,” fretted Eada, “how will you return to us?”

“It will be easier to reach England without the burden of two women,” he replied. “It took us over two months to reach Constantinople, Eada. I can cut that time in half traveling without you. Send me word of the king’s death, and I will be home within the month. I swear it!”

“I dislike being apart from you, my husband, but it is now our daughter for whom I must be concerned. When Mairin is able to travel we will leave.”

It was not until the second week in April that they departed Constantinople. At first when Mairin had fully awakened she could not remember anything of what had happened since her arrival in Constantinople. She was once again half-child, half-woman. That, said the physician Demetrios, was not a good thing. Pain blocked her memories of Basil and their marriage and her avoidance of the truth could have resulted in an even worse trauma. Mairin had to be made to remember so she might face her anguish honestly and overcome it.

The emperor insisted Demetrios move into the Garden Palace so he might treat Mairin, who at first could not understand why the physician was there. Then the dawning knowledge within her that almost eighteen months had passed since her arrival in Constantinople, months that were blank to her, frightened her into cooperation with Demetrios. Slowly the memories began to return. With them came the pain.

Mairin, her hair braided up and covered, was accompanied by Eada and Demetrios as she began to revisit all the places she had first seen with Basil. One afternoon they entered into Hagia Eirene. Looking around her in the soft golden light Mairin unexpectedly burst into tears. Confused, she could only look to her mother for reassurance. Gathering her daughter into her arms Eada crooned reassuringly. Then suddenly one evening several days later as they all sat at the evening meal Mairin looked up and said calmly to Demetrios, “My husband is dead, isn’t he?”

About the table they all froze, shocked with the suddenness of her question.

Regaining his senses first Demetrios answered her, “Yes, highness. Prince Basil is dead these two months past.”

“How did he die?” she asked, her voice still frighteningly calm.

“He was murdered. Poisoned by his old friend the actor Bellisarius, who then took his own life.”

“Why?”
The single word was sharp.

There was a deep silence within the room. Then Eada said, “Dearest, does it matter now? Poor Basil is dead and buried. You are a widow. I thank God you have at last remembered it! It is time to begin to forget once more. To start your life anew.”

“Why did Bellisarius kill my husband?”
demanded Mairin again, a hard edge to her voice now. “I want to know! I want to know why my husband is dead!”

Aldwine Athelsbeorn looked at his daughter seeing suddenly that the child he had so dearly loved and protected was gone. It was an adult face that looked directly at them. It was adult eyes that questioned, and demanded answers to those questions. “Tell her the truth,” he said.

“No!” Eada whispered, her eyes brimming with tears. “Do not pain her further! How much more can you ask her to bear?”

“Do you want her mourning him forever?” demanded Aldwine angrily. “I do not! I want her to be free to renew her life, and go forward. She cannot if she does not know the truth.”

“Yes! Tell me the truth,” said Mairin fiercely.

“Once, before you were married,” began Demetrios, “your husband and Bellisarius were lovers. There are some men who cleave only to women. There are some who can cleave only to other men. Then there are men like your husband who first enjoy women, but occasionally need the diversion of a male lover. When Prince Basil married you he had fallen in love with you. In marrying you he deserted Bellisarius.

“To our knowledge, never in the months of your marriage did the prince visit his former lover. We can only guess why he went the day of his death. We believe it was to tell Bellisarius that it was indeed finished between them. Certainly Bellisarius must have felt betrayed and hurt by the prince’s words. Perhaps he was even angry. We must assume that Bellisarius hid his true feelings. Unknown to the prince he poisoned two goblets of wine, and then cajoled your husband into a farewell drink. Both died swiftly, and relatively without pain.”

Mairin nodded as if the physician’s explanation was totally plausible and acceptable to her. “Thank you,” she said. There was a frightening remoteness about her.

“Will you not weep for your husband, princess?” questioned Demetrios gently.

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I cannot weep for Basil. Your explanation of his death is pure conjecture, Demetrios, for you were not there. You cannot be certain that my husband deserted his lover upon our marriage. My marriage was never consummated. I shall spend my life wondering if Basil’s reasons for it were honest. Did he really love me? Was his concern truly for my well-being? Or perhaps having gained possession of his perfect princess was he repelled by her? I shall always wonder when I remember our short time together where he went each time he left me. Was he really where he said he had been, or was he with Bellisarius? I shall always wonder if he really meant to leave Constantinople for our own home, or if it was to merely be a gilded prison for me. Was the thought of being separated so terrible that Basil and Bellisarius died together rather than be parted?

“Basil said he loved me. In my innocence I believed him. There are other things I will remember. I will remember his kisses, and his hands upon my body. Having this new knowledge you have given me, Demetrios, I will wonder if he truly enjoyed the innocent lovemaking that we shared. Or whether each time he touched me he but held back his disgust, and wished I were the actor. Perhaps one day when my pain is not so great I will weep for my husband, physician. I may even forgive him, but now is not the time. I cannot waste my precious tears upon a man who has brutalized my innocence and destroyed my dreams.”

Demetrios nodded his understanding. “Someday you will love anew, princess. When you do, these memories will fade in their importance for you. It is then that you will weep for Prince Basil. As for me my task is finished. You have faced the truth, and can heal. Now leave Constantinople, and return to your England. You will find happiness again one day.”

“Yes,” said Mairin, “I want to go home to England. I shall never leave Aelfleah again.”

“You will leave Aelfleah when you marry to go to your husband’s home,” said Aldwine.

“Marry?”
said Mairin bitterly. “I will never marry again, father!
Never!
”

The thegn silenced his wife’s impending protest with a look. He put an arm about his daughter, gently hugging her. “We need make no decisions now,” he said. “In time you will change your mind, Mairin. Basil’s death has left you a wealthy woman. That wealth will buy you a good match.”

“I want nothing of Basil’s wealth!” she cried.

“Do not be foolish,” he replied sharply. “As his legal widow that wealth is now yours. Wealth will buy you a secure future.”

“Give it to his mother! I want nothing but to go home and live out my days in peace!”

“Take your daughter to her bed,” said Aldwine sternly to Eada. “She is hysterical, and obviously still not herself.”

In the end, however, the thegn compromised with his stubborn daughter. He took from the prince’s treasury enough gold to give Mairin a dowry worthy of a princess. He took for his child all the fabulous jewelry that her husband had lavished upon her. Everything else he gave at Mairin’s request to Princess Ileana. Everything but the palace that Basil had built for his bride across the Bosporus. That Mairin ordered torn down, and the land donated in Basil’s memory to the church.

“Why do you simply not sell it?” Eada asked her daughter.

“Sell a monument to a love that never really existed?” she said scornfully and bitterly. “No one should ever live in it, mother. It is curst!” That was the last she spoke of it, but her final days in Constantinople were spent on a terrace overlooking the sea where she watched for hours with grim satisfaction the destruction of the palace that Basil Ducas had built for her.

She shed no tears as she and Eada left Constantinople. Indeed having bid her father a tender farewell she never once looked back as they passed through the Golden Gate out onto the road that led west and away from the city. She rode upon a new horse, a delicately built two-year-old dappled gray stallion that the emperor had given to Mairin as a parting gift. The animal, called Thunderer, had been bred from a pair of horses that Constantine had received in tribute from an Arabian king. He was exquisitely and finely made, having as much if not more stamina as the large beasts that they usually rode.

“I hope.”
the emperor wrote to Mairin,
“that you will enjoy Thunderer, and that therefore your memories of Constantinople will be happier than they might have been.”

“A stallion,” said Eada, who was slightly shocked. “Why has he sent her a stallion? A mare would have been far more suitable.”

“But the stallion is more valuable,” said Aldwine, “for we can breed him with our own mares. It is a generous, nay, a very generous gift.”

“Blood money,” said Eada. “He feels guilty, for Basil was his cousin.”

The horse was beautifully trained. The lightest touch of the rein brought obedience to whatever command Mairin might make. The first morning as they left the city she gave Thunderer his head, allowing him a leisurely gallop, and quickly leaving the main party behind her. Half a dozen Varangians rode with her because she was a woman who they felt needed their protection. Mairin thought it ridiculous. The highways and roads of Byzantium were the safest in the world. It was said that a virgin might traverse their length in safety without ever being accosted.

As she rode Mairin realized how confined and constricted her life in Constantinople had actually been. It had been almost two years since she had ridden free. Her rides with Basil had been sedate ones. Now she might gallop with the wind in her hair. She realized how much she had missed her freedom. She had been like some rare and beautiful creature to Basil, a creature to be kept within lavish confines, to never be released from its golden leash to roam free. She let Thunderer gallop on for several more miles. Then as Mairin felt the animal tiring she slowed him to an easier pace.

“You ride like a Valkyrie,” said a voice by her side.

She turned to see an attractive guardsman riding knee to knee with her. He seemed vaguely familiar. Her brow furrowed in an attempt to place him.

“Eric Longsword, princess.” His voice jogged her memory.

Of course! The bold young guardsman who had first looked upon her as a woman when they came to Constantinople. When she was so innocent of the pain that men can cause women. She acknowledged him with a curt nod of her head. She had once thought him daring, but now she realized he was naught but opportunistic. He would have ogled any pretty girl.

He was not daunted. “I was sorry to hear of your great loss,” he said.

“I am not sorrowful, Eric Longsword,” she answered. “I am glad to be going home to England.”

“Your husband’s death is what I meant,” he replied.

Mairin turned to look him in the face, and Eric Longsword thought that she was surely the most beautiful woman God had ever created. She was perfect. “I know what you meant,” she said.

Of course she did not wish to be reminded of the tragedy. He could have kicked himself for his insensitivity! “Where is your home?” he asked her. He was desperate to change the subject, and regain her good graces. He remembered yet her smile. At this moment he thought he would give almost anything to see it again.

“I am Mercian,” she said. “Aelfleah is in a small valley near the Welsh border.”

“The Welsh are fierce fighters,” he said, “but then you would know that, having grown up near them.”

“Aelfleah’s valley is fairly hidden. We have never in my lifetime been raided by the Welsh,” Mairin replied.

“I come from the Danelaw,” he said.

“Yes, with your name, Eric Longsword, I would have suspected it.”

“My father’s lands are near York. I am going home because my eldest brother died and I am now my father’s heir, for Randwulf had no children. I had always thought to spend my life as a soldier. Now I must learn how to be a landholder. I will, of course, have to take a wife soon,” he finished boldly.

“I have discovered,” said Mairin, “that life is not always what we plan or hope it will be, Eric Longsword. I have learned to accept, and so I suspect must you.” Without any obvious effort she then kicked her horse into a gentle canter, and rode away from him.

He had been dismissed, and he knew it. He must, as she had said, accept. He would as long as they were still within the borders of the Byzantine Empire where she was yet a princess, and he but a humble member of the Varangian Guard.