(no subject)
Nov. 5th, 2016 07:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewidewideworldI travelled north up the Red Sea, to the lands of the Cushites, the Ethiopos, and the great and dangerous Umayyad Caliphate with whom my master fought so often. I explored gladly, taking in each new sight and place as I could. But always I kept the cloak of the unseen ready and around me. Never getting too near anyone, never lingering too long in one place.
After Kollam, I didn’t much want to be recognised, or remembered.
I came into the empire of my childhood by the port of Attalia, making my way north by the slower inland way.
I had travelled these roads as a slave child and travelled them now as a free man.
My breath caught as the gates of the city crested before me. I had chosen a lesser gate, one where fewer eyes would be on me. I hadn’t meant to but I found myself at the gate I had shared with Hannibal, the day he had spent in my city in my youth. The memories of that day adding to all the others that flowed over me. Threatening to overwhelm me as high seas overwhelm the beaches.
I stopped and sat on one of the way markers along the road, trying to summon the courage to enter my beloved Constantine’s city. Too overcome by emotions, I felt the magic fall away, leaving me exposed and open.
One of the guards came over and I began to panic.
But he smiled at me kindly. “First time in Constantinople?” He asked, clearly taking me for some provincial outcast seeking work in the city.
“Just so.” I nodded, pulling myself together.
He patted my shoulder softly, reminding me so much of Castor it made my heart ache. “Have you got somewhere to stay?” He directed me to a tavern near the edge of the Greek district where I might find lodgings and walked me to the gate.
Constantine’s city was just as I remembered it, and yet utterly changed.
Markets still bustled with life and yet, the rhythm of that bustling had not as I remembered it. There was a weariness I didn’t recall; a care with which men spoke. A guarded edge to their words. They talked in small groups, watchful of strangers.
Yet the guard’s kindness reminded me of better times.
I was a stranger here. It had been more than ten years. Who left in the great city would still know Aureus of the Golden Cage? Even if I still had the beauty of my youth, no-one looked at me and saw the little slave Constantine loved. Aureus died in a far off land, his body lost in the turmoil that followed his master’s death.
The guard’s recommendation was ideal - a small inn run by an old Byzantine family. They had a small room in the attic they rented to me for a fair price. An amount I was able to earn easily singing in the taverns at night.
And the little window gave me a beautiful view of the palace.
It took me several weeks to work up the courage to go closer to the Golden Cage. I had no reason to enter the palace proper, nor did I want to. My memories of that place were too strong, too much. And there I ran the greatest risk of being recognised.
But adjoining the palace grounds, in the imperial cemetery, lay Constantine’s memorial. My beloved master’s last resting place on earth.
Many nights as I voyaged east, I imagined it – His funerary parade. The great procession through the streets of his city. The laminations – sobbing women crying in the streets, tearing their clothes and skin. Not Empress consort Eudokia, of course. She would make a show of grief – cutting her hair and wearing artfully torn robes. But she would be as still and serene as the porphyry stone they would bury him under, already planning how best to save her children for Leo’s rise.
In chapel, private and small, they would wash his body in water and wine. By rights that should have been my task. Probus and I both, and whichever of the Birds we thought strong enough to bear it. Is that why Probus stayed? When there was only danger left in the place? Niketas would have given him warning, offered some safe escape. That at least he had promised. But Probus was proud, and loyal, and loving. He would have stayed just so it was not a stranger who washed Constantine clean.
Fortunately Constantine’s tomb was a place of pilgrimage for many. Lost in my thoughts and memories I slipped unnoticed into the crowd.
The porphyry sarcophagus glittered in the morning sunlight as it slanted through the high windows, making the imperial purple of it shine. All about were littered little offerings – bowls of grain, small coins, and folds of lead stamped with entreaties.
They venerated him like a saint. It made me smile, he would have hated that.
I sat in a quiet corner, my knees tucked up under me. Sat and thought of him. I let a thousand, thousand tiny memories flow over me. People came and went; services and the hours of the day were sung. Some I sang with, some I simply let wash over me.
Sometime after dark, a Rector’s assistant touched my sleeve, telling me it was time to leave.
I smiled graciously and asked permission to offer one last prayer at the great emperor’s tomb before I went. He hesitated but agreed, keen to tidy up before the candles were doused for the night.
In Constantine’s day, the candles burned all night. But this was the age of Irene of Athens, Empress Regent of Byzantium and her puppet son. She may be working to overturn the iconoclasm of the Isaurian dynasty but that didn’t make her a friend to the church. And all the whispers in the air said Rome was displeased by the reins she kept tight over her son.
Kneeling at the foot of his sarcophagus, I lifted my voice in song. It was an old hymn and one not so often used by the church, even when I was a child. But I knew it to be my beloved master’s favourite. And so I sang it for him, this last time.
So lost in the song was I that I didn’t hear footsteps at my side, not until a second voice – untrained but no less sweet as my own, join me in song.
I kept my eyes closed, not wanting the let the sudden hope warming my heart escape me. The voice held harmony with my own, as familiar as my skin. It sounded, felt like Probus, like having my slain brother at my side once more.
I let the tears fall, making no effort to stanch them, even as the last note faded from my lips.
A soft hand touched my cheek, followed by soft lips. “I’ve missed you, brother.”
My eyes flew open at that. But it was not Probus I saw, but Luka. Luka who had been a child, freshly gelded when Constantine and I left for Bulgaria. His cherubic curls had tamed little, even now as he entered his fifteenth year.
“You know me?” I croaked, my voice breaking. I wanted to touch him, to hold him, to embrace him to my chest and feel his heart beating.
He smiled and cocks his head, a mirror of my own gesture. “Not until you sang. I thought I had run quite mad,” he caressed my cheek again, kissing my lips. “But ghosts do not weep. For if you were a ghost, you would be by his side, not at the foot of his grave.”
He took my hand and led me out into the city, to a villa – small but handsome, down by where the parade grounds once stood. We talked into the watches of the night – I of my long tale and adventures and he of the city and all that had befallen since I last passed the gates.
Secure as the favourite playmate of Anthousa, our master’s only daughter, Luka had been safe enough when Leo came to power. Leo doted on his half sister, young enough to be his own child. He would do nothing that would bring her displeasure.
As the other birds had been smuggled out or sent away, or killed in Probus’ case, Luka had gone with Anthousa when she was sent to Mystras in Greece to study. When Leo had died and little Kōnstantinos came to the throne at only nine Anthousa, but a few years older than him but wise beyond her age, had come back to support and help her nephew.
Leo, in his final days, had written to Anthousa, offering to make her co-regent with Irene. This effectively would have made her Leo’s second heir but Anthousa had refused. Mostly out of the sure knowledge that that would make her a threat in Irene’s eyes. And few years had passed and Anthousa grew tired of the plotting and scheming and constant cruelty that was Irene’s court and had chosen a different path – the nunnery.
But not before she had secured a life for her beloved playmate – a house, a modest income and his freedom – now and always.
We slept together that night, buddled in each other’s arms. I held him as I held him so many years ago. When Luka, youngest of the birds, had come to my bed to shelter from the thunder. We wept and kissed and talked for many days and nights. Of times past, of love and loss and of the father to us both.
He confided in me on our fourth night that he was a virgin still. And that it was his most bitter regret that Constantine had died before he could give Luka the blessing of his love.
That night I gave him, as best I could, the pleasure fate had denied him. I touched him as I believed Constantine would have. I whispered in his ears the many promises and loving words our master had given me. And with the jade phallus I had brought with me from Nippon, I brought him into manhood.
A week later, he started talking about the future. Our future. It broke my heart to have to tell him I would not be staying. That I could not stay.
It didn’t seem right to tell Luka of Milliways, of Ragnar and Athelstan. He was, in so many ways, still an innocent. And there was so much I couldn’t make him understand.
So I tried with all my heart to explain the ways of a wanderer. The way the wind tugged at my hair and whispered that it was time to move on. That I couldn’t stay in a place once I felt that call.
For three days he went through many emotions. At once railing at me for abandoning him, another moment begging for me to stay and crying into my tunic. He bargained that he could keep the wind at bay, that he would find a way to lift my curse. He talked of finding the others, of bringing the Birds back together. Of finding a little villa in the forest of our youth and starting a new life.
It took all my resolve to not to break and stay with him.
At night as Luka slept curled against my chest, I touched the tattoo on my skin, tracing the lines from dove to raven to lark, remaining myself of my duty and destiny.
Three months after we met again, I felt the wind calling and readied to leave. Luka’s eyes were heavy with tears, with a resignation he hated but accepted. We held each other that night, not speaking but both aware our paths may never cross again.
I rose at dawn, as was my way, and climbed to the roof to watch the sun rise. It would be my last in Constantine’s city, perhaps not forever but for many years to come. Luka didn’t rise from the bed we had shared but watched me with those sea green eyes as I packed. “Where will you go now?”
“To the docks.” I answered, folding the last of my things. “From there, God will guide.”
I didn’t believe that. I never had. Fate perhaps, destiny maybe; not God. But Luka had never lost his faith as I had and I knew the silver and garnet cross he wore always was a gift from the pious Anthousa. Saint Anthousa as I knew she would become. I wanted nothing to damage the sweet and pure faith that kept Luka warm.
In truth, I envied him that.
He rose as I closed the straps of my bag and I took my last look at his slender body, bare and pale in the morning light. Luka was what I had once been – smooth and lean, without scar or blemish. He had come to adulthood unbruised by time or suffering. Protected by the love.
I envied him that too. And yet I would not have given up my past for his future.
I set down my pack and took him in my arms, kissing him with all the love of brothers and lovers. “You will travel in my heart, always.”
He started to take off the cross to give to me but I refused it. It was her gift to him, not meant for me. Instead I exchanged a bell from the silver anklet Constantine had given me for one from his own. Mine was worn, tarnished by time and much wear whereas his still shone bright as the day Constantine give it to him – the day before Constantine left for war.
I pulled my cloak of unseen around me as I walked to the docks, not wanting any to see the pain in my eyes. I didn’t weep, I couldn’t. Once that dam broke, I would not be able to stop it and I would need to be many leagues away before that happened.
I found passage with a Frankish trader heading west and north to Rome. A few coins and the offer of my services as a translator was enough to find me a berth.
I stood on the deck, watching the city of my childhood fade into the distance. I wasn’t sure if I would pass this way again. After I give Ragnar the way to England and replayed my debt, my life would be my own again.
Perhaps I would come back. Perhaps when I was old bones, I could lie beside my master’s tomb and give myself back to him.
It was a pretty dream but a dream all the same.
I forced myself to look away, to face the west wind plucking at my hair.
Time to move on.
After Kollam, I didn’t much want to be recognised, or remembered.
I came into the empire of my childhood by the port of Attalia, making my way north by the slower inland way.
I had travelled these roads as a slave child and travelled them now as a free man.
My breath caught as the gates of the city crested before me. I had chosen a lesser gate, one where fewer eyes would be on me. I hadn’t meant to but I found myself at the gate I had shared with Hannibal, the day he had spent in my city in my youth. The memories of that day adding to all the others that flowed over me. Threatening to overwhelm me as high seas overwhelm the beaches.
I stopped and sat on one of the way markers along the road, trying to summon the courage to enter my beloved Constantine’s city. Too overcome by emotions, I felt the magic fall away, leaving me exposed and open.
One of the guards came over and I began to panic.
But he smiled at me kindly. “First time in Constantinople?” He asked, clearly taking me for some provincial outcast seeking work in the city.
“Just so.” I nodded, pulling myself together.
He patted my shoulder softly, reminding me so much of Castor it made my heart ache. “Have you got somewhere to stay?” He directed me to a tavern near the edge of the Greek district where I might find lodgings and walked me to the gate.
Constantine’s city was just as I remembered it, and yet utterly changed.
Markets still bustled with life and yet, the rhythm of that bustling had not as I remembered it. There was a weariness I didn’t recall; a care with which men spoke. A guarded edge to their words. They talked in small groups, watchful of strangers.
Yet the guard’s kindness reminded me of better times.
I was a stranger here. It had been more than ten years. Who left in the great city would still know Aureus of the Golden Cage? Even if I still had the beauty of my youth, no-one looked at me and saw the little slave Constantine loved. Aureus died in a far off land, his body lost in the turmoil that followed his master’s death.
The guard’s recommendation was ideal - a small inn run by an old Byzantine family. They had a small room in the attic they rented to me for a fair price. An amount I was able to earn easily singing in the taverns at night.
And the little window gave me a beautiful view of the palace.
It took me several weeks to work up the courage to go closer to the Golden Cage. I had no reason to enter the palace proper, nor did I want to. My memories of that place were too strong, too much. And there I ran the greatest risk of being recognised.
But adjoining the palace grounds, in the imperial cemetery, lay Constantine’s memorial. My beloved master’s last resting place on earth.
Many nights as I voyaged east, I imagined it – His funerary parade. The great procession through the streets of his city. The laminations – sobbing women crying in the streets, tearing their clothes and skin. Not Empress consort Eudokia, of course. She would make a show of grief – cutting her hair and wearing artfully torn robes. But she would be as still and serene as the porphyry stone they would bury him under, already planning how best to save her children for Leo’s rise.
In chapel, private and small, they would wash his body in water and wine. By rights that should have been my task. Probus and I both, and whichever of the Birds we thought strong enough to bear it. Is that why Probus stayed? When there was only danger left in the place? Niketas would have given him warning, offered some safe escape. That at least he had promised. But Probus was proud, and loyal, and loving. He would have stayed just so it was not a stranger who washed Constantine clean.
Fortunately Constantine’s tomb was a place of pilgrimage for many. Lost in my thoughts and memories I slipped unnoticed into the crowd.
The porphyry sarcophagus glittered in the morning sunlight as it slanted through the high windows, making the imperial purple of it shine. All about were littered little offerings – bowls of grain, small coins, and folds of lead stamped with entreaties.
They venerated him like a saint. It made me smile, he would have hated that.
I sat in a quiet corner, my knees tucked up under me. Sat and thought of him. I let a thousand, thousand tiny memories flow over me. People came and went; services and the hours of the day were sung. Some I sang with, some I simply let wash over me.
Sometime after dark, a Rector’s assistant touched my sleeve, telling me it was time to leave.
I smiled graciously and asked permission to offer one last prayer at the great emperor’s tomb before I went. He hesitated but agreed, keen to tidy up before the candles were doused for the night.
In Constantine’s day, the candles burned all night. But this was the age of Irene of Athens, Empress Regent of Byzantium and her puppet son. She may be working to overturn the iconoclasm of the Isaurian dynasty but that didn’t make her a friend to the church. And all the whispers in the air said Rome was displeased by the reins she kept tight over her son.
Kneeling at the foot of his sarcophagus, I lifted my voice in song. It was an old hymn and one not so often used by the church, even when I was a child. But I knew it to be my beloved master’s favourite. And so I sang it for him, this last time.
So lost in the song was I that I didn’t hear footsteps at my side, not until a second voice – untrained but no less sweet as my own, join me in song.
I kept my eyes closed, not wanting the let the sudden hope warming my heart escape me. The voice held harmony with my own, as familiar as my skin. It sounded, felt like Probus, like having my slain brother at my side once more.
I let the tears fall, making no effort to stanch them, even as the last note faded from my lips.
A soft hand touched my cheek, followed by soft lips. “I’ve missed you, brother.”
My eyes flew open at that. But it was not Probus I saw, but Luka. Luka who had been a child, freshly gelded when Constantine and I left for Bulgaria. His cherubic curls had tamed little, even now as he entered his fifteenth year.
“You know me?” I croaked, my voice breaking. I wanted to touch him, to hold him, to embrace him to my chest and feel his heart beating.
He smiled and cocks his head, a mirror of my own gesture. “Not until you sang. I thought I had run quite mad,” he caressed my cheek again, kissing my lips. “But ghosts do not weep. For if you were a ghost, you would be by his side, not at the foot of his grave.”
He took my hand and led me out into the city, to a villa – small but handsome, down by where the parade grounds once stood. We talked into the watches of the night – I of my long tale and adventures and he of the city and all that had befallen since I last passed the gates.
Secure as the favourite playmate of Anthousa, our master’s only daughter, Luka had been safe enough when Leo came to power. Leo doted on his half sister, young enough to be his own child. He would do nothing that would bring her displeasure.
As the other birds had been smuggled out or sent away, or killed in Probus’ case, Luka had gone with Anthousa when she was sent to Mystras in Greece to study. When Leo had died and little Kōnstantinos came to the throne at only nine Anthousa, but a few years older than him but wise beyond her age, had come back to support and help her nephew.
Leo, in his final days, had written to Anthousa, offering to make her co-regent with Irene. This effectively would have made her Leo’s second heir but Anthousa had refused. Mostly out of the sure knowledge that that would make her a threat in Irene’s eyes. And few years had passed and Anthousa grew tired of the plotting and scheming and constant cruelty that was Irene’s court and had chosen a different path – the nunnery.
But not before she had secured a life for her beloved playmate – a house, a modest income and his freedom – now and always.
We slept together that night, buddled in each other’s arms. I held him as I held him so many years ago. When Luka, youngest of the birds, had come to my bed to shelter from the thunder. We wept and kissed and talked for many days and nights. Of times past, of love and loss and of the father to us both.
He confided in me on our fourth night that he was a virgin still. And that it was his most bitter regret that Constantine had died before he could give Luka the blessing of his love.
That night I gave him, as best I could, the pleasure fate had denied him. I touched him as I believed Constantine would have. I whispered in his ears the many promises and loving words our master had given me. And with the jade phallus I had brought with me from Nippon, I brought him into manhood.
A week later, he started talking about the future. Our future. It broke my heart to have to tell him I would not be staying. That I could not stay.
It didn’t seem right to tell Luka of Milliways, of Ragnar and Athelstan. He was, in so many ways, still an innocent. And there was so much I couldn’t make him understand.
So I tried with all my heart to explain the ways of a wanderer. The way the wind tugged at my hair and whispered that it was time to move on. That I couldn’t stay in a place once I felt that call.
For three days he went through many emotions. At once railing at me for abandoning him, another moment begging for me to stay and crying into my tunic. He bargained that he could keep the wind at bay, that he would find a way to lift my curse. He talked of finding the others, of bringing the Birds back together. Of finding a little villa in the forest of our youth and starting a new life.
It took all my resolve to not to break and stay with him.
At night as Luka slept curled against my chest, I touched the tattoo on my skin, tracing the lines from dove to raven to lark, remaining myself of my duty and destiny.
Three months after we met again, I felt the wind calling and readied to leave. Luka’s eyes were heavy with tears, with a resignation he hated but accepted. We held each other that night, not speaking but both aware our paths may never cross again.
I rose at dawn, as was my way, and climbed to the roof to watch the sun rise. It would be my last in Constantine’s city, perhaps not forever but for many years to come. Luka didn’t rise from the bed we had shared but watched me with those sea green eyes as I packed. “Where will you go now?”
“To the docks.” I answered, folding the last of my things. “From there, God will guide.”
I didn’t believe that. I never had. Fate perhaps, destiny maybe; not God. But Luka had never lost his faith as I had and I knew the silver and garnet cross he wore always was a gift from the pious Anthousa. Saint Anthousa as I knew she would become. I wanted nothing to damage the sweet and pure faith that kept Luka warm.
In truth, I envied him that.
He rose as I closed the straps of my bag and I took my last look at his slender body, bare and pale in the morning light. Luka was what I had once been – smooth and lean, without scar or blemish. He had come to adulthood unbruised by time or suffering. Protected by the love.
I envied him that too. And yet I would not have given up my past for his future.
I set down my pack and took him in my arms, kissing him with all the love of brothers and lovers. “You will travel in my heart, always.”
He started to take off the cross to give to me but I refused it. It was her gift to him, not meant for me. Instead I exchanged a bell from the silver anklet Constantine had given me for one from his own. Mine was worn, tarnished by time and much wear whereas his still shone bright as the day Constantine give it to him – the day before Constantine left for war.
I pulled my cloak of unseen around me as I walked to the docks, not wanting any to see the pain in my eyes. I didn’t weep, I couldn’t. Once that dam broke, I would not be able to stop it and I would need to be many leagues away before that happened.
I found passage with a Frankish trader heading west and north to Rome. A few coins and the offer of my services as a translator was enough to find me a berth.
I stood on the deck, watching the city of my childhood fade into the distance. I wasn’t sure if I would pass this way again. After I give Ragnar the way to England and replayed my debt, my life would be my own again.
Perhaps I would come back. Perhaps when I was old bones, I could lie beside my master’s tomb and give myself back to him.
It was a pretty dream but a dream all the same.
I forced myself to look away, to face the west wind plucking at my hair.
Time to move on.
