By midafternoon, she had tracked down the tailor reputed to be the best in Barbaricum. By sundown, she had completed her business with him. Most of that time had been spent keeping the dockboys from fidgeting as the tailor measured them.
"You also!" Anna commanded, slapping the most obstreperous urchin on top of his head. "In the Service, cleanliness is essential."
The next day, however, when they donned their new uniforms, the dockboys were almost beside themselves with joy. The plain and utilitarian garments were, by a great margin, the finest clothing they had ever possessed.
The Isaurian brothers and Abdul were not quite as demonstrative. Not quite.
"We look like princes," gurgled Cottomenes happily.
"And so you are," pronounced Anna. "The highest officers of the Wife's Service. A rank which will someday" -- she spoke with a confidence far beyond her years -- "be envied by princes the world over."
The Iron Triangle
"Relax, Calopodius," said Menander cheerfully, giving the blind young officer a friendly pat on the shoulder. "I'll see to it she arrives safely."
"She's already left Barbaricum," muttered Calopodius. "Damnation, why didn't she wait?"
Despite his agitation, Calopodius couldn't help smiling when he heard the little round of laughter which echoed around him. As usual, whenever the subject of Calopodius' wife arose, every officer and orderly in the command had listened. In her own way, Anna was becoming as famous as anyone in the great Roman army fighting its way into India.
Most husbands, to say the least, do not like to discover that their wives are the subject of endless army gossip. But since, in his case, the cause of the gossip was not the usual sexual peccadilloes, Calopodius was not certain how he felt about it. Some part of him, ingrained with custom, still felt a certain dull outrage. But, for the most part -- perhaps oddly -- his main reaction was one of quiet pride.
"I suppose that's a ridiculous question," he admitted ruefully. "She hasn't waited for anything else."
When Menander spoke again, the tone in his voice was much less jovial. As if he, too, shared in the concern which -- much to his surprise -- Calopodius had found engulfing him since he learned of Anna's journey. Strange, really, that he should care so much about the well-being of a wife who was little but a vague image to him.
But ... Even before his blinding, the world of literature had often seemed as real to Calopodius as any other. Since he lost his sight, all the more so -- despite the fact that he could no longer read or write himself, but depended on others to do it for him.
Anna Melisseni, the distant girl he had married and had known for a short time in Constantinople, meant practically nothing to him. But the Wife of Calopodius the Blind, the unknown woman who had been advancing toward him for weeks now, she was a different thing altogether. Still mysterious, but not a stranger. How could she be, any longer?
Had he not, after all, written about her often enough in his own Dispatches? In the third person, of course, as he always spoke of himself in his writings. No subjective mood was ever inserted into his Dispatches, any more than into the chapters of his massive History of the War. But, detached or not, whenever he received news of Anna he included at least a few sentences detailing for the army her latest adventures. Just as he did for those officers and men who had distinguished themselves. And he was no longer surprised to discover that most of the army found a young wife's exploits more interesting than their own.
She's different.
"Difference," however, was no shield against life's misfortunes -- misfortunes which are multiplied several times over in the middle of a war zone. So, within seconds, Calopodius was back to fretting.
"Why didn't she wait, damn it all?"
Again, Menander clapped his shoulder. "I'm leaving with the Victrix this afternoon, Calopodius. Steaming with the riverflow, I'll be in Sukkur long before Anna gets there coming upstream in an oared river craft. So I'll be her escort on the last leg of her journey, coming into the Punjab."
"The Sind's not that safe," grumbled Calopodius, still fretting. The Sind was the lower half of the Indus river valley, and while it had now been cleared of Malwa troops and was under the jurisdiction of Rome's Persian allies, the province was still greatly unsettled. "Dacoits everywhere."
"Dacoits aren't going to attack a military convoy," interrupted Belisarius. "I'll make sure she gets a Persian escort of some kind as far as Sukkur."
One of the telegraphs in the command center began to chatter. When the message was read aloud, a short time later, even Calopodius began to relax.
"Guess not," he mumbled -- more than a little abashed. "With that escort."
The Lower Indus
"I don't believe this," mumbled Illus -- more than a little abashed. He glanced down at his uniform. For all the finery of the fabric and the cut, the garment seemed utterly drab matched against the glittering costumes which seemed to fill the wharf against which their river barge was just now being tied.
Standing next to him, Anna said nothing. Her face was stiff, showing none of the uneasiness she felt herself. Her own costume was even more severe and plainly cut than those of her officers, even if the fabric itself was expensive. And she found herself wishing desperately that her cosmetics had survived the journey from Constantinople. For a woman of her class, being seen with a face unadorned by anything except nature was well-nigh unthinkable. In any company, much less ...
The tying-up was finished and the gangplank laid. Anna was able to guess at the identity of the first man to stride across it.
She was not even surprised. Anna had read everything ever written by Irene Macrembolitissa -- several times over -- including the last book the woman wrote just before she left for the Hindu Kush on her great expedition of conquest. The Deeds of Khusrau, she thought, described the man quite well. The Emperor of Persia was not particularly large, but so full of life and energy that he seemed like a giant as he strode toward her across the gangplank.
What am I doing here? she wondered. I never planned on such as this!
"So! You are the one!" were the first words he boomed. "To live in such days, when legends walk among us!"
In the confused time which followed, as Anna was introduced to a not-so-little mob of Persian officers and officials -- most of them obviously struggling not to frown with disapproval at such a disreputable woman -- she pondered on those words.
They seemed meaningless to her. Khusrau Anushirvan -- "Khusrau of the Immortal Soul" -- was a legend, not she.
So why had he said that?
By the end of that evening, after spending hours sitting stiffly in a chair while Iran's royalty and nobility wined and dined her, she had mustered enough courage to lean over to the emperor -- sitting next to her! -- and whisper the question into his ear.
Khusrau's response astonished her even more than the question had. He grinned broadly, white teeth gleaming in a square-cut Persian beard. Then, he leaned over and whispered in return:
"I am an expert on legends, wife of Calopodius. Truth be told, I often think the art of kingship is mainly knowing how to make the things."
He glanced slyly at his assembled nobility, who had not stopped frowning at Anna throughout the royal feast -- but always, she noticed, under lowered brows.
"But keep it a secret," he whispered. "It wouldn't do for my noble vurzurgan to discover that their emperor is really a common manufacturer. I don't need another rebellion this year."