“Would you mind, my guest, if wife and child share our board?” Doukas asked shyly. “They will not interrupt. Yet they’d be glad to hear you. Xenia is, well, forgive my pride, she’s only five and already learning to read.”
She was a singularly beautiful child.
Hauk Thomasson returned next year and described the position he had accepted with a firm in Athens. Greece belonged to the Empire, and would till the catastrophe; but so much trade was now under foreign control that the story passed. His work would often bring him to Constantinople. He was happy to have this opportunity of renewing acquaintanceship, and hoped the daughter of Kyrios Manasses would accept a small present — “Athens!” the goldsmith whispered. “You dwell in the soul of Hellas?” He reached up to lay both hands on his visitor’s shoulders. Tears stood in his eyes. “Oh, wonderful for you, wonderful! To see those temples is the dream of my life … God better me, more than to see the Holy Land.”
Xenia accepted the toy gratefully. At dinner and afterward she listened, rapt, till her nanny shooed her to bed. She was a sweet youngster, Havig thought, undeniably bright, and not spoiled even though it seemed Anna would bear no more children.
He enjoyed himself, too. A cultured, sensitive, observant man is a pleasure to be with in any age. This assignment was, for a while, losing its nightmare quality.
In truth, he simply skipped ahead through time. He must check up periodically, to be sure events didn’t make his original data obsolete. Simultaneously he could develop more leads, ask more questions, than would have been practical in a single session.
But — he wondered a few calendar years later — wasn’t he being more thorough than needful? Did he really have to make this many visits to the Manasses family, become an intimate, join them on holidays and picnics, invite them out to dinner or for a day on a rented pleasure barge? Certainly he was exceeding his expense estimate … To hell with that. He could finance himself by placing foreknowledgeable bets on events in the Hippodrome. An agent working alone had broad discretion.
He felt guilty about lying to his friends. But it had to be. After all, his objective was to save them.
Xenia’s voice was somewhat high and thin, but whenever he heard or remembered it, Havig would think of songbirds. Thus had it been since first she overcame her timidity and laughed in his presence. From then on, she chattered with him to the limit her parents allowed, or more when they weren’t looking.
She was reed-slender. He had never seen any human who moved with more gracefulness; and when decorum was not required, her feet danced. Her hair was a midnight mass which, piled on her head, seemed as if it ought to bend the delicate neck. Her skin was pale and clear; her face was oval, tilt-nosed, its lips always a little parted. The eyes dominated that countenance, enormous, heavy-lashed, luminous black. Those eyes may be seen elsewhere, in a Ravenna mosaic, upon Empress Theodora the Great; they may never be forgotten.
It was a strange thing to meet her at intervals of months which for Havig were hours or days. Each time, she was so dizzyingly grown. In awe he felt a sense of that measureless river which he could swim but on which she could only be carried from darkness to darkness.
The house was built around a courtyard where flowers and oranges grew and a fountain played. Doukas proudly showed Havig his latest acquisition: on a pedestal in one corner, a bust of Constantine who made Rome Christian and for whom New Rome was named. “From the life, I feel sure,” he said. “By then the art of portrayal was losing its former mastery. Nevertheless, observe his imperiously tight-held mouth—”
Nine-year-old Xenia giggled. “What is it, dear?” her father asked.
“Nothing, really,” she said, but couldn’t stop giggling.
“No, do tell us. I shan’t be angry.”
“He … he … he wants to make a very important speech, and he has gas!”
“By Bacchus,” Havig exclaimed, “she’s right!”
Doukas struggled a moment before he gave up and joined the fun.
“Oh, please, will you not come to church with us, Hauk?” she begged. “You don’t know how lovely it is, when the song and incense and candle flames rise up to Christ Pantocrator.” She was eleven and overflowing with God.
“I’m sorry,” Havig said. “You know I am, am Catholic.”
“The saints won’t mind. I asked Father and Mother, and they won’t mind either. We can say you’re a Russian, if we need to. I’ll show you how to act.” She tugged his hand. “Do come!”
He yielded, not sure whether she hoped to convert him or merely wanted to share something glorious with her honorary uncle.
“But it’s too wonderful!” She burst into tears and hugged her thirteenth birthday present to her before holding it out. “Father, Mother, see what Hauk gave me! This book, the p-p-plays of Euripides — all of them — for me!”
When she was gone to change clothes for a modest festival dinner, Doukas said: “That was a royal gift. Not only the cost of having the copy made and binding it as a codex. The thought.”
“I knew she loves the ancients as much as you do,” the traveler answered.
“Forgive me,” Anna the mother said. “But at her age … may Euripides not be, well, stern reading?”
“These are stern times,” Havig replied, and could no longer feign joy. “A tragic line may hearten her to meet fate.” He turned to the goldsmith. “Doukas, I tell you again, I swear to you, I know through my connections that the Venetians at this very moment are negotiating with other Frankish lords—”
“You have said that.” The goldsmith nodded. His hair and beard were nearly white.
“It’s not too late to move you and your family to safety. I’ll help.”
“Where is safety better than these walls, which no invader has ever breached? Or where, if I break up my shop, where is safety from pauperdom and hunger? What would my apprentices and servants do? They can’t move. No, my good old friend, prudence and duty alike tells us we must remain here and trust in God.” Doukas uttered a small sad chuckle. “‘Old,’ did I say? You never seem to change. Well, you’re in your prime, of course.”
Havig swallowed. “I don’t think I’ll be back in Constantinople for some while. My employers, under present circumstances — Be careful. Keep unnoticeable, hide your wealth, stay off the streets whenever you can and always at night. I know the Franks.”
“Well, I, I’ll bear your advice in mind, Hank, if — But you go too far. This is New Rome.”
Anna touched the arms of both. Her smile was uncertain. “Now that’s enough politics, you men,” she said. “Take off those long faces. We’re making merry on Xenia’s day. Have you forgotten?”
Time-skipping in an alley across the street, Havig checked the period of the first Latin occupation. Nothing terrible seemed to happen. The house drew back into itself and waited.
He went pastward to a happier year, took a night’s lodging, forced himself to eat a hearty supper and get a lot of sleep. Next morning he omitted breakfast: a good idea when you may soon be in combat.
He jumped ahead, to the twelfth of April, 1204.
He could be no more than an observer through the days and nights of the sack. His orders were explicit and made sense:
“If you can possibly avoid it, stay out of danger. Under no conditions mingle, or try to influence events. Absolutely never, and this is under penalties, never enter a building which is a scene of action. We want your report, and for that we need you alive.”