Metaxas studied the list more carefully.
“Ducas?What is this, Ducas?”
“That’s me. I’m a Ducas. The scribe gave me the details right back to the seventh century.”
“Impossible. Nobody knows who the Ducases were, that early! It’s false!”
“Maybe that part is. But from 950 on, it’s legitimate. Those are my people. I followed them right out of Byzantium into Albania and on to twentieth-century Greece.”
“This is the truth?”
“I swear it!”
“You clever little cockeater,” Metaxas said fondly. “All in one layoff, you learned this. And a Ducas, no less! A Ducas!” He consulted the list again. “Nicephorus Ducas, son of Nicetas Ducas, son of — hmm — Leo Ducas! Pulcheria Botaniates!”
“What’s wrong?”
“I know them,” Metaxas cried. “They’ve been my guests here, and I’ve stayed with them. He’s one of the richest men in Byzantium, do you know that? And his wife Pulcheria — such a beautiful girl—” He gripped my arm fiercely. “You’d swear? These are your ancestors?”
“I’m positive.”
“Wonderful,” Metaxas said. “Let me tell you about Pulcheria, now. She’s — oh, seventeen years old. Leo married her when she was just a child; they do a lot of that here. She’s got a waist like this, but breasts out to here, and a flat belly and eyes that turn you afire, and—”
I shook free of his grasp and jammed my face close to his.
“Metaxas, have you—”
I couldn’t say it.
“—slept with Pulcheria? No, no, I haven’t. God’s truth, Jud! I’ve got enough women here. But look, boy, here’s your opportunity! I can help you to meet her. She’s ripe for seduction. Young, childless, beautiful, bored, her husband so busy with business matters that he hardly notices her — and she’s your own great-great-multi-grandmother besides!”
“That part is your clutchup, not mine,” I reminded him. “For me it might be a reason to stay away from her, in fact.”
“Don’t be an idiot. I’ll fix it all up for you in two, three days. An introduction to the Ducases, a night as a guest in their palace in town, a word to Pulcheria’s lady in waiting”
“No,” I said.
“No?”
“No. I don’t want to get mixed up in any of this.”
“You’re a hard man to make happy, Jud. You don’t want to fuck Empress Theodora, you don’t want to lay Pulcheria Ducas, you — say, next thing you’ll tell me you don’t want Eudocia either.”
“I don’t mind screwing one of your ancestors,” I said. I grinned. “I wouldn’t even mind putting a baby in Eudocia’s belly. How would you feel if I turned out to be your multi-great-grandfather?”
“You can’t,” said Metaxas.
“Why not?”
“Because Eudocia remains unmarried and childless until 1109. Then she weds Basil Stratiocus and has seven sons and three daughters in the following fifteen years, including one who is ancestral to me. Christ, does she get fat!”
“All of that can be changed,” I reminded him.
“Like holy crap it can,” said Metaxas. “Don’t you think I guard my own line of descent? Don’t you think I’d obliterate you from history if I caught you making a timechange on Eudocia’s marriage? She’ll stay childless until Basil Stratiocus fills her up, and that’s that. But she’s yours for tonight.”
And she was. Giving me the highest degree of hospitality in his lexicon, Metaxas sent his ancestress Eudocia into my bedroom. Her lean, supple body was a trifle meager for me; her hard little breasts barely filled my hands. But she was a tigress. She was all energy and all passion, and she clambered on top of me and rocked herself to ecstasy in twenty quick rotations, and that was only the beginning. It was dawn before she let me sleep.
And in my dreams I saw Metaxas escort me to the palace of the Ducases, and introduce me to my multi-great-grandfather Leo, who said serenely, “This is my wife Pulcheria,” and in my dream it seemed to me that she was the loveliest woman I had ever seen.
37.
I had my first troublesome moment as a Courier on my next tour. Because I was too proud to call in the Time Patrol for help, I got myself involved in the Paradox of Duplication and also caught a taste of the Paradox of Transit Displacement. But I think I came out of it looking pretty good.
I was escorting nine tourists through the arrival of the First Crusade in Byzantium when the mess happened.
“In 1095,” I told my people, “Pope Urban II called for the liberation of the Holy Land from the Saracens. Very shortly, the knights of Europe began to enroll in the Crusade. Among those who welcomed such a war of liberation was Emperor Alexius of Byzantium, who saw in it a way of regaining the territories in the Near East that Byzantium had lost to the Turks and the Arabs. Alexius sent word that he wouldn’t mind getting a few hundred experienced knights to help him clean the infidels out. But he got a good deal more than that, as we’ll see in a moment, down the line in 1096.”
We shunted to August 1, 1096.
Ascending the walls of Constantinople, we peered out into the countryside and saw it full of troops: not mailed knights but a raggle-taggle band of tattered peasants.
“This,” I said, “is the People’s Crusade. While the professional soldiers were working out the logistics of their march, a scrawny, foul-smelling little charismatic named Peter the Hermit rounded up thousands of paupers and farmers and led them across Europe to Byzantium. They looted and pillaged along the way, cleaned out the harvest of half of Europe, and burned Belgrade in a dispute with the Byzantine administrators. But finally they got here, 30,000 of them.”
“Which one is Peter the Hermit?” asked the most obstreperous member of the group, a full-blown, fortyish bachelor lady from Des Moines named Marge Hefferin.
I checked the time. “You’ll see him in another minute and a half. Alexius has sent a couple of officials to invite Peter to court. He wants Peter and his rabble to wait in Constantinople until the knights and barons get here, since these people will get slaughtered by the Turks if they go over into Asia Minor without a military escort. Look: there’s Peter now.”
Two dandified Byzantine grandees emerged from the mob, obviously holding their breath and looking as though they’d like to hold their noses too. Between them marched a scruffy, barefoot, rag-clad, filthy, long-chinned, gnomish man with blazing eyes and a pock-marked face.
“Peter the Hermit,” I said, “on his way to see the emperor.”
We shunted forward three days. The People’s Crusade was inside Constantinople and playing hell with Alexius’ city. A good many buildings were aflame. Ten Crusaders were atop one of the churches, stripping the lead from its roof for resale. A highborn-looking Byzantine woman emerged from Haghia Sophia and was stripped bare and raped by a pack of Peter’s pious pilgrims before our eyes.
I said, “Alexius has miscalculated by letting this riffraff into the city. Now he’s making arrangements to get them out the other side, by offering free ferry service across the Bosphorus to Asia. On August 6 they’ll start on their way. The Crusaders will begin by massacring the Byzantine settlements in western Asia Minor; then they’ll attack the Turks and be wiped out almost completely. If we had time, I’d take you down to 1097 and across to see the mountain of bones along the road. That’s what happened to the People’s Crusade. However, the pros are on their way, so let’s watch them.”
I explained about the four armies of Crusaders: the army of Raymond of Toulouse, the army of Duke Robert of Normandy, the army of Bohemond and Tancred, and the army of Godfrey of Bouillon, Eustace of Boulogne, and Baldwin of Lorraine. Some of my people had read up on their Crusader history and nodded in recognition of the names.