Metaxas said, “Your grace, this is my mother’s sister’s third son, George Markezinis, of Epirus, now a guest at my villa during the harvest season.”
“You’ve come a long way,” said Leo Ducas. “Have you been to Constantinople before?”
“Never,” I said. “A wonderful city! The churches! The palaces! The bathhouses! The food, the wine, the clothes! The women, the beautiful women!”
Pulcheria glowed. She gave me that sidewise smile of hers again, on the side away from her husband. I knew she was mine. The sweet fragrance of her drifted toward me. I began to ache and throb.
Leo said, “You know the emperor, of course?”
With a grand sweep of his arm he indicated Alexius, holding court at the far end of the room. I had seen him before: a short, stocky man of clearly imperial bearing. A circle of lords and ladies surrounded him. He seemed gracious, sophisticated, relaxed in manner, the true heir to the Caesars, the defender of civilization in these dark times. At Leo’s insistence I was presented to him. He greeted me warmly, crying out that the cousin of Metaxas was as dear to him as Metaxas himself. We talked for a while, the emperor and I; I was nervous, but I carried myself well, and Leo Ducas said, finally, “You speak with emperors as though you’ve known a dozen of them, young man.”
I smiled. I did not say that I had several times glimpsed Justinian, that I had attended the baptisms of Theodosius II, Constantine V, the yet unborn Manuel Comnenus, and many more, that I had knelt in Haghia Sophia not far from Constantine XI on Byzantium’s last night, that I had watched Leo the Isaurian direct the iconoclasms. I did not say that I was one of the many pluggers of the hungry hole of the Empress Theodora, five centuries previously. I looked shy and said, “Thank you, your grace.”
46.
Byzantine parties consisted of music, a dance of slavegirls, some dining, and a great deal of wine. The night wore on; the candles burned low; the assembled notables grew tipsy. In the gathering darkness I mingled easily with members of the famed families, meeting men and women named Comnenus, Phocas, Skleros, Dalassenes, Diogenes, Botaniates, Tzimisces and Ducas. I made courtly conversation and impressed myself with my glibness. I watched arrangements for adultery being made subtly, but not subtly enough, behind the backs of drunken husbands. I bade goodnight to Emperor Alexius and received an invitation to visit him at Blachernae, just up the road. I fended off Metaxas’ Eudocia, who had had too much to drink and wanted a quick balling in a back room. (She finally selected one Basil Diogenes, who must have been seventy years old.) I answered, evasively, a great many questions about my “cousin” Metaxas, whom everybody knew, but whose origins were a mystery to all. And then, three hours after my arrival, I found that I was at last speaking with Pulcheria.
We stood quietly together in an angle of the great hall. Two flickering candles gave us light. She looked flushed, excited, even agitated; her breasts heaved and a line of sweat-beads stippled her upper lip. I had never beheld such beauty before.
“Look,” she said. “Leo dozes. He loves his wine more than most other things.”
“He must love beauty,” I said. “He has surrounded himself with so much of it.”
“Flatterer!”
“No. I try to speak the truth.”
“You don’t often succeed,” she said. “Who are you?”
“Markezinis of Epirus, cousin to Metaxas.”
“That tells me very little. I mean, what are you looking for in Constantinople?”
I took a deep breath. “To fulfill my destiny, by finding the one whom I am meant to find, the one whom I love.”
That got through to her. Seventeen-year-old girls are susceptible to that kind of thing, even in Byzantium, where girls mature early and marry at twelve. Call me Heathcliff.
Pulcheria gasped, crossed her arms chastely over the high mounds of her breasts, and shivered. I think her pupils may have momentarily dilated.
“It’s impossible,” she said.
“Nothing’s impossible.”
“My husband—”
“Asleep,” I said. “Tonight — under this roof—”
“No. We can’t.”
“You’re trying to fight destiny, Pulcheria.”
“George!”
“A bond holds us together — a bond stretching across all of time—”
“Yes, George!”
Easy, now, great-great-multi-great-grandson, don’t talk too much. It’s cheap timecrime to brag that you’re from the future.
“This was fated,” I whispered. “It had to be!”
“Yes! Yes!”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight, yes.”
“Here.”
“Here,” said Pulcheria.
“Soon.”
“When the guests leave. When Leo is in bed. I’ll have you hidden in a room where it’s safe — I’ll come to you—”
“You knew this would happen,” I said, “that day when we met in the shop.”
“Yes. I knew. Instantly. What magic did you work on me?”
“None, Pulcheria. The magic rules us both. Drawing us together, shaping this moment, spinning the strands of destiny toward our meeting, upsetting the boundaries of time itself—”
“You speak so strangely, George. So beautifully. You must be a poet!”
“Perhaps.”
“In two hours you’ll be mine.”
“And you mine,” I said.
“And for always.”
I shivered, thinking of the Time Patrol swordlike above me. “For always, Pulcheria.”
47.
She spoke to a servant, telling him that the young man from Epirus had had too much to drink, and wished to lie down in one of the guest chambers. I acted appropriately woozy. Metaxas found me and wished me well. Then I made a candlelight pilgrimage through the maze of the Ducas palace and was shown to a simple room somewhere far in the rear. A low bed was the only article of furniture. A rectangular mosaic in the center of the floor was the only decoration. The single narrow window admitted a shaft of moonlight. The servant brought me a washbasin of water, wished me a good night’s rest, and let me alone.
I waited a billion years.
Sounds of distant revelry floated to me. Pulcheria did not come.
It’s all a joke, I thought. A hoax. The young but sophisticated mistress of the house is having some fun with the country cousin. She’ll let me fidget and fret in here alone until morning, and then send a servant to give me breakfast and show me out. Or maybe after a couple of hours she’ll tell one of her slavegirls to come in here and pretend she’s Pulcheria. Or send in a toothless crone, while her guests watch through concealed slots in the wall. Or—
A thousand times I considered fleeing. Just touch the timer, and shoot up the line to 1204, where Conrad Sauerabend and Palmyra Gostaman and Mr. and Mrs. Haggins and the rest of my tourists lie sleeping and unguarded.
Clear out? Now? When everything had gone so neatly so far? What would Metaxas say to me when he found out I had lost my nerve?
I remembered my guru, black Sam, asking me, “If you had a chance to attain your heart’s desire, would you take it?”
Pulcheria was my heart’s desire; I knew that now.
I remembered Sam Spade telling me, “You’re a compulsive loser. Losers infallibly choose the least desirable alternative.”
Go ahead, great-great-multi-great-grandson. Skip out of here before the luscious primordial ancestress can offer her dark musky loins to you.
I remembered Emily, the helix-parlor girl with the gift of prophecy, crying shrilly, “Beware love in Byzantium! Beware! Beware!”
I loved. In Byzantium.
Rising, I paced the room a thousand times, and stood at the door listening to the faint laughter and the far-off songs, and then I removed all of my clothing, carefully folding each garment and placing it on the floor beside my bed. I stood naked except for my timer, and I debated removing that too. What would Pulcheria say when she saw that tawny plastic band at my waist? How could I explain it?