Up The Line

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.”