The Empress

The spring of 1179

‘I’M GOING TO be queen of the world,’ Agnes sang to herself.

She stopped.

‘No, not a stupid queen. Much, much better than a queen. Empress. Empress of the whole wide world.’

She skipped a little further.

‘Empress of the City. Basilissa tou . . . tou . . .’ The Greek her father had always insisted she learn, without ever quite explaining why, stuck in her mouth. She stamped her foot to make the words come.

‘. . . tou Poleôs.’

She started to chant the phrase, the s’s sizzling on her tongue. She swung her arms out, whirling in circles until the gardens around her blurred, green grass, grey stones, green, grey, green-grey. Then a flash of red and gold. She fell over.

Henri and Little Louis were standing there. Laughing. She stood up, brushed the dust from her dress and stuck her nose into the air.

‘You won’t be laughing when you hear what I’ve got to tell you.’

‘You always say that and then it’s always nothing,’ said Louis.

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Yes, you do.’

‘No, I . . . Shut up. Don’t argue. Show a little respect to your elders.’

It was a sore point. The three of them were almost exactly the same age – thirteen, twelve and eleven, on the brink of adulthood – but she was the king’s youngest daughter and they were his oldest grandsons, and that made her their aunt.

‘That’s what I say to respect,’ said Louis with a vigorous hand gesture that made Henri snigger.

Agnes had no idea what it meant, but she guessed he’d learnt it in the stables, so she clapped her hands to her mouth and shrieked.

‘Don’t be disgusting, Louis! I’ll tell my father, I shall, I swear I shall.’

She turned and started to run back to the palace – although not quite as fast as she could. She didn’t want to look unladylike, not today of all days, and she certainly didn’t want to see her father again. He was grumpy and had hair coming out of his ears. But he was the king, and the boys would be whipped raw if he found out they’d been teasing her, his treasure.

‘Don’t, Ness, please don’t. Come on. Please.’ They each had hold of one of her hands and were trying to drag her away from the garden gate. She tilted her head back so she could look down on them, and decided they were pleasingly penitent.

‘Please who?’

‘Please, Agnes. Please, Aunt.’

She smiled a little cat smile, gracious in victory.

‘All right. I won’t. Just this once. Little boys,’ she tutted, knowing it would enrage them – and knowing they were powerless to do anything about it. ‘Now, aren’t you going to ask me what I’ve got to tell you?’

An emphatic no was forming on Louis’s lips, but Henri thumped him. ‘Go on then, tell us.’

‘I’m going to be empress in the east,’ she said, the words coming out less sedately than she might have liked.

‘What? No you’re not,’ gasped Louis.

‘Yes I am.’

‘No you’re not.’

‘I am, I am. Father just told me. It’s all arranged.’

Henri gawped. ‘You’re going to marry the Greek emperor? The actual real one?’

‘No, ignoramus. He’s already married. And he’s older than Father. No, I’m going to marry his son. His only son, Alexios,’ she said, caressing every syllable of his name as lovingly as one of her pet doves. ‘Young, handsome, brave Alexios. It’ll be the most perfect wedding the world has ever seen. And then, when his father dies, which won’t be that long, Alexios will be emperor and I shall rule by his side.’

An image, as lovely as it was fuzzy, wafted through her mind. A pair of silver thrones surrounded by blue sea and white marble. Thousands upon thousands of people gazing up at her, all whispering the same thing. What a beautiful couple. She turned to her husband. Chestnut curls lapped about his golden crown. He took her hand, his blue eyes – no, she corrected herself, his brown eyes melting . . .

‘Pah,’ said Louis. ‘The Greeks. They’re tricksters and sh-sh—’ the word fought its way out ‘—charlatans.’

‘That’s right,’ Henri weighed in. ‘They know everything about the price of gold and nothing about the weight of iron. They couldn’t even fight the Saracens without our help. They’re—’

‘Shut up, Hee-haw,’ she said, using his mother’s pet name for him that made him mad as a wasp. ‘Just because you’re jealous—’

‘Jealous? I’m not jealous.’

‘Not jealous that I’m going to be grander and richer than your father – than my father – and every prince and comte and duc put together? Not jealous that I’m going to live in the greatest city there’ll ever be? I’ll live in a golden palace and eat off golden plates . . .’ she wasn’t sure about that, but as she spoke, it became true in her mind, ‘and I’ll have hundreds of servants just to sing me songs while I bathe and a pet nightingale and a pet leopard and . . .’

But before she could decide what else she needed in her menagerie, she clamped her mouth shut. It was too late.

‘Pride is a grievous sin, sister.’

Her brother, Philip, had crept up behind them. He had florid cheeks and a thrusting chest and was duller than he had any right to be. But whatever she thought of him, he was their father’s long-awaited son, the first child of his third marriage, the heir, the golden youth, and she knew better than to argue with him.

‘Forgive me, brother,’ she said, bobbing her head. ‘I am so honoured to be able to serve our father with this match that I forgot myself.’

The two boys struggled to compose their faces. Philip became more pompous and preachy by the day – that was something they could all agree on.

‘It is a very great honour, Agnes. A daughter’s first duty to her family is to marry early and to marry well.’

‘Yes, brother. We are so grateful that you are here to remind us that duty must always be at the forefront of our minds.’

She rolled her eyes at Louis and Henri from under her downcast lashes, making the laughter explode from them. Her brother’s gloved hand lashed out and cuffed them both over the head.

‘Don’t snigger like kitchen boys. What are you doing here anyway? You’re too old to be playing with girls. Where’s your tutor? Go on, away with you.’

They darted off over the stones, leaving brother and sister alone. Philip began to pace before her, slow and measured, rubbing his face – probably to remind her that he now had to shave every morning. A lecture was clearly on its way.

‘You should not encourage those boys to follow you about.’

‘I don’t encourage them, brother. Is it my fault they love to plague me?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I’m sure I don’t.’

But she did, of course she did. Boys always wanted to be near her, however cruel she was to them. She’d always known that. Men were the same – except she was never cruel to them.

Philip grew sterner, his voice more pulpit-like. ‘Your face, sister, is not a face I would wish a sister of mine to have.’

‘This is the face God gave me, brother. Surely you do not think his plan was at fault?’

‘I would not have you proud.’

‘So you said, brother.’

She had not lifted her eyes from the ground all the while he spoke, and it was clearly starting to annoy him. He took her by the shoulders.

‘I wish they had not asked for you. I wish my father had said no . . .’

She wondered, briefly, why they had asked for her. Had they heard how beautiful she was? She was beautiful. Everyone said so. One of her uncles said she was probably nearly as beautiful as Helen of Troy. Lucky woman. Combing her hair while the swords of thousands of men crashed outside the city walls. It would have been better, of course, if Alexios had sailed west and stolen her away. But, she thought, you can’t have everything.

‘Sister, sister, are you listening to me?’

‘Of course, brother.’

‘The Greeks’ city is a dangerous place. It is bloated with sin. Rank with luxury. Their ways are not our ways. Constantinople is not Paris. It is full of half-men and fallen women.’

‘Have we no such women here?’

‘No, none.’ He looked sharply at her. ‘None. Not one.’

He was shaking his head and so she shook hers as well. But all she could think was that she liked the sound of the City very, very much indeed. What was Blois, what was Champagne, what was Paris itself? Nothing. What was Constantinople? Everything.

Theo pulled up his breeches, relieved that it was over. Only then did he brave a proper look at the woman on the bed. She was smiling up at him – rather affectionately, he thought. That didn’t seem quite right. She ought to look ravaged or ravished, sated or satisfied – at least a little bit tired. But she was already getting up, smoothing down her dress and pulling up her leg coverings. There was nothing else she needed to do. Even her hair was still more or less tidy.

What was she saying? He understood Latin all right. He’d spent enough time with his father in the frontier lands to the west to mean he’d grown up speaking it as well as the Greek of the empire, but she spoke a funny quacking dialect and had rolled her eyes when he’d tried a few basic words of proper Latin on her.

She ran a finger down his cheek and then – embarrassingly – patted his behind. Run along. She was telling him it was time to go. She twitched her fingers. Where’s my money? He paid up and left.

At least the rate of exchange for his City coins was good here. He could never have bought a youngish woman with all her teeth for that little money within sight of the Hagia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom. That was one advantage of Paris, which otherwise was the filthiest, most godforsaken, scrappiest little outpost that had ever misguidedly considered itself civilised.

He hadn’t expected much, but as the imperial embassy journeyed through the outlying woods, he was surprised they could be so close to a city and yet find themselves in land so wild. Slowly, little houses climbed out of the mud, but it was hard to work out where pigpens ended and human living began. He thought of the neat fields that ringed the City and the lines of carefully pruned fruit trees that grew in the shadow of the great water road from the north.

The Frankish king’s halls crouched on a stub of island in the middle of the river that mouldered through the town. That made good enough sense from a defensive point of view, but the river was so narrow that imperial sappers would be able to bridge it in a day – if the emperor ordered it. But why would he ever do that? He lived in splendour amidst the light and glory of the City. Who in their right mind would waste time trying to conquer Paris?

Theo sniffed as he crossed the river, a sluggish ditch compared to the Bosporus, so vast and alive, and cursed the day his father had sent him on this expedition. Not that he had anyone but himself to blame. Himself and drink.

Mikhail, his father’s aide who was meant to keep an eye on him at camp, had got him tipsy – well, more like blind drunk, if he was honest – and promised to pay for his first legover. By the time they’d reeled to the fringes of the camp where the cheapest women congregated, probably half the garrison was on their tail, fighting over who would get to watch the great general’s only boy pop.

His memory of the night was hazy, but he definitely remembered a huge pair of bosoms, an extraordinary sweet, meaty smell and cheering and clapping coming from all sides – and from inside his head. He had buried his face in the woman in front of him and started to fight open his clothes – but then he’d choked and gasped as somebody grabbed his collar and hauled him off. His father had got wind of it.

Alexios Branas was much too experienced a general to say anything to any of the soldiers involved. Their fear, lingering for days afterwards, would have been plenty bad enough. But with his son, it was a different matter.

Badly done, Theo.

Yes, sir.

Can’t have the men laughing because they’ve seen my son trying – and, let’s be frank, failing – to stuff his prick into the camp’s favourite whore, can we?

Theo had opened his mouth.

Silence!

Yes, sir.

Partly my fault, though, isn’t it?

Sir?

His father said he’d been neglecting him, said it was time to make amends, which sounded ominous.

You’re my son, not a camp rat. Let’s have a look at you. When did I last see you? No, don’t answer. That was a rhetorical question. You don’t know what that is? That’s the problem. You, boy, need a little polish.

Theo had tried to tell him he was fine as he was, that he was just going to be a soldier, but his father had cut him short.

Just a soldier? There’s no such thing. Generals have to be politicians. Politicians have to be generals.

He’d started to say that politicians were shit sacks, but his father held up his hand for silence.

You’re arguing with me, and that won’t do. When a boy tries to argue with his father, it’s time for him to go elsewhere fast.

His father wrote some letters, sounded out some friends, and a few months later Theo found himself the youngest, lowliest member of the embassy that was bound west to collect the Frankish girl for Manuelos’s boy.

What’s wrong with a girl from the City, Father?

The west’s power is waxing, son. A little honour, like this marriage, will go a long way.

Theo quickened his pace through the streets – he was late for the big introduction, the unveiling, the presentation, whatever they were calling it – and decided his father would be a lot less worried about the west if he’d actually seen Paris.

Agnes clutched her father’s arm as the Greek delegation sauntered into the back of the hall. She knew he liked to feel strong when she was around, but for once she was glad to cling on to something. She was nervous – not the veneer of sweet timidity she had decided would be appropriate, but actually agonisingly nervous, like her stomach was a pond of jumping frogs.

She’d been fine getting ready, keeping her maids in order, considering her hair, selecting her clothes. She’d been fine, too, when her mother appeared in the looking glass behind her, tweaked a curl that did not need tweaking, told her not to be scared and dropped a white veil over her face. And she’d still been fine as she waited with her father in the little antechamber at the side of the hall. She’d even remembered to order her chair to be moved a little further from the fire. She wanted to make a good impression – better, she wanted them to be awestruck – and that wouldn’t happen if she had a bright red face.

A footman stuck his head round the door and bowed to the king.

‘They’re all here, majesty.’

Her father nodded, and together they walked into the hall. That was when she saw them. And that was when the frogs came alive in her stomach.

If this is how the men dress, what, pray, do their women look like?

Her relatives dressed in leathers that smelt of dogs and horses. Their spurs clanked and their breeches creaked and they never, ever seemed to wash unless they were covered head to toe in mud. But the robes of the men in front of her swooped to the floor like waterfalls. What wasn’t trimmed with fur was patterned with silk, what wasn’t stitched in gold was spun in silver. It wasn’t just the stuff their clothes were made from, it was the way they wore them, the way they stood, easy as angels on a cloud, and watched her approach.

Her father stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders, protective and possessive.

‘My lords,’ he began, speaking the high Latin of God and government, ‘I introduce my beloved daughter, Agnes.’

He reached forward and lifted her veil. She chanced one look, soft, fleeting, a hind darting into hiding, before her father replaced it. Through the gauze she saw a few of the men exchange the briefest of glances.

She’d hoped for rather more than that.

‘Murzuphlus, Murzuphlus – did you see her?’

Theo had arrived too late and was now chasing after the delegation, who were doubtless on their way to some draughty hall to eat another revolting meal of boiled tripe and overripe wine. The young man he was shouting at turned round and waited for him in the corridor.

‘Stop calling me that.’

Murzuphlus gripped him by the scruff of the neck, but Theo knew he wasn’t really angry and wriggled away.

‘It’s a great name – makes you stand out. Go on, tell me, did you see her?’

Murzuphlus raised one of the preposterously bushy eyebrows that had earned him his nickname and wagged a finger at Theo.

‘And where were you?’

‘Oh, you know, seeing the sights. Come on. You got a peek, right? So go on, tell me, warts and all. Does she have warts? Or was she all dew-on-roses?’

In truth, he didn’t really care, but he liked making Murzuphlus laugh. Also, he was probably still a little bit tipsy.

‘Theodore Branas, is that a speech fitting to an envoy of the emperor? You insult our charming hosts.’

‘Not one in a hundred of them can speak a civilised language. They’ll think I’m conversing with you on matters of divinity.’

He put his hands together, furrowed his brows earnestly and spoke not the street tongue real people used, but his very best old Greek.

‘Tell me, sirrah, the question is to me most vexatious. Doth she ripen?’

And he made two cupping gestures with his hands in front of his chest – unmistakable in any language. Unfortunately, his audience had expanded to include a party of Frankish boys come to bid them to supper, and Theo was neither quick nor subtle enough not to look extremely caught.

The boys squared up to him. Theo was glad he had Murzuphlus – a few years older than him and well built – by his side. None of the Franks looked older than eighteen, but he didn’t want to take them on by himself. Four to two would be fine. But then he turned and saw that it was actually four to one. Murzuphlus was backing away, grinning and mouthing something.

You’re on your own, mate.

Theo stood his ground – not that he had much choice. He was surrounded, his back against a stone wall. His father would have a thing or two to say to him about being caught outnumbered in a narrow, unlit corridor.

‘What were you saying?’ demanded one of the Franks.

‘Me no understand,’ Theo replied.

‘Yes he bloody does. I’ve seen him talk well enough to haggle with whores,’ said another.

‘A joker. Come on. What were you saying?’

There was no need to confess that he’d been insulting their princess.

‘My lords – my friends, I should say – my companion and I were discussing the differing and contrasting architectural merits of the spire—’ he pointed his hands ‘—and the dome,’ he said, repeating his lascivious gesture as learnedly as he could. ‘Do you perhaps have any views?’

They hesitated. They couldn’t possibly believe him, but they’d lost the momentum needed to pick a fight in their king’s halls. Theo might have been able to turn his back and walk away, but he couldn’t resist a final sally.

‘For myself, I favour the more generous proportions of the dome . . .’

They charged.

Agnes had worked out long ago that a plea to feed the doves – they are the holiest of birds, Mama – was the only way to make sure she had time to think things through. Her maids only ever accompanied her as far as the herb garden, scared of the scratching claws, the sudden wings and the dark, sticky smell.

She stood scattering small handfuls of grain about her feet while the sky darkened overhead. Soon she would have to go to bed. She would say her prayers, lie still while they tucked her blankets around her, watch them blow out her candle. Then she would curl up and listen to the sounds of the feasting below. A feast in her honour, and she couldn’t go.

The birds took flight with a great whoosh.

A boy – a Greek boy – had tumbled over the hedge and was staring about him. He caught sight of her and grinned, then threw himself into the seed bin and closed the lid over his head.

‘What are you doing? Get out right now.’

She wrenched the lid open and a cheerful face appeared.

‘Greetings, fair one. My enemies are close behind me. I beg you, keep me hidden. A kiss shall be your reward.’ He winked, and pulled the lid back down.

She was about to tell him exactly what his reward would be when a hullabaloo of running and shouts swept towards her and a gang of court boys careered into the enclosure, puffing, panting, overexcited, with Little Louis and Henri cantering in their wake.

‘Where is he?’

‘Which way’d he go?’

‘Which way did who go?’ she asked.

‘Some Greek who needs to be taught a lesson.’

‘A lesson in what?’

‘Manners.’

Her birds cawed down crossly from their perches in the dovecote. Agnes smiled and pointed.

‘In there.’

But before they could move, the lid burst open and the boy was out and running. He dodged behind her and grabbed her shoulders, using her as a shield against the others.

‘Get off me, all of you,’ she shrieked.

The court boys, better used to her temper, retreated. The Greek boy edged backwards, dragging her with him.

‘Definitely no kiss for you, traitor,’ he hissed in her ear.

He pinched her cheek, quite hard, scrabbled up the wall of the dovecote and disappeared. Agnes rubbed at her face in disgust. Boys. Greek, French, they were all the same. Idiots. She stalked back to the palace counting the days until she’d be on her way.

Alexios, she was sure, would be different.

The summer of 1179

IT WAS THE third day at sea, and Agnes was sick – very, very sick.

She wanted to go up on deck and at least be sick in the bright air, but then everyone would see her, and she would rather feel like this every day for the rest of her life than have a single one of the Greeks see how hideous she was. She hadn’t looked in a glass, but she could feel her hair clinging lank to her temples and taste the stench in her mouth.

The boat lurched once more and her insides followed. But there was nothing left to come – certainly not food, not even the watery green fluid that had appeared when everything else had gone. She retched hopelessly, again and again, until her throat burned.

Finally, in the middle of offering up passionate promises to God, her stomach so cramped and shrunken that she could only lie curled up in a ball, she tumbled into a deep sleep. The thwack of the boat falling off the back of the storm waves, the shouts of the crewmen, the thump of feet overhead might have found their way into her dreams, but they did not disturb her.

When she woke, either a few minutes or many hours later, the yawing no longer tore her body to pieces. Instead it cocooned her, caressed her, as if she too were a little boat bobbing on the waves.

She opened her eyes cautiously. A gouging pain tore at her belly and she tensed, waiting to be sick again. Then she realised that it was monstrous, overwhelming hunger.

Somebody had strung a slab of netting across her bunk to stop her being bucked on to the floor while she slept, but her hands were too cold and stupid to unpick the knots that kept it in place. She worried at them, cursing under her breath, then gave up and wormed through the minuscule gap at the head end. Groping about, she found a dress to pull over her – she sniffed – rather rank undergarments, and looked about for her cloak. It was draped over her maid, a bundle of misery lying at her feet. She whisked it off her and wrapped it round her own shoulders. The body did not move, but at the creak of the door it stirred and groaned up at her.

‘Wait, my lady, I must attend you . . .’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Blanche,’ said Agnes. ‘You can’t even stand up.’

She shut the door behind her. It was dim below decks, but her nose detected the smell of bread baking and fat rendering. Her tongue tingled. Bracing herself against jutting bits of wood, clinging to stray bits of rope, she stumbled down a passageway until she saw a shape, burlier than any blacksmith, huddled over a spitting pot in a little cubbyhole that must serve as the ship’s kitchen.

The man grunted when she asked for food, grunted again when he handed her a sloppy bowl of stew and dumplings, and grunted a third time when she asked how to get out of this miserable underworld and up into the light of day.

‘Do you not speak a civilised tongue?’ she snapped.

He shook his head, grinned and leered all at once and opened his mouth to reveal – nothing. Where his tongue should have been, there was only a darkening stump and a graveyard of teeth.

‘Oh,’ she said, backing away. ‘Well at least you could point. You’ve got hands, haven’t you?’

He grinned again and jabbed towards a ladder with his ladle. Now that she looked, she could see half a dozen stripes of light where the planks met overhead. It was hard negotiating each rung with the food in one hand and her skirts tussling with her feet, harder still to push the hatch up with her head – but it was worth it. It opened like a window on to heaven, a blessed blast of pure light and strong-scented sea air.

She placed her bowl on deck so she could climb out, but it immediately slid away towards the side of the boat, crashed into the side and tipped over. A wave broke over the bow and washed what was left into the gunnels and overboard.

She gave a howl of frustration, then the boat seemed to trip and lose its footing and she might have followed her breakfast into the Middle Sea had two hands not clamped hold of the hem of her cloak.

‘Let me go!’

The hands, obligingly, removed themselves, but immediately the boat butted a wave and she had to save herself by grabbing the nearest thing, which turned out to be a heavy sea coat. She looked up and saw the traces of two black eyes and an unmistakably broken nose in the middle of a familiar face. It was the boy from the dovecote.

‘They got you, then?’

‘They got me,’ he nodded.

A shout came from the raised deck at the back of the boat where four crewmen were braced against the steering oars. Another man, the captain, was stomping towards them, gesticulating and bawling in what sounded like Greek, but ragged and rotten.

‘Get that something something princess off my something something deck or I’ll something her something neck.’

The boy’s eyes widened and he looked at her more closely.

‘So you’re our precious cargo.’

He might have been about to say more, but the captain was now leaning over them, wanting to know why the boy wasn’t doing what he was something something well told.

‘Instantly, good sir,’ said the boy, unruffled. ‘The noble captain, gracious lady, although rightly delighted to see you up and about, begs leave to warn you—’

‘Don’t think I can’t understand what you all say, because I can,’ she said – admittedly in Latin. She wasn’t ready to risk her dignity speaking Greek, not yet.

She realised she was still clinging on to the boy’s coat and lunged for one of the banks of ropes holding up the mast. He followed her.

‘I hope you can’t understand. Not the way he talks. Come on – I’d better get you down below.’

‘I shan’t go.’

‘You must. He’s not joking. It really is dangerous up here,’ and as if to underline what he was saying, the wind whipped his hat from his head and sent it spinning into the froth and spume behind them. His hair was a deep, rich red, almost luminescent against the grey sea and sky.

‘I can see that for myself,’ she told him, ‘but I’m not setting foot in that vile pit until it’s been scrubbed clean.’

‘Then you’ll have to do it yourself. Everybody’s sick in their bunks or sailing the boat.’

‘Fine. I’ll stay up here.’

‘All right. But somewhere the captain can’t see you. Tell you what, we’ll go and sit in the lee of the chicken coop. It’s sort of dry there.’

‘We?’

‘Yes, we. You’ve nearly drowned twice already.’

‘I can’t sit alone with you.’

‘Course you can.’

‘But protocol . . .’

‘Even protocol gets overlooked sometimes. Specially in storms – not that this really counts as a storm, just a bit of a gale. Come on. I promise I won’t tell your husband.’

She gaped. ‘You? You know my husband?’

‘You’re surprised?’

‘But he is the emperor’s son, and you, you are . . .’

‘What am I?’

‘You’re just a boy.’

‘And you’re just a girl.’

And with that he set off towards the front end of the boat, not even holding on to anything, sort of swaying in time to the sea. She tried to copy him, but then she nearly drowned a third time and shuffled prudently after him. He ducked in behind the chickens and settled himself on a pile of sacks. He was right. It was dry and they were out of the wind. She sat down beside him.

‘I’m not just a girl. I have never been just a girl. I am the daughter of a king.’

‘The ruler of a truly noble kingdom.’

‘Exactly,’ she began, then realised he was being sarcastic. ‘It’s true what they say about you Greeks. You’re arrogant, you’re . . . What? What’s the matter?’

It was the first time she’d seen him look even remotely ruffled.

‘I’m not Greek. I’m a Rôman.’

‘What a ridiculous thing to say. You’re from Constantinople, not Rome.’

‘What is Rome? A pile of ruins overrun by barbarians. We’re the Rômans now. Greeks. You’ve got a lot to learn.’

‘You’re wrong,’ she told him. ‘Oh, thank you,’ she added as he passed her a piece of bread and cheese from his pocket. ‘You’re wrong,’ she repeated. ‘I’ve learnt a great deal about the City and,’ she added decorously, ‘my husband Alexios will be sure to teach me whatever else I need to know.’

The boy threw back his head and laughed.

‘What’s so funny about that?’

‘Nothing. Everything,’ he said as his mirth slowly subsided. ‘No, nothing. Don’t worry, I just like to laugh, that’s all. Come on, look. The weather’s clearing. It’ll be a brilliant sunset.’

But Agnes wasn’t interested in sunsets. She was interested in finding out everything she could about Alexios.

‘Do you really know him?’

‘I do. I’ve known him since we were boys.’

‘You’re still a boy.’

‘Do you want to know about him or not?’

‘Yes. Tell me everything.’

‘Everything is hard. What do you want to know?’

‘What does he look like?’

‘Like the son of a great emperor.’

‘I mean – is he handsome?’

‘I can’t judge whether a man is handsome or not.’

‘Stop it. Do the ladies think him handsome?’

‘The ladies are frequently to be heard extolling the rare beauty of his features.’

‘I knew it,’ Agnes said, profoundly satisfied. ‘Why are you smiling?’

‘Am I smiling? Oh, only because I see a beautiful rainbow. Look,’ he said, pointing over her shoulder.

She poked her head out from behind the coop and a wave caught her slap in the face, soaking her hair, her dress, filling her eyes and nose with stinging, freezing water.

‘You did that on purpose,’ she gasped.

‘Did I?’

‘You did, you know you did. I shan’t forget . . .’ She stopped. There was one problem. His name. ‘Who are you? Don’t lie.’

‘I would never lie. I am Theodore Branas, the son of Alexios Branas, the greatest general of the empire.’

‘I’ve never heard of him.’

He looked insulted. Good. She’d meant to insult him. But then he laughed. It was true. He did laugh easily.

‘That’s because you’re a girl. Name one general you’ve ever heard of.’

‘Julius Caesar.’

‘He doesn’t count. He’s dead. Name another one. One that’s alive. I bet you can’t.’

He was right. She couldn’t.

‘I can name dozens,’ she said. ‘Hundreds. But . . . but I find I tire of your company. Farewell.’

She stood up and stumbled back below decks. She’d kick Blanche awake and make her clear up. It was only when she was halfway down the ladder that she realised that for the first time, a boy didn’t seem to have noticed what she looked like.

Many miles and a few weeks later

BLANCHE WANTED TO put her in a white, floating, frilly robe – as befits your youth, my lady – but Agnes wasn’t having any of it.

‘I’m thirteen, not three. I’m here to be married, aren’t I?’

‘But . . .’

‘Don’t but me. Come on. There must be something else.’

She didn’t want Alexios to think his bride was all girlish innocence. She knew that men who married young girls took mistresses, visited courtesans, and although she wasn’t sure exactly what that entailed, she knew it meant competition, and competition was not something she would tolerate.

Her maid tried to stand her ground until Agnes, wearing only her underthings, swore she’d force her way out of their cabin and turn the hold upside down until she found something bearable.

‘No, my lady, please, my lady. Let’s look in here.’ And she dragged a little box out from under the bunks.

‘What’s all this stuff?’ Agnes asked as she rifled through a jumble of oddments, ornaments – and clothes, good grown-up clothes.

‘She wanted me to give you this when we arrived,’ Blanche said. ‘So she’ll always have a little of me with her. That’s what she said. Your poor mother.’

But Agnes wasn’t listening. She was gazing at something red and gold, stiff with jewels. ‘Well done, Blanche. This is perfect.’

‘My lady, truly, you’d much better—’

But she pulled it over her head herself. ‘There. That’s more like it.’

When she made her way up on deck, leaving Blanche behind to finish packing, she immediately detected a new interest on the sailors’ faces and her mood improved further. They had grown too used to seeing her practically in rags.

One of the young Greek – no, one of the young Rôman men clustered about the other side of the deck saw she was unchaperoned and edged towards her, talking most civilly down a long, aristocratic nose, its impact only slightly ruined by his funny eyebrows.

‘Your last morning at sea, ma’am.’ She liked being treated as an adult, but maybe ma’am was going a bit far. ‘We have traversed the Hellespont and are now navigating the Propontis. With the blessing of God we shall disembark at the Bukoleon before the sun reaches its zenith. The City awaits! I promise you a sight you never shall forget.’

You never forget your first sight of the City.

She’d heard that old saw repeated hundreds upon thousands of times by travellers returning to her father’s court, but she wasn’t going to be flabbergasted and dumbstruck like everyone else. She was going to be an empress, and empresses were not impressed by anything. She gave the young man an absent nod and examined the stitching on the cuff of her dress, stifling a yawn.

‘Is Murzuphlus boring you? Or were you too nervous to sleep last night? Don’t blame you. Big day for you.’

She looked up. Theodore, no longer kitted out in grubby deck gear, but smart and starched in a long embroidered tunic, was high in the rigging with the ships’ boys, lounging on one of the spars.

‘No, I wasn’t . . .’ She stopped. She couldn’t believe she’d been about to argue with him in public.

‘It’s all right. You can admit it. You—’

‘Shut up, Theo,’ said the man at her side, adding a few more phrases in Greek whose meaning she could only guess. ‘Accept my apologies, Princess Agnes,’ he said, switching back to his rather stilted Latin. ‘Young Theodore Branas is a most improper fellow and it is wholly meet that you ignore him.’

This Murzuphlus definitely deserved one of her warmer smiles.

‘Is that the City there?’ She pointed.

He smiled in a way that made her like him a lot less.

‘No, ma’am, those are but a string of minor monasteries that lie beyond the walls. Look ahead, a little to port of the ship’s bow. You can discern in the distance the Church of Holy Wisdom – the heart of the City.’

Agnes screwed up her eyes against the early-morning sun. Slowly, what she had taken for a small hill turned into the dome of a mighty cathedral. Her mind rebelled. The great churches of Paris, the pride of the kingdom, would scurry around its feet like mice. Men did not build such things. God created them at the beginning of the world and left them for men to marvel at.

Blanche appeared at her elbow and shooed Murzuphlus away. ‘It is something, isn’t it, my lady?’

Agnes forgot to be unimpressed. ‘It is,’ she whispered back. ‘It really is.’

The boat bumped against the dockside.

At first all Agnes could see was blinding marble, glinting hot and hard, very still, very strong after the shifting sea. Broad white steps marched towards her, but she couldn’t look at them. They hurt her eyes. No trace of a breeze remained and she was, she realised, horribly warm.

Above her, hidden deep within the shade of giant poled panoplies, her new family was waiting. It was hard to make them out. They were like the painted figurines she’d kept in a toy house when she was a girl, or like the archbishops attending to God’s work at the far end of the church, small and perfect.

Half a dozen men formed ranks around her and ushered her down the gangplank. The ground lurched under her feet and she looked up in involuntary surprise.

‘It is the land after weeks at sea,’ one of the men told her, adding a condescending smile. He swept a hand forwards. ‘Go on now, they’re waiting. Don’t be frightened.’

I’m not frightened, idiot.

A barrage of music – pipes, drums, cymbals, she couldn’t tell which – struck up, drowning out the screams of the gulls spinning overhead. She started up the steps, walking slowly enough to look regal, but not so slowly that the sun would melt her before she reached the top. Three more, two more, one more – and then a plump man with a tremendous beard strode out in front of her. He had tiny feet and a tiny mouth and a barrel chest, which he expanded to produce a gargantuan voice.

At first she was delighted. A poem, composed in her honour, dedicated to her youth, her beauty, her nobility. That at any rate was the gist of it, but there was a great deal more, all definitely highly complimentary, but buried in mounds of convoluted Greek.

As it went on and on, her concentration began to slip, but the men and women in front of her were listening, calm and appreciative, apparently engrossed. Well, they could listen all they liked, but there was no reason why she shouldn’t look at them.

It was obvious which one Emperor Manuelos was. He had the biggest beard, oiled and curled, ornate as a carving. He looked like he could hurl down plagues and split oceans. But she wasn’t marrying him; she was marrying his son. Which one was he? She scanned the faces before her.

There, that had to be him. A young man with golden skin, thick bronze hair and the noblest bearing. He hardly had any beard – only the sweetest soft down on his cheeks – and he was every bit as beautiful as she’d liked to imagine him. Maybe even better.

The poet had, at last, stopped talking, although the climactic stanza still reverberated in her ears. Both his arms were raised high as if he were about to dive into a pond, and he held them there for such a long time that it was hard to believe nobody laughed. Finally, when she began to wonder whether his arms were stuck, he let them fall to his sides and bowed low – lower than low. He actually pressed his forehead to the ground while everyone applauded.

And then the emperor stepped forward.

He’s just a king, the same as Father. There’s no need to be frightened, idiot. But her father was such an everyday man, not like Manuelos, not like this walking god.

‘Daughter of the west, I bid you fair welcome to the City of the Rômans. Your father was a much-beloved guest. We shall endeavour to honour the trust he shows us when he commends the brightest star of his family to our care. I say again, you are welcome.’

He had spoken in old Greek, the language of the dark years before the Son of God came to earth, as similar to the daily speech of the City as the slabs of marble under her feet were to rocks in the wilderness.

Then Manuelos smiled and the god vanished, leaving a kindly old man standing before her.

‘And now, the moment we have all so longed for. Allow me to present my son.’

Her eyes flicked to the handsome young man, but he looked away and did not move. She looked back at Manuelos, saw him beckoning to a very different boy, and the sweet trill of her nerves gave way to a throb of disappointment.

He’s not much taller than me.

That was her first impression, and it went downhill from there. His pale brown hair was thin and soft as weed and his pale brown eyes swam as if he had but to blink for tears to fall. As a little boy, he might have been pretty enough, but now, with manhood waiting, he looked ridiculous.

Before he came to greet her, she saw him reach down and clasp the fingers of a woman beside him. At first Agnes feared a rival, then she saw the woman was more than twice his age, although still far from old, and alarmingly beautiful. His mother? If her mother had been there, she would have jumped into the sea rather than look at her, let alone hold her hand. And yet here was this boy taking comfort like a baby sucking a bit of blanket.

‘I h-hope we may be very happy together,’ he began. She was surprised he did not lisp. ‘I have been so excited about your coming. Here, I chose this for you from our best merchants. I chose it myself.’ He reached inside his robes and pulled out what had to be a string of sapphires. ‘They told me your eyes were b-blue. I thought they might suit you – and now I see that they do.’

‘Oh, Alexios, well done.’ Another woman came forward, laughing and clapping, a cascade of pearls jangling on her headdress. ‘He’s been practising that little speech for days,’ she continued in a stagey sort of whisper, ‘muttering it in the corridors. He asked me whether he might perhaps say it in Latin, but he couldn’t seem to make the words stick in his head.’

It was cruel – but all too easy to imagine. She glanced at Manuelos; wouldn’t he be angry? But he was chuckling.

‘Do not tease your brother, Maria. As I recall, you were every bit as nervous when your Renier landed.’

Maria snorted, an emphatic and – to Agnes’s mind – extraordinarily unladylike sound.

‘I was not, Papa.’ And now that Agnes looked closer, she saw that they could only be father and daughter. They shared a firm brow, a square jaw – which looked rather better on Manuelos than it did on her – and an unapologetic gaze. In fact, Maria looked more like the emperor’s son than Alexios did. ‘But I’d wager Renier was terrified, weren’t you, my darling?’

And she reached out a hand and pulled the handsome young man over to her.

‘Come, let me introduce us. I am Maria, your sister. And here’s my beau, the dashing Renier – all the way from Montferrat.’

He blushed and nodded, colour storming up his cheeks. He was much younger than Maria – who had to be at least thirty – affable and nonplussed.

‘We are to be wed a month before you. A warm-up act—’

‘Peace, Maria,’ a chill voice interrupted. ‘You will bewilder the child if you insist on talking like that.’ It was Alexios’s mother who now stepped forward. ‘Time and again you forget yourself.’

Maria looked mutinous, but Manuelos patted her hand and stilled her.

‘That is my daughter’s way, is it not? Agnes, my dear, let me introduce you to my wife, Marguerite-Constance.’

Agnes knew that mothers-in-law were always a difficult prospect, so she mustered her most winning smile, a study in sweet docility. She received nothing in return.

‘She does speak our language, does she not?’ Marguerite-Constance asked her husband. ‘She does understand what’s said to her? She has said not one word.’

‘Of course she understands.’ Manuelos paused. ‘Don’t you, Agnes?’

Agnes nodded. ‘I understand, basileus,’ she said, pleased to remember the correct title for him. ‘And speak also. A little.’

Manuelos smiled, encouraging, but Marguerite-Constance winced and turned her head aside to murmur something to him. Agnes only caught his reply.

‘Certainly she will improve. Your Greek was not perfect when you came to us, was it, my love?’ And turning to Agnes, he added, ‘My wife is your countrywoman, did you know that? She grew up in the holy lands captured by the soldiers of the Cross, but her kinsmen hail from the west. You will be able to talk to each other in your own tongue.’

His wife’s look was withering. ‘She left all that behind when you betrothed her to our son.’

But then her expression changed – in another woman you might have said softened. Watched by Manuelos and Alexios, Marguerite-Constance came over to Agnes and touched her cheek with one finger.

Close up, Agnes realised the flaw in this woman’s astonishing face. Her milk-and-honey skin, her sugar-spun features were ruined by her eyes, the eyes of a bird, metallic, lightless, uninviting.

Those eyes were on her now, domineering, demanding submission, but Agnes would not look down. Marguerite-Constance raised one eyebrow in mock surprise, then placed her hand softly on the back of Agnes’s neck, a caress, a vice, and spoke to her in the language they shared.

‘My son, little one, remember that. My son.’

She twisted one of Agnes’s curls absent-mindedly in her fingers and switched back to Greek.

‘Welcome to Constantinople.’

‘Bitch,’ Agnes told the empty room with satisfaction. She didn’t often swear, but when she did, she liked the way it tasted on her tongue. ‘Stuck-up, uptight, tight-arsed, arse-faced . . . bitch.’

It had been a long day and a longer evening, and throughout it Marguerite-Constance – a ludicrous name if ever she’d heard one – had done everything in her power to undermine her. But she’d done it so discreetly that only another woman, who knew the rules of women’s games, would have realised what was going on.

Manuelos and Alexios probably thought the little Frankish girl was getting on famously with her new mother, but Agnes knew that every conversation, every tiny glance and grimace, had been the opening skirmishes in what promised to be a grim war of attrition.

And her mother-in-law wasn’t the only one who’d been at it. The other women might like to think she was too green, too awed, too Latin to notice, but Agnes had caught every veiled shudder, every delicately disguised wince. And the worst thing was that she had no idea what she was doing that was so wrong. Actually, no, the truly worst thing was that when she’d hosted her country cousins in Paris, with their fussy dresses and sun-brown faces, she’d shuddered and winced in exactly the same way.

At dinner in the Blachernai Palace, the men and women seated apart, she’d found herself trapped between Marguerite-Constance and a frumpier woman called something unpronounceable – Yoofrozyoo-something – and she knew they were both laughing at her.

The woman – who Agnes guessed had only been placed so close to the empress because she was as plain as Marguerite-Constance was perfect – offered her the vessel of oil that was by her place. Agnes had placed her hands together and whispered a little prayer – she thought it some sort of offering to God, a way of thanking Him for the food. But then she’d seen that everyone else was eating theirs. Eating olive oil as if it were as worthless as the bread itself.