Up The Line

38.

We all spent the night in an inn in 1098. Feeling tense and stale after so much delicate work, I decided to jump down to 1105, while my people slept, and drop in on Metaxas. I didn’t even know if he’d be at his villa, but it was worth the try. I needed desperately to unwind.

I calibrated the timing with care.

Metaxas’ last layoff had begun in early November, 2059, and he had jumped to mid-August, 1105. I figured he had spent ten or twelve days there. That schedule would have returned him to 2059 toward the end of November; and then, assuming he had taken out a group on a two-week tour, he’d have been able to get back to his villa by September 15 or so, 1105.

I played it safe and shunted down to September 20.

Now I had to find a way to get to his villa.

It is one of the oddities of the era of the Benchley Effect that I would find it easier to jump across seven years of time than to get myself a few dozen kilometers into the Byzantine countryside. But I did have that problem. I had no access to a chariot, and there aren’t any cabs for hire in the twelfth century.

Walk? Ridiculous idea!

I contemplated heading for the nearest inn and dangling bezants in front of freelance charioteers until I found one willing to make the trip to Metaxas’ place. As I considered this I heard a familiar voice yelling, “Herr Courier Elliott! Herr Courier Elliott!”

I turned. Scholar Magistrate Speer.

“Guten Tag, Herr Courier Elliott!” said Scholar Magistrate Speer.

“Guten—”I scowled, cut myself short, greeted him in a more Byzantine way. He smiled indulgently at my observance of the rules.

“I have a very successful visit been having,” he said. “Since last I enjoyed with you company, have I found the Thamyras of Sophocles and also the Melanippe of Euripides, and further a partial text of what I believe is the Archelaus of Euripides. And then there is besides the text of a play that is claiming to be of Aeschylus the Helios, of which there is in the records no reference for. So perhaps is a forgery or otherwise is maybe a new discovery, I will see which only upon reading. Eh? A good visit, eh, Herr Courier!”

“Splendid,” I said.

“And now I am returning to the villa of our friend Metaxas, just as soon as I complete a small purchase in this shop of spices. Would you accompany me?”

“You have wheels?” I asked.

“Was meinen Sie mit‘wheels’?”

“Transportation. A chariot.”

“Naturlich!Over there. It waits for me, a chariot mit driver, from Metaxas.”

“Swell,” I said. “Take care of your business in the spice shop and then we can ride out to Metaxas’ place together, okay?”

The shop was dark and fragrant. In barrels, jugs, flasks, and baskets it displayed its wares: olives, nuts, dates, figs, raisins, pistachios, cheeses, and spices both ground and whole of many different sorts. Speer, apparently running some errand for Metaxas’ chef, selected a few items and pulled forth a purse of bezants to pay for them. While this was going on, an ornate chariot pulled up outside the shop and three figures dismounted and entered. One was a slavegirl — to carry the merchandise to the chariot, evidently. The second was a woman of mature years and simple dress — a duenna, I supposed, just the right kind of dragon to escort a Byzantine wife on a shopping expedition. The third person was the wife herself, obviously a woman of the very highest class making a tour of the town.

She was fantastically beautiful.

I knew at once that she was no more than seventeen. She had a supple, liquid Mediterranean beauty; her eyes were dark and large and glossy, with long lashes, and her skin was light olive in hue, and her lips were full and her nose aquiline, and her bearing was elegant and aristocratic. Her robes of white silk revealed the outlines of high, sumptuous breasts, curving flanks, voluptuous buttocks. She was all the women I had ever desired, united into one ideal form.

I stared at her without shame.

She stared back. Without shame.

Our eyes met and held, and a current of pure force passed between us, and I quivered as the full surge hit me. She smiled only on the left side of her mouth, quirking the lips in, revealing two glistening teeth. It was a smile of invitation, a smile of lust.

She nodded almost imperceptibly to me.

Then she turned away, and pointed to the bins, ordering this and this and this, and I continued to stare, until the duenna, noticing it, shot me a furious look of warning.

“Come,” Speer said impatiently. “The chariot is waiting—”

“Let it wait a little longer.”

I made him stay in the store with me until the three women had completed their transaction. I watched them leave, my eyes riveted to the subtle sway of my beloved’s silk-sheathed tail. Then I whirled and pounced on the proprietor of the shop, seizing his wrist and barking, “That woman! What’s her name?”

“Milord, I — that is—”

I flipped a gold piece to the counter. “Her name!”

“That is Pulcheria Ducas,” he gasped. “The wife of the well-known Leo Ducas, who—”

I groaned and rushed out of the store.

Her chariot clattered off toward the Golden Horn.

Speer emerged. “Are you in good health, Herr Courier Elliott?”

“I’m sick as a pig,” I muttered. “Pulcheria Ducas — that was Pulcheria Ducas—”

“And so?”

“I love her, Speer, can you understand that?”

Looking blankfaced, he said, “The chariot is ready.”

“Never mind. I’m not going with you. Give Metaxas my best regards.”

In anguish I ran down the street, aimlessly, my mind and my crotch inflamed with the vision of Pulcheria. I trembled. I streamed with sweat. I sobbed. Finally I came up against the wall of some church, and pressed my cheek to the cold stone, and touched my timer and shunted back to the tourists I had left sleeping in 1098.