The Unhappy Medium 3: Wretched Things: A Supernatural Comedy, page 3
Now, with the winds down to a mere force two, the vessel skirted the main island, keeping out of visual range of the 230 people who called the world’s remotest settlement their home. Unseen, she was bound for the most inaccessible of the three islands of the Tristan de Cunha group, the aptly named Inaccessible Island. A blob of treeless rock, bounded by cliffs so steep that only a seabird would take them on, the name was not just appropriate, it was a warning. Dropping anchor on the lee side, the freighter waited for the sun to set, the albatrosses wheeling above her the only sign of life in the massive expanse of the slate grey South Atlantic.
But, when darkness became total, a light appeared on the desolate outcrop, flashing towards the visitor.
Raising her anchor, the freighter began to edge in. A well-disguised jetty, appearing from between the ragged cliffs, pushed through the crashing waves to meet her, lights appearing along its length as it deployed, revealing a solitary truck rolling into position. After the vessel had moved alongside and made herself secure, cranes began to swing out, crates heaving out from the ship and onto the vehicle, waiting in the stark white spotlights of the jetty. Loaded up, the truck reversed back into the rugged cliffs, vanishing for ten minutes or so before reappearing empty, ready for more.
After an hour of unloading her crates, a procession of silhouetted figures began to trudge down the gangway from the freighter and onto the jetty. In single file, they marched, a long line of reluctance trudging off into the interior of this remotest of islands.
Until after an hour, the sad procession ended.
Empty, the freighter raised her anchor and cast off, firing up her old engines as she turned her bow towards Greece, a mere five thousand miles away across an angry ocean. As the jetty retracted back into the cliffs, the powerful lights abruptly blinked off, leaving the rapidly departing freighter the only source of illumination on a very lonely sea.
Inaccessible Island vanished back into the darkness
.
Chapter 3
Terrible
Given that the Empire of Byzantium was so gloriously dysfunctional, it says something about Emperor Andronicus that he stood out enough from its portfolio of monsters to earn the moniker ‘Terrible’.
But Andronicus the Terrible was terrible.
Andronicus was awful.
And Emperor Andronicus wasn’t just terrible; he was also brutal, selfish and unfaithful; a monster as savage as he was incompetent, ready at a moment’s notice to betray anyone that stood in his way. Enemy, friend, family, lover; Andronicus would shaft anyone, anywhere, any time. The man was an utter low-life, a self-serving beast who’d honed his narcissism to such a degree that, even by the subterranean standards of the time, he was a real low point.
Home for Emperor Andronicus I Comnenus (to give him his full title) was twelfth-century Constantinople, the capital of the rather fancy Byzantine Empire. This glittering metropolis was a world apart from its clumsy Western equivalents, for Constantinople was the seat of the Holy Roman Empire, the transplanted glory of all that had once been Rome, something the puffed-up Byzantines never tired of pointing out to their thick-skulled neighbours. They may have shared the same God, but there was a world of difference between the chain-mailed thugs of Normandy and the strutting peacocks of Constantinople. Crude chalk and fine cheese, they glared at each other from either end of Europe like cats on a wall.
But the Byzantines were safe, immune to attack, living their theatrical lives behind colossal walls, the uncivilised West kept at arm’s length by treaty and cunning.
Until the Crusades.
In 1095, aggravated by minor Islamic incursions, Emperor Alexios I Comnenus, grandfather of Andronicus, had penned a colourful plea to Pope Urban II, requesting a few hundred troops to help beef up his jittery border garrisons.
It was, it transpired, a little too colourful.
What turned up were 30,000 of the most violent men in Western Europe, maniacs crazed with xenophobia, religious intolerance and a lust for misadventure. Slavering up to the city gates came broken-nosed warlords from Sicily, princely bruisers from England, and murderous zealots from Saxony, all utterly unprovisioned and wound up like cathedral clocks. Demanding board and lodging, they glared up at the battlements, nothing between them and the riches of Constantinople but forty feet of masonry.
With no intention of entertaining the monster he had so flippantly summoned, the Emperor showered the rabble with provisions, then double-locked the doors. As soon as the mob were sated, he edged the crusaders carefully around the walls to the docks. Ferried briskly across the Bosphorus, the Emperor pointed them at the infidel and then got back to business.
The first Crusade fell upon the Muslim lands, Jerusalem falling to the Christians on 15th July 1099. Proclaiming Christ’s message of love, the Crusaders slaughtered all they found; men, women and children, whether they were heathen or not. The ancient streets ran with their blood.
Islam went into shock. Divided and fearful, they’d been a sitting duck for the Christian invader. Things had to change.
Enter Sultan Salah ad-Din.
Saladin (the Great), as he was known in the West, immediately set about uniting his divided faith, bringing all Islam under one flag, until it became a single united force capable of hitting back.
By 1186, these energised Muslims were ready to give the complacent Crusaders a bloody good hiding.
It was Raynald de Châtillon, a controversial figure by anyone’s standards, who brought the issue to a head, raiding Saladin’s caravans to provoke a decisive, final punch-up. In July 1187, with the Arabs suitably irritated, de Châtillon and his Knights sallied forth from Jerusalem, determined to wipe them out.
4th July 1187. The Battle of Hattin.
Saladin’s army ambushed the arrogant Crusaders beneath a blistering sun, hit-and-run attacks slashing at their clumsy flanks. Ravaged by thirst and exhaustion, the Knights of Christ buckled beneath the Muslim onslaught … and were annihilated.
Not even the relic of the True Cross, held aloft at the head of the Christian army, could save the cocky Crusaders from extermination. Chroniclers describe the Muslims descending ‘like a thousand lions’, slicing and dicing until nothing remained but the relic itself, a sad talisman that had singularly failed to deliver.
It was a defeat of seismic proportions.
Raynald de Châtillon was executed by Saladin himself, his grubby hubris having destroyed all he had sworn to protect.
To the victor, the spoils. Saladin carried the relic of the True Cross away from the bloody field of Hattin, in a specially made, brass-bound, ivory casket decorated with geometric patterns inlaid with cobalt blue lapis lazuli. This most sacred of artefacts had been reduced to a depressing little bargaining chip.
Worse was to come.
On 20th September 1187, the armies of Islam began their siege of Jerusalem. For twelve days, they attacked the walls until, on 2nd October the Crusaders threw in the towel. Coughing up 30,000 dinars in return for safe passage, the Christians packed their suitcases … and left.
When news of this debacle reached the zealots back home, there was uproar. A blame storm swept Christendom from one horrified end to the other, as the cocksure Christians struggled to take in the magnitude of the defeat.
Inevitably, fingers pointed east … to Constantinople.
*****
Enter Andronicus.
Rewind some 60 years. Born around 1120, he may have been of noble blood, but Andronicus was not ordained to take the throne. That honour fell to his cousin, Manuel.
As children, Andronicus and the future Emperor of Byzantium had played together in the sprawling palaces. The weaker Manuel looked up to the more confident Andronicus, no matter how badly he behaved … which, let’s be clear, was pretty bad. His bad boy cousin was dashing, daring … irresistible, everything Manuel knew he wasn’t, and it created in the future Emperor a mass of insecurities, insecurities that Andronicus did not hesitate in reinforcing.
With the run of the palaces, the two boys acted out their adventures, most of them inspired by the Trojan War, still a hit some 1700 years after its publication. The dominant Andronicus would naturally land the better roles, his bullying Achilles overwhelming Manuel’s Hector with a brutally handled wooden sword, leaving the future Emperor a mass of ugly bruises.
Andronicus played Manuel like a fiddle. But through the ceaseless mind games and ritual bullying, Manuel remained besotted, hypnotised by a cruel charisma he would have been far better rejecting.
Andronicus, it is recorded, grew to be tall, some six feet without heels, noted as unusually healthy, quick of wit and knowledgeable in the ways of state, impressive qualities (assuming he’d not written these descriptions later himself). Impressive or not, to Andronicus’ disgust, it was still little Manuel who would be Emperor, not his darkly charismatic but increasingly bitter cousin. This ‘injustice’ dug into Andronicus’ rampant entitlement like a knitting needle. Seething, he vented his bile through twisted practical jokes and relentless exploitation, aiming to pick his rival to pieces, one humiliation at a time.
But little Manuel, trapped within his bromantic adoration, took it all … then came back for more, each fresh abuse cementing his devotion.
Then, in 1143, the incumbent, Emperor John II … died. Manuel, now twenty-five, took the throne.
Then, after a while, as was the tradition, he took a wife.
Andronicus, who had ground his teeth flat throughout the coronation, also married, choosing a long-suffering woman who failed to leave history her name. Anonymous to this day, she remained utterly devoted to Andronicus throughout her life, while Andronicus, because he was a tosser, returned her dogged loyalty with a stream of undisguised infidelities.
Mind you, the new Emperor was little better.
Emboldened by his position, Manuel embarked upon an affair with Theodora, his niece, and though this was thoroughly taboo under Byzantine law, because he was Emperor, the only thing raised were eyebrows.
Andronicus, not to be outdone, embarked upon an affair of his own with a girl by the name of Eudocia. Pretty, Eudocia was a beautiful rose to be plucked from the garden of love.
She was also Theodora’s sister.
Andronicus, however, was not the Emperor and a scandal duly erupted, Eudocia’s family denouncing Andronicus in the strongest possible terms. Andronicus just laughed that away. After all, wasn’t he simply following the dubious example set by his cousin? Eyes switched back to Manuel. Muck, thrown at Andronicus, began landing on the Emperor.
Embarrassed in front of his subjects, under pressure from his advisors, Manuel banished the impudent Andronicus from the court, sending him 500 miles away to fight the Armenians.
History tells us Andronicus performed well in actual combat, but the chronicles also relate that Andronicus’ management of everything from food to latrines was lamentable and that the inept campaign first stalled, then ignominiously failed. Starving and soiled, the Byzantine army retreated before the jubilant Armenians.
Andronicus, blaming everyone but himself, was summoned home.
Rather than have his unemployed cousin fornicating his way around the court, Manuel sent Andronicus away yet again, to defend the border with the ever-hostile Hungarians.
However, Andronicus didn’t find the Hungarians hostile in the least, far from it. Within days, he’d entered into a conspiracy with their king, a clumsy plot uncovered in less time than it took to hatch.
Once again, Andronicus was summoned home.
Despite it being an open secret that Andronicus was itching to assassinate him, Manuel could still only bring himself to punish his cousin through the removal of governorships and the stripping of assets. This leniency simply fuelled Andronicus’ supersized entitlement, hardening his resolve to overthrow an apologist he saw as inexcusably weak.
Short of ideas, Manuel sent Andronicus away to the Byzantine summer residence at Pelagonia, hopefully too far from court to be dangerous, his temptations limited by distance.
Fat chance.
Back in fondling range of Eudocia, Andronicus wasted no time in making with the sweet loving, a fresh affront conducted in plain sight, designed to demonstrate his cousin’s impotence.
It was all too much for her family, who, in the dead of night, charged the tent where Eudocia and Andronicus lay. Tipped off, Andronicus slashed his way out of the back of the tent and vanished into the night, minus his tights.
Two botched attempts to assassinate him later, Manuel finally … finally … snapped. Andronicus, now 35, was arrested.
*****
For nine years long years, the treasonous sex pest languished in prison. Many would have given in to resignation, but not Andronicus.
Working day and night, the jailbird picked away at the cover to his own cesspit until finally, it yielded. Andronicus crawled deep into the fetid pipe and lay still, waiting. A few days later, with the baffled guards leaving the seemingly empty cell door ajar, Andronicus took his chance and slipped away.
*****
An A-list celebrity with a pathetic need for attention, he was quickly re-apprehended, then hauled back to Constantinople.
Six more years beneath the Royal palace.
Manuel must have felt Andronicus had finally learnt his lesson, for he relented somewhat, granting his cousin a penthouse cell and the services of a young page.
Andronicus, naturally, abused this concession almost as soon as it was granted.
Bullying the page into making a wax impression of the key, Andronicus was on the run, bluffing his way aboard a ship bound for the court of Prince Jaroslav. No fan of the Holy Roman Empire, a Russian was delighted to have an insider on the payroll and rewarded him royally. Andronicus dutifully coughed up every titbit of military intelligence he could remember, then made up many more he couldn’t.
With Andronicus once again enabling his enemies, the Emperor was under increasing pressure to act, but even this new outrage failed to overcome his boyhood loyalty.
Incredibly, Manuel offered Andronicus a pardon, and Andronicus returned home.
Andronicus was soon back to his old tricks, undermining a marriage between Manuel’s daughter and a Hungarian prince. Stirring up xenophobia, he denounced the union, something that worked as well then it does now.
Humiliated before his manipulated people, the Emperor lost his rag. Andronicus was sent away for a rematch with the poor old Armenians.
Within weeks, the humiliated Andronicus departed from his routed army and when went off to do what he liked best: womanising.
After a brief sojourn in Jerusalem, he finally settled on the fair Theodora, yet another of the Emperor’s nieces.
At last, growing a spine, the outraged Emperor Manuel ordered Andronicus arrested and blinded, a Byzantine speciality.
Writing on the wall, Andronicus decided to do what he did best and bolted, Theodora by his side. As the agents of Constantinople kicked in the bedroom door, the lovers raced into the night.
*****
For ten years, Andronicus and Theodora, haunted the fringes of the Byzantine world. Enemies of the state, unsafe in any Christian lands, they drifted from kingdom to kingdom, begging for support. At first, it had seemed like Andronicus’ luck would hold, his notoriety still eliciting support from anyone with cause to damage Byzantium, of which there were many.
But, in time, the world began to revolve around other actors and Andronicus was forced to travel further for attention. Now, he was loitering along the fringes of Islam. Out of ideas, he eventually rode to Baghdad, where he was granted an audience with the great Saladin himself.
It was pretty desperate stuff, a pitiful attempt to play his enemies in Byzantium off against one of their primary enemies abroad. Perched upon silken cushions, Andronicus set about betraying his homeland.
Saladin, to his credit, wasn't buying. Why would he? Here was a man ready to betray his own people, his own Empire, hardly the kind of man you’d want to get into business with. Even swearing his sincerity upon the fragment of the True Cross that Saladin had captured at the battle of Hattin, didn’t cut it. Dismissed as a duplicitous loser, Andronicus was sent on his way.
Out of ideas, Andronicus and Theodora trudged on. From court to court, on increasingly mangy horses, their fortunes dragged along the bottom of his collapsing ambitions. In Chaldea, more out of pity than respect, they were reluctantly granted sanctuary close to the border with his homeland.
Safe for the moment, Andronicus brooded.
Desperate for inspiration, he buried his head in the Iliad, but the tales of glory and triumph failed to elevate the exile; the ghosts of Achilles and Agamemnon almost mocking his failure from the pages before him. Andronicus was a broken man, a million painful miles from fulfilling his puffed-up ambitions.
When it became too much, he resolved to travel far to the west, leaving Theodora behind to visit Troy itself. There, on the windy plains of Hisarlik, where the Trojan horse had borne the end of another empire, the would-be despot sat alone beneath a brooding sky. Buckling under the weight of his failure, Andronicus tried to picture himself alongside mighty Achilles, hoping that some of that ancient glory might wash off on him.
It didn’t.
Alone in the landscape, small and impotent … a loser, he deflated like a sheep’s bladder, wishing himself dead.
That night, as Andronicus weighed up taking his own life, he was suddenly aware of distant lights flickering in the blackness beneath the ancient citadel. As he drew closer, he saw them dancing beneath the ruined walls like fireflies, then resolving as he approached a forbidden pagan ritual. From the bushes, Andronicus watched transfixed. Naked dancers writhed to frantic pan-pipes in the worship of Zeus and Poseidon, singing the glories of Achilles, Hector and Helen. Lit by flames fed with exotic oils, the air was pungent with incense, raw sexuality hanging like laundry in the night air. Intoxicated, it lifted Andronicus’ burst ego up from the abyss, old passions flooding back through his poisonous veins like storm water down a dry riverbed.
