The Byzantine Wager

Chapter 44 - Mariapitkee Wakes Up

Chapter 44

Mariapitkee Wakes Up

In the dark Mariapitkee was roused from her sleep by whispering, voices talking. Andronikos and someone else?

"Tell me her words. And her voice? How did she hold herself?" The Emperor asked.

"First she stormed on about how the Lords of Outremer would not stand for this."

"Alas the Lords of Outremer were all in Outremer tonight."

The voice in the shadows sneered. "Will they send an army or a fleet do you think?"

"Ha. A leaking cog and an old monk to collect her bones more like." More low laughter.

"When she saw her own son's signature, in ink as red as blood... Basileus, you should have seen her face. Magnificent. She became as white as the face of the moon. And tears." Chortles and chuckles.

Mariapitkee, still groggy, nestling against the Emperor's long body, hoped the annoying intruder would be berated and dismissed. She could not make out who was whispering in the darkness near the arched doorway. What was he talking about?

"As to her last words, Basileus, I am not certain. She was begging, and praying, and it took so long. It was difficult to make out what she was trying to say. I strangled her with her robe's silk sash" The words hissed from the shadows. Mariapitkee jolted to sudden alertness.

"A silk robe? Was she not in a nun's habit?"

"No, she was wearing her expensive feathers. Until I stripped them off of her."

"And once she was disrobed? Was her form as beautiful as her face suggested? I took her sister Phillipa's maidenhood twenty years ago. She was exquisite." The Emperor lifted the coverlet off and ran his fingers across the nape of Mariapitkee's neck to her shoulder. Naked and chilled she shivered. Gooseflesh pricked her thighs. Against her will, her nipples hardened. "Was she as comely nude as the statue of Hera in the Forum of Constantine, or like unto one of the Muses carved into the Nymphaeum fountains?

This question seemed to confuse the whisperer in the darkness for he paused. "She was womanly and buxom..."

"Stephen, you rough fellow. And then what did you do?" Mariapitkee's wrists were grasped tightly and forcefully. A skull-like face leaned out from the shadows. She stifled a scream. "Did you make the deceitful harlot pay for her sins and treachery?" The Emperor forced himself between her legs.

"I wound the cord around her neck and pulled ."

The Emperor's hands were around her throat squeezing. She struggled to move but her hands were pinned above her head. The skull smiled and whispered on, telling of how the Emperor Alexios' mother was violated as he strangled her to the point of death. Mariapitkee saw bright lights at the corner of her vision. A rushing sound filled her ears. Her back arched. The light brightened and expanded to fill her vision despite the darkness of the chamber.

"Then I would relax the cord a bit..."

Gasping. Air rushed back into her lungs. The room returned to her senses, moonlight on the marble, the horrible man from the kasthima this afternoon held her wrists like a vice. The Emperor's terrible thrusting weight. She wanted to scream, but could only cough and sob.

"And once I got tired of listening to her beg for her life, I would pull on the cord some more to shut her up." The sinister susurration continued. The choking resumed. Again the bright light, the rushing in her ears, and the room receded once more.

When Mariapitkee came back to her senses the evil minion had withdrawn and the Emperor was in an antechamber relieving himself. She was curled into a bruised, bleeding ball. She sobbed silently. It was the Empress Regent who was dead. Not her. Not this time.

When The Emperor returned from pissing he cupped Mariapitkee's chin and wiped away a tear. "Look. I have bruised your throat, haven't I? Poor girl. I am afraid I was too caught up in Stephen's story. Return to your master and come back to us when you are perfectly lovely to look at once more. Have one or two of the other girls sent to replace you. Your sister perhaps."