Chapter 55
Once upon a Time in a Dungeon III
After being questioned and threatened with torture, Stephen Hagiocharistophrites tried to make himself small and unnoticeable in the corner. People - guards, a chamberlain with a portable writing desk, the Emperor, children even - kept wandering down the stairs past the iron bars to view the empty cell. Stephen longed to call out to the Basileus to plead for mercy, but he knew now was not the time. The Emperor was sure to be in a furious mood. Eventually the cramped confines were overcrowded and everyone was ordered out to be about their assigned tasks.
How had Andronikos done it? One moment he was there. Then he was not there. Was this a miracle? Was it magic?
The day passed slowly. They forgot to feed him.
Footsteps on the stairs roused him from a doze and a noblewoman was escorted into the newly vacated cell. Stephen pressed up against the bars to try and see her as she walked by. One guard locked her in, the other rapped Stephen’s knuckles with the hilt of his sword. “Speak so much as a word to the Domina and we will have your tongue as well as your nose, scum.”
Stephen retreated to his corner again. Servants came to see to the lady’s comfort. Eventually she was left alone. Her racking sobs filled the prison as darkness fell. “Andronikos my love, where are you?”
Then, in the gloom, the moaning of a ghost began. An unearthly groan of agony - the sound of a soul in hell, rising up from the underworld - pleading for release.
* * *
Not pins and needles, in his muscles and joints, but lances and scythes. Hours positioned on his knees unconscious in the stressful confines of the drain had not killed Andronikos. Awareness and agony returned.
A woman wailed his name. The voice was familiar. Crying in pain he lurched upward with all his energy. The woman’s cries turned to shrieks of terror.
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“Helena?” he cried out, or tried, the name came out in a croaking, moaning rasp. He pushed the grating free of the drain. “Is that you? Help me. Pull me out.”
* * *
In stunned disbelief Stephen listened as Helena and Andronikos reunited. With tears and kisses she drew him forth. Gently she cleaned him. Tenderly she massaged his sore body. They spoke softly, cried, laughed, and made love.
Before dawn came a hissed whisper. “Stephen, I know you have listened.”
“Noble one, I know not what to say?”
“Good. You will say nothing, ever, to anyone. This will be our little secret. I trust you Stephen, for I know you would never betray me. We are friends. A lesser man would try to turn this secret knowledge to his advantage. I would denounce such a lesser man as a liar who knew my whereabouts all along and lied to the Papias when directly asked. Should, by some miracle of clemency, this lesser man be spared from the law, he and his entire family would not be spared from me and my agents. You Stephen are not a lesser man. Be silent, endure what must come, be patient, and I will shower reward upon you.”
For four days the ruse continued. Andronikos popped down his hole at the first sound of approach by servant or guard. Helena sat in the chair on top of the grate, sewing. Complaining of the dankness, she demanded fresh linens and bed clothes be brought.
The city’s gates and harbors could not remain closed indefinitely. Andronikos knew that Helena would, over the course of time, be released. She was innocent and was Empress Irene’s only real friend. During the years in prison the Empress had given birth to two daughters, Maria and Anna. Little Anna had come down with the winter cough. Helena had nursed their own daughter through the sickness.
Manuel gave in to his wife’s entreaties. Clearly blameless, Helena was brought forth and returned to her villa, then to help tend the ill princess. When all was dark Andronikos crept out of the drain, through the door which had been left unlocked, past the snoring dupe in the cell by the stairs. Up out. Using bed linen torn to strips and knotted into a rope, he slipped from shadow to shadow over the battlements, and off into the night.
He was captured in Tarsus nine hundred miles away several weeks later. He had been trying to get to Antioch. Being one of the largest men in the empire made him easily identifiable and the arrest dispatches had a four day head start. When he was returned to the prison both Stephen and his nose were gone. Exactly nine months after his attempted escape his second son, Ionnes ‘the prison conceived,’ was born.