The Kingdom in the Sun (61 page)

He was accustomed to spend the greater part of the day in bed, keeping the curtains drawn lest he should ever see the sunlight. . . . Whenever the sun appeared he would seek the darkness, just as wild beasts do; also he took much pleasure in rubbing his decaying teeth, putting new ones in the place of those that had fallen out through old age.

As the dissatisfaction grew, various conspiracies began to take shape for Mary's overthrow; notably one by her step-daughter Maria—that same princess whose hand her father had twice offered to William of Sicily. The plot was discovered; with her husband Rainier of Montferrat and her other associates, Maria barely had time to flee to St Sophia and barricade herself in. But the Empress-Regent was not prepared to respect any rights of sanctuary; the imperial guard was despatched with orders to seize the conspirators; and the great church was saved from desecration only through the mediation of the Patriarch himself. This incident deeply shocked the Byzantines, and the subsequent exile of the Patriarch to a monastery for his part in the affair made the regime more unpopular than ever— unnecessarily too, since such was the state of public indignation against her that Mary never dared to punish her step-daughter. Nor, later, did she lift a finger when the people of Constantinople marched
en masse
to the Patriarch's monastery and led him back in triumph to the capital. The whole matter, in fact, could scarcely have been handled worse.

This first
coup
had, none the less, failed; but there followed a threat from another of the Emperor's relatives—a man this time, and one of a very different calibre. Andronicus Comnenus was a unique phenomenon. Nowhere else in the pages of Byzantine history do we find so extraordinary a character; perhaps his cousin Manuel comes closest; but next to him, even Manuel is outshone. And nowhere else, certainly, do we find such a career. The story of Andronicus Comnenus does not read like history at all; it reads like a historical novel that has gone too far.

In 1182, when Andronicus first enters this story, he was already sixty-four years old, but looking nearer forty. Over six feet tall and in magnificent physical condition, he had preserved the good looks, the intellect, the conversational charm and wit, the elegance and the sheer
panache
that, together with the fame of his almost legendary exploits in bed and battlefield, had won him an unrivalled reputation as a Don Juan. The list of his conquests was endless, that of the scandals in which he had been involved very little shorter. Three in particular had roused the Emperor to fury. The first was when Andronicus carried on a flagrant affair with his cousin—and Manuel's niece—the Princess Eudoxia Comnena, effectively answering criticism by pointing out that 'subjects should always follow their master's example, and two pieces from the same factory normally prove equally acceptable'—a clear allusion to the Emperor's relationship with another niece, Eudoxia's sister Theodora, for whom he was well known to cherish an affection that went well beyond the avuncular. Some years later, Andronicus had deserted his military command in Cilicia with the deliberate intention of seducing the lovely Philippa of Antioch. Once again he must have known there would be serious repercussions; Philippa was the sister not only of the reigning prince, Bohemund III, but of Manuel's own wife, the Empress Mary. But this, as far as Andronicus was concerned, merely lent additional spice to the game. Though he was then forty-eight and his quarry just twenty, his serenades beneath her window proved irresistible. Within a few days she had capitulated.

His conquest once made, Andronicus did not remain long to enjoy it. Manuel, outraged, ordered his immediate recall; Prince Bohemund also made it clear that he had no intention of tolerating such a scandal. Possibly, too, the young princess's charms may have proved disappointing. In any case Andronicus left hurriedly for Palestine to put himself at the disposal of King Amalric; and there, at Acre, he met for the first time another of his cousins—Queen Theodora, the twenty-one-year-old widow of Amalric's predecessor on the throne of Jerusalem, Baldwin III. She became the love of his life. Soon afterwards, when Andronicus moved to his new fief of Beirut—recently given him by Amalric as a reward for his services— Theodora joined him. Consanguinity forbade their marriage, but the two lived there together in open sin until Beirut in its turn grew too hot for them.

After a long spell of wandering through the Muslim East they finally settled down at Colonea, just beyond the eastern frontier of the Empire, subsisting happily on such money as they had been able to bring with them, supplemented by the proceeds of a certain amount of mild brigandage; and their idyll was only brought to an end when Theodora and their two small sons were captured by the Duke of Trebizond and sent back to Constantinople. Andronicus, agonised by their loss, hurried back to the capital and immediately gave himself up, flinging himself histrionically at the Emperor's feet and promising anything if only his mistress and his children could be returned to him. Manuel showed his usual generosity. Clearly a
menage
at once so irregular and so prominent could not be allowed in Constantinople; but Andronicus and Theodora were given a pleasant castle on the Black Sea coast where they might live in honourable exile—and, it was hoped, peaceful retirement.

But it was not to be. Andronicus had always had his eye on the imperial crown and when, after Manuel's death, reports reached him of the growing unrest against the Empress Regent he needed little persuading that his opportunity had come at last. Unlike Mary of Antioch—'the foreigner', as her subjects scornfully called her—he was a true Comnenus. He had energy, determination and ability; more important still at such a moment, his romantic past had lent him a popular appeal unmatched in the Empire. In August 1182 he marched on the capital. The old magic was as strong as ever. In a scene inescapably reminiscent of Napoleon's return from Elba, the troops sent out to block his advance refused to fight; their general, Andronicus Angelus, surrendered and joined him
¹
—an example followed soon afterwards by the admiral commanding the imperial fleet in the Bosphorus. As he progressed, the people flocked from their houses to cheer him on his way; soon the road was lined with his supporters. Even before he crossed the straits, rebellion had broken out in Constantinople; and with it exploded all that pent-up hatred of the Latins that the last two years had done so much to increase. What followed was a massacre—the massacre of virtually all the Latins in the city—women, children, the old and infirm, even the sick from the hospitals, as the whole quarter in which they lived was burnt and pillaged. The Protosebastos was found cowering in the palace, too frightened even to try to escape; he was thrown into the dungeons and later, on Andronicus's orders, blinded;
²
the young

¹
It was typical of Andronicus Comnenus that he should have had a joke ready when Angelus came over to his colours. 'See,' he is said to have remarked, 'it is just as the Gospel says: "I shall send my
Angel,
who shall prepare the way before thee." ' The Gospel in fact says no such thing; but Andronicus was not a man to quibble over niceties.

²
Though not before he had recovered his nerve and lodged a formal complaint that his English guards were not allowing him enough sleep.

Emperor and his mother were taken to the imperial villa of the Philopation to await their cousin's pleasure.

Their fate was worse than either of them could have feared. Andronicus's triumph had brought out the other side of his character —a degree of cruelty and brutality that few had even suspected, unredeemed by a shred of compassion, or scruple, or moral sense. Though all-powerful, he was not yet Emperor; and so, methodically and in cold blood, he set about eliminating all those who stood between himself and the throne. Princess Maria and her husband were the first to go; their deaths were sudden and mysterious, but no one doubted poison. Then it was the turn of the Empress herself. Her thirteen-year-old son was forced to sign her death-warrant with his own hand, and she was strangled in her cell. In September 1182 Andronicus was crowned co-Emperor; two months later the boy Alexius met his own death by the bowstring and his body was flung into the Bosphorus.

'Thus,' wrote Nicetas, 'in the imperial garden, all the trees were felled.' Only one more formality remained. For the last three years of his short life, Alexius had been betrothed to Agnes of France, the second daughter of Louis VII by his third wife Alix of Champagne. Owing to their extreme youth—at the time of their engagement Alexius was eleven, Agnes barely ten—the marriage itself had never taken place; but the little princess was already installed at Constantinople, where she had been rebaptised in the more seemly Byzantine name of Anna and was treated with all the respect due to a future Empress. And so indeed she proved. Before 1182 was out the new Emperor, now sixty-four, had married the twelve-year-old princess—and, if at least one modern authority is to be believed— consummated the marriage.
¹

No reign could have begun less auspiciously; yet in many ways Andronicus did more good to the Empire than Manuel had ever done. He attacked all administrative abuses, wherever he found them and in whatever form. The tragedy was that as he gradually eliminated

¹
Diehl,
Figures
Byzantines,
vol. II, which includes scholarly but highly readable short biographies of both Andronicus and Agnes. What became of Theodora is unknown. She may have died; but she was still relatively young and it is more probable that she was packed off to end her days in a convent.

corruption from the government machine, so he himself grew more and more corrupted by the exercise of his power. Violence and brute force seemed to be his only weapons; his legitimate campaign against the military aristocracy rapidly deteriorated into a succession of blood-baths and indiscriminate slaughter. According to one report,

he left the vines of Brusa weighed down, not with grapes but with the corpses of those whom he had hanged; and he forbade any man to cut them down for burial, for he wished them to dry in the sun and then to sway and flutter as the wind took them, like the scarecrows that are hung in the orchards to frighten the birds.

But it was Andronicus himself who was afraid—both for his own skin and for his Empire. His popularity was gone; the saviour of his country had revealed himself a monster. The air was once again thick with sedition and revolt; conspiracies were springing up, hydra-headed, in the capital and the provinces alike. Traitors were everywhere. Those who fell into the hands of the Emperor were tortured to death—-often in his presence and by his own hand—but many others escaped to the West, where they could be sure of a ready welcome for, as Andronicus was well aware, the West had not forgotten the massacre of
11
82.
He also understood, all too clearly, the implications of the Treaty of Venice. For a long time now, Byzantium had had two principal enemies in Europe: the Western Empire and the Kingdom of Sicily, the Hohenstaufen and the Hauteville, both equally determined to block the Greeks from realising their legitimate claims in South Italy. While these two had remained at loggerheads Constantinople had had no cause for alarm; but now they were friends, and soon they might be allies. In that event, Andronicus had an unpleasant suspicion in which direction they would march; and when, in the autumn of
11
84,
there was announced at Augsburg the betrothal of Constance of Sicily to Henry of Hohenstaufen, his alarm was not diminished.

Early in January 1185 the Arab traveller Ibn Jubair was in Trapani, having just taken passage on a Genoese ship to return to his native Spain. A day or two before he was due to depart, an order arrived from the government in Palermo: the harbour was closed to all outgoing traffic till further notice. A great war fleet was being made ready. No other vessel might leave until it was safely on its way.