Empress & Soldier: Chapter 9 Part I
In which Eudekia meets a prince.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6 part I
Chapter 6 part 2
Chapter 7
Chapter 8 Part 1
Chapter 8 part 2
I DREW UP A SMALL TABLE before I settled on the stool beside my father’s bed. I wanted to take notes, and I’d never liked writing on my lap. “Where do we begin?” I asked.
“With the families, I think,” my father said. “If we look at the lineage of the current Emperor—” He stopped, his attention caught by voices in the hall outside his room, his expression startled. A knock at the door, but before my father could say ‘come in’ it opened, and a man I did not know pushed past Mahir to enter the room.
Tall, with dark hair, clean-shaven, young. A tunic of creamy linen. “Varos,” he said, “I came to see how you did,” just as I realized who this must be. Biting my lip against an audible gasp, I slipped off the stool and onto my knees, head bent.
“Prince,” my father said. “You honour me.”
“I would rather speak to you of these passages you set me than write my responses,” the prince said. “If you are well enough.” He spoke with confidence, I thought, but not arrogance.
“I was about to begin a lesson with my daughter,” my father said. “But that can of course be postponed.”
“Your daughter? This is she?”
“Eudekia.” I looked up at my name, to find the prince smiling down at me.
“Eudekia,” he repeated. “Please stand.”
I did, with what I hoped was some grace. I didn’t want to seem an awkward child in front of this man.
“You are lucky to have your father tutor you,” he said. “I know I am.”
“Thank you,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. My mouth was dry. His eyes, dark too, met mine. I took a shallow breath, another. His lips were full, curving still in a smile.
“What was your lesson about?” he asked. Of me. As if my father were not in the room.
But it was my father who answered. “The lineage of your family, prince,” he said from the bed. “Eudekia wishes to understand Casilani politics.”
“Do you? Why?” To me again. I swallowed.
“I assist my father with his clients. It will help me understand their concerns, Prince Philitos.” I had said his name. Was that allowed?
“Admirable,” he murmured.
“Prince.” My father. “May my daughter leave, so we can begin our discussion?”
“Can she not stay?” the prince asked. “Have you not told me she has been well educated? Perhaps she has something to add.”
My father had spoken of me to the prince? Who was being polite in asking if I could stay, nothing more. My father flicked his fingers upward, a dismissive gesture. “She knows nothing of what we are studying.”
“I see.” The prince smiled. “Then we had best not bore her. Please go about your day, Eudekia.”
I knelt again, before I took a few steps backward. Three were appropriate, I thought, before I turned my back. Philitos had already settled himself onto the stool when I closed the door.
An hour later, the prince left my father’s room. I had found reasons to be close by for the last little while. After all, wasn’t it only fitting that I walked with him to where his guards and litter waited, since my father couldn’t?
“Was it a good discussion, Prince Philitos?” I asked, falling into step beside him.
“Very.” He stopped at the door, a smile on his lips and in his eyes. “But surely you knew that, my lady Eudekia. As your father has been your tutor as well.”
My cheeks warmed. “He is exacting.”
“Indeed he is.”
I wanted to ask what it was they had spoken of. But instead, I said, “Will you come again?”
“Until your father is well enough to return to the palace. And perhaps—” He hesitated. “Perhaps you could prevail upon him to give you the same assignment, so I could hear your thoughts as well?”
My thoughts? Had his earlier suggestion been more than just politeness, then? “I will try.”
“Good,” he said. “Until then, my lady.” He strode across the cobbled yard to the litter waiting at the gates, a guard on either side of him. I watched until the litter left. My lady Eudekia.
“Is it Casilani politics you wish to learn, or to discuss the fine points of philosophy?” my father asked, with a lift of an eyebrow. “I have not time for both, Eudekia.”
“But you do,” I argued. “All you have to do is tell me what the prince is assigned to read. Nishan can find the texts for me, if needed.” Or I would just ask Nishan. The prince’s lessons were among the letters my father dictated in the mornings, I was sure.
“The prince,” my father said, “has been reading the letters and treatises of the philosophers for some months now. His studies are not yours.”
I began to protest, but he was adamant. “No, Eudekia. No more of this, please. Tomorrow we will continue with our discussion of the families that have worn the purple.”
I knew his tone. There was no point in pleading further. I murmured my assent, and at his request left him to rest.
The next time the prince came I was busy with clients, and learned he had visited my father only from the servants. Disappointment and anger made me want to stamp my foot, like a child too young to control her feelings. But I restrained myself, at least outwardly, and in the afternoon, after I had asked for my father’s guidance on a few issues from the clients, I simply asked, “How was Prince Philitos?”
“Well enough,” my father said. “Now, do you have your writing materials? We were discussing the adoption of heirs among the early Emperors, were we not?” A method, he explained, of ensuring that the heir to Casil’s throne was a man of integrity and intelligence; adoptions were not made until the young man was old enough to have shown himself to have both.
“But that is not the case now,” I said. Philitos was his father’s son by birth.
“No. We have had almost a century of the throne passing peaceably from father to son,” he said. “Luckily all have been competent. This has not always been the case: the Emperor Catilius, for example, designated a son as his heir, and that son was both corrupt and depraved.”
“I thought Catilius was a philosopher.”
“A great one. His book The Contemplations should be read by all men who find the demands of their daily lives conflict with their peace of mind.” Like a man who would one day be Emperor? “But he made an error in naming his son as his heir, although had Catilius lived longer the outcome might have been different. The boy inherited a position of great power too young.”
I thought of a conversation weeks earlier. “But did you not say Blaesus’s son should not be trusted, because sons are loyal to fathers? Shouldn’t Catilius’s son have been loyal to him?”
“There are exceptions to every rule, Eudekia,” he said. “Catilius’s philosophy rejects pleasure, even perhaps love. His son may have rebelled against that, rather than revere his father. But we are straying from our lesson.”
We discussed these strategies for another half hour, my father pointing out times when marriage had been used to bring a rebellious province into line, or even once or twice to end a war with another state. Adoptions, he acknowledged, had less wide-reaching implications, used more in the past to strengthen internal alliances among Casilani families.
“Only in the past?” I asked.
“Not entirely. It still happens, especially if there is no male heir.”
“Why did you not adopt?” I asked impulsively.
“I saw no need,” he said. “Had I a brother or sister with a spare son, I might have considered it, but I have no property to pass on, beyond some money and this house and its contents. My mother’s villa is hers, to bequeath how she likes.” He smiled at me. “Do you wish I had?”
“I think,” I said slowly, wondering if I should speak my thought, “that you might not have educated me as well, if you had.”
He didn’t laugh, as I had been afraid he would. “I hope that is not true,” he said. “Now, your assignment. What criteria would you use to determine which family we might align ourselves with?” I started to speak, but he held up a hand. “That is all. You are to decide what matters in an alliance, and explain your choices. We will discuss it in two days.”
Mahir brought his medicine then, so I had no chance to argue, or even ask the question that had sprung to my mind. Was he asking me to identify a family I might wish to marry into?
Perhaps he was. But that should be only one of many criteria. Agreement on the topics my father supported in the Assembly would be another. Similar patronage, perhaps? Or would it be better to have different types of clients, to widen our combined families’ influence?
I took my writing materials to the office, where I could work in the undisturbed quiet. But as I went to sit at the desk, I glanced at the bookshelves. I knew how my father arranged his books. It took me only a moment to find The Contemplations.
In the end, I decided that complementary patronage was preferable. When I presented this idea to my father, he nodded his approval. “Well thought out, Eudekia.”
He held out his hand. I gave him the list I had made, watching as his eyes ran down it, and the smile that appeared on his lips as he reached the end. “A family whose habits are similar to ours?” Amusement coloured his voice.
“Would that not be best?” I said. “So that expectations are more easily—” I searched for a word.
“Assimilated? I suppose so.” He handed me back the list. “How does that differ from agreeing on political issues?”
“I was thinking of day-to-day things,” I said. “Whether music is played during dinner, and if chatter is allowed if someone is reading. Or if it is rude to leave the room if one wishes to read in peace.”
His laugh was the strongest I had heard since he fell ill. “Very important,” he said. “What we know in our childhood and youth shapes what we find good, or comfortable, and individual comforts matter.”
I almost said, ‘Catilius doesn’t agree,’ stopping myself just in time. I found the philosopher-Emperor’s thoughts hard to understand. Let it make no difference to you whether you are cold or warm. How did you do that? I hated being cold, and in the damp winter months took comfort in braziers and tunics of warm wool. As did my father.
He’d said too that Catilius rejected even love. I had no doubt my father loved me, so he was no follower of the philosophy laid out in The Contemplations. Even if he thought every man born to power and influence should read it. What other philosophies were there?
I could ask Nishan. But I had another idea.
The prince arrived promptly as his usual time the next day. I’d finished with the clients, and the corridor and entrance cobbles had been swept of any mud tracked in. I heard Philitos greet Nishan, and their feet on the tesserae of the hall, but I didn’t leave the office. I wanted a reason to speak to the prince later.
He was with my father for an hour. I intercepted him in the corridor. “Prince Philitos,” I said, “please accept my apology. I have not welcomed you to our house today, or the last time you came. My duties as patrona kept me from doing so.”
“No apology is needed, my lady Eudekia,” he said. I kept my eyes down, but I could feel his on me. He was smiling, I was sure.
“Would you...” I let my voice trail off, hesitant. “Would you accept a cup of wine before you leave? We could sit in the atrium.” Was I being too forward?
“That would be delightful,” the prince said. I met his eyes. He was smiling.
“This way,” I said. I had ordered wine to be brought to the atrium not long after I had heard the prince arrive. The jug, covered by a weighted cloth, stood with two cups and a second jug of water on the low wall of the fountain. I poured a cup, then raised the water jug in a silent question.
“Please,” Philitos said. “Strong wine would not be wise, I think.”
He probably had more lessons, later. I gave him the cup. He smiled his thanks. I poured my own, added water, and, after the prince had chosen a bench, seated myself on the fountain wall.
“You are still discussing philosophy with my father?” I asked.
“We are,” he said. He raised his wine cup as if acknowledging someone, his eyes looking past me. I turned my head to see Nishan, quietly standing on the far side of the atrium. Chaperoning me, of course. The cook would have told him of the wine.
I ignored my tutor and turned back to Philitos. “Whose philosophies are you contrasting Catilius’s with?”
“The works of Korous, primarily,” the prince said. “A Heræcrian philosopher, but of course you know that.”
“And which do you prefer?” Korous. I had a name.
He sipped his wine. “Catilius’s ideas are suited to a soldier, I think. His thoughts on pleasure and pain, and ignoring both, seem apt for a life spent in barracks and tents in all weathers, and he was frequently at war. But why would you turn your back on pleasure when you are comfortably at home?”
“Whereas Korous approves of pleasure,” I said, guessing.
“What is pleasurable is morally good,” Philitos said. It sounded like a quote. “And so this wine and your company must be morally good, because they are certainly pleasurable.”
“But a life cannot be lived only for pleasure,” I said. “We have responsibilities. Duties.”
“Which in themselves can be pleasurable, if approached with the right frame of mind. Do you dislike your duties as patrona in your father’s stead?”
“I dislike it when I have to turn a request down.” Disappointed faces, or occasionally angry ones. Sometimes they kept me awake at night.
“And why would you?” He sounded genuinely interested.
“For many reasons.” I put my cup down on the wall beside me. “Say a woman comes to ask for help in setting up a business. She wants to make cushions to sell in the market. I ask questions, and discover she has no great skill in sewing, nor does she have knowledge of buying materials. It is not much money she is asking for, but she is too likely to fail. So I must say no.”
“But that is only prudent. Why should it upset you?”
I twisted a lock of hair around a finger. “Because it is a life, Prince. A woman, a widow, trying to feed her children through honest labour. Should I not care about that? Catilius says it is right to.”
“Within its chances of success. So your practice is in line with his teachings.” Was he mocking me? His face was serious, intent.
“Yes,” I said. “I suppose it is.”
“You have a generous heart,” Philitos said, “tempered by a mind that reasons. Is that not what we should all strive for?” He drank the rest of his wine before standing. “I must go. Thank you for wine and conversation, my lady Eudekia.”
“I will walk with you to the door.” As I stood the tabby kitten appeared to wind itself around my feet. I picked her up, not wanting to trip, or, worse, step on her. She began to purr, loudly, and then to lick my neck.
The prince laughed, a low chuckle. He reached out to stroke her, her purr growing even louder. “Your kitten?”
“Not mine particularly. She belongs to the house. A kitchen cat.”
“So she is not just ornamental, but has her work to do. As do we all.” He gave me a wry smile. “Even princes.”
“Especially princes, I would think,” I said.
“You should be right,” he said. “But what my father gives me to do is ceremonial. I envy you the training in practical matters your father has allowed you.”
“There is time for that yet,” I said.
“I wonder,” he said softly, then shook his head. “I am in a strange mood, my lady Eudekia. Pay me no mind.”
I put the cat down, and walked with Philitos to where his guards awaited him. Behind us, I heard Nishan’s quiet footfalls.
At the door Philitos turned to me, holding out his hand. I gave him mine: protocol demanded it. He raised it to his lips. “Until next time. My thanks for your company.”
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