Just One Iota
by Stephen Bondar
part 1
“He’s coming! He’s coming!” the little cook’s girl gasped, scarcely able to breathe from running and fright. “Hagio... Hag... the one they call the Antichrist!”
Everyone knew of whom she spoke. She had come from the kitchens at the rear of the fortified Constantinopolitan house-palace of the Angeli; the old cook following behind, equal parts surprise and fear on her wrinkled face. Her daughter must have come through the servants’ entrance, dropped whatever she had been sent to purchase at market and rushed straight into the main room to warn the so-called “master” of the house, Isaac.
The girl ran almost straight into me, so I caught her by the shoulders and admonished her to breathe. She obeyed and took a deep one.
“Hagio...” I said, looking her directly in the eyes and exaggerating the inhalation on the first syllable.
“Hagio,” she repeated.
“Cristo...” at the top of the breath.
“Cristo...”
“Phorites,” on the exhalation.
“Phorites.” She nodded so vigorously her whole body shook, and I backed away from her, signalling approval. She was even younger than I. “Hagio... Hagiochristophorites. The Antichrist!”
The name actually meant “the Holy Bearer of Christ,” which was ironic in the extreme, because Stephen Hagiochristophorites was indeed nicknamed by many — though not to his face — “the Antichristophorites,” or just “Antichrist,” as there was no deed too foul or bloody for him as the right-hand man and lapdog for Andronicus Comnenus, who himself had acceded to the throne of the Roman Empire up a staircase built of the bodies of women and children.
I bear witness to these events as I was privy to them, having been a young servant-boy paid about as much notice as the plaster on the wall to which I retreated after my exchange with the cook’s daughter. Immediately following the events that I relate, I fled — coward that I was and still am — and took refuge in the nearby monastery of the Peribleptos.
But the events of that early evening, September 11, 1185, though now nearly three decades past, are burned into my memory as if they happened only yesterday, and I often still wake in the watches of the night gasping for breath and in fear for my life when I relive them in dreams.
There was no way that Isaac could not have known that this hour had been coming; everyone else had. But he now paced hither and thither like a panicked chicken in a barnyard, muttering to himself of this plan and then that and then another, demonstrating the indecision that seemed almost the defining element of his character.
He was quickly gathering up coins into a small purse and looking for some shabby old cloak, intending to flee by creeping out of a rear window and try, accompanied by his boy — me — to get to the harbour and pay for passage on any ship that would presumably take us anywhere.
But he then ceased his preparations, to my great relief, suddenly announcing that he could surely reason with Hagiochristophorites, since he had not — at least recently — been part of any conspiracy against Andronicus. Surely any suspicions were misplaced.
But then another sharp-eyed servant who had had the presence of mind to go to an upper-level window looking down the Mese — one of Constantinople’s great thoroughfares — shouted down to report that he saw seven mounted men coming up that street, Hagiochristophorites at their head, riding a mule and armed with a short sword or long dagger. There were six other riders, horsemen, two of them well-known associates of Hagiochristophorites, not visibly carrying weapons, but the other four bore swords and maces, the glint of mail visible from under their cloaks.
Isaac’s normally ruddy complexion turned the ashen pallor of the death that he was now almost certain was coming for him. He set his mind again upon flight, seeing no means of resistance, because part of his agreement with Andronicus had been a stipulation that the Angelus household could keep no armed retainers. He ordered me to ready myself and to cast off my livery in favour of the shabbiest clothing I had.
He moved to continue filling the purse with coins, panting and visibly shaking.
Before I could move, all eyes were drawn to a commotion on the upper gallery that looked down onto the main room, before ending in a grand down staircase.
Euphrosyne Kastamonitissa, a grandmother more than fifty years of age, yet still handsome despite the most recent of those having been very unkind to her, had come storming out of the gynaeconitis — the women’s private quarters — with her terrified, weeping maids tumbling after her.
Her face a mask of rage, she had been tearing off her jewellery, and she now flung it down piece by piece at her son, who raised his hands to protect his head as bracelets, earrings and a necklace came hurtling down, followed by a pin ripped from her uncovered grey-blonde hair, which now flowed freely around her head and shoulders.
“Take these! And these! You might need everything you can get.” She spat, literally.
“Running to save your own hide, just like your father did, leaving the rest of us to our fates, eh? He abandoned me twice, you know: first, when he tried to repudiate me by having our marriage annulled — annulled — after I gave him eight children and thirty years of my life. He wanted to relegate me to a nunnery so he could marry his latest mistress. And the second time, when he fled the clutches of that same stinking old satyr that you now do, to wander in the lands of the Hagarenes.
“And your elder brother is already with him; you might as well go and find them in Damascus. Or maybe they’ve thrown in with the Latins in Palestine by now, the brethren of those same ones who are murdering and raping their way through Thessalonica as we speak and are preparing to march on Constantinople.
“The same ones,” she continued, the knuckles of both hands whitening with her grip on the banister, “whose forebears your great-grandfather Alexius, the first Roman emperor of that name, sent back to Sicily with their tails between their legs. Alexius Comnenus, who defeated the barbarian Roussell when he himself had the barest beginnings of a beard. And who wrested back a good piece of Anatolia lost to the Seljuks by the fools who preceded him. And who completely annihilated the race of the Pechenegs so that they could never menace our northern borders again.
“And yet now the Magyars threaten from that same quarter, and Andronicus does nothing about it, instead occupying himself with the persecution of the very people he ought to be using to defend the Empire built and rebuilt by the better men who came before him.”
“Mother, Thessalonica—” Isaac tried to venture.
“Was commanded by David Comnenus,” Euphrosyne snapped back, “another spineless simpleton who lost the second greatest city of the Empire because he did nothing, out of terror of Andronicus, without whose express approval everyone fears to take any action, lest it be seen as evidence of disloyalty or plotting against him.
“Fear of a stinking old goat who takes a twelve-year old girl to his bed to defile, despite the countless courtesans he already has at hand to disport himself with. One of whom he has already made a widow by having that same rodent who is coming to our gate at this very moment strangle the rightful Emperor with the assistance of his cronies. A child-Emperor whose rights he had sworn to protect, as the very reason for his seizing the reins of government in the first place.”
She paused for breath, but all stood transfixed, none daring to interrupt her utterly, frighteningly and disgustingly truthful tirade.
“Which is not to say that the boy was not himself a despicable creature who, at this monster’s bidding, had his own mother cast into prison, where she received the same bowstring that he, too, was shortly strangled by at the hands of Hagiochristophorites and his henchmen, the likes of Constantine Tripsychos — whom Hagiochristophorites later turned upon and blinded — and the same vile eunuch that Andronicus had assigned to poison Alexius’ sister Maria.”
It is difficult for me to restrain tears for the Empire of the Romans as I recall that formidable woman’s words. Andronicus had first clawed his way to power by swearing oaths to the Emperor Manuel Comnenus — the last holder of that office actually worthy of it until the current Theodore — to protect the rights of his progeny and then rising in rebellion against the regency of the boy’s mother, Manuel’s widow, Maria of Antioch, as well as the lover she had taken, another Alexius unworthy of that very name.
It was all under the veneer of upholding his oath that Andronicus had pressured the Patriarch Theodosius to crown him co-emperor along with the boy Alexius II. Theodosius resigned his see and fled the capital shortly thereafter. The very next day after his coronation, Andronicus relegated Alexius to the status of junior of the pair and had him, as already mentioned, have his own mother imprisoned, where she was murdered soon after. Not much later, the same fate befell the ‘junior’ Emperor, at the hands of the very Hagiochristophorites, who was now coming for the blood of the Angeli.
Shortly afterwards, Andronicus had appointed the ridiculous Basil Kamateros Patriarch of Constantinople and had him then officially release him from the oath he had so tearfully and disingenuously sworn to his cousin Manuel. A man who reportedly had sung and danced when the boy-emperor’s headless body was hurled into the sea, sealed in a lead coffer.
This could only have been to the delight of Hagiochristophorites, who had reason to hate Manuel and any of his supporters, including the Angelus family. He, the utterly ignoble son of a corrupt provincial tax-collector who had been notable only for his extortionate and frequently brutal conduct, had tried to gain a foothold in the court of Manuel by attempting to seduce a noble lady thereof. For his efforts, he had not only gotten laughed out of the Palace, but had had his nose slit.
So he certainly had common cause with Andronicus against the Angeli, particularly Isaac. When the loathsome old serpent had appeared at Manuel’s court to take advantage of the latter’s well-known magnanimity towards defeated enemies, he — after all of his plots not only against Manuel, but also his father John — did so dressed as a tearful penitent, kneeling and wearing a great iron chain around his neck, secured by a heavy lock.
His theatrics went to the extent of insisting that even after Manuel had promised him amnesty, before accepting it and swearing his oath of allegiance to the Emperor and his progeny, he had to be dragged by the chain and dashed against the throne as punishment for his former behaviour. And it had been Isaac who had performed this deed, as he was bold in that moment, in the presence of Manuel, who, one might say, provided him a backbone at that time.
It was a deed Andronicus would not forget.
How the Angeli had not seen fit to flee the City for Anatolia, where they had relations and friends, I know not, save for Euphrosyne’s insistence that they were under a kind of informal house arrest, being kept where Andronicus could keep a close eye on them. And they knew that any attempt to decamp could meet with dire consequences.
“Here,” Euphrosyne continued, as her maids put their hands to their mouths, horrified. She had pulled off her jewelled belt, letting her robe fall wide, exposing her undergarments. “Oh, don’t be so shocked, girls; it’s not like this isn’t anything that hasn’t been exposed to the whole world before. Isn’t that right, my son?”
She tore apart her belt, link by link, each one worth more money than I ever expected to see in my life, each segment a precious stone or cameo, and began throwing them to the floor, at least no longer aiming directly at Isaac, who stood dumbstruck, still trembling.
“Nay, even my privy parts and the very breasts that suckled you were laid bare for all to see as my shift got shredded outside Nicaea not three years ago. You recall that, don’t you, son? No?”
“Mother—”
“When I fell into Andronicus’ hands after your father’s flight, and you and the other rebels were holding out at Nicaea?”
“Yes, Mother, we were holding out.” Isaac began to find his voice and ability to meet his mother’s gaze. “Myself and Theodore—”
“You mean Theodore Cantacuzene and yourself in that order,” Euphrosyne snapped. “But I’ll give you that: you were in open rebellion against that old beast’s seizure of power, but it was Theodore who was in charge, wasn’t it?”
“Mother—” Isaac began again, anger entering his voice.
But she spoke over him again: “Oh, don’t bother, we both know the answer to that question, don’t we? You know I still pray every night...”
She stopped to take a breath and get her own voice under control. “I still pray every night for the archers who harassed the siege crews without harming me, so that I did not have to endure as many of those terrific impacts — from which my bones still ache — as I could have, strapped to that God-cursed ram. Even the Turks in your service. And the men who saved me that night.”
“I was one of them, Mother,” Isaac said quietly.
This also was all horribly true. Andronicus, who at that point had not yet actually had himself crowned Emperor but had pretty much taken complete control of government through Alexius II, had had Euphrosyne tied to the top of the heaviest battering ram being employed against the walls of Nicaea, so that the defenders could not, due to the coward’s use of a human shield, shoot fire-arrows at it nor otherwise set it ablaze.
But Euphrosyne was right to be grateful to the Nicaean archers; the best of them had targeted the crew of the siege engine without endangering her. They had been able to hamper its use but not prevent it entirely.
The Nicaeans had made several night sorties in attempts to free this noble woman. At the same time, they managed to burn some of Andronicus’ other siege weapons. At last, Euphrosyne, half-dead from her ordeal, was rescued, but by a party led by Theodore Cantacuzene after Isaac had led a diversionary attack a quarter-hour before on another part of the enemy encampment.
While one can understand how Euphrosyne felt, I have to think she was being unfair to her son, basing her words on her knowledge of his general character, rather than his actions on that particular night, which I would assume to have been just as daring and essential to her rescue as those of his compatriot.
The servant called down to tell us that the riders were almost at the gate. But our attention was held fast by Euphrosyne, who in that moment had a presence unlike any other woman I have ever seen and even few men. She was like a commander on the battlefield, to which, as she had just reminded us, she was no stranger.
“Yes, you were one of them. But why were you not leading the party that finally freed me? You’re a capable fighter, Isaac; it’s in your blood, but only if someone else tells you where to go and where to stand. I know the plan was Theodore’s, and he made sure — for my sake — that he was in charge of the most complicated part.”
“Well, maybe he just wanted the glory. He always—”
“Don’t you dare say that!” Euphrosyne’s face darkened again. “He died leading another sortie—”
“His horse stepped in a hole—”
“It happens in battle!” she snapped. “And he got thrown hard, and the enemy were on him and cut him to pieces while he was still dazed. I was still at Nicaea too, remember? And you immediately lost heart and stomach when command fell to you alone — or your backbone, I should say, because that’s what Theodore was — and let that simpering Nicaean Patriarch, Nicolas, talk the people into surrendering, supposedly on terms, just like you were thinking of a moment ago.” Her voice dripped venom. “How could you have thought of doing anything but killing that monster with your own hands after seeing what he did to me?”
An insistent hammering began at the gate.
Copyright © 2026 by Stephen Bondar
