Free Anna of Byzantium by Tracy Barrett Page A

leaving Maria to follow, small and forgotten, in our wake.
    In a few moments we arrived at the door, the purple hanging with its gold tassels pulled back and secured against the side, the guards in their smart imperial liverystanding straight at attention. Quickly Grandmother adjusted my clothes, and as I hung back, trying to delay the inevitable entry, she gave me an impatient push. “Go in,” she snapped. “And don’t forget your manners!”
    I took a deep breath, then started toward the throne, watching my blue and purple slippers flash, flash, flash, against the stones. The familiar patterns of the floor repeated themselves until I knew that I was in front of my father. I stretched out flat, burying my face in my hands, waiting for him to tell me to rise. How would he appear? I wondered. It had been almost a year since I had seen him. I knew I had changed, but I hoped that he had not.
    I did not have long to wait. Rather than hearing his voice telling me to rise, it was his hands I felt on my upper arms—his hard, callused palms scraping and catching on the fine material, lifting me to my feet, the smell of his leather boots filling my nostrils—and finally I dared to look up, and there he was, Alexius Comnenus, emperor of the Byzantines, conqueror of the Turks, his beard a little more gray, perhaps, his face a little more lined, but still my father, home from the war.

CHAPTER TEN
    murmured a dazed welcome as he pressed his hand on top of my head, blessing me. “Daughter Anna,” he said, and my heart sank, sure that I was about to be interrogated about my grandmother and what I was learning from her. Fortunately, it was not to be yet, but I did not have the chance to relax, for another interrogation was in store for me. My father placed his hand lightly under my chin and tilted my head up. He frowned a little. “A veil?” he said. He turned to my mother. “Surely she is not old enough. She is but—how old are you, child?”
    “She is almost twelve,” my mother answered. “And I agree with you, she is too young to be wearing a veil. I don’t even know where she got it from.”
    “She got it from me,” said my grandmother, so smoothly that it seemed as though she had been waiting for the question. “At her age I had already been veiled for two years. She is not a Ducas, but a Comnenus, and she must behave accordingly.”
    I dared not look at my mother, and she did not reply. My father sighed and passed his hand over his face. He suddenly looked weary, and I realized how fatigued he must be from the journey. After all, he must have been riding hard to come home again and see us all. But he seemed to pull himself more erect, and once more turned his smile in my direction.
    “You have grown, child,” he said, “and look ready to step into my throne. Surely that is not purple you are wearing on your gown?” He looked amused rather than angry, although I knew how strictly he observed rules governing who should wear what color and what style.
    “I did not know it had purple on it until I was ready to put it on,” I said, my voice scarcely rising above a whisper.
    “Ah, so it is a new robe?” he asked. I nodded. He turned to my mother. “And which of our weaving-women decided to add purple to the border?” he asked. Before she could answer, my grandmother did so.
    “It was a gift from me, Alexius,” she said. “I told the slave to make it deep blue with red embroidery around the edges. Evidently she thought that purple would be a better color. She is not of our race, my son, and does not know the significance we place on imperial purple. I have already had the woman flogged for her mistake.”
    My father made a face. I knew how much he dislikedunnecessary punishment. “Surely,” he said, “if the slave did not know of her misdeed beforehand, a reprimand would have sufficed.”
    My grandmother’s expression did not change, although I thought I noted a touch of coldness in her voice when she