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At the altar the emperor stood in a pure white silk robe. The empress, whose face was veiled, wore pure white, too, except her gown was of brocade with raised designs in silver and gold. Extremely ornate and heavy crowns were held above their heads by attendants as they spoke their vows and exchanged rings.
Various high church and civil dignitaries presented themselves before the emperor and empress by prostrating themselves on the floor in front of them in a position of obeisance called proskynesis. It was an extreme sign of allegiance to not just the emperor but his new wife, who just stared stonily forward.
A totally inappropriate-for-a-church thought came unbidden to Drifa, a picture of Theodora doing those things with John that she had done with Sidroc. Almost immediately, she knew. It would never happen. What does that say about me? Mayhap just that I was never destined to be a nun? Or an empress? She put a hand to her mouth to prevent herself from laughing aloud.
Ivar slanted her a questioning look.
She pretended not to notice.
But Drifa did notice everything she saw and heard, hoping to imprint it on her memory so she could tell everyone at home about it all. If only she had a real talent for painting!
Once when he glanced around during the lengthy rituals, she saw Eparch Mylonas staring at her from across the aisle. A shiver of apprehension raised the fine hairs on her body.
It wasn’t that the eparch looked at her with lust, as some men did. Nay, it was more like dislike. Rabid dislike. What had she done to engender such animosity in the man? Ah, she realized. Her half-Arab ancestry. To some Greeks, just being Arab was reason for hate.
And that reminded her of the man in the Arab burnoose who’d bumped her earlier in the procession. She must tell Ivar about both these happenings, not that there was much to tell. Just an uncomfortable feeling.
Later at the wedding feast, in the Hall of Nineteen Couches, Drifa was seated at a table of strangers. Her guardsmen were permitted to stand off to the side under the colonnade, but they were not invited to partake of the feast itself. There would have been no room, if nothing else.
The people she dined with were pleasant enough, though none of them spoke Greek as a first language, and the conversations were ofttimes stilted. Toward the end of the evening, though, the man from the Rus lands on her right side leaned closer to her and said, “I have a message for you from your cousin.”
“Cousin? What cousin?” She tried to recall if she’d ever heard her father mention a cousin. Nay, she decided. He had not.
“Bahir Ahmed ad-Dawlah, your cousin thrice-removed.”
“Huh?”
“He saw you today in the procession and he is pleased.”
The man in the burnoose? “That’s nice.”
“Mayhap a wedding will be in your future.” The Rus man winked at her.
“What? You cannot be implying what I think you are. Impossible!”
“Who knows what Allah has in mind for us?”
Ah, so this man, though of Rus background, was a Moslem. That was fine, but she was not, and no god was proclaiming a marriage for her, especially not with a stranger.
“Do not be afeared, m’lady. Bahir is young and virile. He has already produced ten sons and six daughters with his other wives.”
“Other wives?”
“Of course. What kind of man of wealth would he be at forty and one if he did not have at least three wives? Bahir has five.”
“And I would be number six?”
The Rus man nodded. “And most favored.”
“Sorry I am to decline this most unusual proposal, if that is what it is. But I have more than enough ‘favors’ back home in the Norselands.”
“No, no, no, princess. Baghdad is your true home, and the desert your garden.”
Ha! Some gardens I would be able to plant in the endless sand.
“A fair maiden like you does not belong in the icy land of the barbarians.”
“My father is not a barbarian.” Not often, leastways. “And let me repeat: Thank you, but nay, I am not interested.”
