But, just as obviously, the tension of the moment had passed. Even the young bravos were relaxed, now, exchanging half-amicable words with Syrian grenadiers. And she could see women and children, too, here and there, as well as old folks. The children, filled with eager curiosity. The women, beginning to banter with the Syrian wives. And the old folks, of course—not for them this useless time-wasting—were already setting up their foodcarts and vending stalls. Life comes; life goes. Business is here today.
“Very good,” Antonina murmured. “Very good.”
Euphronius tried to maintain an officer’s dignity, but his quiet relief at her approval was evident.
She smiled down at him. “Leave half your grenadiers here, Hermogenes. Along with Triphiodoros and his infantry. Just in case. Doesn’t look as if the Greens showed up today. Maybe that’s because they usually side with the Monophysites, but maybe it’s because they’re just dithering. If they change their minds, I want grenadiers here to change it back.”
Euphronius nodded.
“Meanwhile, I want you and the rest to come with me.”
She cocked her head, admiring the collapsed storefront. Her smile turned positively feral.
“I need some demolition experts.”
By nightfall, the House of St. Mark was a pile of rubble. Buried beneath that mound of wooden beams and sundried brick were the bodies of perhaps a hundred ultra-orthodox monks. Nobody knew the exact number. From the rooftop and the windows, the monks had shrieked their defiance at the surrounding troops. Vowing never to surrender. They had particularly aimed their words at the figure of the small woman in armor sitting on a horse.
We will not yield to the Whore of Babylon!
And other phrases—considerably more vulgar—to that effect.
Antonina had not minded. Not in the least. She would not have accepted their surrender even if it had been offered. So, cheerfully, she waited for several minutes before ordering the grenadiers into action. Establishing, for the public record, that the monks had brought their doom onto themselves.
Murmuring, under her breath, a gay little jingle, as the grenades drove the monks into the interior of the huge monastery:
She’s back, she’s back!
The whore is back!
Chuckling quietly, as the sappers set the charges:
Alas, Alexandria!
Thy judgement has come!
Chortling aloud, as the walls came tumbling down:
How are the righteous fallen!
Chapter 34
Antonina rose before dawn the next morning, at an hour which normally found her fast asleep. But she was determined to drive through her reestablishment of imperial control without allowing the opposition a moment to regain their equilibrium.
Her servants bustled about, preparing her breakfast and clothing. When the time came to don her armor, Antonina was amused by the way her maid ogled the cuirass.
“The thing’s obscene, I’ll admit,” she chuckled.
She walked over and examined the cuirass lying on an upholstered bench against the far wall of her sleeping chamber. Jutting into the air.
“Especially since my reputation must have grown in the telling, by the time the armorer got around to shaping his mold.”
Firmly: “My tits are not that big.”
The maid eyed her hesitantly, unsure of how to respond. The girl was new to Antonina’s service. Antonina’s regular maid had become ill at sea, and this girl had been hastily rounded up by her head servant Dubazes from the staff of the palace’s former occupant.
There had been few of that staff left, when they arrived. Upon the arrival of Antonina’s fleet, and the destruction of the naval forces which tried to block her way into the Great Harbor, the former owner had fled Alexandria. He was a Greek nobleman with close ties to Paul and Ambrose’s faction, and had apparently decided that discretion was the better part of valor. He would wait out the storm at his estate in far-off Oxyrhynchos.
Antonina thought about that nobleman, as her maid helped her into the armor. Not about him so much—she didn’t even know the man’s name—but about what he represented. He was not alone in his actions. A very large part of Alexandria’s Greek nobility had done likewise.
By the time she was buckling on the scabbard which held her cleaver, a task for which the maid was no use at all, she had made her decision. Two decisions, actually. Possibly three.