How to Slay a Dragon Page 15

  Textbooks: a pretty boring way to bring the Old Gods back, even if the title is great.

  STRATEGY #4: DON’T EXPLAIN THE PYRAMIDS

  But there was another theory floating around—one that al-Idrisi tried to cover up and few other people dared mention. This theory agrees with al-Idrisi’s belief that the pyramids can and will survive until the apocalypse.

  On the other hand, this theory has no use for astrology, alchemy, or Trismegistus under any name. Instead, it whispers that we do not now and never will know the secrets of the pyramid builders. We will never know what they knew. We will never know who they were. For all the splendor of their monuments, the builders have vanished.

  And herein lies the reason that people in the Middle Ages partied at the pyramids, plundered the pyramids, and explained the existence of the pyramids as anything except the creation of unknown gods or people. The great monuments had endured to that day. They testified to human expertise, craftsmanship, and glory. They revealed a height of skill that medieval writers had never observed in their own time.

  And yet, even the people who built the greatest marvels in the world could vanish without a trace. Those who dared to create monuments meant to last forever had still crumbled to dust. And in their silence, the pyramids proclaimed “You will crumble, too.”

  12. The title as translated by Martyn Smith, “Pyramids in the Medieval Islamic Landscape: Perceptions and Narratives,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 43 (2007): 1.

  WINNING the WAR

  HOW to LIGHT the BEACONS

  With Vikings just off the Scottish coast in the days of Earl Rognvald, the people of Orkney didn’t hesitate. The glowing flames on the horizon leapt from island to island, blazing their warning far more quickly than any ship could sail or any pigeon could fly. And the message continued to pass by fire and smoke until all the people were warned.

  Oh, indeed, people in the Middle Ages called for aid with signal fires. Wouldn’t you? Fire beacons were part of the mythological past that medieval Europe so admired, supposedly used to herald world-shattering events like the fall of Troy. In fact, they were so important in the Middle Ages that Europeans found every way they could to teach heroes just like you (or more realistically, heroes’ helpers like your traveling companions) how to light the beacons to warn of approaching doom.

  1. LINGUISTICS (NO, REALLY)

  Early medieval English kingdoms may not have realized it, but they probably lit their signal fires on the graves of their predecessors. You say long-gone Iron Age people built flat-topped hills called barrows as funerary mounds? And that Saxons also used them as cemeteries in the post-Roman days? Perfect! The seemingly random scattering of place names based on Old English words for “lookout” is not so random if you can arrange them into chains connecting Mercian or Wessex settlements. It’s even less random when experiments show that fire and smoke can actually be seen from one to another.

  2. LAWS

  Aragon, Portugal, and all the other kingdoms fighting it out on the Spanish frontier quickly established two cardinal rules of conquest. The best way to claim land was to get people to move there, and the best way to steal it was to kill or enslave them. The people involved in the moving process learned that signal fires were a great way to lower their chances of being involved in the killing and enslavement process. Town laws from the eleventh to the thirteenth century grew increasingly specific about what people were at least supposed to do when a riding messenger brought news of a threat to the town or castle.

  Are you a town watchman? Great—light a signal fire on top of the watchtower and make sure the church rings its bells. An ordinary villager who sees the fire? If you hurry to the castle gates fast enough, they might even have room for some of your livestock. But the unluckiest had twenty-four hours to get themselves and their weapons to the nearest town or militia, and thus risk of death. Twenty-four hours… or sometimes twelve.

  So, when someone comes running into your courtyard yelling that the beacons of Aragon are lit, you better grab your sword and run.

  3. CHRONICLES

  Medieval chronicle writers take pride in recounting their victories over aquatic threat, to… varying… degrees of trustworthiness. (Pro tip: providing place names tends to make your account a little more reliable.) It’s Charlemagne’s grandson who casually mentions how his very clever grandpa set up beacons along the Seine River so the warning could beat the boats to Paris. A man who may or may not have been named Ernoul, and who may or may not have seen it for himself, described a true beacon network in Crusader Syria that radiated outward from Damascus until all the land was roused.

  Or set chronicles aside and check out Byzantine military manuals. Some of these guides are old-fashioned and theoretical. But some talk about a tenth-century chain of fire stretching hundreds of miles from Constantinople in the north down to the Taurus Mountains near the Syrian border. Archaeologists have evidence that this beacon system actually existed.

  4. COMPLAINING

  The men who actually had to, you know, sit on the towers during English king Edward III’s reign (r. 1327–1377) were exactly as thrilled about it as you will be. Letters, regulations, and every other use of writing on parchment flew back and forth trying to make sure the beacons had people to light them.

  Okay, fine, you only need four, five, or six people to actually run one of the coastal beacons. The response battalions only have to be able to see it. Oh, the wood’s getting wet? That’s no excuse; start using pitch as fuel instead.

  No, the Black Death doesn’t mean you can stay home. Yes, really, all of you are getting drafted. And you have to move to near the coast as long as the French are out there. (No, it doesn’t matter that the French navy is terrible.)

  But the real complaining about the coastal beacon system—the strongest evidence of all for its existence—came from exactly who you’d expect: the people who had to fund it. All the people who had to fund it. For instance, there’s the don’t make us send money, Canterbury edition. Don’t make us send money, Devon edition. Don’t make us send money, Kent and Sussex and Budleigh and Surrey and Parliament edition. Evidently the real problem in England was taxation with representation.

  * * *

  Of course, even if you weren’t one of the people staring at the same stretch of empty ocean all day, every day, beacon systems had their downsides. The authors of the Norse sagas, writing their stories halfway between history and legend, certainly envisioned plenty of them. Their characters crafted or suffered from false alarms triggered by elaborate Viking strategies and false alarms triggered by ordinary fishing boats. Then they had sword fights over who to blame for the false alarms.

  Other possible issues: You run out of wood and don’t have the time to replace it; you run out of wood and don’t have the money to replace it. You don’t run out of wood, but an enemy saboteur poured water over all the available wood and it won’t burn. One saga author tried to explain away a Viking invasion by insisting that the beacon guardians were so intent on scrutinizing the eastern horizon for fires that they just… forgot to look to the west.

  And sometimes it was just the universe in general that ruined things. In December 1346, Edward III gave up and sent everyone home because, in short, England has terrible weather.

  HOW to SAVE the PRINCESS

  THE PRINCESS

  Because actual princesses tend to have their own thoughts on whether or not they need rescuing (and whether or not they want you to do it), you might need a few more people than usual to provide guidance. So, listen up.

  We’ll ease in slowly with the piece of advice you probably don’t need; that the place you wanted to be in the Middle Ages was literally anywhere except the Byzantine court. The place where Princess Euphrosyne, our exemplum, was born? The Byzantine court.

  Her mother, Maria, would have made the better fairy-tale princess. Maria was the daughter of a good-hearted but bumbling father from a rural area in the north of Anatolia. In 788, she
was (supposedly) chosen for her beauty to journey to the imperial capital at Constantinople and (supposedly) compete for the hand of none other than Emperor Constantine VI.

  Constantine had previously been betrothed to the daughter of Charlemagne (yes, that Charlemagne). And yet he (or possibly his mother, Irene) chose the daughter of an unnamed, obscure nobleman from a backwater province instead. The royal couple quickly had two daughters, Euphrosyne and her younger sister, Princess also Irene.

  Unfortunately for all involved, Constantine VI was also the emperor who:

  lost a bunch of wars

  had to blind and castrate his rivals to hold on to power

  divorced and exiled Maria and his own daughters

  married his mistress

  was blinded and deposed by his own mother

  and ended up so hated that nobody even bothered to note what year he died

  Byzantine court politics do not mess around.

  Thus, Maria’s Prince Charming proved to be somewhat less than charming, and in 795 she ended up unhappily exiled to an island monastery along with her kindergarten-age daughters: a true fairy tale ending hardly the happily ever after of a fairy tale. So, enter Maria and Constantine’s older daughter, our true heroine: Princess Euphrosyne.

  Well, first enter the parts where

  Constantine’s mother blinded, deposed, and exiled her own son

  (This is your periodic reminder that anesthesia does not yet exist)

  Nikephoros deposed and exiled then-Empress Irene

  Emperor Nikephoros defeated a coup

  Emperor Nikephoros lost his head in battle one day and… lost his head

  (On the other hand, sometimes anesthesia isn’t very useful)

  Staurakios inherited the throne for two entire months

  Michael I deposed, exiled, and possibly assassinated Emperor Staurakios

  Leo V deposed and exiled Emperor Michael I, eyes and organs intact

  To prevent future rebellions, Emperor Leo V castrated Michael I’s sons

  (But sometimes you really do want anesthesia)

  There was also the part where Leo V decided his military expertise qualified him to make a sweeping change to Christianity itself that turned a whole bunch of high-ranking Byzantines into heretics overnight. Minor details.

  So now it’s 820. Now ex-Empress Maria, ex-wife of the emperor five emperors ago, is locked behind convent walls and seething. Twenty-five-year-old Princess Euphrosyne has spent nearly her entire life behind those convent walls.

  Now the princess is ready to be rescued. Five emperors, one empress, and two attempted emperors later.

  THE PRINCE

  Because this is the opposite of a real fairy tale, the future Michael II (770–829) probably began life as an uneducated peasant. Even better, he was possibly born into a religious sect scorned by both iconophiles and iconoclasts alike. (A feat that took some effort and did not have good consequences for its believers.)

  As the story goes, Michael only joined the Byzantine army because it was a family obligation. He had a speech disability and no formal education, let alone even the most remote of political positions. But none of those stopped him from distinguishing himself for bravery and skill in battle. During the 790s, he rose to military prominence under the watch of the great general Leo.

  Naturally, Michael and Leo did decide to mess around with Byzantine court politics. Somehow, though, the two of them survived more than a decade of imperial intrigue as close confidants. You can guess how this part of the story goes. In 813, Leo ascended to the throne as Emperor Leo V, secured the line of succession, and elevated Michael to one of the highest-ranking government positions. Michael wasn’t ready to rescue anyone just yet. But he was another step closer.

  In 820, the warm and fuzzy story of a mentor and his protégé came to the tragic and bloody end you were expecting. Michael had spent some number of years building a military faction behind Leo’s back—until the last months of 820, when Leo figured this out and threw him into the sort of jail from which people do not come back out.

  And of all people, it was Leo’s wife—his dear, dear Theodosia—who may or may not have spearheaded her husband’s murder. She convinced Leo to delay Michael’s execution, which turned out to be just long enough for Michael’s forces to kill the emperor first. In a church. During the service. On Christmas Day.

  Whether or not Theodosia had organized the Christmas mocking, the imperial crown became Michael’s Christmas gift to himself. He thanked Theodosia for her service to the empire by castrating and exiling her and Leo’s sons instead of castrating and executing them.

  And so, 820 becomes 821. The princess has been ready to be saved for a while now, and now there is a prince mostly charming who can save her.

  NOPE, NOT QUITE YET

  Michael’s reign was born in tragedy and raised in tears, because this is Byzantium. His other friend from his army days had also spent Leo’s reign gathering a faction of military supporters. But while Michael built his power in Constantinople—the imperial capital, importantly, but still just one city—Thomas did so in all of Anatolia.

  And the two of them weren’t about to break the chain of emperor bloodshed by making some kind of Christmas treaty. Thomas laid siege to Constantinople. Michael called in the Bulgarians. The Anatolians defeated the Bulgarians in battle. The Bulgarians somehow ended up the real winners. And in 823 Thomas ended up dead.

  But things hadn’t exactly been better inside besieged Constantinople than outside it, because this is Byzantium. Michael was fifty years old when the imperial crown was placed on his head, so like most Byzantine men that age, he had a wife and child.

  In 823, Michael oversaw the execution of his former friend, crawled exhausted into bed—and woke up to the death of his wife.

  THE RESCUE

  You’ll recall that Leo V had turned either himself or the entire Byzantine religious establishment into heretics. Then he had been horrifically murdered in church on a religious holiday. Michael and his allies learned their lesson. They decided to break only small Church rules, in hopes that God wouldn’t bother to punish them for such minor sins. Or rather, they wanted someone to break Church rules on their behalf. Because there were three facts:

  Nuns vow themselves to perpetual chastity and residence in a cloister.

  Princess Euphrosyne was a nun.

  Marrying a princess would legitimize Michael’s hold on power.

  The third of those was not, historically speaking, true, because this was the Byzantine court, and legitimate power was generally a matter of opinion. It is not a matter of opinion, however, that Euphrosyne did indeed leave her convent, and she and Michael were married in 823 or 824.

  Unfortunately for you, we have no idea how Michael pulled it off. Euphrosyne was a princess locked behind convent walls, and then she was an empress. That is the sum total of what our sources say. Not so good for finding out how you can pull off the same feat… great for Michael’s reputation. Because he probably succeeded by paying off the abbess. I mean, he donated money to the convent. A donation.

  Some rescue.

  THE HAPPILY EVER AFTER

  Byzantium gets a happily ever after?

  Euphrosyne never returned to the convent where she had been exiled for two decades. Michael reigned for around nine years, with her at his side the entire time. The royal couple had no children, so there was no second son to scheme a way to inherit the throne instead of the emperor’s only son from his earlier marriage, Theophilos. In fact, the three family members seem to have gotten along well. Euphrosyne probably helped arrange her stepson’s marriage to a provincial noblewoman, Theodora, which would never have happened without his father’s approval.

  Michael died in 829, at nearly sixty years old, and Theophilos inherited the throne peacefully.

  Really.

  Theophilos reigned for nearly thirteen years before falling sick and dying in the palace. Theodora was at his side the entire time. When her husband d
ied, Theodora took over de facto rule as regent and became one of the most powerful women in Byzantine history.

  You wanted guidance for how to save a princess? Well, Michael II was accused of treason, was imprisoned and nearly murdered, beat the charge, murdered the emperor instead, seized the throne, started a royal dynasty, and saved the princess.

  Not bad for a country kid with a disability.

  The PRINCESS SAVES HERSELF

  You’re this far into your quest, and you haven’t started longing for your beautiful and idyllic village? You haven’t wished that no mysterious stranger had ever encouraged you to claim your destiny to fight the forces of evil? Remember the part where Satan taught you how to read, and John of Morigny tried to tell you that not being pursued by supernatural hordes of evil was better than being able to read? Good thing you disagreed, because right now it’s 1489 and you’re standing in Regensburg, earning some much-needed money as an abused servant to the owner of a printshop. You’ve definitely been getting a little restless, so it’s good that you’ve formulated a way to revise your quest based on a hot tip in a printed tabloid pamphlet. Kunigunde of Austria, the daughter of the Holy Roman emperor, and her husband have been the subject of steamy gossip since her birth in 1465. Two years ago, Kunigunde married Duke Albrecht of Bavaria. That pamphlet has sounded the alarm about the duke’s nefarious intentions. Looks like the job for a hero: you’ve got a princess to save.