One feels that the whole story is a masterpiece of lying, and it is not difficult to learn the truth. Round the bed of the unconscious Andronicus Cantacuzenus and his mother and friends pursued a desperate intrigue for power. Anna was young and helpless, and might be used for furthering their plan. Xene, however, watched their intrigue with furious anger and fear, and pitted her hatred against that of the mother of Cantacuzenus. Constantine was thrust in a loathsome and secret dungeon by Cantacuzenus, lest any faction should remember that he was the real heir to the throne. Even the old ex-Emperor at Constantinople was approached, and was offered the alternative of death, exile or the monk’s tonsure. With many tears he embraced the least painful of the three proposals and adopted the name of Antony. The triumph of Cantacuzenus seemed to be assured when, to their astonishment and mortification, Andronicus emerged from his stupor and returned to health.
Xene at once appealed to her son to punish the intriguers, but he was either deceived by the hypocritical professions of Cantacuzenus or not strong enough to face his hostility. Xene now felt that she had incurred their mortal vindictiveness and retired to Thessalonica. There she induced the citizens to swear that they would protect her, and she even adopted as her son the wily and accommodating Sir Janni, who governed the province. Sir Janni had not long to wait for his reward—the fortune of his “mother.” She died four years later (1334), and was buried at Thessalonica, having run a strange course since she had nervously quitted her Armenian home thirty-eight years before.
The older Andronicus had died two years before, at the age of seventy-two. Nicephorus Gregoras, our best authority for the time, tells us how he spent a night in pleasant conversation with the old man in February 1332. Andronicus, or Antony, died the next day, and was buried in his monkish robe. The same passage of Gregoras gives us our penultimate reference to the interesting Simonides. She was present at the conversation, and we seem to be justified in inferring that she “kept house” for her father. The last glimpse we have of her is a fitting crown to her strange career. We faintly discern her, some years later, as a royal nun in the Court of her nephew and former lover.
CHAPTER XVIII
ANNA OF SAVOY
The first wife of Andronicus III., Irene of Brunswick, had died prematurely five years after her marriage. Andronicus had quickly recovered from his grief, and plunged again into his customary pleasures, but his grandfather insisted that the throne of the Empress must not remain vacant. Whatever substitute for an “Almanach de Gotha” the times afforded was scanned once more, and it was discovered that the young Count of Savoy had an eligible sister named Jeanne. The little principality, which was destined to have so important an influence on the fortunes of Europe, had only recently been carved out of the German Empire, and the name of the ruling house was in high esteem. It was still, however, a mere patch of the hills and valleys of Switzerland, and, when legates came from the Byzantine Court for the hand of Jeanne, she was readily yielded to them.
Whether Anna, as the Greeks promptly christened her, would find Constantinople equal to the reputation of its splendour that still lingered in Europe may be doubted. The majority of the gorgeous palaces in which our earlier Empresses had moved were now heaps of ruins. From the roofs of the public and imperial buildings the copper had been torn to make coin, and the marble from their facades and halls had gone to deck the palaces of Venice and Genoa. Great stretches of desolate, ruin-encumbered spaces existed within the crumbling walls, and the streets no longer glittered with a proud display of domestic treasure on the balconies as a royal cavalcade passed along. Some gold and silver may still have lingered in the reduced palaces before the disastrous civil war, but the display now made in the imperial households and processions was largely a display of imitation diamonds and gilded furniture. For the first time, in fact, we find Constantinople itself impressed by its visitors, even from the small Court in Savoy. The Count had sent with his sister a large escort of knights, and, as the marriage was deferred for eight months, they had ample time to exhibit their skill in tournaments. Why the marriage was postponed from February (1326) to October must be left more or less to the imagination. Cantacuzenus observes that Anna was indisposed after her journey, but one may find more enlightenment in his casual remark that Andronicus was ill and, after receiving his betrothed, went for some months into Thrace. It would probably be indelicate and impertinent to attempt a diagnosis. He returned in the autumn, married and crowned Anna, and permitted her train of knights to return to Savoy.
Since Byzantine history is too full of large and tragic matters to recount the small details of domestic life, and since the Empresses would in their early years, if they were fortunate, be confined to these small domestic interests, we pass lightly over the youth of Anna of Savoy. In the spring after their marriage she accompanied Andronicus to Didymoteichus, and would be faintly interested in the conferences of Andronicus and his mother with the King of Bulgaria. In the following year Andronicus dethroned his grandfather, and Anna found herself mistress of the Empire. The scene at Didymoteichus during the illness of her husband two years afterwards would complete her introduction to Byzantine politics, and make her realize the importance of Cantacuzenus and his friends.
Andronicus was, however, still a comparatively young man, and it was probable that he would outlive the older intriguers about him. He was only thirty-four years old at the time of his dangerous illness, and he returned to his boisterous sports and gaieties. In 1332 Anna, who was at Didymoteichus, gave birth to a son, and Andronicus came on the scene in a mood of wild rejoicing. His Olympic games and Western jousts alarmed and scandalized elderly ministers, who shuddered to see the sacred breast of an Emperor expanded boldly to meet a lance. But he laughed at etiquette, told his courtiers to put away the kind of silk-covered mitres that they had hitherto been compelled to wear at Court, and allowed them to have any dress or headgear they pleased. Fun and good-fellowship were his ideals. He kept, to the despair of the imperial treasurer, a vast number of hounds, horses and hawks, and there was no better way to secure a favour than to present him with a good dog or horse.
It is just to add that Andronicus made a sincere attempt to improve the administration of justice in the Empire, but apart from this one sincere and fruitless effort at reconstruction he danced down the road of death like all his frivolous subjects. A little war, the suppression of a rebellion or two, and mighty hunting and jousting filled the thirteen years of his single reign. The Turk drew nearer and nearer, and received no very serious check. The city of Nicæa had now fallen into the hands of the Turks, and the crescent flashed on the shores of the Sea of Marmora. Andronicus could do little more than trust the old Byzantine weapon—intrigue, ruse, diplomacy. His sister Anna, who had married the Prince of Epirus, assassinated her husband and invited her brother to annex the territory. His daughter Irene, who had married the Emperor of Trebizond and found him unfaithful, assassinated her husband, and sent to Andronicus for a ruler. He was endeavouring to profit by these assassinations when death overtook him. Earlier in his reign the veteran Sir Janni had rebelled. Andronicus, knowing the mettle of his opponent, had fortified and victualled the palace, where he left Anna and her boy, and gone out to the field; but he removed the danger in the end by deception and assassination. At length, in the early summer of 1341, Andronicus became alarmingly ill. He shrewdly put off his stained purple and retired to a monastery, in preparation for death, and he passed away on 15th June, leaving Anna with two boys of nine and four years. Then began the romance of Anna of Savoy.