#gulsah / 001.

[komnenid]

@gvlsahs​

The hot June sun pulsed in the air, rubbing the French queen’s skin into a rosy, olive glow. Smooth, dexterous hands extend to the children gamboling past – brandishing ribbons woven in the blue-and-gold of the Capetian crown – or to accept golden deniers, melted and embossed with King Charles’s mighty profile. His bull-necked confidence, such that Caesar could only hope to possess; the Aquiline slope of his nose, such that poxed Antony’s valorous visage. Anna ushers the people toward the castle for benediction, to replenish their cups at the King’s fountains of wine, her keen, dark eyes trained on the magnificent stone fortresses and cathedral spires that rise up into the Parisian skyline, the sun so bright as to appear whitish, the hue of whipped yolks, hung by heavenly clouds.

The day’s festivities –– and the overwhelming heat –– meld seamlessly in Anna’s Byzantine blood, though the Pope’s lingering presence, in the city, and at her husband’s side, hardly bottled any warm promise within her. Indeed, she had been anointed a Catholic consort, dabbed with holy oil at the scalp and breast by the realm’s finest archbishop, but among the low-voiced conferences shared with her ladies and bishops, Queen Anges’ prayers pealed out for the Orthodox church, and in the transcendental Greek tongue. Heaven help her, thought she, if any among Innocence’s extravagant farce peered through her crenelated resolve. 

Spying a familiar face in the crowd, Anna drops a generous coin purse into the slick palms of her ladies and rushes to join Gülsah at her side, her skirts crushing over a train of rose-petals and herbs scattered about the concubine. ‘Sultana,’ Anna purred with an ostentatious sweep of her arm, linen and silk embroidered with the fleur-de-lis of her adopted, schismatic kingdom latching onto the breeze like an eagle in flight. ‘Will you bow to me as a Queen, or may we continue our tradition of sisterly barbs?’

[komnenid]

@gvlsahs continued from x (blame tumblr)

Gülsah’s effusive praise brought a bright gleam to wreath Agnes’ mouth, laughter to spill lawlessly from her breast. It had, indeed, been an age since they last parted – Anna recalled the salt breeze stinging at her beestung lips as the Ottomans’ fleet of magnificent ships glided out from the Prosphorion, billowing under the languid Constantinople sun, bearing Byzantine gold and benedictions and precious relics in their wooden underbellies. For a fleeting moment Anna had felt her eyes burn with hot tears, rolling over her hand as brought two fingers to her lips, a sinuous, sensual prayer, a reverent adieu. Then, it had seemed an impossibility that she, an imperial princess, should ever see the silken sirens she had grown to adore, the family that would soon become an adversary of the Empire; but Fate had seen her so gloriously apportioned, saddled with riches and blazing with divinity, that Gülsah should now be a guest of her adopted kingdom.

Whatever eyes be upon them, condemning the odious, extravagant bond between two Easterners, the Queen damned them; pressing Gülsah into her chest and ringing with laughter at her taunt. ‘I would be sorry indeed if they did not. Come, I know that you will not try the wine, but you must try the granatus. My brother, Prince Louis, brought it from his sojourn to Castile, and I think you will love it as well as you love me.’ Anna interwove their hands, jeweled fingers clinking together and secured with warm affection, as she led the Sultana toward the banqueting table, spangling with delicacies and silver goblets aplenty.

A jongluer approached to fill the lady’s cups, as Anna turned to her companion, ‘pray, tell me of your son. Whispers hath reached mine ears that he was hatched, rather than born, as recounted by one of my lord king's devout priests, akin to Zeus's own mother. I said this couldn’t possibly be true, yet when I gaze upon thy delicate frame, it appears you have not borne any offspring at all. What concealed secrets have you for a I, a woman whose crimson cramps are unfailing?’ As if to prove her point, Anna laid her hands flat against her belly, spreading her fingers across the blue-and-gold band across her waist.