Several guards wearing oblique cloaks lifted the light gauze curtain on their shoulders, and sitting among the embroidered pillows was little Anna. Komnenos, her eyes fixed on Idorus, who was about to be banished, "I'm here to see you off, Mentor. ”

Idorus hurriedly walked over, half-knelt in front of his shoulder, and saluted the eldest princess, "In the Cathedral of St. John, my collection of books is there, and I don't take any of them with me. Two years ago, when you came with your father, you fell in love with it, so I made an agreement with the deacons who stayed in the church to seal the library and then just yours. With that, Idorus slipped a key out of his cuff and landed in Anna's palm, as if he had been prepared, and then he smiled knowingly at the eldest princess.

Although Anna was only eleven years old, she was more mature and steady than other children of the same age, and she ran out of the gap between her father's private deliberations with the guards, because she knew that her father had given a vigorous and uncompromising order to Imam Idorus, and there was no room for forgiveness, and even the Patriarch Maastas was dumbfounded, so she anxiously walked out of the palace and came to the royal docks at the Golden Horn, to see off her mentor on her last journey—who knows if her mentor would survive after twenty years of exile? Maybe this is goodbye.

She will never forget the time when Anna met her spiritual mentor, it was a sunny winter afternoon, it was the time of the New Year's ceremony, she saw the white-haired mentor, standing in the middle of countless piled up scrolls, each of which exuded a golden precious light, and when she realized it, the mentor turned back and stretched out his hand to her, very amiable, where she met countless pagan sages, and he felt that the words on the scrolls were like beautiful notes dancing on the strings, But what is played is not a long and dreary hymn, but a real part of human wisdom, love, conquest and sorrow.

"Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Ovid, Virgil" Anna, holding the key, with long eyelashes and tears in her eyes, gave a string of shining names to her mentor, but in this day and age they were all overshadowed by the power and brilliance of the Lord, perhaps only a "dangerous humanist" like Anna would mention it, and fortunately she was the daughter of the emperor.

"Yes, I'll leave it all to you now." As she spoke, Idorus patted the railing on his shoulder, and turned to walk towards the place where Peter and Gawain stood.

"Man is the measure of all things." Anna looked at the back of her mentor and finally said this sentence to say goodbye.

Then Gawain also turned around, holding the hilt of the sword with Peter's rosary hanging on it, and slowly walked towards the ranks where Anna was shouldered. Anna carefully placed the key in the hanging bag under her shoulder, and then she looked at Gawain, "Hey, you stupid big brute, you could have directly served as the captain of the shield guard, and you have an income of two gold pounds a year, and now you refuse to kiss your father's boots, so you can start as a big soldier, and your salary for a year is only twenty gold coins, which is only eight gold coins more than ordinary peasant soldiers." ”

"But I still appreciate your love and the emperor." Gawain then took up the duffel roll, and then took the piece of leavened bread that Peter had sent him in his mouth, and followed Anna back to the palace, behind whom the birds were flocking in the direction of the setting sun, over the vast bays and cities, not knowing where they had gone.

"It's strange that you use leavened bread, could it be that the monk who baptized you is Orthodox? But where did Denmark come from? Anna turned her head and glared at the loaf of bread in Gawain's hand, and said, "Hmph, go to the camp of the Emperor's Guard outside the Brachna Palace at once, it is full of strange heretics, unbaptized Varyag barbarians, but fortunately you are not bad, you must know that my father hired five thousand Varyags and Saxons, but only one of them can be selected for the shield guard, nine hundred." ”

At this time, in the emperor's chamber in Brachna's palace, Alexios, escorted by his guards and accompanied by Nikdemia, entered a side hall, and the guard Theognis followed cautiously, almost counting the marble floors under his feet, for fear that one step across two floors would be despised and reprimanded.

Then in the side hall, the queen Irene, with a crown and pendant beads, dressed in a long robe inlaid with gold plates and jewels, sat on the chair in the room, and the emperor stopped, he looked at his pillow man with some embarrassment and displeasure, and the honorable woman who had engraved the imperial gold and silver coins with him at the same time, coughed dryly, and said to Irene, "I am going to have a very confidential matter soon, so you should wait in the inner room, waiting for John and Anna to return, and see if the children are willing to sleep with you tonight." If they do not want to, let the maids and eunuchs serve them and sleep in other palaces. ”

Queen Irene clearly felt this cold tone, her breathing secretly rushed and excited, after so many years, when she married him was a teenage girl, and then she gave birth to the lovely and intelligent eldest princess Anna, and the heir of the empire, Prince John, and several other children, but he, Alexios, always regarded her as a coin head, a lifeless sculpture in the court, who would love these things? What's more, his husband has never abandoned his attempt to give up the throne to another child!

So in the next minute, the queen sat in her seat without knowing how to advance or retreat, which made the atmosphere of the scene even more embarrassing, "Erin, as a queen, must behave as an example for the servants in the court. Alexios, who seemed to be disgusted to see her even for a minute, openly uttered these words that expressed strong emotions. Several of the maids who accompanied the queen were immediately frightened, lifted the long skirt of Erin, who was slowly standing up, and half-forcibly hugged the queen down the corridor.

After a while, Alexios spoke in a tone of resentment, "You mean, Myaulinus. Ducasse secretly let Norman's Bohemond go! ”

"Yes, otherwise I would not have dared to instigate such a rebellious remark against the Ducasse family!" The captor knelt on the ground, sure and terrified.

Of course he knew that the queen's name was Erin. Ducasse - Yes, Caesar is the eldest brother of the Empress, and Theodora, the sister of the Emperor, is Caesar's wife.

The whole world of the Roman Empire was ruled by the Commnenos and the Ducasses, and if he dared to create a rift between the two families, he would probably be just as Mycollinus had warned before, "Tomorrow your head will not turn around your neck."