True Successor: A Novel of the New Roman Empire

By Joseph H. Levie

It is 1812 in Sapoda, a small crossroads town nestled in the neutral zone between the New Roman and Mongol Empires. Mikail de Reuter, a young political officer bored by his job and worried about his prospects, is only there to visit his girl. But Mongol cavalry looking to clear a path for an invasion come to kill him. He knows he has been betrayed and runs for his life.
In New Rome Emperor Charles Martel IV has had to contend with many enemies just to keep Charlemagnes crown on his headand that head on his shoulders. So far he has managed to hold things together. In Mikails story he glimpses an enormous treasonable conspiracy years in building. As the Emperor begins a frantic hunt for them, the conspirators realize that unless they strike first they will soon be dead.
True Successor is a fast-moving good read and a trip to a fascinating New Rome for Alternate History buffs. Like Mikail we live briefly in that city and meet and hear not only the great men of the realm, but young lovers, clerks, soldiers and ordinary men and women shopping, drinking in its taverns and walking its streets.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475970678

Joseph H. Levie

Joseph H. Levie, an attorney and banker, has nurtured a lifetime interest in the Roman and Chinese empires. Since he first saw Charlemagne’s coronation robe and crown as a young man, he has wondered what would have become of Charlemagne’s empire had someone been able to revive it. He currently lives in New York.

Book preview

Book One

Mikail

April 1812

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Chapter I

Mikail

The young political officer had a girl in the village. He had met Karita a year ago when he had visited Sapoda to talk to the headman about smuggling. Close to the main road running through the neutral zone between the Roman and Mongol empires and only ten miles from the Mongol border, the village of Sapoda was a natural way-station for smugglers. Mikail had been spending most of his time on smuggling cases for no better reason than that his chief thought them important. No one else did; the Zone had always been a haven for smugglers.

The Sapoda headman was also the local man of substance. He owned the mill, some other property, and The Blonde Horseman, the only tavern in the village. His daughter Karita, a very young widow, was not on good terms with her stepmother so she managed the tavern and lived there on the second floor. When the headman housed him at the Horseman, Mikail had noticed the petite blonde waiting on him when her clever hands made a show out of deboning his fish. He spent the evening flirting with her. For her part, Karita seemed to like what she saw. Mikail de Ruyter was six feet tall with dark brown hair, blue eyes, and a trim little mustache anchoring his sunburned face. He had given his dinner order in Ukrainian, the language of the western provinces of the Mongol Empire. She came over to his table, bringing a bottle of wine and then surprised him, first by sitting down and then by unexpectedly speaking Latin. The Inn’s very best, she said with a friendly smile, uncorking the bottle. Surprised and delighted, he showed it by smiling and thanking her for the wine in the courtliest Latin he could command, adding, I could listen to you all night. I had almost forgotten how lovely my own language sounds until I heard you speaking it. How did a girl like you get here?

I was born here, she said. My parents moved to Imponza when I was a baby. When I was seven, my mother died, and we moved back. Father remarried, but my stepmother and I do not like each other. We all agreed I would be happier with my uncle and aunt in Imponza, on the other side of the river. I went to school there in the Empire and came back here to get married. My husband died within a year, and I’ve been running the tavern ever since.

My sympathy on your husband’s death, Mikail said.

It was an arranged marriage. Daddy thought he was doing the right thing, but it was a terrible mistake. She paused and studied his uniform, What brings you here, red jacket?

Mikail laughed, Your father and my uniform. I’m here to talk about the smuggling problem with the headman of Sapoda while I drink his sour Dragonhead leaf tea, because I hope to be a diplomat some day. The smuggling is upsetting my chief, and I can’t see why. If you live here, you have to know that everybody in the Zone is involved. Yet, your father insists with a straight face, there is no smuggling here.

Karita made her face look angelic. Smuggling? Here? How could that ever happen?

"Besides making my day a lot brighter, whatever are you doing in Sapoda?"

I really don’t know, she sighed, although making your day brighter sounds like a good idea.

The bottle of wine had launched his best evening in a very long time. She so obviously enjoyed stretching her spirit’s limits and showing how pleased she was with their encounter, that he found himself talking to her seriously. There were plenty of blonde beauties in the Zone villages, but no lively, articulate girls. He told her how lonely and bored he was, how his chief’s patronizing ways irritated him, and how uncomfortable he was about his prospects for advancement. Officers of the Political Department were supposed to collect information and increase Roman influence if they wished for promotion to the elite Diplomatic Service. He had liked George Hoffman, his sector officer, but George had unkindly returned the favor by dead-ending Mikail at a desk, fussing over trivia. That was no way to build a record for transfer to the Diplomatic Service.

As Mikail opened up to her, Karita responded. She felt that she had been nowhere and done nothing since her schooling had ended. Her brief, arranged marriage with a rich old man from the next village had ended after a year when his horse had fallen on him. Karita did not miss her husband, but she was lonely. She hadn’t grown up in Sapoda and didn’t have a single friend there. The men were clods, and the Blonde Horseman bored her. Her stepmother was a figure out of a nasty fairy tale. She yearned for a better life in a bigger world.

He commiserated. She was too pretty and vivacious for a small town in the neutral zone between Rome and Mongolia. After three hours, Mikail felt happier than he had been for a long time and told her so before he finally dragged himself upstairs.

Not long after, there was a knock on his door, and in she slipped, pink and blushing, barefoot in a lacy white chemise. When morning came, Karita went downstairs to make a hot breakfast and brought it for them. Afterwards, they sat on the bed, arms around one another, and talked for hours. Mikail marveled; this girl was a laughing brook in a stony desert.

As he left, she stood on tiptoe to tell him with her parting kiss, Thank God you came, I was going to run away next week. I had already started to pack.

That had been exactly a year ago. Since then, he had seen her as often as he could get to Sapoda.

He had written Karita to say he would stop by on Thursday and stay over before going on to his monthly meeting with his sector officer, but here he was on Tuesday, two days early to surprise her with a one-year anniversary present, a turquoise necklace that echoed the color of her eyes. Mikail wasn’t at all sure what her father knew (and if he did, whether he wanted others to know) about his daughter’s lover. So rather than wearing his uniform, he was dressed in a peddler’s hooded coat that cast his sharp features into shadow, a costume he often had occasion to wear. Not everyone in the Zone wanted to be seen talking with the Emperor’s political officers.

Mikail put the necklace into his pack, tied up his horse in the woods a mile from the tavern, and sauntered down the road, enjoying the hundred shades of green in the first blush of the Moldavian Spring. He began to think about putting the necklace around her smooth lovely neck that night. He would wait until she was naked to have the pleasure of seeing it hanging between her generous breasts. The thought of bedding her caused him to whistle in anticipation. Certainly, she was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and he kept thinking ahead to the night’s pleasures, but—a dash of cold water—it had to come to an end. The Political Service might ignore an officer’s affair with a Zonian—its junior officers were young, unmarried men with healthy appetites and that was how the Service liked them—but Karita was an extreme conflict of interest made lovely flesh.

Nor would his family be of any help. His father was long dead, and Lucas, his ambitious older brother, was head of the family. Lucas loved Mikail, mentored him, had gotten him this job, and still was his most important supporter, but he insisted so often and so vehemently that he was not a stuffed shirt that he ended up proving the contrary. Worse, Lucas and his wife, especially his wife, would consider Karita an embarrassment to Lucas’s own career. As the head of a Roman family, Lucas had a legal right to prevent an unsuitable marriage. Still, Mikail felt that he and Karita could go on for the present with clear consciences. Karita had no one else, at least that he knew of. He wouldn’t stand in her way if something better came along, would he? He had told her so, and they were both of age, weren’t they? As if to prove he was right, the sun came out from behind the small cloud that had hidden it.

He emerged from his daydream smiling and looked around. A few hundred yards before the tavern a tannery and smithy huddled near the stone bridge over a small, fast flowing stream two hundred yards down from a water-driven mill. Together they comprised Sapoda’s tiny industrial district. The tannery’s stench and the smithy’s fire kept them away from Sapoda’s reed-thatched wooden houses. Approaching the two establishments, still glowing with love, Mikail couldn’t believe what he saw. Not fifty yards away, riding down from the village towards the smithy, were three uniformed Mongol cavalrymen and a string of horses trotting on a lead held by a middle-aged sergeant with a grizzled mustache. The two soldiers riding behind the sergeant looked very young, probably recruits. A Mongol cavalry detail was as out of place on this country road as a line of spangled circus elephants, yet there was nothing clandestine about these riders. They sat in their saddles as if they knew exactly where they were going and belonged there.

The three turned off the road towards the smithy. The instant he saw their backs, Mikail slipped into the woods and crouched between the broad trunk of an old oak and a boulder to observe them. The smith’s helper came out of the shed, and the sergeant bawled at him, Hey, Fydor, send out big-muscles-and-tiny-brain. I have paying work. The sergeant’s Ukrainian had an accent, but was not bad. He’s been here before and done this, Mikail thought. Sure enough, the blacksmith was already standing in the door, primed to return fire by loudly telling his helper, Fydor, ask the horse’s ass on that horse’s ass what brings the great Khan’s worst sorrow here to honor us.

One of the troopers started to snicker, but as the sergeant began to turn in the saddle, he quickly changed his expression.

The sergeant retained his dignity by pretending not to have heard the insult. Horses need reshoe, he told the smith. We pay same as last time. How long you take?

Easy enough, the smith answered. You in a hurry?

Yes, the Mongol said, We have job to do on somebody here Thursday. Then must rejoin our tuman fast as can ride. Big operation on the way, probably next week. Our big man wants us, buttons shiny, ready to go.

Then take your men to the tavern for an hour, said the smith. Have a drink, and when you come back, I can tell you how long I’ll take. But do me a favor, Jelem. Don’t force yourself on that pretty little blonde. The last time was ugly. She’s has a hard enough life, and right now she’s probably crying her eyes out in the kitchen because we both know who’s going to get hurt by that little job that brings you to Sapoda.

Those soldiers are looking for me, Mikail thought. Looking for me and no one else. Why else would Karita be crying? They knew when to expect me. I’ve been betrayed. Crouched behind his rock he was very frightened. Political officers lived and worked in foreign territory without diplomatic immunity. Why had the Mongols singled him out? The Mongols had a reputation for cruelty and torture. The idea of falling into their hands was terrifying.

A sense of urgency that was close to panic overwhelmed him. I can’t stay here, I’ll be killed. My duty is to warn the Emperor that an invasion is coming. The Mongols will be over the border, raping, pillaging, and burning our cities as they did in the past. I’m the only one who knows!

He realized he had to get back to his horse, his maps and his weapon. The compass in his pack would enable him to go cross-country through the woods. Move now! Move now! He’d get rid of his uniform and clean out his saddlebags so he could pass a checkpoint. But what about my silver card identifying me as a political officer? I’ll have to find a way to hide it. I’d better be well away before tomorrow. They’ll be sending out parties to watch the roads. Move! Don’t wait! Move!

He pushed down rising terror and took out the compass. Once the Mongols were out of sight and the smith and his helper had returned to their smithy, he ducked into the woods and started back, carefully watching where he stepped. He worked his way through the woods, keeping under cover and parallel to the road. Move now! Move now. Now! Now!

Twenty minutes later he found his horse and started to breathe normally. He poured the contents of his saddlebags out onto the ground and hastily sorted through them. His correspondence, a Latin-Ukrainian dictionary, a pocket copy of Virgil, Galilean binoculars, the manuals stamped with the Emperor’s portrait or the Imperial Political Department seal and anything else that might shriek ROMAN! and made them into a small pile. He added his uniform to the heap and carried it into the woods where he scratched a shallow hole in the ground with his short sword and covered it with a flimsy layer of dirt, leaves and sticks held down by small rocks. They’d be found, but by then it shouldn’t matter. He checked his weapons, a standard short sword that really was no more than a long dagger and a crossbow covered in a cloth sheath, along with two-dozen spare bolts. They would not attract attention; most travelers carried a weapon. The crossbow was only good for a single shot before reloading, but the bolt it fired could kill within two hundred feet.

Not much of a believer, Mikail said two Paternosters and tried to remember the right formula to commend his soul to God. He could not recollect the exact words and hoped God would accept the heartfelt intensity of his feelings. He started to put distance between himself and the village, carefully keeping to a moderate pace that would not attract attention and trying not to let the horse feel his anxiety. Not, he reflected, that there was much chance of his mare’s pace drawing unwanted attention. George did not believe in buying good horseflesh for his junior officers. He liked to say in a droll way that that fancy horseflesh gave a junior officer an improper perception of his importance. George’s own mount, of course, was another story.

It was almost ten a.m. Concentrated thinking now would distract him as he traveled. He could consider his position when he stopped to water the horse or let it graze. Survival tactics had been part of his training in Trier and in the annual refresher course. His instructors had preached over and over against the dangers of inattention. By half—past one, after the few people he passed had barely looked at him, he began to feel better. Finally, he spotted a small stream next to a grassy clearing and turned the mare’s head towards it. His teachers had insisted that once you were out of immediate danger, you should do exercises to calm your mind and then take time to consider what to do next. While his horse grazed, Mikail settled down to think.

Although he had come down this very road just a few hours before, he could hear the instructor’s voice saying, Careful, careful, take nothing for granted, as he took out his map. It revealed that in a few miles the road would fork, with the right turning towards the official border between the zone and Roman territory, the Velina, a narrow river less than a hundred feet wide, thirty miles away. Once across it, there was another thirty-five miles to the Pruj, a much broader river. The space between the two rivers was Roman territory but empty countryside in which the only sign of Roman presence was a military road constructed long ago to move troops up to the border when necessary. The area was uninhabited, except for smugglers and a few fishermen. It would not be safe. Mongol patrols might already be roaming it.

To reach safety Mikail had two rivers and over seventy miles to cross. His three-year-old mount would be tired long before he was safe. He had a good head start but the Mongols had numbers, experience, and plenty of remounts. His horse could ford the Velina, and afterwards, the Roman highway offered easy traveling, but it would not be safe, especially where it ran through open countryside and swamp. He might risk the forested road by daylight, but once out in the open, he would be too visible. When he finally arrived at the Pruj he would need a way to cross the big river.

As he rode he kept alert. It would be wise to replenish his supply of food, if only to keep his mind unclouded by hunger. It was too early in the year for berries or fruit, and he didn’t have time to grub for edible roots or ferns, but a peddler could bargain for a few loaves of bread without being conspicuous. The first town after the fork was Gadowa, but he would not pass through it because it was on the wrong side of the fork in the road. Gadowa held a fair every Friday. If a farmwife asked him, he would say he was going to the fair. But wouldn’t a peddler with nothing to sell be suspicious? He would say that his partner was already in Gadowa with their trade goods, and he wanted something to eat in the saddle as he rushed to catch up with him. Before he reached the fork he stopped at a wooden farmhouse in front of a large grove of linden trees, which meant the farmer kept bees. Near the house he found himself enjoying the early spring flowers and colorful blossoms on the bushes while listening to a goldfinch sing before he remembered that men were hunting him.

The farmwife was working in her kitchen garden when he walked over and told her his story, which elicited no reaction. She sold him two loaves of bread, a few big pieces of cheese, and some boiled ham for a fair price. He had been right about the bees; he could hear them buzzing in the field. Mikail liked sweets. He asked the farmwife for a piece of honeycomb.

Don’t have any left, she said. They’ve bought all our hay too and practically everything else we were willing to sell. We used to see wagons and equipment now and then, but for the last couple of weeks it’s been like the Emperor’s birthday parade.

Mikail took a chance and asked, Who are they and what are they doing here?

I don’t rightly know, she said, but there are more of them almost every day. Whatever they are going to do, they are going to do it soon. She looked at him in a kindly way and added, Don’t ask me too many questions whoever you are. It isn’t healthy for either of us.

Mikail thanked her and once out of her sight urged on his horse’s pace. When he came to the fork he saw three horsemen waiting in the shade of a spruce tree by the road leading to the Velina. Courage, he told himself, perhaps they aren’t Mongols. Anyhow, it’s time to find out whether I can pass a checkpoint. They can’t be looking for me already. As he came nearer he observed that the horsemen were indeed Mongols and seemed to be looking for someone, but their profiles showed they were watching for someone riding towards Sapoda. He slowed down to avoid suspicion and passed them without stopping.

He kept to the road until late afternoon when he had to decide about crossing the Velina. Mongols at the crossroads meant the ford would be watched. He could avoid it by swimming his horse over the steam a mile or two away, but a night crossing would entail wandering blindly through the woods. His mare might break a leg. Better to wait for morning and cross above the ford. He found a patch of shrubby, interwoven mug pines and thorny bushes that afforded a good view of the road behind which he could hide. He led the mare into the woods, took off its saddle, and tied it to a beech tree, keeping his crossbow and short sword with him, the spare bolts in his pocket. Still anxious, he walked back to the road for a second look to reassure himself he would not be visible. It was already dusk. Feeling hungry, he nibbled at a piece of one of his loaves and a bit of the ham; it tasted like a feast.

Now Mikail had the time to think things through. It had to be the headman, Karita’s father. Did he have a motive to betray me? Did he want to end her relationship with me? She never told me he had complained to her, and a Roman political officer would be a good catch for his girl. That would please him. How could her father know of my arrival if she didn’t tell him? So could it have been Karita herself? No, she must have been indiscreet—the whole town seemed to know about us—but she wouldn’t be a party to trapping me. Karita loves me, loves me more than I love her. (There was a stab of guilt as he thought this.) She has not been acting any more than I have; her passion is real. And she cried when she thought the Mongols were going to kill me. Nor is she the sort to tell people, let alone her own father, when she was going to have an assignation with a lover. Certainly if the village knew of our affair then her father must have known, but why must he be the one who told the Mongols?

All right, then how did Karita herself know when I was coming? I told Tvar, George’s messenger, to stop at the tavern on his way to deliver my weekly report to George. He was to give my letter to her when no one else was present. But I didn’t tell anyone about Tuesday. That was to be a surprise. The Mongols thought I was coming on Thursday. Who knew about Thursday besides Karita? Tvar? Tvar is George’s stooge but I don’t think he can read. Anyhow, my love notes always are put into a second envelope, which is also sealed.

Who else could have known about Thursday? George? Certainly. I told him so myself. I put a note in with my weekly report telling him I’d arrive Friday afternoon in time for the meeting because of a personal matter on Thursday night. I knew he wouldn’t mind because the sector meeting was set for Friday night, and he would know where I was, which is what he always insists on, but he didn’t know about Tuesday. That was my own last minute idea. George has known about Karita for months. I told him myself over drinks, several drinks, and now that I think of it, George paid for them, which isn’t like him; he’s miserly. He told me in his worldly manner that so far as the Service was concerned my love life was mine to do what I pleased, but that I must always avoid mixing my personal and professional lives. It has to be George, damn him! Pretending to be my friend and mentor, so kind, so helpful, and all the time betraying me. I used to like him, he knew it, and he’d have taken advantage of it to have me killed.

This just isn’t possible, Mikail thought. There must be another explanation. But, once started, the thought was irresistible. It answered the obvious question: how could the Mongols have kept their presence in the Zone a secret from all the Emperor’s political officers there? Maybe they didn’t have to try very hard; perhaps George isn’t the only traitor in our little group. It’s such an easy trick if George tells the Mongols the location of every political officer. Then the Mongols just keep away from us and make sure any Zonian knows what will happen to his family if he tells us. George knows just what the Mongols need, and what they need is exactly what is in my weekly report. He never gives extensions for the weekly report. It makes sense for the Mongols to arrest or kill all the sector’s political officers just before they attack. Probably everyone else is dead or captured and that’s why the Mongols are hunting me.

What do I know about my supervisor? George never talks about himself or his personal feelings. He had a couple of years in Aachen and has important friends there. Since then he has been in the field for ten years, which is unusual. He’s really good. He speaks all the languages, can talk easily to anyone, knows the regulations forward and backward, and has a great understanding of process. He always knows exactly what all of his people are doing. He couldn’t have missed knowing his section was infiltrated.

Then, too, before he came to us he was supervising a dozen officers down South and due for a promotion to the Diplomatic Service or a good job back at Saint George’s Castle working for the Paladin, until he fell afoul of that oddball, Hugh Pannonius. The rumor was that Pannonius wanted to discharge George for some violation of regulations, but the