The Coin

*** An adult drama in three parts in which women of strong temperament and passions play a vital part.

Act I
Reign Of Irene, Empress Of The Byzantine Empire.
Byzantium Late 797 AD.
The island of Principo, Convent of St. George.

Act II
Reign Of Catherine The Great Of The Russian Empire
The Russian Empire Summer 1750 AD.
The palace of the Kremlin. Moscow.

Act III
In The Midst Of The Russian Revolution.
Revolutionary Russia Autumn 1919 AD.
Lubyanka Prison, Lubyanka Square in Moscow.

*** Act I

Byzantium Late 797 AD the island of Principo, Convent of St. George. : Part I

The cell was cold and nearly unfurnished.

A simple wooden bed was pushed up against the rough stone wall of the cell, its thin blankets ruffled and disordered by the young man that sat there in total despair. Dressed in a simple white robe and with fetters on his ankles he passed a single gold coin from hand to hand in agitated apprehension.

There is no betrayal of greater depth than the duplicity of a mother!

In his hands was that single gold coin, a reminder of his status and of the depth of his fall from God’s grace. One side carried the face of his mother, the Empress Irene, with the orb of the Imperator in her hands. The other side, the side that he was staring at, was his own face, bland and beardless, a second rank to the mother that held him in thrall.

Emperor Constantine the Sixth.

Imperator and arbiter of the mother church in Constantinople, holder of more titles than he could count on his fingers.

Sitting alone in a cell.

Awaiting his evil mother’s judgement.

Bronze chains were between his legs and he was wearing the flax robe of a simple priest.

The two sides of the coin that he flipped in his shaking hand, the last of that treasury full of gold and silver, the last dregs of his affluence and power.

Soon she would come, that treacherous mother of his. Her verdict would be his doom, her revenge would be his demise. He knew in his heart that she would blind him, that was a certainty. He would be left to suffer and expire, leaving her as the Empress of the Byzantine Empire.

Constantine moved his legs to the chinking of the chains and waited as the sun rose and cast its light through the bars of the window. Outside the distant voices of the nuns drifted in, the everyday noise of work being done and tasks being completed.

Time drifted and he forgot that he was hungry and cold, he just remembered the bitter taste of his betrayal. He remembered that he had cast the wife that Irene had chosen, Maria of Amnia, into this very convent. He supposed that the woman that he had subsequently chosen, Theodote, was probably also languishing in a cell awaiting the Empress Irene’s judgement.

The chatter in the real world, the gardens outside his cell, ceased and died away leaving just the sawing sound of a cricket and the occasional chirp of a bird. A sense of imminence filled Constantine’s small world, a feeling that decision would soon come and grind his false hopes and aspirations to dust.

The sound of footsteps sounded in the corridor outside.

Hushed voices, women’s voices.

That was the fact that irked him the most. That women ruled his life! That his mother chose his circle of friends. She had chosen his wife from amongst a select group that she had decided would offer their chastity as their wedding gift.

And the result?

Maria of Amnia!

A woman who was not in the least Constantine’s idea of attractive womanhood. A lower logothete’s daughter from Paphlagonia of all places! A peasant from the farm! She was plump in the wrong places, a female vessel of chastity in everyday clothes! A woman that his mother knew that he could never desire and who would never bear his heir and son.

Worst of all a woman who, like his mother, wished to rule over the Emperor. Her tongue was a whip that chastised him from the first day. Disappointed in his lack of attention she had made his life a misery until he had discovered Theodote, the love of his life.

The footsteps in the corridor stopped.

Hushed voices and the rattle of bronze keys.

After the loveless, indeed hate filled, marriage had come the impotent attempts to rid himself of this gynocracy. Thrashing like a fish on the deck of a boat, he had plotted and subverted to no avail. His mother had trapped him in an unending succession of futile political actions and ceremonial and it had ended here in this cell.

‘What better or more ironic place to confine me than an abbey?’ he thought to himself. ‘Just another part of the world that is ruled by women!’

The key turned in the lock and time seemed to stand still for the unseated Emperor of the Roman Empire in the East. Every chirp of the birds was stilled, there was silence as the door opened to reveal the three women that would now be in absolute charge of his life.

Empress Irene. Resplendent in robes of woven gold, carrying the orb of the Empire in one hand and a whip in the other. A smile on her whitened face as she followed the woman that she had chosen for his wife.

Maria of Amnia. A woman filled with hate and resentment. The woman who had been chosen as the bride of the Emperor, but had been rejected by him as unsuitable. Her corpulent figure filled the door as she entered. Wearing the light brown robes of the convent she swept into the cell with the hauteur of the righteous.

Finally, Vergina, the abbess of the convent. Tall, slim and young. It was no accident that she and Irene were such close confederates. She ruled her convent with a rod of iron and fear.

Iron and flesh.

Iron and pain.

It was well known in the capital that no word of misdemeanour ever came from the Convent of St. George on the Prince’s Islands. For Vergine ran a convent that could be likened to a prison. A place where husbands could find placement for their unwilling wives. Where pregnancies disappeared as did the women who carried them and where unwilling concubines emerged as mannered slaves. This was the place where the nuns spent less time in devotions to God than they did tormenting their fallen betters.

There was no better match for the unscrupulous Irene than this crow, who feasted on the sour leavings of family and love, lust and sex. With a thin smile and a stern mien she doled out punishments that became a personal pleasure for her. The ruthless woman who had become prosperous at the oppression of others.

With these three malevolent female harpies arrived a man pulling a small brazier in which the irons were already glowing with white heat.

Irons for the delectation of an unspeakable mother and a vengeful wife.

Blushing pink and white hot for the use of the Abbess of the Convent of St. George.

*** Part II

His hand clenched the coin, bending the soft gold slightly, concealing it from the three women who were about to achieve their goals by blinding their Emperor.

Still, by law and by God he ruled the Empire. A power stretching from Istria and Sardinia to the borders of the Caliphate by the Euphrates. A man who had nothing remaining of all that power, but the coin in his left hand as they prepared to reduce his world to one of touch and sound.

The executioner worked the little bellows under his forge of pain until the iron rods glowed a fierce yellow-white. Small flakes of black crusted the glow as the charcoal burned with a quiet fury and a slight sighing sound as if it regretted the task in hand.

“Kneel,” said Irene in a commanding tone.

Her robes parted for a moment to allow her son to see her naked form. At forty five her body still had that magic spice that had enchanted Leo, the previous Emperor. Smooth skin, a dark bush of clipped pubic hair and alabaster thighs that were glimpsed, but for a second, as she closed the robe and flashed a triumphant smile at Maria, the wife who followed her like a slave.

“Please...” sobbed Constantine.

He was overwhelmed by the power of these women who had ruled his life and now required it as a gift to open the locks of Empire.

“That slut, Theodote, the woman you would replace us with, is already serving as a tavern whore!” said Maria with a smile. “Now you will be no better, husband! A whore slave to Vergina and myself as you contemplate the low estate to which you have sunk. Your very mother has decided that it will be so!”

Constantine shuffled on his knees and put his hands together as if praying to his mother and her evil consorts. The chains made the only sound, apart from the rustle of the stiff golden robes that concealed Irene’s nudity.

Irene nodded at Vergine who took a place behind the abject Constantine. She buried her strong hands in his thick hair and gripped his head as the executioner pulled a single glowing iron from the hot charcoal.

Now that the moment was at hand, the moment that signified her ascension to the throne of Byzantium, Irene shivered with hunger. A hunger for authority and manipulation that was almost like lust in her loins. It took her with its force, the outward sign a shiver, the inward flutter of a climax was hidden in the shadowy folds of her mind.

This was real power!

The glowing tip of the metal rod moved forward.

Close to the eyes of the victim.

The heat, not the metal, brushed the eyes briefly to allow Constantine one last flash of his mothers naked body peeping from within its coverlet of gold and embroidery.

His first sight as a newborn, his last as an adult, her naked form.

Vergine allowed her fingers to slip from the mop of hair that would soon be a monk’s tonsure. Her laugh rang clear in the stillness of the moment. A call of triumph and conquest. Now she was to have the Emperor as her slave, the highest was to become the lowest, in the entire Empire.

Irene watched impassively as her son began to sob. There was no remorse, no penitence for what she had done. Empress Irene had done what she had to, the safety of the Empire and her own virtuous comfortable status were too important to lose because her son wished to marry the woman whom the Empress had not chosen!

How dare he?

The reign of the Emperor Constantine the Sixth was now over!

The reign of Emperor Irene had now begun. The old ruler would be consigned to his vengeful former wife, and the new would rule from the throne in Constantinople, just across the azure waters of the Sea of Marmara.

Now, at last, Emperor Irene could concentrate on the Arabs and their Caliph, Harun al-Rashid. She could sort out the disagreements with the church and iconoclasts. Best of all, she could return to the Porphyra Palace where her lovers waited and relax in the clasp of their strong arms and attentive, servile lips.

The worthless son cried on the floor like a newborn as the mother swept out of the Convent trailing gold robes and silk train as well as a hurrying group of attendants who had to run to keep up with the new ruler of their world.

*** Part III

Maria of Amnia sat on the side of the bed by her former husband. The blinding had so excited her that her thighs and legs shook from the reaction. The blind man who had humiliated her and married a mere household servant out of love.

Love!

Who could believe that a member of the lower orders could experience such an exalted emotion? The poets sang of love, it was for the owners, the users, the rich and the titled to experience that lofty sentiment. Theodote, the servant made wife was already disposed of in the Blachernae Gate brothel where she would serve the barbarian soldiers with her body.

Now she, Maria, would snuff out that ‘love’ from the former Emperor’s mind.

She, who should have been the Empress. How dare he snatch that glory and power from her to marry some prostitute that he chose for himself?

She would rape and punish him until in the darkness of his blindness he would acknowledge her as the arbiter of all his emotions.

To that end she had the help of her friend and confidant, Vergine. The woman who had organised her convent as a place where women, and occasionally men, were sent to be broken down, humiliated and disposed of, for standing in the way of an aristocrat’s enjoyment of life.

Her heart swelled with excitement as she watched Vergine, the Abbess of Pain, stripping her silk robe and allowing it to fall to the ground. It would not do for the robe to be splashed with the blood of their royal victim!

In her hand was a hazel rod, flexible but hard and sharp, that would take Constantine to a place where pain and subservience was the only mistress. When he was mewling with pain he would learn that his wife regretted their lack of congress over the last two years and wished to renew the liaison with him as the slave and her as the master.

As the rod tore the first strip from his flesh, his hand convulsed and the coin rolled across the floor to draw a circle at Maria’s feet. She looked down at the portrait of Irene, Empress of Rome, and thought to see the twitch of a smile on those stern lips.

A thin smile that matched her own emotion of achievement.

Her red shod toe kicked the coin out of sight.

The victory might have been expedited by Irene, but the pleasure of revenge was only for Maria.

*** Part IV

The months rolled by in the outside world as the Empress Irene struggled with the matters of state that required her attention. She never asked about her errant son, she knew that he was no threat anymore and that Maria would be extracting her vengeance in small but painful measures, day by day.

In the closed world of the Convent there was a brief disturbance, like a pebble thrown into a pond. But, the ripples died and the new slave became a part of the scenery.

At first he was used exclusively by Maria.

She enjoyed the whippings arranged by Vergine, the Abbess of nightmare. She found that the surest way of coming to a climax was to witness her special friend using all her skill to destroy her victim.

Just a touch of her own hand to her cunt and she orgasmed, as the whippings with strappados made her blind victim suffer the tortures of hell.

But, then she left her victim alone with that ill named sister of God!

Vergine too was addicted to suffering and torment, but she needed more than a hand that rubbed her to a climax. She needed to take her victim to a new place. The place between pleasure and pain, the unknown territory where all passion, love, hate and raw feeling merges to become a single emotion.

The feeling of gratification fused with raw fear.

She rode her Emperor. Vergine pushed his erection into her narrow cunt and climaxed as he struggled to both satisfy and escape the attentions of her tortures. He struggled and bucked with the pain as she rode him to her exclusive heaven and back again.