TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

Milovan Radojević

his arms and face. He was racked by pain, yet he smiled when he saw me. He was holding the same cross on his chest, and he looked at me with tired eyes. “My body is still alive, as you see, so you don’t have to touch that scroll,” he uttered quietly. I placed my hand on his, old and vein- mottled, and felt a fear of the emptiness if he should depart. “I’ll survive just to spite them, and I want to live some more . . . Do you know—,” he whispered with great effort, “do you know who is to blame for Dioclea falling to its knees and for all the suffering beyond description?” The priest Theodor brought up a pot of hot milk for him to drink, but he refused, and I heard his whisper again: “Bodin, 23 the great king who lies beneath the slab of the martyrs Sergius and Bacchus—may the earth cast out his bones. That wretch who could not resist the honey-sweet voice from the conjugal bed and attacked his own kin 24 sowed eternal ruin among the Diocleans,” and Dominik raised his eyes to the crucifix above the bed. And he pulled me by the arm for me to come closer again: “If I survive, and I want to and have to—guess what, apart from stubbornness, will keep me alive?” “Compresses and prayers heal bruises, and spiritual nourishment is balm for the soul,” I heard my own voice, and he smiled and pushed away my hand.

23 . Dioclean king, ruled 1082–1108. 24 . King Bodin married Jaquinta, daughter of the Norman governor of Bari. She persuaded him to kill his relatives who might later pretend to the throne, and this contributed to decades of civil strife in Dioclea.

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