Meanwhile, a pigeon had winged its way to the castle on the ridge with a message. Another had then been sent to Famagusta and arrived late the following day. Dimitri read the message tied to its leg and smiled.
A week later, Siranus delivered a message to Tamura from the spy who worked for the “man on the mountain”. It caused her some confusion.
“Are you sure?” she demanded, wondering how she was going to pass along this kind of information to the suspicious and paranoid Isaac, who had begun looking even at her with suspicion. Despite his erratic behavior he was not a complete fool, especially where his own survival was concerned, and he’d sensed that her behavior towards him had changed after the arrival of Exazenos, despite every effort on her part not to make it obvious.
“They are saying that the emperor should go to Paphos and take back the castle before it is too late,” she said with a puzzled expression on her face. “How am I going to tell him that without giving myself away?” she wondered out loud. “Besides, isn’t Exazenos there? Who has taken the castle?”
It had gradually dawned upon her that Exazenos was a monster who loved to destroy people in the most painful manner he could devise. Despite this, she had held onto the thought that the new devil was better than the one she hated most, until he had turned on her and threatened her with exposure. Now she felt alone and terribly vulnerable.
“I want to see this man and ask him directly,” she stated to Siranus. “This doesn’t make sense. Exazenos is in Paphos. He told me and the emperor that was where he was going.”
Siranus agreed reluctantly to set a meeting up. A day later, he told her that it was all prepared. She could go to the cathedral, where she would be met.
Tamura excused herself to go to the Cathedral and pray. Isaac didn’t monitor her activities that closely. She set out for the cathedral, making it obvious that she was going, and reached the cool gloomy building with its beautiful rounded archways in the afternoon, when a service was in process.
The priest was preoccupied, as were his acolytes, so it was not a problem for her to genuflect respectfully towards the altar and move slowly towards the dark shadows of the building, near to a thick pillar of stone. She watched her surroundings, careful of spies whom she was sure were everywhere, now that Exazenos was in charge of that department. At a fluted pillar she stood very still and waited.
A voice spoke to her from nearby that made her jump, she was so nervous. She shot a glance in the direction of Siranus, who had followed her in to watch her back, and he nodded.
“Madame, you wanted to know more about Paphos?”
“Yes, what is happening there?” she demanded, peering into the gloom. There was the figure of a stocky-looking man, but he was covered up, including his face, and his head was covered by a hood. As though anticipating her the figure said, “Please do not look at me, my Lady. Just listen.” She turned away and stared up at the arches above.
“You must not disclose what I am about to tell you. Not yet.”
“Very well, I am listening.”
“The emperor will find out in due course that the man he knows as Exazenos is dead.”
She gasped. “Dead?” she almost shrilled. Her voice was raised enough for him to lift a hand. “Please keep your voice down, my Lady,” he admonished her.
“But how?” she whispered fiercely, her mind working with furious speed.
“That is not your concern, my Lady. Suffice it to say you need to keep this information to yourself for the time being and persuade the emperor to go to Paphos, and urgently, before it is too late. Tell him that Exazenos left some information behind inadvertently and one of the servants ‘discovered’ it.”
Tamura was stunned. It had been over two weeks now since Pantoleon had departed and no word had come back to her, confirming her fears. She had hoped for something. Had they not declared for each other and had she not intimated that she was a willing agent against the emperor? Now in the blink of an eye all that had changed. “I... I need to think about this,” she stammered.
“Yes, you should do that, my Lady. It has not escaped our attention that you were taking sides, and as you well know the wrong side can mean disaster,” the figure said. His tone was dry. “Yes, we have other spies in the palace, my Lady, but... we value you.”
Tamura felt cold. The words carried a threat she could not ignore, but at the same time some encouragement, so she lifted her pretty chin and said, “I shall tell the emperor and keep quiet about the other news.”
“This should make it easier for you,” the figure said, and thrust a package towards her.
“What is it?” she demanded.
“The letter you will show the emperor. This will convince him that Exazenos was going to betray him.”
“He was?” she asked shocked.
“Read the letter, my Lady.”
Tamura took the package and looked down at it. It was not sealed. When she looked up again the messenger had vanished. Again she felt a cold sensation trickle down her back. These people were truly frightening.
Collecting Siranus she hastened back to the palace, and in the privacy of her chamber discussed the situation with him. They opened the package and found a letter from a merchant in Tyre addressed to Pantoleon. They looked at one another and nodded their heads in agreement. This was damning, even if it was a forgery, which Tamura was sure it was.
Tamura and the emperor were seated in the gardens of the palace, enjoying the spring air. The garden was coming alive with buds and flowers, the fountain bubbled and gurgled to itself, and the leopards were safely caged, while some of the youthful hostages were practicing an elaborate dance on the lawn a few dozen paces away.
The food on the table was basic. Isaac liked his olives with bread and oil. The second course of wild game was due in a few minutes, and he was enjoying some new wine that his Chief minister had recommended. He appeared to have relaxed since his new chief spy had gone off to attend to business. Exazenos had frightened more than just the servants. Wherever he went in the palace he left a sense of darkness behind him. Tamura waited until Isaac had drunk another cup of wine before she asked him, as casually as possible, “Do you know what our chief spy is doing, my Lord?”
“Gone to Paphos to terrify the locals, I dare say. He has been gone for longer than I expected.” Isaac chuckled, but it was a nervous laugh. “He even scares me, that one. He’s done a good job with the other cities,” Isaac replied more comfortably. His chief spy had cowed the nobles in their castles to the point where he, Isaac, didn’t worry so much about an insurrection from that direction any more. He left unsaid how very uncertain he had become of his lieutenant, whose attitude had changed in subtle ways; before he’d left he had begun to behave less respectfully.
“Anyway, why do you ask?” he demanded, as he spat out an olive stone and took another swig of wine. “Good wine, this; a little new but it has potential,” Isaac said savoring the ruby liquid.
“I think you should see this then, my Lord. It came to me, er, quite by accident. A nosey servant brought it to me from his room. I had him whipped but then I saw what it said and feel it my duty to bring it to you.”
Isaac opened the folded sheet and began to read. Slowly his face turned purple and his eyes bulged as his mouth pouted. He gripped the paper and shook it with so much force that it tore in his hand.
“This, this scum of a merchant in Tyre is saying that once Exazenos has claimed Paphos he will provide more ships and men!” he exclaimed, drumming his heels. “The traitor! The filthy traitor!” he bellowed. All his good mood evaporated in an instant and he began to look for things to kick and throw about in the garden. A monster tantrum was on its way. The dancers vanished from the lawn.
“My Lord! My Lord! I beg of you be calm,” Tamura implored him. “You must be calm, my Lord!” she cried again, clutching at his forearm. “To be enraged just now will only blur your vision; there is real danger here! You must be clear-headed about this issue or you, we, all
of us will be in jeopardy. Remember, you yourself said that he is very cunning and dangerous!”
Isaac’s blood pressure slowly subsided and he settled back into his chair in a slump. He took a deep breath and looked at her. Then he patted her hand. “Of course, my Dear. You are perfectly right. Where would I be without you, my lovely angel?” he murmured. “I sensed that he was considering treachery before he left. Now we know for sure. The baastaard!” He shouted, savoring the word. “By God but he shall pay and pay again for that!” He straightened his back and shouted for his servants, who had been cowering in anticipation of a tantrum.
“Get me Diocles this instant!”
Diocles appeared like a genie from nowhere and stood trembling in front of the still heated emperor. “Your Highness?” he enquired, wringing his hands.
“Stop shaking, you dithering old fart, and tell the horse guards we are leaving within the hour.”
“Where, where might we be going, Your Highness?”
“To Paphos, you fool, where else? You will stay here and mind the palace. I want all the people who work for Exazenos arrested and in prison by the time I get back.”
The guards on the castle walls overlooking the city of Paphos were bored. Their job was to guard the locked chest down in the dungeon and to keep a lookout for any royal soldiers that might be coming to Paphos. One of them noticed a donkey with a man walking alongside coming up the wide path towards the gates. The rider halted the donkey, which seemed glad to do so as its load looked heavy.
“What do you want?” called down one of the men on the wall.
“I brought the wine that was ordered,” the man called back up squinting in the sunlight.
“Wine you say? Wine? Never ordered any.”
“Yes, you did, about a week ago. You owe me for this! You people ordered it and now you should pay!” the driver retorted. He sounded very cross.
“Get lost and don’t come back,” the man on the wall shouted.
“Damn you! I went to a lot of trouble to bring this up to this God-forsaken pile of stones!”
“If you don’t go away I’ll show you what you will look like with my spear rammed up your arse! Go away, and do it now!”
Grumbling and swearing, the man hauled his donkey around and walked slowly out of sight back towards the town.
Then one of the lookouts on the walls called the leader over, saying, “Nasuh, come and look at this. I see cavalry.”
Nasuh trotted over to where his companion stood staring down towards the eastern walls of Paphos.
“They’ve arrived,” he grunted. “We’ll let them get close enough to see us moving about, then we’ll leave. Put the figures up along the wall, then our task is done.”
They clustered together, ready to depart via the back entrance, and watched as the horsemen clattered through the city, then turned onto the dirt track that led up to the castle. When the cavalry unit was within two hundred paces of the castle, they looked up and saw what they took to be men on the walls.
Shouting and gesticulating, they milled about on the ground in front of the gates, which were locked and barred. Calling up to one of the more exposed figures, the leader of the cavalry shouted, “Open up, in the name of the emperor!”
No one responded. “Get his attention!” Isaac ordered. With a glance at his leader, who nodded, one of the more enterprising of the horsemen loosed off a bolt at the figure standing silently thirty feet above them. The bolt struck the stone, chipping it very close by the sentry, but the man did not even flinch, nor look their way. None of the other sentries on the walls moved either, which was also very odd. A second bolt flew and struck the wall nearby again, but still no movement.
“My Lord, they are dummies!” exclaimed the leader of the riders to Isaac, who was seated next to him. “There is no one there!”
Isaac began to get angry. “Either get over the walls or break down the gates. I don’t care how you do this!” he roared. He was tired from the long, three day ride and wanted nothing more than a good rest.
An hour later the gates had been battered open, and Isaac and his men entered a deserted castle courtyard.
“Where is that traitor?” Isaac roared. “Search the entire place for him! For anyone!”
His men spread out in small groups, weapons at the ready. Later, a soldier came up to Isaac, who was standing impatiently in the yard, tapping his boot with his whip. “My Lord,” he said respectfully, “there is nobody here but we have found something. It was down in the dungeons, we are bringing it up now.”
A few minutes later, the emperor’s commander led the way out with two men struggling along behind him carrying a small but clearly very heavy chest. They placed it thankfully down on the ground in front of Isaac and stood back.
“Open it.”
The cavalry officer beat the lock off the chest with a borrowed axe, then opened the chest. The men around gasped at the sight. It was identical to the first chest of gold that Exazenos had brought to the emperor when he had first come to him. Then the cavalry officer handed Isaac a note. It ran:
“This is the tribute for the next few years. Use it well.”
Isaac studied the letter for a long moment. “So where is this traitor, Exazenos?” he demanded, “Where has he gone?” He knew well enough from where the note had come and he was afraid; but where was his chief spy?
“Your Highness?”
“What is it?”
“There is another letter in the chest. The leader handed over to Isaac a ribbon-bound roll of paper with an unmistakeable seal on it. He stared, recognition dawning on his face. Then, with a shaking hand that belied his confidence in the bragged about “friendship”, he broke the seal and unrolled the missive.
The letter was from Sultan Salah Ed Din and contained all the flowery greetings that would come from one as exalted as he; there was no mistaking the seal nor the flourish if his own handwriting. It greeted him with great respect and affection, but the contents of the letter burned itself into Isaac’s mind.
“Leave Sir Talon undisturbed. He is my friend.”
“Take this chest back with us,” the emperor said in a hoarse voice, his face flushed. “We leave for Famagusta tonight. Garrison the castle and secure it,” he said shortly, and mounted his horse, only too eager to be out of this gloomy and now ominous fortress. He had an uneasy feeling, tinged with relief, that he might never see Exazenos again.
A month passed, and another, but there was still no sign of Exazenos. It was as though he and the men who had been with him in Paphos had vanished into thin air. The emperor sent men to all his cities to make enquiries, but no one could help. There were a few in Paphos who thought he had left on a ship, but none were sure.
The mystery remained why he should have left when he had so much going for him. The chest full of gold presented its own puzzle, but Isaac was richer now and there was less need to plunder. He remained in his palace in Famagusta and took up his life with Tamura, who was by now firmly ensconced as his wife in all but name.
With her newly established position she settled scores with a few of her rivals; her power was such that she could banish whomsoever she liked from the palace. Several of the women in Isaac’s harem were turfed out to survive as best they could on the streets and a couple of slaves turned up drowned in the harbor.
Isaac hung all the men who had been followers of Exazenos, and some who had not. What were a few innocent lives compared to his own security? Isaac didn’t venture back to Paphos for a long time, thus enabling the city to recover from his depredations and reestablish some of its once flourishing maritime trade.
The one person who thought he might know what had happened to Exazenos, although not exactly how, was not talking. Diocles, who continued to act as the First Minister, kept his thoughts to himself.
A disconcerting moment came for him one sunny day months later, when Tamura accosted him in the gardens and asked him.
“Where did you go on that winter’s day, Diocles
? Was it to the Man on the Mountain? My slave saw you leave and head in that direction.”
He nodded, guardedly and afraid, but she smiled and said, “I think I know why. That was courageous. Perhaps we should be thanking you?”
His respect for Tamura went up several notches. This young and quite beautiful woman was maturing into a queen. Perhaps between them they could contain Isaac’s brutal excesses.
He followed her gaze towards the far distant enigmatic castle, perched on the knife edged mountain. It was now known to one and all as the home of the Assassins of Kantara. Perhaps its Lord, Sir Talon, might assist in that exacting task.
The End
Author’s note.
I try hard to keep the ‘Historical’ aspect of my stories accurate. No tomatoes with their lettuce at that time! There’s no point in changing the tapestry of history for the sake of a story. It misleads. However a story can be woven into that same tapestry and this is where Talon comes in.
Kantara castle, as some of you might know, actually exists. You can google it. The castle is located exactly as I have described on the long arm of Cyprus. In Turkish lands at present.
It was originally built by the Byzantines once they had ousted the Arabs to help keep watch for their possible return and for pirates of course.
The view from the castle is truly magnificent! It was built in the 10th century but not very much at all has been recorded about it’s history. Which is why it was too tempting to ignore and Talon and his people took the opportunity to steal it! What was he to do? You can’t storm a place like that, but guile and skill can be used to good effect as has been proved time and again. Remember where he came from?
Isaac Komnenos was a horrible man as was his great uncle, Andronicus Komnenos, who ruled in Constantinople and who met the deserved death I have described. It is hard to imagine what life must have been like under these awful tyrants but people managed somehow. More on that perhaps later. For now Talon and family have a place to call their own. Who knows what might happen next?
Assassins of Kantara Page 64
