Emperor's Winding Sheet

by The Emperor's Winding Sheet (retail) (epub)

  Vrethiki cried out despairingly, “I will see nobody’s will in it but his! Is it God’s will that princes should enslave helpless strangers?”

  “I won’t translate that!” cried Stephanos, his voice thick with anger. “How can you lay this burden upon him, when he has already so much to carry?”

  The boy said nothing for a moment, wholly astonished by the idea that the Emperor needed defending—against him. In the silence, the Emperor gently touched a lock of the boy’s hair, turned away, and went to his prayers.

  “Vrethiki,” said Stephanos, urgently. “Listen to me. Try to understand. What you cannot avoid in life, you must accept with dignity. Men are not judged by the fate God appoints for them, they are judged by the manner in which they meet that fate. What has happened to you has happened; you will only bruise yourself by fighting against it.”

  The boy did not reply. His face did not relent from its wild and sullen expression. He was still kneeling before the spot where the Emperor had stood.

  “Listen, accept this danger with a quiet soul. God will see the sacrifice, will see the burden you bear quietly. He will judge. He will reward. But if you struggle, if you go unwillingly, you will lose the merit of it, and yet you must go, just the same. Find the courage to submit.”

  “Courage to submit?” exclaimed the boy. “I’d call that cowardice. I’d call that unmanliness. What I need is courage to fight to the last gasp of breath in my body. If life is going to batter me, the least I can do is go down fighting; I’ll bite and kick to the end!”

  “A fit end, then, for a barbarian! Rage as you like, I cannot help you. But if you dare to utter one word of appeal or complaint to my master again, I’ll take a belt to your backside myself; understand?”

  “Ah,” said the boy, getting up. “Now the truth is out. That’s your true colors.” And he marched out. Behind him, Stephanos stood frozen with a dismayed expression on his face.

  THE BRIDLE OF VRETHIKI’S HORSE WAS LOOPED OVER Stephanos’ wrist all the way on the ride to Monemvasia. He said nothing. For all his angry words, he was overwhelmed by a glum crushed hopelessness. And once on shipboard, he was flooded with grief and homesickness. The last time he had joined a trim vessel, it had been riding at anchor in Bristow, loading tin and cloth, and full of English voices, and high hopes whose owners now were dead. The Catalan ship which carried the Emperor was a babel of half the tongues known to humanity. She was of a strange elaborate build above the water line, and carried her sail somewhat oddly rigged; but she creaked like the Cog Anne, she smelled of tar and salt like the Cog Anne, groaned like her as she swung into the wind. As Monemvasia fell away astern he remembered the smart wind that had borne them down the Bristow Channel, and his mother, dwindling to doll-size, waving and weeping on the receding quay. The Catalan sailors knew their business well, and he took pleasure in watching them handle sail and sheets, though before long he was needed below decks and could watch no more.

  They were hardly afloat before the Emperor became seasick. Stephanos and Manuel were both pale, with that green-tinted pallor that seasickness brings. Vrethiki, rock-steady on his stout trading legs, with the Bristow Channel and the Biscay Bay behind him, scarcely felt the movement of the ship; and, grimly pleased at the sight of Stephanos’ misery and the thought of for once getting the better of him, he went to take warm water and towels to the Emperor’s bedside, and empty slop basins himself.

  He had hardly got the Lord Constantine lying between clean sheets, and swabbed down the wooden boards beside his bed, and set a clean bowl ready for the next disaster, when Stephanos needed similar attention himself. The boy sniffed disgustedly at the acrid smell of the cabins, and recklessly poured wine into the water with which he mopped up the mess. The ship continued to pitch and roll easily on the swell; really it seemed to Vrethiki more like the rocking of a cradle than like the open sea; but it was hard work being the only member of the Imperial party on his feet. It was night before he finished tending everyone. The Emperor had refused to eat anything at all, but Stephanos had taken a few spoonfuls of soup that Vrethiki offered him on a spoon, and coaxed and wheedled him to swallow.

  When all was done he went above decks. The clean salt air filled his lungs and lifted his spirits. He listened to rope and timber grumbling at each stress and strain, at the water frothing and slopping along the ship’s side below him. He looked at the neatness with which every rope lay curled, and the tidy trim of the sails, and mentally saluted the captain. He looked up at the fantastically abundant stars—mil lions more of them than ever graced an English sky, clustered as thick as buttercups in a Bristow water meadow. He stood leaning on the gunwale for a long time before he found the strength to steel himself for the closed fetid air of the cabin beneath.

  Things continued so for three days. On the second, grumbling and hectoring him in English, and telling him he would need his strength for the days to come, Vrethiki managed to feed the Emperor a bowlful of broth, a spoonful at a time. To Stephanos he said sharply in Latin, “Oh, come, sit up and eat, sir. Where’s your manhood?” And Stephanos flinched, and struggled upright, and ate like a scolded child.

  That evening when Vrethiki climbed up to take the air, the ship was moving through a narrow channel with a sloping wooded coast on either side. It looked like the Bristow Channel, only narrower. The green shores pricked his memory. “This is the Hellespont,” a sailor told him. “Keep a sharp eye out for the shore—it’s Turkish land.”

  “Which shore?” asked Vrethiki.

  “Both,” said the sailor. But nobody offered any resistance to the four ships, as they slipped up the middle of the channel in the gathering dark.

  BEYOND THE NARROW CHANNEL LAY A TRANQUIL LANDLOCKED sea, on which the ship moved so swanlike that even the Emperor and his Eunuch recovered somewhat. Vrethiki carried food for them from the galleys, and acted as page again rather than nursemaid. The Emperor gave him a heavy silver coin, and a slow half-smile as a grave thank-you for caring for him. Vrethiki put the money in the little knot of rag with the coronation bounty, reflecting that though it would take more than gold to save his skin, and escape was beyond hoping for, there would surely be a use for it some time. On the evening of this smoother day he went up as usual to take the air, and found the ship almost motionless, sail flapping gently, deliberately letting slip the wind.

  “Nearly there,” said the coxswain, whose Italian was just comprehensible, when the boy asked, with gestures, why this was so. “And not wanting to land till morning.”

  Nothing broke the surface of the tranquil sea. Gently it rippled, glassy and smooth, and shining with opalescent radiance in the low-sloping light of a golden evening. Leaning on the rail, idly looking, dreaming, the boy nursed his anger in his heart like secret treasure. It gave him strength. But for all that, it was a fair fine evening. It seemed as though a translucent infinitely pale shawl of gray-blue silk had been cast over the surface of the sea, with a silver sequin or two scattered over it when he looked toward the light. And the sky too was radiant, clad in veil upon shimmering veil of golden and ivory silk. Along the skyline lay a band of brightest, purest sheen, a river of pale liquid gold, dividing sea and sky; and in one direction, in the distance, hovering above the molten horizon lay a cloudy shadow, a mirage of land, with a great round mass, a tall wide dome, rising at one end of it.

  “La Città!” said the coxswain. “Ècco la Città; Santa Sofia! Ècco!”

  It was the City, at last.

  Chapter 6

  The emperor slept peacefully enough that night, and his servants were undisturbed. The ship might have been tied up in some haven, so little did the cradling waters rock her. But very early in the morning Vrethiki woke to hear pulleys groan again at ropes rattling through them, and the loud canvas snap and bang as the wind stiffened it and the water began to chuckle and suck against the ship’s side.

  They were under way again. Quietly Vrethiki rose, and went above.

  Lilac against a rose-pink sky lay th
e long promontory of the City, hovering dreamlike above the silver sea. It was much nearer now: a lovely complex shape, topped with slender columns, laden with swelling domes. As they drew nearer, and day brightened, Vrethiki half expected the vision to fade and vanish, so unearthly and insubstantial did it seem, but it solidified, and took on shape and detail in the gentle morning light. All round, it was ringed by towers, towers and battlemented walls, with the sea dancing and sparkling at the foot of them; above, rose arch upon arch, terraces, towers, columns and clustering domes. Pink and purple and honey-colored stones—gray domes, green domes, overtopped with shining crosses of gold-white marble clashing brilliant against the deepening blue sky! Vrethiki was mildly surprised to remember that he had thought Mistra a fine place, for he saw now at once that there was, there could be, no place in all the earth like this.

  The sailors were putting in to a little harbor at the southern, western end of the City. Even so, looking back as they sailed smoothly along the southern shore, he could see that the City lay at the mouth of a channel no wider than the Hellespont. The jutting promontory on which it stood came within half a mile of the facing shore, and had he not a few minutes before looked up the open water of the channel beyond the tip of the City, he would hardly have known, looking back, there was a break in the land there at all.

  “Over there,” said his friend the coxswain, pointing to this other shore, “Turks.” And he drew the side of his hand across his neck, in a cut-throat gesture.

  A WIDE TENT OF SCARLET CLOTH WAS READY FOR THEM ON the shore. The Emperor was carried from the ship to this tent, and there put on his ceremonial robes, and his crown. Vrethiki, seeing what was coming, seized his penitential robe himself, and put it on on top of his scruffy everyday tunic, thus saving himself the pain of it next to his skin. The Emperor’s horse was led into the tent, and he mounted it, and looked around for Vrethiki. A little brown pony was brought for Vrethiki, and he was told to ride three or four paces behind the Emperor. Then they drew back the curtains of the tent door, and the Emperor rode forth to the welcome of his people.

  Beyond the tent a crowd were gathered, shouting and waving. A procession was drawn up ready, ranks of priests, and ranks of soldiers, to escort him. Fluttering pennants flickered at the points of the soldiers’ spears. The sun flashed off their helmets and greaves. The route was lined with people all the way, standing in the rows of young green corn, beside the roadway, yelling and weeping, and holding out hands to the Emperor. The land sloped gently upward as they rode, and a low rolling crest cut off the view ahead, like the rise and fall of an English plain, never quite as flat as it seems from a hilltop viewpoint. Then as they moved onward, mounting this low incline, a line of walls and towers rose out of the ground ahead. On the facing slope, beyond a little valley, stood the walls of the City.

  When he came on them so suddenly like that, it was their size which struck Vrethiki first. They were huge, the towers like a battle line of looming giants. Right and left they stretched, down to the shine and ultramarine of the sea on their right, and up the hill on their left, disappearing over the crest, all at regular intervals, like well-drilled battalions. The defenses were deep as well as high. First there was a moat, very deep, and walled and faced with buttressed masonry; then a wall, with battlements and towers, and, behind that and beyond, towering over it, another wall, a massive wall like a cliff, with gigantic towers standing one in each space between the towers of the outer wall. And all was made of well-squared, fine gray masonry, braced and trimmed with bands of dark-red brick.

  “But the Turks will never get in!” thought Vrethiki, with a sudden lift of the heart.

  The road they were riding on wound toward a point in the wall where the regular march of the towers was broken by a huge white bastion, a vast stark white slab of marble, rising even higher than the inner towers. In front of it was a flourish of arch, columns, stairways rising on either side, and every cranny and foothold of the walls here, every inch of battlement and step of stairs was swarming with citizens, shouting and waving. In the terraces between the walls there was also a band of small boys, who burst out singing as the Emperor rode over the causeway across the moat. Across the moat they went, up the sloping stairs, through the outer arch, and then Vrethiki saw that the mountainous white marble bastion had a vast brazen door in the middle of it.

  “The Golden Gate,” said Stephanos at his side, as they rode through. “This was here even before these walls were made, they say.” He tendered the remark like a peace offering.

  “How long ago was that?” asked Vrethiki, interested in spite of himself.

  “The walls? They were made for the Emperor Theo dosius, a thousand years ago. The triumphal arch? I don’t know, but long before that …”

  Beyond the great gate lay a little enclosure with smaller walls round it. It was full of soldiers, yelling and stamping, and waving pennants on their lances, and blowing out bursts on their bugles. The Emperor reined in his horse, and raised his arms to them in greeting before riding on.

  On through the streets of the City, through the thronging crowd. Vrethiki had never seen such a street. It was lined with marble all the way, with marble and with porphyry. Great houses faced the street, not with windows, but with high blank walls, pierced by columned gateways, and overtopped by columns, by columns and roof gardens, and little gabled roofs and upper chambers, and casements and balconies. And from every upper window of every house along the way, from every door, over every wall and pillar, hung swaths of colored cloth. The people had draped their houses with robes and coverlets, with arras hangings, with carpets and with sheets, red, purple and gold, linen and wool and shining whispering silk, for the boisterous wind off the sea to sport with and wave like flags. The great road passed through squares, through forums. Huge columns stood there, shooting sky ward, standing memorials to something Vrethiki had never heard of, no doubt … and pedestals laden with statuary, bronze horsemen, marble statesmen, gilded saints. They came at last to the Hippodrome, a huge stadium, with an oval elongated cursus, down which the Emperor rode past tiers and tiers of joyful shouting people. At one end of it, to the right, rose the huge mass, the great buttressed bulk of that first dome Vrethiki had seen—the one so massive that it loomed in sight even from far out to sea.

  The Catalan coxswain had called it Santa Sophia, but Stephanos now murmured, “The Church of the Holy Wis dom.”

  But although they rode toward it, to Vrethiki’s surprise and faint disappointment they did not enter there. At the doors stood an old man who must be the Patriarch, robed in white, with black crosses on his pallium. The Emperor dismounted, and went to meet him, and knelt before him on the steps, but when the Patriarch had blessed him, the Emperor mounted again, and the procession moved on. And while the Emperor knelt thus, it was as if a cloud had slid across the sun; the crowd fell silent, and cheering ceased. You could hear the people’s feet, shuffling on the paving. They muttered to one another. When the Patriarch stepped forward, someone hissed. And a cracked voice called crazily from far back in the crowd, “Woe to the City for Constantine!”

  Stephanos clenched his teeth, and scowled toward the voice; but now the blessing was over, and the Emperor was riding away, and as though the cloud had passed the crowd was pleased again, and cheering. Children ran along beside the Emperor’s horse, jumping, and calling with their high birds’ voices. They pointed to Vrethiki, and gabbled at each other. The people threw branches of myrtle, branches of olive before the hoofs of his horse, and from windows sprinkled him with rose water as he passed. The street they were riding down now was taking them back in the general direction of the land walls, and after some long time, when it seemed to Vrethiki they had been riding for hours, when the sun was overhead, and the shadows deepening to velvet black, he saw the walls again ahead of them. The road ran down a little, and the land walls descended to meet the walls of a palace, which stood in the corner of the City at the angle between land walls and sea walls. Over the roofs
of this palace lay a prospect of tranquil water and green hills.

  They descended the slope, while the walls of the palace rose above them, and rode through the great bronze gates that stood wide to greet them, and into a garden, full of trees, and little marble basins planted with herbs. A fountain gushed from a conch in the hands of a bronze Neptune and brimmed a wide white basin full of clear water. Paths of flagstone led across beneath the trees. A bell struck three clear notes, and the great gates of the palace swung shut. The clamor of the crowd was shut out, and in the sudden hush Vrethiki heard the fountain trickling, and a small bird singing on a bush. Wearily the riders dismounted. From a doorway in one of the buildings that crowded haphazardly round the garden an old woman came forward, wearing a black damask robe of great richness, and walking with the help of a silver cane. Stepping forward swiftly to meet her, with hands held out toward her, the Emperor called her, “Mother.”

  VRETHIKI NOTICED ALMOST AT ONCE THAT STEPHANOS WAS an important person here. From the moment they entered the gates of the Palace of Blachernae, he was surrounded by slaves and servants, calling him sir, asking for instructions, running to carry them out. He went at once, trailing Vrethiki three paces behind him, to inspect the Emperor’s apartments. Servants who had made them ready went with him, eager to show him what had been done. Stephanos approved the rooms, all three of them: a chamber hung with damasked silks, with a wide hearth and a good fire burning, and gilded couches, and a writing desk, a bed chamber, and a large anteroom, with the walls all painted, and the floor of colored marble, and a great wide throne at one end. All these rooms had large arched windows with glass in them, and so were both warm and light.

  When Stephanos had seen over the Emperor’s lodgings he saw to their own: a little chamber off the Imperial anteroom for him and Manuel. He had an extra bed brought in for Vrethiki before marching on to look at rooms for priests, wardrobe keepers, stewards, chaplains, captains, for everyone who had come with them from Mistra. Every three minutes it seemed messages were carried to him from the kitchens and cellars about arrangements for a banquet that night. He had no time at all for Vrethiki, who soon stopped following, and returned to the little room. Here he untied his bundle and put his few things in a small wooden chest that seemed to be for him, since it was beside his bed. Then he pressed his nose to the window, to look through the little thick squares of glass.