Varangian John told Vrethiki about impaling. “They skewer them, like a chicken on a spit,” he said. “A sharp pole driven in between the legs, and out between the shoulder blades, and set upright in the ground for poor devils to die on. They say the Venetian captain took two days to go. Some take longer. I’ll tell you another thing, young Piers. The gun that did the damage was cast by our friend Urban. I told you he should have been dealt with. The Turks have a name for that new castle of theirs. They’re calling it the gorge-cutter.”
“How do you know that?” asked Vrethiki, astonished.
“Ways and means,” said John cryptically. “The Sultan may have made a mistake, though, blasting off his shiny new gun. The Venetians can hardly overlook it—or at least we must hope they can’t.”
The Emperor hoped so too. He assembled all the Venetians in the City to meet him in council. Among them were the captains of six merchant ships lying in the Golden Horn, four of them bound for Trebizond and unable to proceed for fear of the Sultan’s guns, and two on a homeward run, having come down the Bosporus just in time. The Bailey of the Venetians in the City, an elderly man called Minotto, promised the Emperor that he would remain in the City, that every able-bodied Venetian would bear arms in the City’s defense, and that he would send urgent messages home to ask for a fleet to come swiftly to their aid. The Emperor spoke to each of the captains in turn, asking them to stay and help the citizens in their struggle. They consulted together, briefly. Trevisano was the one who gave their answer. “We stay,” he said. “For the honor of God, and all Christendom.”
The Emperor turned next to Pera. Over the Golden Horn, opposite the tip of the City, stood that Genoese colony which the Genoese called Galata. It was snugly ringed with its own walls, with its own warships drawn up below them. Nearly all the trade with the Black Sea and beyond was in their hands; they sucked the City dry of wealth. Their ruler, the Podestà, was evasive, careful never to give a straight answer. He would promise the Emperor nothing. Yet it was from Genoa that the best help was to come.
His name was Justiniani Longo. It was January when he put in to the Golden Horn with two ships, and the news of his arrival took the City by storm. Varangian John was cock-a-hoop about him: “A man of our own kind, lads, a soldier of fortune, who has never yet fought without glory, and best of all is famous, is renowned above all in the art of defending cities and dealing with siege warfare. Let’s hope the Emperor knows what a bird has flown to him, knows how to treat such a man!”
“You should tell him yourself, if you think he might not know,” said Vrethiki.
“Not I,” said John. “But you could. You tell him.”
Vrethiki told Stephanos.
Justiniani was a thickset, stocky fellow, very light on his feet. He presented himself wearing armor—a full suit of gray plated steel, and a short pleated cloak that fell from his shoulders just to his buttocks. He was wearing a huge wide-brimmed hat when he entered, but he swept it off as he came forward to the throne. His black hair had a streak of pure white, growing on his brow and swept back over his head like a plume. A splash of white grew also in his beard, a little off-center. He drew his sword, and, coming forward, knelt, and laid the blade on the Emperor’s knees.
“Are you sent from Genoa?” asked the Emperor.
“Not sent, Lord Emperor. I am here on my own behalf, as a private citizen.” He must have noticed the dismay on the councilors’ faces. Standing, he said, “Genoa will do nothing for you officially. They are afraid of offending the Turks, in case that’s bad for trade. They won’t help either directly, or through Pera. The Podesta at Galata has orders to stay neutral. I blush for my countrymen, but I tell you the truth.”
“Have you any other news for us?” the Emperor asked. “What will Venice do?”
“I have heard they are sending ships. But I saw nothing of them on my way here.”
“And the Pope?”
“He is sending letters and embassies everywhere. Something will come of them perhaps …” Justiniani looked straight at the Emperor. “Your Imperial Majesty would do well not to count on it, I think.”
Vrethiki stared raptly at this famous man. There was a perky, sparrowcock look to him, as though he brought with him a breath of the fresh wind that had blown him here.
The Emperor handed him back his sword. Those dark eyes of his were bent on his visitor, weighing him up.
“Will you take me into your service, Sire?” said Justiniani.
“You can be my commander in chief at the land walls,” said the Emperor. “If we win, I will give you Lemnos.”
“That’s generous,” said Justiniani. Vrethiki could see that it was, from the angry look on Lukas Notaras’ face.
“I must say honestly,” said the Emperor in a cool level voice, “that I do not expect to have to make that offer good, unless we have help from the West. From some where in the West, and substantial help. Change your mind if you will.”
The Genoese looked at his new master with a slight twist of the mouth, and a twinkle in his eyes. “Come, Sire,” he said. “War is a fickle thing. Here’s seven hundred well-armed men with me. There must be some Venetian dogs here who can be made to bite as well as bark, and you have your own loyal citizens. Perhaps we can beat the bloody infidel, perhaps not; but for certain we can give him a good fight of it!” He broke into a cheerful grin. “I’ll go and look at these walls you’ve given me,” he said, and bowed, and marched out, with his sword lifting a fold of the cloak swinging behind him like a dog’s tail.
“My Lord, you cannot, you absolutely cannot make him a commander,” said Lukas Notaras. “The Venetians will never obey a Genoese. The commands must all go to us Romans.”
“He’s a soldier, Lukas, and you are not,” said the Emperor. “Besides, I like him,” he murmured under his breath.
At the dinner in honor of Justiniani and his captains which the Emperor gave next night, Justiniani said cheer fully, “A lot needs doing to those walls. First of all, the moat needs clearing, and flooding with water again as far as the lie of the land permits. There’s a good stout fellow called Trevisano who’s undertaken that, with his men.”
The Emperor eyed Lukas Notaras across a bowl of figs. Trevisano was a Venetian.
IT SEEMED JUSTINIANI HAD REALLY BROUGHT A NEW WIND with him. Suddenly there was work, things to do, precautions and preparations. It seemed to Vrethiki that finding things to do had brought the horrible threat nearer, made it more real to everyone, and yet mysteriously dispersed the stagnant atmosphere of fear. The Emperor went riding with his new commander up and down the land walls, studying weak points and strong points. The citizens made work gangs to labor at clearing the great fosse of rubbish, at mending the walls, at carting stone balls for ballista and cannon, making stockpiles at well-chosen points. Justiniani had no trouble getting men to work for him. He smiled freely, praised freely, was not above lending a hand in a task he had ordered, generous with praise and always cheerful; he made even hard labor like carting stone seem worth while in a hopeful cause. Vrethiki’s heart warmed to him; he thought him splendid. Riding the walls Vrethiki saw even the Emperor in a new light. The moment he got up on those windy parapets, talking strategy, he lost his ceremoniousness; he became a brisk and practical sort of man, with a good eye for cracked masonry, and so little hobbled by ancient piety he was willing, without batting an eyelid, to order the ripping up of tombstones or the dismantling of ruined chapels to be used as repair material.
Vrethiki soon knew the weak points and strong points on the walls as well as anyone. For anyone could see where the trouble would be. Halfway along the land walls a little river called the Lycus ran into the City from the countryside, and made its way to the Marmara shore. It was ducted under the walls in a huge conduit, but along its flat valley floor the walls faced an open plain on which attackers could marshal, and where they had room to place their guns.
It was riding along this section of wall one morning with the Emperor that Justini
ani suddenly seemed to notice Vrethiki.
“Your master has a weakness, after all,” he said to Stephanos who was riding at his side, taking notes of work that needed doing. “He has that lovely slave boy always at his side.”
Stephanos flushed with anger, and answered smoothly, rapidly, in a fiercely muttered undertone. Justiniani apologized, gracefully. A moment later he tried again, asking Vrethiki himself where he came from.
“Bristow? Ah—lnglese!” he said, smiling. “Thence the sunny hair, and summer eyes. So you too have come looking for battles and glory. We are rash bold fellows, you and I.”
Vrethiki glowed with pleasure, but somehow he couldn’t just accept such praise, given on a misunderstanding. “I’m not so brave as that,” he said. “I’d be far hence if I were free to go. But a fool dream binds me here.” And he told Justiniani about the Cog Anne, and the shipwreck, and Mistra, and Plethon.
“So here you are,” said Justiniani when he had done. “And being here, you will fight with the best of us, eh?”
“I’ll keep my place by my master,” said Vrethiki. “But as to fighting, I’ve only tooth and nail to do it with.”
The next day one of Justiniani’s swaggering soldiers came to the Emperor’s apartments, bearing a parcel ad dressed L’Inglese. Inside the linen wrapper was an Italian dagger—a steel blade some twelve inches long, with niello inlay on the hilt, and a handsome scabbard of gilded leather work. Vrethiki ran his finger down the blade till he cut himself; wore it at his belt all day, taking it out of its scabbard every other minute, and laid it close beside his pillow at night. It was to be a long time before the boy exchanged words again with the great Genoese. But from that day onward he worshipped him.
Chapter 9
The emperor took luka notaras, Minotto, the Venetian, and the Turk, Orhan, with him on that morning’s ride, round the circuit of the sea walls. The sea walls were simpler than the land walls. They were a single line of towers, girding the shore, with a great wall linking them, and a parapet and catwalk, and battlements along the top. Flights of steps ran up to the strong points from within, at regular intervals. In the northern run of the walls there were many gates, and outside them, on the beaches, was a great clutter of fishermen’s boats and shacks. But the Emperor planned to shut off the great curving arm of water from Turkish attack with a boom floated across the mouth, between the tip of the City and Pera. “With God’s help, we shall not need to defend this stretch,” he was saying.
“A token force, perhaps,” said Orhan.
“Nevertheless, if they did get through to attack here,” said Notaras, “the walls are at their lowest here, and it was here that the Crusaders got in …”
“You can defend this part,” said the Emperor. “Your house is in this district, Notaras, and the fleet is in your charge, so it is as well you should be near it. You can garrison this wall, and hold your troops in reserve for bringing reinforcements as needed.”
Farther along the wall they drew nearer the mouth of the Golden Horn. They could see Pera, with its fortified towers and walls, perched on the slopes of the point opposite. They began to discuss the placing of the boom to close the channel. Obviously the nearer the tip of the City it could be placed, the more wall could be protected from attack. While they talked Vrethiki stood looking over the parapet. On his left lay Pera, for the City projected farther than the northern shore into the deep waters of the Bosporus. Ahead of him the Bosporus stretched away north ward, with the Sultan’s castles out of sight round the bend. On his right the Asian shore, wooded, hazy in the sunshine, with a few Turkish villages visible and, at the nearest point, the pitched roof and minaret of a little mosque. It was so near! Vrethiki measured the distance with his eye. The gulf between friend and enemy, between infidel and Christian, was only this choppy mile or so of dark-blue water; and as the party moved on, turning southward round the point, Vrethiki almost thought he could hear, on a gust of the breeze, the wailing singsong call to an alien prayer.
The party rode onward swiftly, under the ruins of an older Imperial palace, crumbling away on rising terraces above them, and moved round the curve of the walls to the southern shore. The Emperor was not much worried by attacks on this section of the walls, for the current ran so fiercely and swiftly round the point that it would take astonishing seamanship to bring an assault to bear there. But the southern wall had numerous small harbors set into it, and each one needed careful looking at, in case it was a weak point. All would need garrisons. On their left as they rode stretched the bright sparkling sea, with its scatter of shadowy island in the haze.
They had ridden nearly to where the sea wall joined the land wall again, on the southern shore, when they came to a little church, close within the wall. There was a garden round the church, with cypresses growing. And under the trees was a table, and a party of fishermen and shepherds seated, and eating, with a bride and groom. The Emperor reined in his horse, and looked down at this scene a moment. At once he had been seen. An old man wearing a shepherd’s fluffy cloak came running up the flight of steps to the top of the wall, flung himself on his knees, and invited the Emperor to honor him by drinking a cup of the wedding wine.
The Emperor smiled. He dismounted, and climbed down into the garden. Stephanos and Vrethiki went with him, but his noblemen stayed where they were. The Emperor sat on a stool in the porch of the little church. He sipped wine, and ate a piece of grilled fish that they brought him, wrapped in vine leaves. The priest of the church, bowing gravely, told him that the young bridegroom was Basil, a fisherman, and his bride was Zoë, the shepherd’s daughter. Zoë kept her face veiled, but Basil came forward, and greeted the Emperor. He was awkward and shy, not knowing what to say, or how to bow. A wrinkled old woman wearing black brought another piece of fish, “for the lucky child.” Vrethiki ate it happily. It was pink and firm and salty, and pungent with some good spice.
Just then the musicians arrived, with shawms, and a psaltery, and a tambour. Basil led his bride forward to dance for the Emperor. She spun and glided, he leaped and stamped, a simple dance like a mayday romp in England. The Emperor watched and smiled. Vrethiki saw with surprise that he tapped with his silken foot to the joyful beat of the dance. At last Basil dropped to one knee, with his arms flung upward. He was a little breathless, and the sweat glistened on his smooth young face. Zoë, too, stopped spinning, and the fluttering ribbons on her head dress floated to rest. The Emperor rose.
“Fight as bravely as you dance, my son,” he said.
Rejoining the others at the top of the wall, and seeing Notaras’ cold disapproving face, he said, “You should have come down, Lukas, the wine was drinkable.”
“Is this a time to marry?” said Lukas as they rode away.
“Soon it may be too late,” replied the Emperor.
“HOW MANY MEN DO WE HAVE TO MAN THAT CIRCUIT OF walls?” asked the Emperor. “We need an accurate count. You see to that, Phrantzes. Get the demarch of each district to bring you a list of every able-bodied man in his district, and all the weapons they can muster. They must do it secretly, not comparing tallies with each other, but bringing the results straight to you. And, Phrantzes old friend, this is for your ears only, take the accounts to your own house, and sit down alone within your own four walls, and make a total, and let nobody know it but you and me.”
THE SPRING HAD COME ROUND AGAIN. IT HAD HARDLY SEEMED like winter to Vrethiki, only storms, rainfall on gusty mild winds, and once a light scatter of snow that had been blown into corners and crevices by the wind, and melted almost as soon as it came. More often the rain was like a mist, a grayness in the air, a fine drizzle faintly caressing the skin. Bright sunlight had shone in between.
But that had been winter, for now it was spring, with an outburst of birds singing on every bush, and an outburst of sudden flowers scrambling all over the ruins, creeping in dusty corners on the streets, waving like fragile flags from parapets, from cracks in masonry. Storks came back, and built nests on the rooftops;
spring plowing was halfway done in the City’s fields, and the shepherds were busy with lambing in the flocks that wandered grazing through ruins and copses. The gardeners gathered a first crop of sweet green salad and sold it through the streets on handcarts. The sun shone, briefly interrupted by warm showers, and the air was bright and sweet like wine.
The flowers and birds were not the only ones to flourish unconcerned. Down in the Petrion quarter, where the palace household bought its fish on the teeming shore, the price of turbot was up because some of the fishermen needed new nets. “The old nets will not last above another month or so,” a fisherman told Vrethiki and Manuel.
“Pray God they will have to,” muttered Manuel. But the Emperor liked turbot. Manuel haggled a little, but in the end he paid. There was still a thronging market in the City, full of Genoese traders from Pera, the stalls laden with produce from the farms, with dried figs, with bales of silk, with leatherwork and wool. Among the other merchandise, armaments: swords old and new, greaves, helmets, straps and bows were on sale, and yet the crowds were denser by the shining bales of silk. A strange-looking man in a long blue robe with sun and stars sewn on it in golden sequins, and flasks of brightly colored liquors on his stall, was selling painless poison in little phials, “to bring an end swiftly like a child falling asleep.” But nobody seemed to need his wares, and he changed tune abruptly when a priest came by, and offered a marvelous cure for lumbago instead.
Vrethiki stared as he stood, waiting patiently, holding the fish basket, while Manuel was explaining loudly to a friend that he, Manuel, was buying produce only so that most of the Emperor’s household could serve as soldiers; he himself was thinking of asking the Emperor to let him go … The alchemist drew near to Vrethiki, and whispered to him. “No sweet death for you, eh, my young lamb? For you I’ve a better thing … look at this …” He opened a little box, and took out a jar of alabaster. He lifted the lid of this jar, and showed Vrethiki a cloudy, gray translucent ointment within. It emitted a pungent oily smell. “This, now, most wonderfully heals wounds—closes open gashes, stems the flow of blood, and brings the skin to heal over instantly …”
Emperor's Winding Sheet Page 9
