Emperor's Winding Sheet

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

  The thin and widely spaced line of men keeping the walls, stretching on either side of them, brought nearer noises in the dark. On the right somewhere a man stamped his cold feet, yawned, put down his quiver with a rattle of loose shafts.

  “What’s that?” said Theophilus, suddenly. Over to the right, across the water, a sudden light blazed out, and then was gone.

  “Someone has signaled from Pera,” said Phrantzes. “We are betrayed.”

  “It may not be that,” said Theophilus, always hopeful. “A watchman’s lamp, perhaps?”

  “It vanished as suddenly as it came,” said Notaras grimly. He called to a sentry and consulted with him. “He says he has not seen any lamps over yonder, on any of the past six nights he has watched here,” he reported, more grimly still.

  In agony of mind they strained to listen. Vrethiki thought he heard a splash once; but so stealthily did Coco come that his ships had moved right beneath the tower they stood on, and farther yet, and the anxious listeners had heard nothing before the guns opened up. They saw the lurid flash of cannon from the Valley of the Springs and outlined on the suddenly scarlet water were the black outlines of their own ships. They heard, even through the thunderous crash of cannon fire, the sickening splintering noise of the impact of ball on wood. There were splashes and screams, and clearly audible across the water, shrieks of laughter from the Turks. A choking smell of smoke drifted out of the dark. Then flares were lighted in the Turkish ships, and one by one they moved forward to the fight.

  “They knew. They were warned,” said the Emperor dully. Screams still reached them out of the night. They could see small areas of the Turkish vessels, lit by their flares, floating to and fro like patches of light on a wall. They could not make out what was happening. The cannon fire continued from the farther shore and from enemy ships, and all this confusion of moving lights and fires was doubled, mirrored in the glossy black water. For an hour and a half they stood in anguish, watching this strange and terrible spectacle. Then dawn began to break, and a dim gray light showed the two large galleys surrounded by enemy ships on the dark water, and all around things floating, broken spars, broken men. Of the other ships that had gone with Coco there was no sign. The Emperor covered his face, and bowed his head.

  In the lightening day the galleys began to move, and seeing, at last, the distress of their fellows, other Christian ships began belatedly to move up from the boom to bring aid. The Turkish vessels retired hastily.

  “Bring me the reckoning when it is known,” said the Emperor, departing.

  Phrantzes came with it later in the day. Coco’s ship lost, with all hands. Trevisano’s also, though he and some others swam ashore. Ninety men dead, shot or drowned; and only one Turkish ship destroyed. The Emperor heard him out, white-lipped, taut in every muscle, silent.

  But just behind Phrantzes came Trevisano, he who had stayed, he said, for the honor of Christendom, and he was in a pitiable state. Tears were running down his face, and his eyes were reddened and swollen. A gash gaped in his forehead, and his clothes were tattered and damp.

  “Lord Emperor!” he cried. “Lord Emperor!” And he fell on his knees at the Emperor’s feet. “They have taken prisoners … all who swam the wrong way in the dark … to the opposite shore, my friends, my country-men …” The Emperor reached out his hands, and took I Trevisano’s. “They have impaled them all along the shore, and they are out of bowshot … we can do nothing to help them … nothing …” He was shaken with sobs.

  Vrethiki stiffened to see the dark flash in the Emperor’s eyes.

  “Have we any prisoners?” he asked Phrantzes.

  “Two hundred and sixty in all, my Lord.”

  “Take them every one down to the sea wall, and hang them from the battlements there,” said the Emperor.

  And Varangian John marched forth to do his bidding.

  Chapter 14

  After that there was a long respite from serious attack. The guns hammered on, remorselessly, with out cease. Men coming from duty on the wall were deaf for an hour or two, from the numbness left by the noise. And yet already used to it, and finding no danger in it for themselves, the birds no longer flew up from the trees at the gunclaps, but sang peacefully on in gardens and bushes only a mile within the walls. Nearly every day the Turkish vessels sallied out and made as if to attack the boom, or brought scaling ladders, and made feint attacks on the walls at their weakest and lowest, along the Golden Horn. But the walls were patched and botched up every night; the attacks were only shadow play and came to nothing.

  Had the Christians only known as much! As it was, they were continuously sounding the alarm, springing to their posts, hurriedly transferring men from one point of the wall to another, so that men were less and less willing to go. Tempers ran short. Only the Emperor remained calm. Day by day, Vrethiki watched him. The problems, and quarrels, and difficulties were brought to him to be dealt with. He worked long hours in council; he soothed people; he tried to find them guns or shot, or extra working hands; he thanked them and flattered them. He rode round the walls every day, to see for himself, to listen to problems, to praise, to cheer his people. He prayed every day, in public in the churches, and, with a kind of despairing abandon, stretched out before his icon at night. He ate and slept very little.

  Sometimes Vrethiki remembered the night he had the terrible dream. The dream itself he had forgotten, except that he remembered he had seen Uncle Norton, wearing the Emperor’s robe. He wondered why. It seemed absurd to him now. “Uncle Norton made more fuss and bossiness out of a ship and a warehouse,” the boy thought, “than the Lord Constantine does of an Empire.” And Uncle Norton, he couldn’t help thinking, had never been the man to ask his servant if there was food enough for his supper. Then when the boy watched Justiniani talking to the Emperor, he saw how the great captain deferred to his master. He was not ceremoniously polite, not at all—rather, brisk and inclined to make wry jests. But anyone could see he was serving a man he respected. “What did I hate about the Emperor?” the boy found himself wondering. “Only that he brought me here. And that was only because I was, I am afraid. And yet others have come freely into the same danger, out of greatness of heart.” He glanced again at Justiniani, his dark head with its white streak bent intently over a map they were discussing. “I should be ashamed of myself,” Vrethiki thought ruefully. And his hand traveled to the hilt of the dagger that had been given him that he might play his part.

  The day came when the Emperor, riding on one of his ceaselessly repeated patrols, found a section of the wall without defenders. Just beyond the empty stretch they came upon a quarrel, so loud and violent that the group of men involved did not see or hear the Emperor and his party till they were right upon them.

  “What is happening here?” asked the Emperor sternly.

  “This man will not keep his post,” said the captain, who was barring the top of the steps down to the City, and holding a man back at sword point.

  “What have you to say for yourself?” said the Emperor, and Vrethiki saw again that dark flash of anger in his eyes.

  “Forgive your servant,” said the man, collapsing to his knees, “but my wife … my child is sick … they have nothing to eat. I only wanted to find some food, I would have returned at once, at once …”

  “Yesterday I let three men from my watch go to find food, and they did not return for five hours,” said the captain.

  “And what if the attack comes while you are gone?” said the Emperor. “Cannot your wife buy food for your children?” But at that a murmur, an angry murmur, came from all the listening men.

  “Things are difficult, Lord Emperor,” said the captain. “There’s next to nothing to be had, whole districts of the City where nothing can be bought. We tramp round for hours, looking for something, anything, and when we find it the price is often too high. Those Genoese rats from Pera charge the last obol they can squeeze from the hungry … the fishermen cannot put out, nothing grows much at this season
, only lettuces, and those have been taken before they were ripe. As you know, Lord Emperor, there are not many cattle or sheep within the walls, and there is barely any bread …”

  “Enough, my son. I understand,” said the Emperor. “I will do what I can. But you must stay at your post,” he added, looking down at the kneeling man.

  “THIS IS LUDICROUS,” SAID THE EMPEROR TO HIS COUNCIL. “We have made a soldier out of every citizen, man, woman and child. We must provide food for them.”

  “I don’t see how we can …” said Notaras.

  “We must. We must buy all the food in the City, all of it; beasts on the hoof, salad in the fields, everything; then we must issue a daily share to everyone.”

  “My Lord,” said Phrantzes, “for that there is not money enough in your treasury, though you spent it to the last coin.”

  “The prices have so risen, with scarcity …”

  “We should have thought of this sooner,” said the Emperor. “But there is money enough in the City. We shall have to levy contributions from wealthy citizens, and from churches. They can spare us their candlesticks, their surplus plate …”

  “This will cause anger, Sire,” said Phrantzes.

  “That can’t be helped. Will it be better if the Turks get it all? Get the demarchs of each district to work with you, Theophilus; I am giving this job to you. Make very sure that money is taken from the churches of those who support the Union, and those who do not, with perfect fairness; and when you buy, do not pay absurd prices, take the food, and give what is reasonable. And when shares are distributed, make sure the poor get as much as the rich, and nobody, whoever he is, gets more. Wait … yes, an extra measure for those who fight on the walls.”

  “May I suggest, Sire,” said Theophilus, “that extra measure should be given also to those who work repairing the wall at night?”

  “Yes, that would be only right.”

  “Furthermore, Sire,” said Phrantzes, “perhaps we should promise reparations to the churches, should we succeed in repulsing the Turks.”

  “Promise it fourfold,” said the Emperor.

  •

  NEXT TIME VRETHIKI RAN INTO VARANGIAN JOHN, HE HAD A wide grin on his face. “Guess what happened, boy,” he said, “to that swine of a gunsmith!”

  “Can’t guess,” said the boy. “You tell me.”

  “Kaput!” said John. “Blown into nasty oozy little pieces. And guess what did it?”

  “Oh, do tell me!”

  “Well, listen. What do you hear?”

  “Guns, as usual.”

  “When did you last hear the big one—you know, that monstrous one that shakes the houses end to end of the City, and rocks the ships in the harbor? When did you last hear that one?”

  “Oh,” said Vrethiki. “Now you mention it, I haven’t heard that one today.”

  “It blew up yesterday,” said John with great satisfaction. “And it blew its bloody maker with it!”

  “How do you know?” said the boy doubtfully.

  “Ways and means,” said Varangian John.

  “Just what are your ways and means, John?” asked Vrethiki.

  “Look here,” said John, and he pulled from his pocket a little scrap of paper, rolled tightly into a tube. He flattened it out, and showed Vrethiki writing on it. “Someone out there thinks we ought to know this and that,” he said. “He feathers his arrows with this pretty scrap of plumage, and shoots it over.”

  “So the Turks have traitors, too!”

  “Traitor is a strong word for it. There are Christians out there, too, you know. The Despot of Serbia, for example. He’s the Sultan’s vassal, so he’s had to send some troops to help him. Perhaps some of them aren’t quite as keen as they might be to help Christian against Turk.”

  That evening, as the boy rode beside Stephanos, a few paces behind the Emperor, making the evening inspection of the walls, he said to Stephanos, “Can it be true that there are Christians in the Sultan’s army?”

  “There are some,” said Stephanos. He was keeping a solicitous eye on the figure of the Emperor in front, riding as always with Phrantzes on one hand, and Don Francisco on the other.

  “How can they?” demanded the boy.

  “Well,” said Stephanos, “on our side there is Prince Orhan, and the men of his court, who are Turks, and Mohammedans. Should they not fight for us?”

  “Oh,” said Vrethiki, his swelling indignation suddenly pricked.

  “Still wanting everything simple?” said Stephanos with a half smile. The Emperor had halted to talk with a Genoese captain. “You’re all the same, you Westerners! Hungry for simplicity, like Crusaders! Did you know the Crusader Lords were scandalized that the Emperor had dealings with the infidels; but the Emperors have had a frontier with Islam for nearly eight hundred years! Nothing is simple here; time complicates.” He was talking quietly, almost as though to himself. “The Emperors are Christ on earth, the chosen of God, like Solomon, like David. Yet they have been usurpers, image-breakers, adulterers, torturers, tricksters. An Empress once put out her own son’s eyes that her lover might reign unthreatened. Time weaves complexities. And this place, this City, the seat of majesty, the throne of Christ on earth, it was once a palpable glory, and is now a ruin, a memory—a memory clad in a web of dream. Look around you, Vrethiki, and see this amazing thing. Here are good men ready to fight and die for it—for a ruin, a memory, and a dream. And over there”—he pointed to the Turkish camp below them and beyond—“more brave men, and what are they fighting for? It is a dream of their own that brings them here; a promise their prophet made them, a blessing on the army, on the prince, that should conquer us. Why us? Why did the heathen prophet set his men on us? Because this place was crowned with a dream of Christendom, with the ideal of Christ’s kingdom upon earth. It is because of what we dream this place to be, because of what it never in truth has been, that they, too, lust and long for it, and come marching against us to wrest it from us. If all men saw the world for what it is, Vrethiki, this City would be left to molder peacefully in its powerless old age, and the Sultan would stay at home and build his palaces and gardens, and not a drop of blood would be shed!”

  “You know, Stephanos,” said the boy. “I think you’re wrong!” But at that moment the Emperor finished talking to the captain, and rode on, and although Stephanos looked at the boy with an amused inquiry on his face, there was time for no more talk just then.

  THE EMPEROR CALLED A MEETING OF THE CHIEF VENETIANS in the City. Since Minotto had sent urgently to Venice for help, nothing more had been heard. “Would it be possible,” inquired the Emperor, “to sneak a ship past the Turks, and go in search of the fleet that is on its way to help us? They may not realize how desperate is the need for haste.”

  “I should think it could be done,” said Minotto. “A small, fast ship—a brigantine, or such like. It’s taking a chance on the Dardanelles being unguarded, but I expect they’ve left it open by bringing every ship they have up here.”

  “God knows, we could do with good news,” said the Emperor. “If we could tell the people help was coming …”

  “We will make a ship ready,” said Minotto.

  THAT EVENING WHEN STEPHANOS AND VRETHIKI WERE SERVING the Emperor his supper, and the three of them were alone in the cells of the Chora, the Emperor said to Stephanos, “Tell the boy about the ship that is going. I am putting on board her, safely concealed in the hold, one or two elderly ladies who served my mother, or my late wife. I have a duty to save them from suffering if I can. And I have it in mind that I have injured the boy, too, in bringing him into peril whether he would or no. Tell him he may go to safety with them.”

  Vrethiki saw Stephanos glance at him, with an expression full of pain. Then Stephanos translated the Emperor’s words.

  “But what about the prophecy?” cried Vrethiki, wildly. “He needs me because of that! I’ve got to stay!”

  Stephanos made this answer to the Emperor, who was sitting slumped with weariness in
his chair, gazing at the flames of the fire in the little stove and turning his ring of state round and round on his delicate long finger. The Emperor looked up at Vrethiki with a trace of surprise, and spoke with sudden passion.

  “He says,” said Stephanos, “do you think he is a fool? Do you think he cares for prophecies? He says he brought you here to please Plethon, and he thinks even if the citizens here all knew about it, they have forgotten by now. He says why should he take thought for the prophecies, since whatever he does, and whatever happens, the people will hold him to blame? Do you think he doesn’t know how they blame him even for his name, saying it has been prophesied that Constantine, son of Helena, shall be the last Emperor, as also was the first? Do you think he hasn’t heard them say that the Turks will break in, and get as far as the Column of the Cross in the Forum of Constantine, and then will come an angel with a fiery sword and give it to a simple poor man, who happens to be standing by, and he will turn back the Turks, and lead the Romans to victory? If that simple poor man who can do so much better than my Lord would only present himself now, how gladly would the Emperor lay down his burden! What use is it to seek to avoid blame by a people such as that? The Emperor says he wishes to die with a clear conscience, with no one having a cause of complaint against him, and he thought you longed to go home.”

  But Vrethiki was shattered and confused. The solid ground was cut from beneath him and he floundered in a conflict of feeling like a man in a quagmire. At last, “It’s true, I did want to go home,” he said miserably. “But to leave now! And the Emperor, and Justiniani, and you, Stephanos, all stay here still, and I am to go, and have no share in what is to happen! Let me stay!”

  “There’s nothing to stay for,” said Stephanos quietly. “Nothing for you here, and those who stay will die.”

  “What is he saying?” asked the Emperor, watching them.

  “He says he will die for the Empire,” said Stephanos. But Vrethiki had been hearing Greek for a long time now, and the sentence was simple, made up of familiar words. He understood it.