Emperor's Winding Sheet

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

  “No,” he said. “To die for the Empire is the Emperor’s privilege—but lesser folk may dare for lesser things. And you, Stephanos, you with your ‘nothing here,’ your ‘ruin and memory and dream,’ you are quite wrong; the people here are real, and so their courage is, and while the Lord Constantine is alive, and fighting for it, ruin, memory and dream are all alike real for me!”

  “So, he would stay,” said the Emperor gently, when Stephanos translated that. “Tell him to take care what he wishes, in case it is given to him. Tell him that when I was a young man I wanted above all to be Emperor, to inherit my brother’s place. I plotted and maneuvered, and quarreled with my other brothers, all to further my ambition. God punished me by granting my desire. I have got what I wished for, and it is a heavy and a long ordeal, that I am hard put to to bear with dignity. A little while ago the boy wanted release; and now it is given to him he draws back and says he wants another thing instead. So tell him he shall have what he asks for; tell him to be sure of what he asks.”

  “Let me stay!” said Vrethiki, stubbornly, near to tears.

  “Let him stay, then,” said the Emperor to Stephanos. “And out of all possible lesser things, what is it, I wonder, that keeps him?”

  As though for an answer, the boy fell on his knees, and with a swift clumsy gesture took the Emperor’s right hand, and managing at last to get his tongue round two words of Greek, he said, “A ff endi mou!—My true Lord.”

  “If I had a son, you know, Stephanos … “ said the Emperor.

  “Yes, Sire, I know,” said Stephanos.

  THE VENETIANS MADE READY THEIR BRIGANTINE. IT HAD A crew of twelve volunteers, who blackened their faces with char coal, and wore turbans and Turkish trousers and jackets. She slipped through the boom on the night of the third of May, flying the red crescent from her masthead, and she got safely away, though Vrethiki was not on board her.

  Chapter 15

  Days passed. Twice a day the Emperor rode along the walls. He spent less time than he used to in churches, though he visited one church or another nearly every day; he spent much more time conferring with his council, with his captains. The ambit of his days had shrunk down to al most nothing but the walls and the few churches near the walls, for he had no time to ride through the middle of the City. Thus it was that neither Stephanos nor Vrethiki, and perhaps not the Emperor himself, had realized the change in the feeling of the people—what the wear and tear of hunger and fear, and the leprous creeping growth of despair had done to the mood of the citizens.

  But when one morning the Emperor visited the Church of the Holy Wisdom, the people turned their faces from him in the street. They hissed and spat as he passed, and screamed curses after him, crying that it was because he had united the churches that the curse of God had fallen upon the City. The Emperor took not the least notice of this; but Stephanos and Vrethiki, knowing their master, flinched on his behalf, and hated his accusers.

  Rumors began to reach them of quarrels and brawling between the Venetians and the Genoese; at first just rumors, and then complaints. At last several of the demarchs came to the Emperor, and told him that they could not keep the peace in the streets of their districts, so widespread and bitter had disorder and fighting become; the foreigners fought each other, or threatened and insulted each other, and the demarchs could not control them because they would pay no heed to orders given by Romans. The Emperor called the leaders of the Venetians and the Genoese before him, and asked what was the cause of the trouble between them. There was a sullen silence at first. The two nations had ranged themselves on either side of the hall like antagonists before a battle. They glowered at each other, and so sulfurous was the atmosphere in the room, thought Vrethiki, that had anyone put a match to it, it would have exploded like a charge of powder. “Come, gentlemen,” said the Emperor sternly. He had robed him self in purple, and put on his crown for this audience. He sat on the Gospel-book side of his throne, and held in his right hand his orb of state, in his left his silken bag of dust. “What have you to say for yourselves?” he demanded, frowning at his turbulent allies.

  “They provoke us,” said one of the Langascos, the Genoese, at last. “They say it was our fault the attempt to burn the Turkish fleet failed. They taunt us with it …”

  “It was your fault!” cried Minotto. “Because of you there was delay, and delay brought failure. Can you deny that? You said you wanted it put off so that you could join in, and that gave you time to get a message to your precious accomplices in Pera, and they gave the game away, like the stinking traitors they are!”

  “It’s a fine thing to be called a traitor by you!” cried Cattaneo, his hand on the hilt of his sword, “when you Venetian rats have been sneaking ships out to safety whenever you get the chance!”

  “Our ships,” snarled Minotto, “have their rudders un shipped, and their sails and gear folded and stored within the City, so that all men can see we mean to stay. And yours? They are all ready to run at a moment’s notice!”

  “We certainly have no intention of making our vessels unseaworthy when they may be needed at any time to fight. We aren’t cowards!” retorted Langasco.

  “You are all in league with the men of Pera, and they are hand in glove with the Sultan!” said Minotto, ostentatiously turning his back.

  The Emperor sat listening to them with his lips tight and a curious gray tinge on his sallow cheeks. Vrethiki, looking anxiously at him, thought he might be going to faint. But his voice was steady enough as he suddenly cried out to them, “For the pity of God, gentlemen, is not the enemy without enough for you, that you must start a war be tween yourselves?”

  There was a silence. The nobles and captains looked ashamed. There were bowed heads, flushed cheeks. “In deed we must strive and work together,” said the Emperor. “God knows we will die together if we fail. Come now, there are no traitors here, but only brave and honorable Christians. Let me see you friends again before you leave my presence.”

  Very slowly, very slowly and reluctantly, the two groups drew near each other. The movement was started by Justiniani, who had been standing quietly among the Genoese. He walked over and saluted Minotto gravely, and then took his hand. Then one by one the others followed suit.

  But when they had trooped out, leaving Phrantzes, and Theophilus, and Notaras, and one or two other Romans standing round the throne, the Emperor said, despairingly, “We get weaker and less united by the day.”

  Phrantzes said, “My Lord, I think we should negotiate.”

  “Is it possible we will get any good of that?” said the Emperor doubtfully.

  “I think there is a faint chance, my Lord,” said Phrantzes. “There is a peace party in the Sultan’s camp. He must be disappointed at finding us so tough a nut to crack; he has failed on both sea and land. It is true we are weary; but then he has to keep his vast army in the field, and well fed, and in good heart. Time wears heavily on him too, we may be sure.”

  “I will not deal openly with him,” said the Emperor. “But if it can be done secretly.

  “We can do it through the men of Pera,” said Notaras. “We can find out what his terms would be.”

  “Very well, find out,” said the Emperor wearily, rising to go to his prayers.

  There seemed to be difficulty in getting an answer. A sealed letter was delivered to the Emperor two days later. The Sultan would give his word as a Moslem, that if the City were surrendered without conditions, the people and their property would be safe. The Emperor might go to the Morea if he wished, with his courtiers and his property. If the City were not surrendered it would be stormed.

  “No,” said the Emperor to that. And not a man of his council advised saying yes. But Notaras spoke up, declaring he was speaking for many of them, and urged the Emperor to leave the City. “If you fall, my Lord, perhaps to some stray arrow, the City and the Empire both are lost forever; if you are in safety, the loss of the City itself will not be the end. Surely your presence in their midst will r
ouse the Westerners as nothing else can? Perhaps the Hungarians will support you, perhaps the Serbs. Your presence in his rear may make the Sultan lift the siege at once.”

  “No,” said the Emperor.

  “My Lord, this advice is the advice of us all,” said Phrantzes.

  “Theophilus?” said the Emperor, looking round for him. “What do you say, dear cousin?”

  “The same as all the rest,” said Theophilus, quietly, fixing his unsmiling eyes on the Emperor.

  “Justiniani?” said the Emperor, as though he would appeal to him.

  “I will make ready one of my ships to take you safely hence, Lord Emperor,” said Justiniani.

  The Emperor bowed his head. Then he said, “No. Do not ask it of me. Ask me rather to remain with you. I am ready to die with you.”

  “My Lord, prudence bids you …” Theophilus began.

  “Prudence?” said the Emperor, looking up at him. “Pru dence? You tell me to leave the City, the churches, the people, the monks and nuns, the holy icons … I can see that what you advise would be for my safety, but what would the world say of me? Prudence? I would rather follow the example of the Good Shepherd, who laid down His life for His sheep.”

  Then Phrantzes and Theophilus were weeping openly, and Notaras looked at his master with a fleeting softness on his proud face.

  “My Lord, if you will not go,” said Justiniani in a while, “will you not at least remove your lodgings to a better place? You are too close within the walls here, too near the battered part. If they break through …”

  “I must be near the walls,” said the Emperor. “I am already wearied out with riding, and I cannot give myself yet more miles to cover.”

  “Nearby you must indeed be,” said Justiniani. “But need you be just where they might break through? Suppose they got in at night? You are so near they would be upon you before there was time for warning, and if they found you sleeping, they would take you alive … I pray you, for your servants’ peace of mind, take your rest farther off.”

  “Very well,” said the Emperor. “I will return to Blachernae. But I will have a tent pitched just within the St. Romanus Gate. If I am as near as that there will be time for warning.”

  SO THE NEXT DAY VRETHIKI AND STEPHANOS WERE BUSY again. a small contingent of Justiniani’s men was dispatched to help them pitch the tent, and carry things, so the hard work was swiftly accomplished with laughter and Italian voices, chatting and chaffing in their tantalizing babel, that Vrethiki with his now well practiced Latin could nearly—so it seemed to him—but not quite understand. It was a tall wide tent of purple linen they had found. Outside, it had fringes and banners, all scarlet and gold. It seemed made for ceremonies, for a king going to a tournament in a green field, rather than for the dry verge of a roadway just within the wall of a doomed, dusty City. Stephanos curtained off a portion of it for the Emperor’s bed, and he found a screen behind which to unroll his bedding and Vrethiki’s, out of sight of the grand men who would doubtless be coming in and out. They kept only what was needed for the barest comfort; everything else went back to Blachernae.

  It was while they were still disposing things neatly in the tent that there came suddenly a thunderclap of sound. Vrethiki saw the tent walls bulge inward, like sails catching the wind, felt a moment later the blast like a gust of wind, pressing on him, hurting his ears. He and Stephanos both rushed out of the tent. They could hear cries a little distance off, toward the Lycus valley. They scrambled hastily up the long flight of steps that climbed the back of the inner wall to the catwalk, and having reached the battlements looked anxiously down the slope to the valley bottom. A great pinkish cloud of dust hung over the wall. Through veils of thinning smoke they could see the great gun with a dribble of smoke still floating from its muzzle. It stood with its back embedded in timber balks and mud to hold its tremendous recoil. A Turkish soldier poured water on it that went up in a hiss of white steam, rolling off the hot metal.

  “So they’ve mended it,” said Stephanos gloomily. A cannonade of balls from the smaller cannon that were drawn up in endless rows rumbled toward them. They could see the shot arching toward the walls, and hear the crack of their impact. “Come on,” said Stephanos. “Who wants to watch this dismal sight? We have work to do.”

  That day the bombardment was particularly heavy. The blasts of noise rolled ceaselessly over them like the waves beating one after another on the shore. The newly recast gun was fired five times. And the fleet in the Golden Horn was maneuvering too. Little skiffs bustled round it bringing supplies; it seemed they were making ready for battle. In the afternoon the Emperor was summoned by Lukas Notaras to see what was happening at the boom; there, too, a cannonade was being fired. The Turks had set up guns behind the walls of Pera, and were firing very high into the air right over the colony, so that the balls plummeted downward onto the ships at the boom. They were not, of course, accurately aimed, but they had sunk one vessel that day, and they were enough to threaten and alarm the sailors.

  “An assault is coming,” said the Emperor. “We must do all we can to be ready for it.”

  On the land walls the bombardment did not cease even with darkness. The enemy fired blindly all night, hoping no doubt to prevent Justiniani’s repair gangs from making the damage good. But Justiniani made a stockade farther back, across the line of the smashed and fallen inner wall, instead of at the outer wall, and he mustered troops on the terrace between the walls on either side of the gap to take the attackers in the flank. When dawn came, therefore, there was no way open into the City but the same obstacle course as before—the partly filled-up fosse, full of loose rubble, treacherous footing, then earth walls, and the stockade, grimly defended. The Turks kept up the bombardment for another day. Then, in the middle of the night, the attack came.

  Thirty thousand of them rushed the breach in the walls in the Lycus valley. The Emperor, who was sleeping in his tent, was woken at once by the noise, and Vrethiki and Stephanos helped him on with his armor by lamplight. Chain corselet, great golden breastplate—Vrethiki fumbling with the straps, all fingers and thumbs in his haste—then the purple surcoat, with the double eagle woven on it, and last the sword. Hastily they prepared him, and he went out into the night.

  He was gone for some three hours, and Vrethiki, who had been left behind—Stephanos would not let him go after the Emperor in the dark, but took up the cup and flask and went himself—sat trembling alone in the tent, listening to the fearful din of battle, expecting every moment to see Turks bursting into the tent. He remembered that if he were not at the Emperor’s side, the City might fall, and he felt that might even be true, and he ought to disobey Stephanos and go and find the Emperor. But the blackness of the night and the noise defeated him, and he stayed where he was. Never had three hours seemed longer!

  At last the Emperor returned, escorted by a handful of his Varangians, and Vrethiki jumped up, and came to help him off with his burdensome armor. The noise in the distance was gradually dying away, receding through rise and fall like an ebbing tide. But the Emperor was weeping. Silent tears ran down the hollows in his ravaged face, and he said not a word. Vrethiki brought him warm wine from a pan upon the stove, but he would not have it, and went, still weeping, straight to his bed.

  “What has happened?” said Vrethiki fearfully. He al most thought the City might have been taken, and that, after all, the Turks would come rushing in and slaughter them all.

  “Rhangabe has been killed,” whispered Stephanos, “an old friend of the Emperor’s, who fought with him often, and saved his life, they say, at the battle of the Hexamilion. He cut the Sultan’s standard-bearer in two, but then they surrounded him and killed him. The Emperor is grieved for him.”

  “Did they get through the wall?” Vrethiki asked hoarsely.

  “No, they were driven back. God knows how. Sleep now; we must wake him at dawn.”

  It seemed to Vrethiki he had been sleeping only a moment or two when Stephanos shook him awake, an
d asked him to light a lamp and warm some wine. He could not keep his eyes open or raise his head from the pillow till Stephanos came again and pulled the covers off him to let the chill air of morning do the job.

  “No dreams and waking last night, then?” said Stephanos, who was laying out clean linen for the Emperor.

  “No,” said Vrethiki. “It’s strange. I haven’t had any bad dreams for quite a while. Not since the Emperor let me go, and I chose to stay. And yet in a way I’m more afraid than ever.”

  “Real Turks are bad enough, you mean, but better than nightmare ones?” said Stephanos, with his quizzical smile.

  “They were real before—those pirate Turks,” said Vrethiki. “I can remember now all about it, though I’d rather not—I try to turn my mind away from it.”

  “I was glad when you chose to stay,” said Stephanos, without a flicker of emotion on his impassive face. “Selfish perhaps, but mostly I was glad for your sake. What you run away from is always just behind you.”

  “I had to stay,” said Vrethiki. “And I expect you’re right. Though I’m not sure what good can come of turning to face things when you can’t hope to conquer.”

  “We can conquer ourselves,” said Stephanos, lifting the curtain and going to wake the Emperor.

  The Emperor rose and dressed. He sipped a little mulled wine and ate a round of bread while Stephanos and Vrethiki strapped on his armor. At the tent door Don Francisco and Theophilus awaited him, and his groom with his horse. Stephanos and Vrethiki were still eating their bread when they mounted to go with him.

  They went first to the sea wall along the Golden Horn. But in spite of all the maneuvering there had been no attack. However, the cannon fire from beyond Pera had driven the ships from the boom; they had taken shelter in the lee of the Genoese walls, and in the little harbor below the Acropolis. Things were getting very difficult. The Emperor turned back, and rode round the Blachernae walls, looking at the increasing number of guns mounted on the Turkish pontoon bridge with a grim stare. Then up the slope, toward St. Romanus, and along the land walls. The battle of the night before had left the fosse thickly strewn with corpses. In the still, gray air of dawn a smell of blood tainted the air breathed by the defenders. Behind the stockade men sat or leaned in attitudes of the utmost weariness; beyond it, creeping cautiously among the dead, Turkish soldiers were recovering their fellows for burial, and dragging them away. One of the bodies shrieked as it was pulled, and the Emperor looked up. “Should we allow that?” he asked the nearest captain. The captain seemed to make an effort to answer. “They’re unhealthy when they rot, Sire,” he said. “They stink bad.” The Emperor nodded. “I am watching them, to make sure what they’re up to, Sire,” said the captain. His voice was sluggish and low-pitched with fatigue.