The supplicants were already ensconced in Ayia Sophia in the Eastern part of the city. Otherwise the streets were deserted. My visit to the palace kitchens was brief. I was just too pre-occupied to eat much. So I went to my room.
As soon as I closed the door what had been looking me in the eye suddenly hit me. If there were so many inconsistencies in the Emperor’s behaviour, it was because I did not meet with the Emperor himself, but with a different person.
And if that was true then we were all in danger and the city had already been lost some time ago; the siege was a simple formality and a smokescreen. The betrayal had already decided the outcome.
Yet what was disturbing was that the ‘Emperor’ I met was so believable. He could have fooled anybody. And he knew so much, so many of our most guarded secrets.
This could jeopardise everything. The future of the Order itself could hang in the balance. If we had already been infiltrated, it could all be over in a flash. I had to act fast.
I closed my eyes, focused my mind and invited my mother to join me. She materialised before me like a hologram. She hugged me close and quickly released me. She stared at me with that piercing look of hers and waited. I experienced an involuntary tremble rush through my entire body.
‘Mother, my mission has failed. But the worst is that - and I know you won’t like this - the child is missing.’
‘What do you mean missing?’
It’s at times like this that I admired my mother. You never knew when she was upset. But you would know when she was angry. She would show little emotion and without wasting time dwelling on how or why something happened or on any ‘what ifs’, would always turn her mind to the practicalities and the solution.
‘The Emperor did not seem to know or had even sent a search party or taken any attempt to find out. And apparently it all happened a few weeks ago. When I asked him why we were not informed and why they did not ask for our help, he simply dismissed it as unimportant and left me in no doubt that he was not expecting us to be of much help in any case. And he made his charitable feelings towards us clear when he added as an afterthought that the matter of the child was none of our business. He did not seem to care. His whole attitude was very lackadaisical.’
‘The Emperor I know is hard and still harbours strong feelings against the Order, but he’s no fool and has a heart. Michael, come out with it, what’s on your mind?’
‘I could not chase away the feeling that he was an altogether different person. Not everything he said was wrong. But he slipped often enough. Mother, he knew too many of our secrets which you would expect of the Emperor. Yet I do not believe that he was the Emperor. I think we are in great danger. We need to warn the others.’
‘We will deal with the so-called ‘Emperor’ later. We need to concentrate on the child. Nothing else matters now. That child is everything. It has to be found and taken to a safe place. Now … what about Mark? Is he still alive? He has not shown any signs of life and the battle was two days ago.’
‘When I last saw him he was shaken and injured, but alive.’
‘When was that?’
‘At the battle scene. It was when we realised we had no chance and decided to get out of there to fight other battles. As we went our separate ways, he said he had a mission to complete.’
‘That must be the little errand I sent him on. We will hear from him before long. And the others?’
‘The others are gone, mother. Mark and I are the only ones that got out alive.’
‘Now let’s go back to your ‘fortuitous’ meeting with the Emperor.’ My mother could never resist a little irony.
‘I did plead the Order’s case for his ancestors’ redemption as one final decent act of power, but he was unmoved and spiteful.’
‘That does not sound like the Emperor at all. One thing I’m certain of is that you did not meet with the real Emperor. There have been many fine occupants of the reins of power. Yet there were many of his predecessors that ascended the transcontinental double-eagled throne that were greedy and vain, and murdered without compunction to gain power. But Konstantinos Palaiologos is different. I truly pity him. It was a great shame that he ascended the throne at the end of the life of an empire, for which, despite all his great abilities and determination, he could do nothing. Such a waste.’
‘Mother, would that person consider, let alone put into words openly, in front of witnesses, fleeing the city, and to Venice of all places?’
‘He said that to you? Flee to the city’s rival and mortal enemy and sworn adversary? If it had not been for all the other things you told me about your meeting with him, I would think it a joke. But if he’s not the Emperor, it starts to make sense. But then again, would he have betrayed himself so easily. I wish I could say that I need to think about this, but, I’m afraid, we don’t have time for such luxury.
‘Michael, we both know that the Emperor would never flee from his duty to his people and his city. As regards Venice, he would have preferred death than to surrender to the charms of the lion’s mouth. As you well know the Venetians did not waste any time taking advantage and using an excuse to raid and loot the city in 1204. They have smelled blood again, an opportunity. He must have promised them a lot. The problem is it looks as if it may already be too late for even them to intervene, not to help the city, but to even manage to get him out and especially their booty. Even for them it would be an impossible task to break through the Ottoman naval blockade.
‘I wonder whether we have the firepower to spirit away many of the treasures that he has so recklessly and arrogantly promised in exchange or simply failed to get out of the city to hiding on time. Maybe he’s taken them out already. Real Emperor or not, they both have the incentive and the wish to do that for their own different reasons and it is the result that matters. Michael, there is only one way we can be sure who we are faced with and we need to act quickly before any more damage is done. We need to test the blood of the Emperor. You need to get me a sample.’
‘But how?’
‘Tonight, whilst he’s asleep.’
‘I don’t think he will be getting much sleep tonight. He was already talking about going to the battlements to prepare and rally his defenders.’
‘You’ll need to find a way. In the meantime, we cannot sit tight waiting to know before we can act. We need to hedge our bets and take certain measures. I have to go now. I will contact you later. Goodbye, son.’
‘Till later, mother.’
As suddenly as she appeared, Eleni vanished, as if she was never there. I briefly wondered whether I had just had a dream.
What I did not know was that I would not see the Emperor again. Events would throw our plans off kilter.
I had always wondered why my mother had never told me who my father was. I had sometimes wondered whether I had been adopted, as I was very often at cross-purposes with my mother. However, I could also see the striking similarities in our character and the family resemblance in our looks.
CHAPTER 8
Constantinople
29th May 1453 A.D.
(The Day of the Fall)
Dawn was breaking over the dome of Ayia Sofia and the first rays of the sun were starting to throw an incandescent light on the Patriarchate and the bell towers of the churches scattered around the city.
The harbour was waking up and the first ships were ploughing the waters of the Bosphorus heading for the harbour of the Golden Horn. It seemed like another normal day in the city that took your breath away.
The streets were waking up with the first signs of life. Or rather that was the idyllic view on a normal day, before the siege, before the heavy chain or boom was put in place to close the entry to the harbour of the Golden Horn and prevent the Ottoman fleet from entering the city’s heart, from bringing forward the seemingly inevitable and finishing the job once and for all.
Inside the Vlachernae Palace, all was being prepared for the Emperor’s audience with his ministers and advisors and a select
ed number of prominent citizens. The Emperor was in readiness to rally his troops and his citizens.
The distinction between ruler and ruled was now blurred and waning further. On everybody’s mind was the Ottoman, on everybody’s lips was one word, their eyes directed involuntarily to the heavens and the direction of the painted dome with the depiction of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ hugging the world.
All present had only one question. When would the city fall, not how.
Rising above the murmur of raised, burning, anguished concerned voices, was the serene and calming sound of the trickling water from the fountain in the middle of the Great Hall. But on this day the serene surroundings, their potency diminished, failed to inspire and beguile.
Outside the walls the normal activity was as if suspended in time. The fields were deserted. All the city’s gates were hermetically closed. All available defenders were manning the battlements. And those defenders were few and severely diminished in number through hunger and the disease that was spreading like wildfire through the crowded city.
Everybody who could fight was armed. Everybody else was assisting with the organisation of the city’s defences and the supply of any help to the defenders on the walls.
Every church and chapel and religious spot was teaming with people praying to their God. Ayia Sofia, the city’s great Cathedral, was packed to the rafters with people trying to reach God with the prayers and hope of a thousand years. The air inside the great church was thick with the breathing of so many, mixed with the heady smoke of the incense burners.
The view from the walls chilled the blood and spread terror through the heart. As far as the eye could see, the fields had lost their normal sunburned colour; they had turned black. The Ottoman armies looked like a dark cloud that had descended on earth and had choked the life out of every living thing. The Ottoman had fanned out far and wide in its blockade of the city.
The mighty canons were in place ready to direct their firepower at the centre of the Western land walls or Mesoteichion, between the St. Romanus Gate and the Gate of Charisius. That was the weakest part of the walls where the ground descended towards the valley of the Lycus stream, making this part of the walls lower than the rest of the walls.
The walls were thick, but could they withstand the vicious and relentless onslaught about to be unleashed at them?
* * *
The walls of every city had a weakness and so it was with Constantinople. Particular attention had been given to the defence of that weak spot. Unlike the rest of the land walls, which were of triple-thickness, at the Vlachernae Quarter, on the North-Western side, there was only one single wall, and it was here close to the Palace of Vlachernae that the Ottoman cannons were concentrating their firepower and where they would break through.
A small gate on the Vlachernae walls called Kerkoporta was the culprit. It had accidentally been left open after a sortie by a band of the city’s defenders. Some Ottomans went through, but were repelled and the small gate was closed. However, a small number of Ottomans were trapped inside, between the outer and inner walls.
Unfortunately for the defenders, this small Ottoman group had the canny idea to raise the Ottoman standard on the tower next to the gate. Some of the defenders saw that as a sign that the Ottomans had got through and that the Vlacharnae Quarter had fallen to the enemy.
The news spread through the city like wildfire and demoralised many. Others were heartened and enraged by it, their determination bolstered, and it became the impetus for a final push to repel the enemy within. They fought like lions, but to no avail.
The bombardment rained relentless on the city. Stone after stone was dislodged from its many-a-century-old position. Chunk upon chunk of wall was collapsing. Every hit slashed another wound. The wounds were multiplying and they were getting deeper until one final hit brought a huge section of the Western Walls near the Vlachernae Quarter crushing down.
A powerful gust of stale air rushed out and hit the Ottomans with tremendous force. It took them aback and the Ottoman rush paused, but only for a moment.
A gust of dust and debris burst through and blinded the defenders within. The mouth had widened considerably and its appetite for the Ottoman troops entering the city was insatiable.
Nothing could stop the flood of Ottomans rushing into the city through the breach. Wave after wave of Ottomans was sweeping through, thirsty for victory, hungry for killing and looting and raping, hungry for their rightful reward.
They had no fear for death itself, for there was reward in death as well, perhaps for them the biggest reward was in heaven.
Fires were breaking across the city. Screams pierced the night air. The sound of sword against sword, gun against gun, echoed all around and was getting louder as it spread through the city’s streets.
Panic reigned everywhere. You could smell the fear, the sweat, the smoke and the already rotting bodies. It choked the air out of you.
The city had been breached. The city was being violated. Its reputation of inviolability and impregnability shattered in one fell swoop. The curtain fell on the Empire that had been ruled from this city for more than a thousand years.
A new chapter was beginning. The Sultan ordered a halt to the looting after three days. The Ottomans obeyed their master and stopped, but they also saw the sense in his message: ‘do not destroy what is now ours’.
The Sultan lost no time in installing himself in the Vlachernae Palace and making the city the capital of his Empire. The Sultan, finally relieved to be able to finally put a halt to the relentless campaigns and conquests of the last few hundred years, set into motion the next part of his ambitious plans; the consolidation of his sprawling Empire.
Amongst the confusion of the battle, the Emperor’s fate would become one of the world’s greatest and longest-running mysteries.
When some of the elite Ottoman Yenitsari troops went through the breach on the wall of the Vlachernae Quarter, they opened the Adrianople Gate, and it was then that thousands of Ottoman troops started to stream into the city like an unstoppable flattening avalanche.
The Emperor, without any hesitation, relinquished his Imperial regalia and threw himself into the fighting to repel the incoming waves together with the remaining defenders of the city. If there were a body somewhere, it would be impossible to locate, let alone identify, amongst the thousands of dead.
The Sultan could not allow for any doubt surrounding the death of the Emperor to remain. That would be dangerous for, as a symbol of resistance, the hope that the Emperor could still be alive and could still return to lead a new charge against the new rule would give hope to the Sultan’s newly-conquered subjects and ammunition to his rivals lurking in the background and craving the throne; and it would be an excuse to any foreign powers to interfere and unite against him and his Empire.
Such a situation would become a gangrene of doubt against the Sultan’s legitimate claim on the throne of the Roman Empire, as rightful successor of the Emperors of Constantinople.
The Sultan had taken the title of Roman Emperor, in addition to his other titles. He emphasised his descent from the Imperial family of Constantinople and the Imperial blood running in his veins, as one of his ancestors had married a Byzantine princess.
The Sultan devised a neat and final solution to this problem. The story goes that the news was spread that the last Emperor was killed and that his head was presented to the Sultan who impaled it on the walls for all to see, as a sign of the ultimate humiliation of the Byzantine Empire, the final proof of his great victory and as a message to the remaining defenders to take away their faith, to sap their strength and the hope, which they were still clinging on, that they could still win, with the Emperor as the symbol of their struggle and as their leader.
The Sultan was certain that with the dead Emperor being paraded publicly and with such brutal fanfare, his new Byzantine subjects would lose heart and the will to fight and would finally submit to his rule; any resistance would be qua
shed and would die a silent death with not even as much as a whimper.
But amidst rumours that the Emperor had removed his Imperial regalia and others saying that the so-called body of the Emperor when found had no Imperial signs or regalia, to irrefutably confirm the Emperor’s death, a huge cloud weighed on the truth of the Emperor’s fate.
And as the prophecy goes, “he will rise again and free us …”
CHAPTER 9
Constantinople
29th May 1453 A.D.
(The Day of the Fall)
The Emperor never asked to see me that day to find out about the Likureian icon. No doubt his mind was otherwise engaged. I hoped he was inspiring fire into the hearts of the defenders.
I dared not leave my room for fear of being accidentally and forcibly recruited to the suicidal numbers on the walls. I could not put my life in danger like that. Not here. Not for this lost battle.
I heard the chaos running rampant outside and knew in my bones the enemy was close. The palace would not be spared. I had to get out, but could not risk using my powers for fear of being detected by any Ruinand spies in the city.
I had to do it on foot. I had to hurry, if I was to get out of there alive. I packed my things and ran out of the room, all my senses on high alert.
I did not know of any secret passages leading away from the palace. I had to reach the Basilica Cistern, which meant venturing into the streets of a city overrun by Ottomans running riot.
I had to disguise myself as an Ottoman. There was a good chance I would encounter Greeks, but they should not present a risk as they would be running away, trying to save themselves, though they could still probably stop to fight if cornered. I needed Ottoman attire. I did not want to have to kill to get it from a soldier.
I remembered the satirical play put on only last night at the palace. One of those costumes would, hopefully, help me look the part. Desperation and fear was fertile ground to inspire humour.
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