The Walls of Byzantium tmc-1

by James Heneage

  Fiorenza sighed and stood up. ‘We should sleep,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow we have work to do.’

  ‘You will sleep here, lady?’ asked Dimitri.

  ‘Of course. Where else?’ She smiled and bent to kiss Lara, and then walked back in the direction of the horses.

  ‘Tomorrow we will find a solution,’ said Luke and he rose to follow Fiorenza into the darkness.

  In the same darkness, much later on, it was impossible for Luke not to be aware of the woman’s presence. Her scent, always discreet, was in the air around him, and her breath was a soft echo of the waves caressing the beach.

  Luke was lying on his back as he had been for some hours. The stars, scattered above him between the branches of the tree, were so plentiful as to be able to discard a few towards a sleeping world.

  Despite his best intentions, he was thinking of Anna.

  They were in the cave and the lamp had been relit to cast a spray of light across their bodies as they lay side by side, numb with the exchange of pleasure. He thought of her small breasts and of how they trembled under the fingers of wind that reached through the branches at the cave entrance. He thought of the space between and beneath her breasts, of the fragility of a ribcage that was too prominent.

  And he thought of holding her and holding her and holding her and of two heartbeats pressed together and of a deep, deep longing that had never really left him.

  Anna.

  Then he dreamt. He was back in Monemvasia and it was night and he was running and something evil was behind him. He could hear its low, guttural breathing and the noise was quite distinct because there was no other sound in the city; none of people talking or cooking or children preparing for bed; none of dogs or cats; none of the sea breaking on the rocks beyond the sea walls. He was alone in a city of dead.

  Now the beast was behind him and gaining on him but he had one clear thought: that he knew this city and whatever was behind him didn’t. He knew its infinite and tiny streets, its dead-ends and circularities. And he knew that, if he could just put distance between him and the monster, he could hide.

  Then there was a cry and he looked in its direction and Anna was there at the end of a street, beckoning and beckoning and he couldn’t move because his feet were stuck and wouldn’t move.

  He screamed.

  But it wasn’t Anna who was holding him beneath a canopy of branches that moved with the wind he felt on his cheek. It wasn’t Anna who stroked the sweat from his forehead and murmured comfort in his ear. It wasn’t Anna who kissed him on the mouth and then again on the nose, and back to the mouth with the softness of goose-down.

  Fiorenza.

  But Fiorenza couldn’t hold him against the pull of the dream that was rising up again around him. He was slipping from her, slipping from her, and he tried so hard to cling on but couldn’t and the black walls rose up on all sides.

  And the beast was still there.

  This time there was darkness. Not the darkness of a night with no moon but one that was complete and forever. This was a darkness whose dense fabric had evil woven into its very core. This, he knew, was the darkness of the labyrinth.

  The beast was still here, with him, and its stench was all around him and its faeces were sticky beneath his feet. But he didn’t know this place and the monster did and its black bull’s head would be turning left and right on its muscular neck, sniffing and sniffing and knowing.

  There was no sound. Nothing, except the laboured breathing of a mutant man-bull that had no goodness in its being, no reason even, only an insatiable appetite for human flesh.

  A movement to his left. A movement of stealth and bull-cunning. Then the beast was upon him and the weight of its neck fell on to his shoulders and threw him to the ground. The head bit and bit in the darkness, searching for the ecstasy of living food. Luke drove his sword upwards into the monster’s belly, feeling the coarse, matted hair of the chest meet his hilt. The neck above him stiffened and arched high in a scream of anger and agony. And as he pulled the sword free, he shouted something.

  Anna. Anna. Anna!

  ‘Anna! Anna! Anna! An-’

  He smelt the familiar scent first. Then his eyes opened and it was almost day and a face of great beauty was looking down at him. He was soaked in sweat and he tasted wine on his breath and his eyeballs felt too big and ached with a rhythm that made him close them again.

  He remembered everything and knew that this had been both dream and revelation, sent from above or deep, deep below. And he remembered a kiss.

  ‘Where have you been, Luke?’

  Luke opened his eyes and looked at the woman who may have been part of the dream; there was no trace of anything beyond concern in her face and no part of her body touched his.

  ‘I dreamt of a labyrinth.’

  ‘What sort of labyrinth?’ asked Fiorenza, frowning.

  ‘A labyrinth in Knossos, or Monemvasia. It means something, Fiorenza.’

  She smiled and nodded and got to her feet. ‘Then you must have time to think about it, Luke,’ she said quietly, and walked away.

  But, this time, the scent didn’t go with her. It stayed with him because it was on him. On his mouth, his nose, his chin. And there was no guilt or fear, but only relief and happiness.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHIOS, SUMMER 1395

  It was two weeks after the kendos that Luke saw Marchese Longo again. He had spent the intervening time with Benedo Barbi and they had built something of extraordinary beauty.

  The translation of a dream into substance had been no easy task and had required Luke to summon forth scenes that he hoped never again to revisit. His part was the idea, a fantasy of breathtaking ingenuity. The practical elements had been supplied by the engineer and, to a lesser extent, Fiorenza, who’d watched and encouraged and never made mention of the night under the trees.

  Now Luke, Dimitri and Benedo Barbi stood around a large table at the villa at Sklavia on which was presented the new village of Mesta, or perhaps a maze, or a labyrinth. And Marchese Longo, elegant in sleeveless pourpoint with a chain of gold spanning his broad shoulders, was looking at it in wonder and some shock.

  Barbi had used compacted sand to create the height and contours of the little hill on which the village stood and the fields and orchards around it had been built using moss and fine red earth with twigs for trees. A track in white clay ran through the fields to the single entrance of the village, which had a solid wall, with towers at its four corners.

  ‘This is the first innovation,’ Barbi was saying, letting his fingertips drag lightly along the length of the wall, ‘and I’ve seen it work well in the Kingdom of Sicily. You build the outer ring of houses such that their walls, without windows, form the wall of the village. The towers at the four corners are taller and curve outwards to provide the lookouts with views of all the perimeter.’

  Longo peered over the maze and reached out to touch a tall, four-storey tower at its centre. ‘What’s this?’ he asked.

  ‘That,’ said Luke, ‘is not the point, lord. That is the last place of refuge when all else has failed. If I’m right about this plan, then it will never be used.’ He brought his hands, templed, to his mouth. ‘Imagine that you are a pirate. No, imagine that you are a band of pirates, perhaps fifty in number and all well armed.’ Luke’s hand hovered above the chalk that marked the track to the village. ‘You have landed at Apothikas Bay and it is night and the road runs straight to Mesta, which you know to be a collection of mean houses with mastic in the storehouses, children in their beds and a garrison six miles away at Apolichnon, fat and lazy with your bribes.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Longo, looking up and frowning.

  ‘Really,’ said Fiorenza, who had come into the room, silent but scented.

  Marchese frowned.

  ‘So,’ continued Luke, ‘you have been to this village before. Then you took what you came to take with no resistance offered and now you are complacent. But then you see a new village, which ha
s arisen in the place of the old one. And this one seems to have walls and only one gate to enter by. So you approach with caution.

  ‘As you approach, the sky is suddenly lit with fire-arrows and you can be seen and the next arrows hit some of your men but you are not disheartened because a fiercer defence means more to defend. So you rush the single gate and manage, somehow, to force it open and, with shouts of triumph, you pour into the village.’

  Luke looked across to Fiorenza, who was smiling slightly. ‘Except it’s not like any village you’ve ever seen. It’s a village from hell. It’s a labyrinth.’

  Luke paused and walked around the table to stand next to Longo. He leant low over the model so that his head was just above the maze of tiny streets and houses. ‘Now you’re inside the village,’ he said, his voice dropping almost to a whisper, ‘but it seems deserted. So you assume everyone is hiding inside their houses which are, incidentally, much taller than when you were last here. Three storeys high, in fact.

  ‘You break down a door, since there are no windows at ground level, but instead of people you find animals inside and only a trapdoor in the ceiling to get to the rest of the house; and the ladder has been pulled up.’

  By now, Longo was stooped inches above the model too, peering with curiosity at the inside of a house, its roof removed by Benedo Barbi.

  ‘Yes,’ Luke was saying, ‘in this village it’s the animals that live on the ground floor and there is no staircase to the floors above, just a ladder. Each house has its landing on the first floor, which leads to the living areas. And on the second floor, every house is connected to the next by a walkway above the street. So the village, in essence, has two levels.’

  ‘Ingenious,’ said Longo softly.

  ‘But there’s better to come,’ continued Luke. ‘Remember, lord, that you are a simple pirate and by now a little confused. So you leave the animals alone and come back out into the street just in time to see a pair of heels disappear around a corner, and you give chase. But you are in a maze which has corners and dead-ends and some streets which end in tunnels and some which don’t and some which seem to join to another street but in fact it’s a painting and you run into a wall.’

  Longo was shaking his head slowly from side to side.

  ‘Then you notice, above you, a whole different world of interconnecting walkways which you cannot get to but which can certainly get to you. And you know this because the man beside you has been shot by an arrow released from an arch across the street and you’ve just heard the scream of another man, in the street next door, scalded by boiling water poured into a tunnel through a hole in its roof.

  ‘So now you’re getting enraged and a little scared and you think about burning it all down but everything seems to be built of stone, not wood, and anyway you don’t know where all your companions are because your whole band of fellow pirates is hopelessly lost in this maze.’

  Benedo Barbi was pointing out details of the model to Longo, removing bits from houses and whole arches from streets and spanning alleyways with tiny ladders which he lifted between two fingers.

  ‘By now, lord,’ said Luke, straightening and looking at the back of Longo’s head which was bobbing up and down with the flow of information, ‘by now, you might have given up.’

  ‘Indeed, you might well.’ Longo was laughing now.

  ‘But let us say that you are an unusually tenacious band of pirates who don’t give up and, despite everything, manage to get to the centre of the village. What, lord, will you find at the centre of this labyrinth?’

  ‘Why, this tower,’ replied Longo, pointing at it.

  ‘Yes, you will. And’ — Luke bowed slightly from the waist and smiled — ‘it will be the final indignity heaped upon you! It will be your nemesis. Dimitri, pray tell Lord Longo of our tower.’

  It was the first time that Dimitri had been asked to speak and, such was his surprise, he was silent for some moments.

  ‘Well, lord,’ he said at last, ‘to begin with, this tower is much bigger than any we have had before; big enough, in fact, to hold every person in the village. Then you will see that it has no door at all on the ground floor and can only be entered at the first level, using a ladder that is then drawn up. It has a large cistern below and a tunnel that runs to a well outside the village, so it’ll never run out of water. And there’s room in the upper levels for a month’s food and all the stored mastic. It is the last line of defence and impregnable.’

  There was a long pause when nobody spoke and everyone looked at Longo, who was still bent over the model, lifting things and putting them back and then moving to look at them from a different angle.

  ‘Ingenious,’ he repeated at last, ‘but expensive. Too expensive, I fear. We are protecting mastic, not gold.’

  ‘But it is gold,’ said Fiorenza. ‘Listen, my lord, to what Dimitri will tell you of our mastic.’

  Dimitri produced again his worn satchel with its two pouches, the contents of which he laid out in a field somewhere outside the village wall. He told of his invention and Longo’s eyes shone with imagining.

  ‘So you see, my lord,’ said Fiorenza, moving to stand beside her husband, ‘the villagers will have something to protect beyond the lives of their children. They will be protecting mastic because it will be theirs. Part of this plan involves giving the villagers a share of what they produce.’

  ‘So where will the mastic belonging to the campagna be stored?’ asked Longo.

  ‘At the new port,’ answered Benedo Barbi. ‘It will be stored in warehouses at the new port we will build at Limenas, two miles north of Mesta. It will be stored in the place it is shipped from and this is where the full garrison will be stationed to protect it. It’s logical.’

  ‘A new port?’ asked Longo with incredulity. ‘A new port on top of a new village? How can we possibly afford that?’

  ‘Not just one new village, lord,’ said Luke, ‘but many. This new industry will require new labour and we’ll need to protect all the villages where our workers live. Next to be built will be the village of Pyrgi.’

  Longo looked from Luke to Barbi to Dimitri and then to his wife. He was shaking his head. ‘But the money,’ he said. ‘Where will we find the money?’

  Fiorenza turned to face her husband and her fingers traced the length of the gold chain across his chest. ‘We can borrow the money,’ she said. ‘The alum that we ship from Chora goes mainly to the city of Florence for the Arte della Lana. Their banker is a man called Medici. In exchange for alum and mastic at a discount, he will fund this venture.’

  ‘You know this?’ asked her husband.

  ‘I’ve talked to his representative on the island,’ she replied. She smiled up at him and her dimples had never looked more charming. ‘He, too, has holes in his teeth.’

  Marchese Longo looked at his wife in wonder, as did the others. It was the first that any of them had heard of this part of the plan. Then he leant forward and kissed her on the forehead.

  ‘You are mysterious and extraordinary,’ he whispered.

  Longo drew apart and circled the table, once again taking in the brilliance of the idea before stopping to address them all. ‘This is revolutionary and will take time to absorb. There are many issues to discuss with the other signori, not least how long we can expect to stay on this island. Remember there is only so much time left on our lease.’ He spread his hands before him. ‘But I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I believe that, between you, you may have come up with something that will secure our future here and I’m grateful beyond measure. Now you must leave me to think.’

  He turned to Luke. ‘Luke, please do me the honour of talking further with me.’

  Longo walked to the door and Luke followed him, giving Dimitri a wink as he passed. Once outside the room, he was led to an antechamber with deep chairs and portraits crowding the walls amidst rich hangings. Longo sat and gestured to Luke to do likewise while a servant set wine and olives on a low table between them.

/>   ‘Luke,’ said the older man when the man had left, ‘how long do you plan to stay with us on Chios?’

  Luke was taken aback. ‘Lord, I mean to leave for Mistra soon,’ he said carefully.

  ‘You must know that Fiorenza and I have become fond of you. We have not been blessed with children and perhaps it is your misfortune that we see you almost as our son.’

  Luke felt the blood rise in his face. He thought of a night beneath mastic trees. ‘You … you honour me, lord. I do not deserve it.’

  ‘But you do,’ went on Longo. ‘Without you, this idea would never have happened. And it’s brilliant.’

  ‘Thank you, lord,’ said Luke.

  ‘Anyway, I wanted to say this to you.’ Longo leant forward and lowered his voice. ‘I want you to lead this venture and, if it works, I will make you part of the campagna. You will be rich, Luke.’

  Luke stared at him. ‘Lord, I am but eighteen!’

  ‘Yes, but never did an eighteen-year-old have such a head on his shoulders,’ said Longo. ‘Will you do it?’

  Luke’s mind was racing. How could he tell this man, who had been so good to him, why he must go to Mistra? ‘I will think about it, lord.’

  Longo stood up. ‘I cannot ask for more. Please do think about it and know that there is a home for you here on Chios if you want it. And as an added inducement, you will take the full profit on the first boatload of mastic to leave the new port of Limenas when it’s completed. Build it fast, Luke.’ He smiled. ‘Now, there is someone who arrived on this island yesterday and wants very much to talk to you. Come.’

  Marchese Longo led the way down the corridor towards an arch through which light spilt from the veranda. As they approached, Luke could hear the sound of voices, one of which was Fiorenza’s.

  Then he heard another and a wave of unexpected joy swept over him.

  Standing on the terrace, white-bearded, white-togaed and gesticulating, was the unmistakable person of Plethon.

  As Luke stepped into the sunshine, the philosopher turned and gesture became embrace.