The Walls of Byzantium tmc-1

by James Heneage

  ‘You may know,’ Plethon went on, ‘that a great army is assembling in the west to march to our aid. They say that the flower of Christian chivalry is polishing its armour and that the force will be large enough to crush the Turk once and for all.’

  Plethon paused and leant forward.

  ‘Perhaps they will defeat the Turk and I can go back to my beloved home and it will be called Adrianopolis again. Perhaps. But what then?’ He looked around at seven people waiting for the answer. ‘Well, what happened the last time that a great crusade came to the aid of Constantinople?’

  Patrick began to nod slowly, his thumb and finger at work on his moustache.

  ‘It’s why you are here, Varangians!’ said Plethon with some feeling. His palm came down hard on the table. ‘They can’t help themselves! Last time they sacked our city and raped our nuns when there were a million people inside its walls. This time the citizens number fewer than fifty thousand and most of them are armed with pitchforks.’ He paused. ‘And why did the Franks do it? Because we couldn’t pay them what they wanted.’

  Now all three of the older men were nodding, as Plethon, philosopher and orator, used the weapon of silence. Basil was holding the ring and he placed it deliberately on the table before the man in the toga.

  ‘So the Emperor needs the Varangian gold to pay them off?’

  Plethon nodded. ‘Quite possibly. If it is gold.’

  ‘What did Luke tell you?’ asked Patrick.

  ‘He told me that he didn’t know anything about the treasure beyond legend. He told me that he would have learnt more from his father but his father is dead.’ He paused, scraping off a vein of wax from the candle in front of him with his fingernail. ‘Tell me, Patrick, why is Luke called Luke? And why is Joseph called Joseph? Why are they both not called Siward?’

  The Varangian exchanged glances with his companions.

  ‘It’s not such an odd question,’ Plethon continued. ‘After all, the Akolouthos was always called Siward. Father to son, always Siward. And the family name was Godwinson.’

  ‘I will tell you what we know,’ Patrick said. ‘Luke’s grandfather Siward and our fathers quarrelled. Siward left with the treasure. It’s no longer at Mistra.’

  ‘He stole it?’

  Patrick didn’t answer. Matthew, Nikolas and Arcadius stared at him. They’d not known this.

  ‘Well, I think I can help,’ Plethon said. ‘There was a Siward who rejoined the Palace Guard in Constantinople a few months after Luke’s grandfather left Monemvasia. He spent the rest of his life there and was buried with honour in the Varangian church. I think it was the same man.’

  ‘Rejoined the Guard? But he would have been fifty!’ said David.

  ‘It seemed the Emperor intervened.’

  ‘But he was a traitor!’

  ‘Was he? Are you sure that he took the treasure? Why would a rich man rejoin the Varangian Guard?’ He lowered his voice. ‘Why do you imagine they quarrelled, David?’

  There was no answer. Three Varangians were considering the possibility that it had been their fathers, all now dead, that had wanted to take the treasure.

  Anna held her breath, watching Matthew, Nikolas and Arcadius watch their fathers.

  ‘No one knows what or where the treasure is,’ Plethon continued softly. ‘But I believe that it wasn’t gold that was removed from Constantinople that night. I think something much, much more important was taken, something so important that it had to remain hidden where no one could find it. I think Siward moved it to make sure that remained the case and that a grateful Emperor rewarded him.’

  Patrick was shaking his head, the frown driven deep into his forehead. ‘So you think that he simply gave the treasure to the Emperor?’

  Plethon shook his head. ‘No, I think he hid it somewhere else.’

  ‘But where? In Mistra or Constantinople?’

  Plethon looked down at the piece of wax, held between his fingers, which he had moulded into a ball. ‘That’s what I’m here to find out,’ he said simply.

  Outside the room, the sounds of a little city poised between land and sea were fading as the first noises of the night crept in. A church bell sounded across the red-tiled roofs and some laughter came and went, shut away with the closing of doors and the bolting of windows. Quite soon, the soldiers at the three gates of the lower town would be ushering through the last travellers and, much to the annoyance of the citizenry, the muezzin would call his small, military flock to prayer.

  ‘I am afraid we will disappoint you,’ Patrick said eventually. ‘The secret of the treasure is lost to us.’

  ‘Siward left no clue?’

  ‘He left nothing but his sword,’ said Basil. ‘Which Luke now has. Or had.’

  Plethon sat there, twisting the wax round and round between his fingers, staring at the candle.

  His sword.

  There was sound from the street, of footsteps and of conversation approaching and then stopping. He frowned and looked at the window. Matthew got up and opened the door. There was nothing there.

  Plethon stood. He turned to Matthew. ‘There is one more thing. The Emperor has need of his Varangians. There are only a few of you left now, here and in Constantinople. He wants you to join this crusade.’

  Basil grunted. ‘Well, we’re no longer sworn to the Archon, it’s true. But how would we leave? The Turks guard every gate.’

  Plethon went over to Basil and put his hand on his shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean you,’ he said gently. ‘You may not be sworn to the Archon any more, but you’re still sworn to guard a treasure that might yet be here somewhere. I meant your sons.’

  Matthew asked, ‘but what about Anna? And Rachel? We can’t leave them here.’

  ‘So take them with you,’ said Plethon. ‘Find a way to escape. Go to Chios, leave Anna and Rachel there and take ship to Venice.’

  Nikolas had risen. There was excitement in his voice. ‘So how do we do it?’

  The silence was broken by Anna. ‘I think I may know of a way.’

  ‘You have a plan?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And something better. I have someone who might help us.’

  Yusuf was standing in front of Zoe in her bedroom within the palace. His hands were behind his back and he was trembling. She, fully clothed but prepared to be otherwise, was tracing the contour of a pectoral muscle at exactly eye-level and her breathing was quicker than normal.

  Yusuf was ugly but, for Zoe, ugly was new.

  ‘Where are you from, Yusuf?’ she asked, allowing her hand to drop from his breast and travel slowly down the valley that led to his groin.

  ‘Edirne, lady,’ replied Yusuf in perfect Greek. The statement ended in a gasp as Zoe’s finger brushed the tip of his penis, prominent beneath the soft folds of his janissary pantaloons.

  ‘The Devshirme?’ she murmured, her fingernails moving very slowly down its length to rest somewhere beneath.

  Yusuf nodded. His face was red and a contortion of vein and perspiration. Zoe turned the hand and slowly pushed it forward between his legs and then up, so that her open palm was suspended fractionally beneath his balls. She lifted a middle finger and began to rub it gently in the place where, had he been a woman, his vagina would have been, getting closer, with each stroke, to a puckered hole behind.

  ‘And the man she met was also from Edirne … Plethon, wasn’t it? Did you know of him?’

  Zoe pressed the hole and discovered that she’d been right. A small convulsion, definitely of pleasure, ran through the man’s great body. He gasped and his hands, still behind him, were clasped and shaking.

  ‘I knew of him, lady,’ he said dully, fighting for vowels. ‘He … he used to speak in the forum. Of learned things.’

  ‘And you understood him? A great big ugly brute like you understood him? A great big …’ Zoe moved her hand up to grasp the object so apparent between them and began to stroke up and down slowly. ‘What did he talk about?’

  ‘He talked about … our Gre
ek forefathers. I was a child, lady …’

  ‘A child, yes. Not so big … then,’ she said, squeezing harder, the rhythm quickening. ‘And what did he talk about with the girl tonight, Yusuf?’ she asked, rising on tiptoe to get closer to his ear. ‘What did they talk about?’

  ‘It was hard to hear, lady … something about a treasure. Oh.’

  Zoe had stopped the movement and held him, poised, her thumb idly caressing the tip.

  ‘Treasure? Varangian treasure?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘Yes, lady … please …’

  ‘Only if you are very clear, Yusuf. Did they say where it was?’

  ‘They talked of a sword.’

  A sword. Luke’s sword.

  Yusuf had screwed his eyes in the effort of containment and Zoe, still on tiptoe, was smiling up at him and one hand resumed the movement while the other began to unbutton her tunic.

  ‘Open your eyes, Yusuf,’ she whispered. ‘You can look, if you want.’

  He looked down and saw one breast, then two as Zoe drew the tunic apart. They were the colour of satinwood and without flaw and the nipples were darker than mahogany.

  ‘Would you like to touch, Yusuf?’ she murmured, her tongue at the base of his neck. ‘Would you like to touch them?’ Her hand moved behind him and grasped one huge buttock and a finger found the hole again.

  But this was too much.

  With a groan, the giant bent forward and the hands left his back and grasped Zoe’s hand as, with one deft and final movement, she pulled him into heaven. His shoulders rose and fell as if in laughter but the sound that came from his mouth was not laughter. He fell to his knees, grappling with the front of his pantaloons, trying to stem the flow, his whole body in unwanted spasm.

  ‘I’m sorry, lady … please,’ he moaned, not daring to look up.

  But Zoe was not looking at him. She had walked to the other end of the room, buttoning her tunic as she went, to where a towel was folded beside a low bathing pool. ‘Get up,’ she said, dipping her hand in the water and wiping it dry. She threw the towel at Yusuf.

  ‘Here, clean yourself,’ she said, ‘and then tell me the rest. With accuracy, if you want to live.’

  Yusuf, now standing, was feverishly wiping the front of his trousers, his big head bobbing up and down with the effort. ‘He had come from Chios, lady. He spoke of someone there called Luke. The lady was glad of the news. She had thought him dead.’

  Zoe clapped her hands together. ‘Hah! I knew it. So he’s alive. What is he doing on Chios?’

  ‘He has learnt Latin,’ said Yusuf, knowing it wasn’t enough. ‘And Italian … from the Genoese.’

  ‘And how to fill men’s teeth, I don’t doubt,’ murmured Zoe. She turned to the man. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘The girl means to escape, taking the woman Rachel with her. With the help of a friend.’

  ‘Ah, a friend. Yes.’ Zoe smiled. ‘You may go. Find Prince Suleyman and ask him to join me.’

  Yusuf, still clutching the folds of his pantaloons to cover the stain, bowed in relief and turned to go.

  ‘And Yusuf?’ said Zoe over her shoulder as she walked towards the balcony. ‘One word of what has happened in this room tonight and you will never talk again.’

  It was much later when Rachel was awakened by a freshly changed Yusuf who signalled to her to dress for travel and brought her, in some bewilderment, to Anna’s bedroom. Anna was already wearing breeches and a thick, woollen smock so as to be ready for either sea-borne or mounted escape.

  Rachel seemed more frail than when she’d last seen her, but her frailty was bolstered by a new joy that had been born the moment that Anna had told her that Luke was alive. She felt exultant, ready for anything: in particular ready to join her son on Chios as soon as humanly possible.

  Now Anna sat opposite Rachel in a room that was almost dark and they held hands and told stories for comfort and to pass the time. A single lamp stood on the table between them with its wick almost burnt through. It was smoking slightly and its light made monsters on the walls. The palace outside was silent and asleep.

  ‘Speaking Latin!’ whispered Rachel. ‘He must have been educated.’

  ‘Was he always clever?’ asked Anna.

  ‘Well, he shared a few lessons with the twins long ago but they stopped it for some reason. Perhaps Damian was jealous.’

  Anna wanted to imagine Luke as a young boy, running barefoot, knees scratched, or riding bareback, his arms clinging to the neck of an animal he already understood better than other people.

  ‘Were they close once, the three of them?’ she asked.

  ‘Close? They were inseparable! They shared everything from their toys to the bath. The servants had to be sent down from the palace to bring them home. I loved those twins like my own.’

  Rachel was laughing softly at the memory, her hands steepled in her lap.

  ‘I used to take them with me to gather kermes outside the city. I would put them on a donkey, one, two, three, with the baskets behind, and they would laugh and laugh at its ears and the silly noise it made when they pulled them.’ She paused, eyes faraway. ‘Yes, they were very close.’

  ‘So what happened?’ asked Anna gently.

  ‘They grew up, I suppose. But something else as well.’

  Anna was still, allowing Rachel to decide whether or not to find comfort in disclosure.

  ‘She was always a difficult girl,’ said Rachel, looking up. ‘She had everything she wanted but only wanted the things she couldn’t have.’

  Anna felt the very first pricking of a new fear deep, deep inside her stomach. It was a fear without name or, for now, explanation. But it was there.

  ‘Luke?’

  Rachel nodded slowly. ‘Luke, money, power. It was difficult to tell which was more important to her.’ She paused. ‘Probably money and power. She was always a clever girl.’

  Anna didn’t have time to think further because there was a muffled knock on the door and Yusuf arrived to take them somewhere else. He stood in the doorway and nodded to Anna, who helped Rachel to her feet. Then they walked out into the dark of the corridor and along it until they reached the top of a curving staircase that swept down to the hall below.

  The hall was lit by torches held in sconces on the walls that were beginning to splutter. Standing in the centre of the space was Zoe, alone. The janissary guards were either asleep or had been persuaded to absent themselves.

  Holding Rachel’s hand, Anna tiptoed down the staircase, stopping every third step to listen to the palace around them. When they reached the bottom, Zoe put a finger to her lips and beckoned for them to follow her. Anna glanced behind and found that Yusuf had left them. They crept into the lobby where, centuries ago, Luke had stood with Joseph to learn his sentence.

  The first glimmer of dawn was framed in the opening at the top of the dome and it cast everything in a spectral glow. Waiting there were Matthew, Nikolas and Arcadius, armed but not armoured; each stepped forward silently to kiss Rachel. One of them gave her a hooded cloak and helped her to tie it at the throat.

  Zoe took Anna to one side. ‘You know the way to the cellars below?’ she whispered. ‘You know the door through the kitchens into the street? Go there. It’s unguarded and once outside you can make your way to the gate to the lower town. How you get through that is your business.’

  Anna nodded and walked past the three young Varangians who’d formed a little circle around Rachel, and into the deep shadows of the corridor that led to the staircase. Her heart was beating a rhythm of increasing hope. She wanted to run to the stairs but knew that any noise would be fatal.

  Then she heard a noise.

  Behind her: a command and the drawing of steel. Her stomach lurched and she turned back to see the three Varangians, swords before them, staring up at the balcony. Zoe was standing next to them looking aghast. She glanced in the direction of Anna and her eyes bore into her.

  Stay where you are.

  Anna put her back to the wa
ll of the corridor and edged along its shadow to see into the lobby. Lining the balcony were at least a dozen janissaries, each with an armed crossbow pointing below.

  With them was Suleyman. And Yusuf.

  Yusuf. Do you work for Zoe or Suleyman? Who has betrayed us?

  Suleyman’s hands were clasped, his forearms resting on the balustrade.

  But this was no thunderbolt. He was unsteady on his feet. He seemed unlikely to wield the sword of Islam to much effect. Perhaps this Burgundian crusade would succeed after all.

  He glanced at Suleyman. Surely, thought Luke …

  His hands were clasped and his forearms resting on the ledge. He was leaning over and he was smiling. Anna watched, appalled, as he began to walk slowly down the stairs, his black eyes moving around the hall in search of something, someone. He went up to Zoe and walked around her once before stopping beside her, his mouth level with her ear.

  ‘Someone, I think, is missing, lady,’ he whispered. ‘Where is she?’

  Zoe turned so that her face was very close to his and facing Anna. ‘I regret that she’s flown, lord,’ she whispered, quite loudly. ‘She’s flown to somewhere you won’t find her. Somewhere safe.’

  ‘Safe from me?’ he said, drawing back a little. ‘You know it’s my father she should fear, not me. I am trying to help her. Have you told her that? I imagine not.’

  Suleyman and Zoe locked stares; then he laughed softly and walked backwards to the bottom of the stairs, still holding her gaze. ‘Yusuf!’ he called without turning. ‘Bring me your sword!’

  The giant came down the stairs and handed an unsheathed scimitar to his master. Suleyman, his eyes still fixed on Zoe, put his thumb to its blade and felt its sharpness. Then he pointed at Arcadius. ‘Kneel,’ he commanded.

  Arcadius stood still, his big body frozen in indecision. Suleyman walked over to him.

  ‘Kneel!’

  Matthew came to stand by his side, Nikolas beside him.

  ‘If he is to die, then we all die,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Suleyman agreeably. ‘You will if you don’t tell me where Anna is. If she is in the town, she will be found — probably by my father’s men who are already here. Would you want that for her? Now kneel. All of you, or I’ll ask Yusuf to make you.’