The Walls of Byzantium tmc-1

by James Heneage

  ‘Look,’ whispered Zoe. ‘Imagine him younger, without the beard.’

  They both gazed at the face, entirely still.

  ‘It could be you,’ she said softly.

  Luke pulled away from the painting and found that his hands were trembling. He suddenly felt cold although the afternoon was still warm. ‘The sword — look at its pommel,’ he said.

  The dragon head was aglow. Alive.

  ‘It’s my sword,’ whispered Luke. ‘Siward’s sword.’

  Then he said, ‘Perhaps it’s pointing. What’s it pointing at?’

  Zoe’s gaze travelled the length of the blade. ‘Well, that answers that,’ she said. ‘It’s pointing to where the painting has worn away. Look at the corner of the picture. It’s worn through to the plaster beneath.’

  ‘And beyond?’

  ‘Into the side chapel.’

  There was no sound in the little church beyond their breathing. The light was almost gone now, a frieze of dust motes suspended above the ground like things discovered. They felt their way into the chapel. As their eyes accustomed themselves to the dark, they saw tombs, the black shapes of sarcophagi with one, much larger than the others, rising up at their centre.

  ‘Siward’s tomb,’ said Luke.

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘I just know,’ replied Luke quietly. ‘I must write to Plethon. He’ll know what to do.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  VENICE, AUTUMN 1396

  At the new headquarters of the Banco dei Medici, situated discreetly above their Hanseatic friends at the Fondaco dei Turchi on the Grand Canal, there was mixed reaction to the news.

  The Ottomans had lifted their siege of Constantinople.

  Of course it meant that alum from Trebizond could now get through and prices to the Arte della Lana would fall. On the other hand, it meant that the considerable outlay they’d made to the Campagna Giustiniani on Chios looked a little more precarious.

  On the Rialto, all was joy. The news lifted the ducat ten against the écu, and the cortigiane di lume, those bawds who plied their trade in those and other parts, lifted a celebratory toast.

  But then this was Venice and celebration was in the air.

  Except, it must be said, for Murano. That five-fingered island, second in the Venetian constellation, its hundred glass foundries belching smoke into the gassy air, was a place of serious industry. It looked with contempt at the goose-masked, all-night revellers who rowed their unsteady way across the lagoon each dawn. Its foundries were at full blast, the scarred, glistening bodies of their maestri toiling with tongs and bubbled rods in the bloody glare of the kiln-vents, tweaking, shaping and rolling end-jewels into weightless circles of nothing.

  Leaving such a factory were its owners, the father and son Mamonas, whose palace on the Goulas of Monemvasia contained, it was said, the very finest of its produce. There was, between them, an air of smug satisfaction only slightly tempered by the thought that a dearer ducat would narrow their profit margin. Both were wearing the sober black damask that signalled wealth and probity.

  They were surprised to see, waiting for them at the quay, a barge sent by the Serenissima to gather them to her bosom.

  A man, also dressed in black, bowed to them as they approached.

  ‘Niccolò di Vetriano, Knight of the Order of San Marco, at your service,’ he said between lips pressed into the tightest of smiles. ‘I am to bring you to meet His Serenity, the Doge.’

  Father and son bowed in return, assuming their names were known.

  ‘We are honoured,’ said Pavlos, ‘but we are not dressed to meet the Doge.’

  ‘We will go to your fondaco first, signori,’ said the man. ‘When you are prepared, we can go to the Arsenale.’

  The Mamonas exchanged glances.

  ‘The Arsenale?’ said the older. ‘But we understood that His Serenity never stepped outside the palace.’

  The Venetian captain smiled and examined the neat tips of his gloves. He was a handsome man of dark and manicured menace. His voice was soft and dripping with condescension. A bejewelled short sword hung at his side. ‘Indeed. The Doge will leave the palace only in exceptional circumstances.’

  Pavlos Mamonas inclined his head. He’d expected to meet the Doge but not so soon, not like this. He and Damian stepped into the boat and walked to the stern where cushions were arranged beneath a tasselled awning.

  As the barge moved away, he screwed his eyes against the sun and looked across the milky surface of the lagoon towards the skyline before him, elaborate with campaniles, domes and crenellations. There was Venice, the supreme mistress of trade, reclining scented in her lagoon. There, across the water, was the flamboyant city of festivals, water parties, music and masquerades. There was the place of barter and procession and entertainments of more intimate nature conducted behind the silken curtains of gondolas. There, in all her eccentric glory, was the Bride of the Adriatic, the Eye of Italy, who counted, among her hundred thousand amphibious souls, no fewer than ten thousand prostitutes. Pavlos Mamonas smiled.

  One in ten.

  They were passing the island of San Michele now, the Camal-dolite Monastery squat behind its walls, where the pious but worldly monks supplemented their income by making the finest maps in the world. The waves from their oars rippled against the little jetty and a monk carrying a basket of fish looked up with little interest.

  Another emissary. Another alliance to allow this fair but ferocious republic to carry on its divine right of trade.

  ‘Ah, your escort,’ remarked di Vetriano. He was pointing towards the docks and wharves of St Mark’s Basin from where two golden barges were rowing in leisurely tempo towards them. ‘Twenty years ago,’ he went on, ‘I was fortunate to witness the King of France sail in on a ship rowed by four hundred slaves. He had an escort of fourteen galleys and there was a raft on which glass blowers made objects from a furnace shaped as a sea monster. Had you heard of this?’

  It was clumsy and neither Mamonas did more than smile thinly. The captain spoke again.

  ‘You will be pleased with the news of alum shipments at last getting through from Trebizond, no doubt?’

  ‘The alum is but a small part of what we do,’ Pavlos replied easily. ‘Frankly, I’m more amused by the new appetite for our Malvasia wine amongst the English. Their nobility drink it by the gallon. They call it Malmsey.’

  Di Vetriano laughed. ‘I drink it too,’ he said. ‘It’s a lot more gratifying than this new mastic drink.’

  ‘Mastic drink?’ asked Damian, too quickly.

  The Venetian arched an eyebrow. ‘Had you not heard? I brought the shipment in from Chios myself last week in one of the Empire’s galleys. The rest brought alum. They broke through the Turks’ blockade of Chios. Since then all the talk has been of mastic. Its applications seem limitless.’ He was watching them carefully. ‘They say it even fixes dyes. Surely not, for then what need would there be for so much alum?’

  Pavlos Mamonas gripped his son’s arm before he could answer. He looked hard at the Venetian.

  Why has the Doge sent this man?

  He turned towards the scene opening up in front of them. They were coming in fast with the race of the tide and the escorting galleys were finding it hard to turn to station on either side.

  ‘Slow down!’ yelled the captain to his oarsmen. ‘Wait for our escorts to form up, damn you!’

  The oars lifted as one and the barge slowed. Mamonas leant forward to gaze along a shoreline he knew better than most in the world. There was something about the melancholy of this marshy home to waterfowl and fishermen that he found reassuring: a refuge in a world that suddenly felt less secure.

  Ten minutes later they had passed the bar and were sweeping in past the Piazza San Marco with its twin pillars from which the winged lion of the city’s patron saint and his predecessor, St Theodore, looked down with hauteur. As they drew nearer to the entrance to the Grand Canal, they found themselves amidst a bustle of boats: passenger
skiffs, lighters, vessels laden with fish and vegetables — all of them manned by half-naked men yelling greeting or warning to each other. Some of the ships entering were deep-keeled, seagoing vessels, pulled by tugs, which would travel past the opening bridge of the Rialto to reach the small docks fronting the fondachi further down the canal.

  The Grand Canal opened up before them and soon they were passing a parade of palaces, shimmering in pink self-satisfaction, with restless coveys of boats nuzzling at their water gates and sunshine blushing their pillared loggias. This was the central artery of the city from which smaller canals branched off; it was an esplanade of wealth and splendour, a dazzling repository for the booty wrenched from Constantinople.

  The canal curved its way through the length of the city and, at its second bend, came to the bridge of the Rialto where the bankers had their stalls, the merchants their offices, the slavers their auction yards and the whores their love potions. On the quays were barges from the mainland, moored in their hundreds, waiting to ship cargoes from the ocean-going ships. And it was here that the Mamonas family flag, the black castle, flew high above their splendid fondaco.

  As they glided towards its jetty, two trumpeters, winged lions on their tabards, stood at the front of the barge to herald their arrival. A gondola, gilded and tasselled and poled by liveried negroes wearing the Loredani badge, slowed to let them pass.

  On the jetty stood the Mamonas factor, a small man of some girth. He was flanked by two fat sons and a fatter wife, all dressed in black and looking nervous and hot beneath the afternoon sun. Pleasantries were exchanged, travel enquiries made, two heads patted and then the party walked up the steps and into the loggia that ran the length of the building.

  ‘I’m told all the talk is of mastic?’ said Pavlos as they walked.

  The factor was rubbing his hands as if the substance was stuck to them. ‘No one knows what it can do, lord,’ he said. ‘Aphrodisiac, wound sealant, drink, tooth filler … every day it seems they have a new use for it. Some even say it will fix dye. The market is excited. It will calm.’

  ‘I think not,’ said his master. ‘And Chios is the only place that can produce it?’

  ‘It seems that way, lord,’ said the man uncomfortably. ‘Or at least the sort of mastic with these properties. It would seem that the island has a unique climate.’

  Mamonas was silent for a while and the sound of their boots on the stone echoed beneath the arches. The children were hurrying behind, dragged by their ample mother, and one was grumbling too loudly.

  ‘Have you bought the land there?’

  It was the question the factor had been dreading. ‘Lord, there have been difficulties …’

  ‘Difficulties? It’s a straightforward transaction. I told you to pay what they wanted for it.’

  ‘The Genoans have control of the island, lord. They will permit no sale of land to anyone outside their campagna. It didn’t matter what sum I offered.’

  Mamonas cursed silently. Despite the blockade, any further pirate raids on the south of the island had been expressly forbidden by the Sultan on pain of the bowstring. Meanwhile the Genoese were consolidating their hold. He would need time to think before his meeting with the Doge.

  He stopped and turned to the factor. ‘Please go and thank Signor di Vetriano for his courtesy. My son and I will walk to the Arsenale.’

  An hour later, the two men were walking across the Piazza San Marco. The square was full to bursting point and they were jostled as they walked. There were the booths of trade guilds collecting their dues, shipmasters recruiting crews and the perennial tourists, money changers, souvenir sellers and those of nobler rank, black-gowned and heavy with brocade. It was alive with dialect and the scents of several continents and it was, for Pavlos, close to paradise.

  This was where the Mamonas family belonged. This was where an empire, built from alum and wine but now encompassing much, much more, should have its headquarters.

  But what of my heir?

  Pavlos glanced across at Damian, struggling to keep up, his head dipping with the drag of a foot.

  They say Temur is lame.

  The Arsenale of Venice was, undoubtedly, one of the great wonders of the world. Surrounded by two miles of stout walls, it contained the secret of Venetian power and it was a secret jealously guarded. The walls were patrolled by crossbowmen and today their red and white striped jerkins were spotless and their breastplates polished to a blinding sheen.

  They, and the other sixteen thousand arsenalotti, were to receive their doge.

  In fact he was already there. Standing in front of the ranks of his guard, the excusati, was the sixty-third of that office: Antonio Venier, His Most Serene Prince the Doge, Duke of Dalmatia and Istria and, to the eternal shame of every Byzantine, Lord of a Quarter and a Half-Quarter of the Roman Empire. He was a tall man of erect and patrician bearing who looked born to rule such an empire. A man of seventy-two years, with an enigmatic mouth, prominent nose, sallow skin and contempt in his eye. A man of implicit control whose only unruly feature was a beard of some bushiness.

  A man unlikely to mire himself in the sweaty friction of trade.

  And yet here he was, in his ermined cloak and long, Byzantine robes, grave and aquiline, the pragmatic master of a pragmatic empire. He bowed very slightly to the Mamonas couple; if he was pleased to have escaped the confines of his palace, they weren’t to know it.

  Father and son had seen this man before and they’d been ignored. Now he opened his arms to them.

  ‘Welcome, Pavlos. And you, Damian. What a pleasure it is to welcome you back to Venice, which I hope, like me, you regard as home.’ He stepped forward and raised the older Mamonas to his feet by the elbow. ‘Come, no kneeling! We are a republic and all men are equal.’

  Pavlos Mamonas rose. He remembered a room in the Doge’s palace where maps on the walls told of a trading power greater than any the world had yet seen. He remembered a Carpaccio lion with its feet both on land and water signifying sovereignty over two empires. He remembered kneeling before a man who didn’t know his name.

  ‘We must talk as friends, Pavlos,’ the Doge continued in his basso voice, turning and leading them up the steps and into the building. ‘And we must talk where we shall not be overheard.’

  They walked the length of a chequered hall and came to a vast door guarded by stone men with fish scales for armour and tridents for weapons. Opening it, the Doge brought them into a tall room, panelled with oak and red damask and lined with candle sconces and the portraits of former Doges. There was a row of high windows on one wall, all of which had been shuttered. Models of galleys and barges stood on plinths below the portraits and a scale model of the complex of boatyards, slipways and factories that made up the Arsenale occupied a wide table at one end. At the other end, a colossal fireplace burnt logs the size of trees. They were alone.

  The Doge walked over to the model of the Arsenale and pretended to examine it.

  ‘

  One makes his vessel new, and one recaulks

  The ribs of that which many a voyage has made;

  One hammers at the prow, one at the stern,

  This one makes oars, and that one cordage twists,

  Another mends the mainsail and the mizzen …

  ’

  His murmured words faded and he looked back at the Mamonases. He removed his cloak and set it down on a map chest. He beckoned to them.

  ‘Come over, please. Not to hear any more Dante, I promise. No, I want to show you a secret.’

  The two men walked the length of the room. The model of the Arsenale was presented at thigh level and was a mass of shadow. The Doge went over to the wall and took a candle from its sconce.

  ‘This is our secret,’ he said softly, lifting the candle high above the buildings and cradles and canals. The Arsenale was a city within a city. ‘No one, not even the members of the Great Council, is permitted to know how this miracle of human ingenuity is arranged. That is why the windows are
shuttered and will remain so.’

  The Doge spoke in a whisper. He spread an arm above the scene like a man throwing seed. ‘Look at it. It is a revolution. At any one time there may be fifty galleys within its walls in different stages of production, from great galleys to rembate. We’re even building round ships for the Genoese now. See how we use these canals to bring the boats to the workers rather than the other way round? It’s a form of industry seen nowhere else in the world.’

  He paused and looked across at the two Greeks. ‘They tell me that in ten years we will be building a ship a day. Imagine that … a ship built every day of the year!’

  Pavlos thought of the antiquated boatyards north of Monemvasia. The fastest they’d ever built a ship in was five months.

  ‘And, of course,’ the Doge went on, ‘our method of building from the frame first means we use much less wood. That is good for the city’s purse and the poor trees of our Montello hills.’ He pointed at a building. ‘This is the largest rope factory in the world, this a cannello for lifting boats from the water and this’ — he looked up at them — ‘is where we make cannon under the expert eye of gun casters from Budapest and Ragusa.’

  They peered down at a part of the model constructed of newer wood. It was a long building and had tall chimneys at one end.

  ‘Here we are making bombards and culverins and ribaudekins and pots-defer.’ He stroked the roof of the building with his fingers. ‘And of course cannon to go on ships.’ He looked up at the two Greeks. ‘And now, it seems, we are persuaded to make cannon big enough to bring down the walls of Constantinople. There is no one else the Sultan can go to for these cannon. But of course you know this.’

  Hat in hand, Pavlos Mamonas suddenly felt at a disadvantage. He left the model and walked over to the largest of the model ships, a gorgeous thing of swirling gold, canopied stern and long banks of oars poised like spiders’ legs. He turned to the Doge, pointing at the model. ‘Every year, Your Serenity throws a ring into the sea from this floating palace. The Romans called the sea Mare Nostrum, and it was truly theirs. But it’s not your sea yet and nor will it be unless the Sultan allows it.’