The Walls of Byzantium tmc-1

by James Heneage

  The Doge smiled. He walked over to the model of his barge, the bucintoro, and stooped to look carefully along the lines of miniature oarsmen. ‘There are no slaves in Venice,’ he said calmly. ‘Every man in the galley is a volunteer. We part the sea because we want to and it is our strength.’

  ‘And yet the Rialto parades slaves daily. It seems you exercise your tyranny by proxy.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Doge looking up. His smile was glacial. ‘Now that’s a good word. Most apt.’ He placed the candle on the plinth beside the barge. ‘Signor Mamonas, we are a merchant nation and cannot afford to take sides. We are unique among nations: half eastern, half western; half land, half sea; poised precariously between Christendom and the lands of the Prophet and trading indiscriminately with both. We are a place of silk and velvet and soft fumigations and we are a place of hard porphyry and marble.’

  His look was now sharp, the smile gone. ‘Above all, signore, we are pragmatic. We are like a hunting dog. We point to best advantage. Now, which of these sultans are we to deal with? The one ruling, or his heir?’

  Pavlos Mamonas stood very still. The room was not cold but the skin beneath his doublet was pricked as if the lightest current of air had crept through the shutters. It was fear of course. He heard Damian shuffle behind him.

  ‘My son finds standing difficult,’ he said. ‘Will Your Serenity permit him to find a seat outside?’

  ‘Father-’

  The Doge raised a hand. ‘I would insist,’ he said.

  Damian stayed where he was. He looked from one to other of the older men.

  ‘Leave, Damian,’ said his father quietly.

  The note of the heavy door shutting stayed with them for some time and, after it had subsided, there was no sound in the room except the crackle of the fire. Antonio Venier gestured towards it. ‘Shall we warm ourselves?’

  Two chairs, not three, had been placed on either side of the fireplace. They were high-backed and padded with embroidered velvet. With a screen, it might have been a confessional.

  Both men sat.

  ‘So which sultan is your master, signore?’ asked the Doge. ‘Is it Bayezid or Suleyman?’

  Pavlos Mamonas suddenly wanted wine. His mouth was dry and he needed something to do with his hands. He hoped they weren’t trembling.

  He said, ‘The Sultan’s heir, Prince Suleyman, has been tasked by his father with the capture of Constantinople. There is division within the Sultan’s court as to where to go next for conquest. He leads the faction that would go west.’

  The Doge nodded slowly, his old eyes alert above steepled fingers. ‘We know this. The philosopher Plethon has been in Venice for some time now. He argues that Venice is committing suicide by building ships and cannon for such a prince.’

  Pavlos Mamonas sighed. He’d hoped that Plethon had left the city by now.

  The Doge continued: ‘His case is strengthened with the offer of gold.’

  ‘Gold?’ asked Mamonas. ‘The Empire has no gold.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. A young Greek has sent us a galley filled with mastic. Do you know the price mastic is fetching on the Rialto these days? It’s extraordinary.’

  Pavlos shook his head slowly, his mind working.

  A young Greek.

  ‘But what is more extraordinary is that this Greek has instructed that the entire profit from the mastic go to Plethon to use in the service of the Empire. So I now have a counteroffer for my cannon.’ The Doge furrowed his brow. ‘Difficult.’

  Pavlos Mamonas asked, ‘Am I permitted to know the name of this generous Greek?’

  ‘His name is Luke Magoris. He is from your city of Monemvasia. You may know him.’

  ‘And he is here in Venice?’

  ‘Alas no. He was captured by pirates and taken to Prince Suleyman’s camp at Constantinople. We don’t know why.’

  Where Zoe is.

  Pavlos Mamonas took a deep, but silent, breath. The feeling of unease that had entered him since leaving his factory on Murano had suddenly strengthened.

  But the Doge hadn’t finished. ‘Then there’s this crusade,’ he said. ‘They say that Burgundy has emptied his considerable coffers to put a vast force into the field. An unbeatable force.’ He paused. ‘Again, difficult.’

  Pavlos Mamonas was only half listening now. Part of his mind was considering what he’d just discovered about Luke Magoris and the implications of telling Suleyman that he’d not get his cannon. Of Suleyman telling Bayezid. He felt ill.

  But, he thought, I am here. If the Doge’s mind is made up, why is he talking to me?

  He decided to be direct. ‘What do you want?’ he asked quietly.

  The Doge’s beard looked like spun silver in the glow of the fire. Pavlos Mamonas waited and was suddenly glad he had not been offered any wine. The Venetians were said to strengthen it when it was served at negotiations.

  ‘We want Chios,’ Venier said at last.

  Pavlos said, ‘Your Serenity has already instructed me to include Chios in the negotiations. But there is a complication.’

  ‘I know it,’ murmured the Doge. ‘The Sultan’s teeth.’ He put a finger into his mouth. ‘I must go there myself one day.’

  ‘With the alum from Trebizond now coming through, I had assumed the Chios trade less urgent.’

  Venier raised his hand. ‘Please, signore. The alum trade is not the issue. We want Chios, not its alum. And we want it quickly if we are to work hard to perfect a cannon big enough to bring down Constantinople’s walls.’

  The Doge affixed his eyes to Pavlos above the most sparing of smiles. He was stroking his beard, smoothing its chaos into something more akin to his speech. ‘Do you want to know why we want that little island so badly?’

  Pavlos shrugged slightly. ‘Because you want to be able to say Mare Nostrum? Because you own every other island from Corfu to Negroponte to protect your trade routes? Because the Genoese like it so much? There is likely to be more than one answer.’

  ‘Yes, but there is something else. Come.’ The Doge had risen and was making his way to the other end of the room, where stood the model of the Arsenale. He lifted the candle and pointed to a small collection of buildings that seemed unconnected to the purpose of ship building. ‘Every civilised place of work should have an infirmary, don’t you think? All those accidents that can happen in a shipyard.’

  ‘Infirmary, Serenity?’

  ‘Yes, infirmary. I want to take you to see it, Pavlos. Come.’

  A short while later they were there, without guards and without Damian, who seemed to have been magically removed. The building was entirely without character or embellishment of any kind. Two soldiers of the arsenalotti stood to attention either side of the door.

  Inside was a small anteroom, whitewashed and unwindowed, in the middle of which stood a long table with two sets of strange clothing laid out. There were two overcoats, coated in wax, two pairs of long leather breeches that would stretch up to the groin and two wide-brimmed hats. All of the clothes were black. Beside them were two masks with long beaks, also in black, and two sets of gloves.

  Pavlos Mamonas suddenly felt cold. ‘These are the clothes of the plague,’ he said.

  ‘Indeed, and I will ask you to put them on. As you do so, I will explain why we are here.’

  Mamonas hesitated. It was only fifty years since the Great Plague had left half of Europe dead and it had reappeared every five years or so since. It was an invasion far more deadly than even the Mongols could aspire to.

  ‘Please. You will be quite safe, I promise you.’

  The Greek stepped forward slowly and began to dress. His heart was beating fast. Venier joined him.

  ‘Half a century ago,’ he said, ‘Venice lost two-thirds of her population in less than a year from the plague. Like most things bad, we have the Genoese to thank. A month before, the Mongol Jani Beg had been besieging their colony at Jaffa when he had the inspiration to catapult the bodies of plague victims over the walls.
The Genoese fled in their boats and those that didn’t go to Sicily, came to us.’

  He paused to fasten the breeches tightly around his waist. ‘We weren’t much worse off than most. Florence’s population halved in less than two months.’ Now he was donning the long coat and small pieces of wax fell away as he pulled the sleeves over his arms. ‘We both know what happened after that. Chaos. Jews and lepers were massacred, there were crop failures and famines because of labour shortages, flagellants were everywhere. And our city, famed for its cats, lost them all in one bloody night when the populace remembered that they were in league with the Devil. Worst of all, trade seized up. The blood in this city’s veins coagulated to a standstill.’

  Venier had dressed completely, including the hat, and was studying the beak of his mask with distaste. Two red glass eye-pieces stared back at him malevolently. ‘I’m told they first thought it spread through migrating birds, hence the shape of this thing. At least the herbs inside it will provide some benefit.’

  He turned to Mamonas, who was by now dressed. ‘Do you know what’s really interesting?’ he asked suddenly, his voice lower. ‘What’s really interesting is the places the plague didn’t reach. The Pyrenees, Santiago de Compostela to name two.’ He had come over and was helping Mamonas tuck the cowl of his hood behind the mask. ‘And yet it leapt from island to island in our Middle Sea like a grasshopper. Especially those with ports.’ He had tilted the beak of his own mask to peer into it and check that the herbs were in place. ‘Except one. And can you guess which one it was?’

  Mamonas, giddy from the fumes in his mask, didn’t answer. He’d guessed which one.

  ‘Yes, Chios. It never reached Chios. The population of that island was, at the end of the plague, slightly larger than it had been at its start. Shall we go in?’

  The Doge opened the door on the other side of the room and led Mamonas into a long corridor along which were a dozen cells. Each had a grille at eye level through which the visitor could see into the room. Penetrating the smell of herbs was the stench of sulphur and something indefinable.

  The air was full of low, unhappy monologue.

  ‘We should not talk,’ whispered the Doge, turning. ‘It distresses them.’

  The two men walked the length of the corridor, stopping at every door to look inside. In each cell was a man, half-naked, skeletal and pale, with deep, sunken eyes ringed with shadows. Their bodies were clean and their heads had been shaven. They either sat or lay on straw pallets; they looked vacantly before them or talked to themselves. Their bodies were a mass of coruscating scars, dried abrasions where there had once been pustules and buboes, and they scratched at their necks and armpits where the scars were most closely gathered.

  Mamonas reached the end of the corridor without vomiting and, even when they had come into the clean air of the outside, he did no more than remove his mask and retch. When he had collected himself and straightened, he found himself staring into the face of di Vetriano.

  ‘You have met, I think,’ said the Doge, calmly removing his mask and gloves. He placed them in a tall butt containing a grey powder. ‘Captain di Vetriano will now explain further why we are here.’

  The man in front of Mamonas was a more serious creature than he’d been in the barge.

  ‘Signore,’ he began, ‘I don’t know how much you know about the plague but I will tell you anyway. The first stage begins with buboes in the groin, neck and armpits that ooze pus and bleed when opened. After two or three days, the second stage sets in when black spots, small and large, appear all over the body. The victim then begins to suffer additional fever and vomits blood. His breathing becomes laboured. He develops a raging thirst and will drink anything. In a further two days he is dead. It is always so.’

  Mamonas nodded. He’d seen it once.

  ‘I told you that I brought in the first shipment of mastic from Chios. It was a week ago.’ Di Vetriano was watching him closely. ‘Unfortunately, mastic wasn’t the only cargo I brought into Venice.’ His voice was grave. ‘I also brought the plague. We picked up some crew at Negroponte, men who had been abandoned by a Genoan galley. We needed rowers but I should have checked them more carefully before bringing them aboard. In three days it had spread throughout the crew. We were throwing men in the sea by the dozen. We limped into Venice and the ship was placed under quarantine.’

  The Venetian paused and looked at the Doge, who was motionless and staring hard at Mamonas. A seagull called above them and was joined by others.

  ‘The men died one by one, out there in the lagoon. They went from tumours to black spots and then died in agony. I myself only survived by barricading myself in my cabin. But for twelve men it was different. These were those whose duty it had been to guard the cargo. They’d been close to the mastic throughout. They developed the buboes but never reached the stage of the black spots. They’d also been consumed by the usual thirst and, in their madness, drank a compound of the mastic that had been formulated to fix dye.’

  Di Vetriano looked back to the door through which they had just come. ‘Those are the twelve men in there.’

  For a long time, none of them spoke. Mamonas felt his heart hammering against his ribcage and his mouth was dry. He looked from captain to doge. ‘A … a cure?’

  Venier shrugged. ‘Perhaps. It is too early to tell. It may be coincidence, but I think not.’ He walked over to Mamonas and put his hand on his shoulder. ‘You can see why we want Chios,’ he said gently and smiled. ‘A cure for the plague will pay for a thousand armies. It will make us invincible.’

  ‘But first, signore, we need Luke Magoris,’ said the Doge. ‘We need him to tell us what was mixed with the mastic to bring about this miracle.’

  Mamonas swallowed. Two masters, Ottoman and Venetian, each as dangerous as the other. He needed time to consider this new information. But the Doge went on.

  ‘Di Vetriano knows this Magoris by sight and is the best captain in my navy.’ He bowed slightly towards his fellow Venetian. ‘We need you to deliver Magoris to him. Can you do this for us?’

  Mamonas was thinking hard. ‘And if I do?’

  ‘Then the alum monopoly from Chios will be yours. We will be happy with the mastic … once, of course, we have the island.’

  Suddenly Pavlos felt very tired. He had just heard something that could transform him from a man of great wealth to a man of limitless wealth. But it was dangerous. Venier saw his struggle.

  ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Nothing need be decided today. Let us return to my palace and drink some of your excellent wine.’

  The two men turned towards a guard of excusati that had mysteriously appeared at the end of the street.

  As di Vetriano bowed his farewell, he spoke. ‘By the way, you’ll be pleased to hear that it doesn’t fix dye. We brought in the best chemists from Florence. The experiment failed.’

  Four days later, Suleyman was standing at the top of the Gelata Tower in Genoese Pera and thinking about Zoe. It was an evening of moon and stars and bats flitting around the tall silhouette of its hat like bloated moths.

  He’d been admitted to the tower by a Genoese nobleman who knew perfectly well whom he was admitting and had asked no questions. If the heir to the Ottoman throne and his companion wanted privacy, then they’d find it in this, the most obvious of places.

  Suleyman hadn’t joined the army marching north because its departure from Constantinople gave him the perfect opportunity to study the city’s defences incognito. So he’d moved his tents further north of Pera, to a place where they couldn’t be seen from the walls, donned the disguise of an Arab merchant and ridden forth with a small bodyguard.

  And Anna.

  And it was as he was riding back from the Theodosian walls, his map-maker by his side with a tunic stuffed with drawings, that the message had reached him that Pavlos Mamonas needed to meet with him. Urgently.

  He’d been delighted by the choice of meeting place. The Gelata Tower offered unrivalled views of Constantinople’s s
ea walls as well as the full length of the Golden Horn where the Empire’s shipping had remained secure behind its chain throughout the siege.

  The chain.

  Something would have to be done about that chain. It was infuriating that something so simple could prove so effective. If he could somehow break or remove it then the sea walls beyond were the weakest part of the city’s twenty miles of defences. But that meant taking Pera and, apart from the nobleman standing guard below, every Genoan seemed staunch in their allegiance to the Empire.

  Now he turned to the man next to him, his two eyebrows arched in surprise. ‘Pavlos, am I to understand that the Serenissima is attempting to change the terms of our agreement?’

  Pavlos Mamonas had ridden without stopping from Venice. He’d not slept for forty hours and was more exhausted than he’d ever been but he needed to choose his words with care. He took a deep breath.

  ‘They have been offered a better price for the cannon they’re building,’ he said. ‘By the Empire.’

  ‘The Empire? But it’s penniless.’

  ‘They have found money.’

  ‘So give them more money.’

  Mamonas scratched his chin. There was three days of stubble on it. ‘It’s not so simple. The Venetians have persuaded themselves that this crusade will succeed. They are nervous.’

  ‘They are fools,’ Suleyman snorted. ‘We will beat this crusade and punish them for their cowardice.’ He paused. ‘So what do we do? I want Constantinople. How do I get my cannon?’

  ‘You wait, lord. Crush the crusade and then talk again. Meanwhile …’ Mamonas was looking beyond Suleyman to the door to the staircase, checking they were alone. He’d heard that Anna might be with him.

  ‘Meanwhile?’

  He turned to look Suleyman in the eye. ‘Meanwhile, you give them the Magoris boy. They want him.’