The Walls of Byzantium tmc-1

by James Heneage

  At last it was over. The final pitiful groan subsided and the imams, their robes crimson, sat on the ground and stared at each other in horror. Their limbs ached and their breath came in spasms and sweat trickled its way past the blood and dripped on to the sodden earth around them.

  Bayezid was drunk. He had enjoyed himself, laughing and clapping as the murders went on, roaring insults to de Nevers and impervious to the disgust around him.

  Then it was the turn of Suleyman’s prisoners.

  Luke had braced himself to face death with the same courage as those who’d gone before. Now he turned to his friends and saw the same determination in them and he drew them all to him so that they formed a circle, their arms entwined and their heads pressed together.

  ‘We are brothers,’ said Luke quietly, ‘brothers and Varangians, and we will die as such. Let’s show these bastards how a Varangian dies.’

  ‘Just one last question, Luke.’

  It was Nikolas.

  Luke looked at him. Nikko. The one never far from a joke.

  ‘Did you actually … you know, with Zoe?’

  The arms gripped harder with the laughter.

  ‘You can’t die without knowing that?’

  ‘No.’

  Luke smiled. ‘I’ll tell you on the other side,’ he said.

  The imams looked at the next group being brought forward and they looked at Bayezid, who could have been asleep. His eyes were closed and his huge chest rose and fell and his goblet had fallen from his hand.

  Suleyman and Mehmed looked at each other.

  ‘We must stop this madness,’ whispered Mehmed.

  Bayezid opened his eyes. ‘We will continue, Prince Mehmed,’ he said quite calmly.

  ‘I will not continue.’ The oldest of the imams had risen. ‘This is ungodly cruelty and I will have no further part in it. Great Sultan, you may kill me, but I will not go on.’

  He threw down his sword and one by one the imams rose and did the same. They faced their Sultan, their backs as straight as they could make them, and they defied his will.

  The only sound came from the sky and the birds of prey that had gathered to circle these new pickings. The sun emerged from behind a cloud and bathed the scene in a warmth that belied its savagery. Bayezid stood up and moved to the edge of the pavilion and looked up, enjoying its heat on his face. Then he smiled and shrugged; he beckoned to a servant for another goblet, which he lifted in the direction of his heir.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Prince Suleyman, you may continue. Perhaps rather quicker, if you will.’

  Anna had heard, rather than seen, the dreadful spectacle. And, because of the courage of the Christian knights, she’d heard little beyond the exertions of old men and the soggy connection of blade with skin.

  She was sitting in a little tent to the rear of Bayezid’s and beside her sat Devlet Hatun, her elbows resting on a table and her palms to her ears. Since their first meeting at Serres, the two women had come to trust each other. Anna knew that much of what she confided to Devlet Hatun was passed on to her brother Yakub Bey and that this was all part of a wider plan to connect good with good.

  During the journey north to Nicopolis, Anna had barely slept and now she clutched the older woman’s shoulder as much for support as comfort. She was dizzy with exhaustion.

  The uncomfortable ride had given her time to think, to let logic push Luke from her mind. At Monemvasia, she’d agreed to go with Suleyman to save the lives of Luke’s friends. Now the Turks had won a great battle and nothing stood between them and Constantinople. They would win and she would be forced to marry Suleyman. She had to banish Luke from her thoughts.

  But logic couldn’t push him from her dreams, and the little sleep she’d had had been devoted to him.

  Now she stood, swaying and praying that he had survived the battle.

  Then someone spoke.

  To begin with, she couldn’t place the voice. Then she could.

  Yakub.

  He was standing at the entrance to the tent. ‘You should come.’

  Anna let go of Devlet Hatun’s shoulder and walked to the entrance. Through it, she could see the side of Bayezid’s tent, and beyond it, an open area littered with bodies. In the centre, in the midst of death, knelt Luke, his head on a block. Above him, sword raised above his head, stood Suleyman.

  Now she was running, running towards the scene before her. Everything else was a blur. Bayezid had turned in his chair and was moving his head. The Vizier’s head was bent, listening to one of the imams. De Nevers was being supported by Boucicaut, vomit at his feet.

  She reached the open ground, stopped and swung around to face Bayezid. ‘Stop this.’ She paused, recovering her breath. ‘This is unworthy of you, lord.’

  Bayezid was looking at her as if he wasn’t quite sure who she was. His head was on one side and there was spittle gathered at the side of his lips. An empty goblet was in his hand.

  ‘I think not. Please proceed, Prince Suleyman.’

  Anna spun and looked around her. Then she ran over and picked up a sword. She held out her arm and put the blade to her wrist. She stared at Suleyman. ‘If you do this, if you harm one hair on his head, you will never see me alive again.’

  ‘No, Anna …’ It was Luke.

  Bayezid leant forward in his chair. ‘And if you don’t do this, Prince Suleyman,’ he growled, ‘you will not rule this empire after me.’

  Suleyman looked from Anna to his father, his sword still raised.

  ‘You will submit!’ screamed Bayezid, flinging his cup to the ground.

  Suleyman didn’t move. There was a silence so complete around them that the sudden shriek of a carrion bird came out of the sky like a thunderclap.

  Anna walked over to him and, very softly, so that only he and Luke could hear, she spoke.

  ‘Spare him, Suleyman, and I will submit.’

  Suleyman did nothing. Then, very slowly, he lowered the sword.

  But someone else was speaking. It was Yakub: he’d moved to stand in front of Bayezid. With him was the Vizier and one of the imams. He turned to the imam. ‘Tell your sultan. Does not the law forbid the killing of prisoners if they are below twenty years of age?’

  The imam’s hands were still stained with blood. He stared at them, then looked up. He nodded.

  ‘Majesty.’ Yakub now faced Bayezid. ‘You cannot kill this boy. The Book forbids it.’

  ‘Cannot, Lord Yakub?’ growled Bayezid.

  But the imam had recovered himself and came to Yakub’s aid. ‘Highness, the lord Yakub is right. Allah has granted you a great victory and perhaps it would be wise to regard his law. It is forbidden to kill child prisoners.’

  Bayezid slumped back in his chair. He shook his head as if to clear it. ‘And what should I then do with this … boy, lord Yakub?’

  ‘Send him to the tribes of Anatolia, highness. Do what you always do with your share of the prisoners. Send him to our homeland to be taught how to be a janissary. He will make a fine one.’

  Behind him, Suleyman had recovered some of his composure. This was not as it should be. Luke was going somewhere he didn’t want him to go. He watched Yakub as an animal watches another steal its prey.

  He turned to be sure de Nevers was watching. He wanted to be heard by him.

  ‘Father,’ he cried in French, ‘the law may spare his life but this one we cannot send away. He speaks languages and has the Varangians’ skill at arms. He would be valuable to us here.’ He paused and looked directly at Luke. ‘After all, he was the one we sent into the crusader camp.’

  Luke leapt to his feet. ‘That’s a lie!’

  Scores of Christian faces were turned to him.

  Suleyman addressed de Nevers. ‘Did he not ride into your camp with news of our battle order, my lord Count?’

  De Nevers was looking strangely at Luke.

  Marshall Boucicaut spoke. ‘Indeed, sire. You will remember. He claimed to be Serbian. We didn’t trust him.’

  Lu
ke reeled. This was madness. He’d told de Nevers everything that had then come to pass. But who here knew this except men who had everything to gain by shifting the blame for this catastrophe?

  Bayezid was getting bored. He didn’t know why Suleyman wanted this prisoner or why he was speaking in French but his son had publicly challenged him and he was in no mood to favour him. ‘Lord Yakub? You were the one to point out the law that has saved this boy. You will send him to one of your villages and make him into a gazi.’

  Suleyman strode over to his father. ‘Father,’ he said in a voice that only Bayezid could hear, ‘I have reasons for wanting this boy to stay.’

  But Bayezid had had enough of his eldest son. He said softly, ‘You have humiliated me before the army. I care nothing for what you want!

  ‘Yakub, you will do this?’

  The gazi bowed. ‘I will do this, highness.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  EDIRNE, OCTOBER 1396

  The party that left Edirne with the Sultan Bayezid a month after the Battle of Nicopolis was a varied one. This was especially true in the matter of age: Luke found himself the youngest by some years, the pretty page having been made to stay sulking in the capital.

  The oldest person present was a man he’d never seen before but who’d joined them at the city gate, slipping quietly into the column behind the ranks of the imams. He was tall and gaunt and rode badly, his simple white robe rucked up to reveal legs spotted with age. His beard was as white as his caftan and was shaded by a beak that an eagle would have raised with pride. He wore a turban of green cotton from which grey hair hung like netting. He seemed to be known to Yakub, who rode next to Luke, and brought his horse up to the gazi’s other side. He glanced at Luke, nodded and said to Yakub, ‘we should talk, old friend. Shall we fall back a little?’

  Anna had remained in Edirne, imprisoned in the harem, and Luke had not set eyes on her since she’d put a sword to her wrists. Matthew, Nikolas and Arcadius had stayed with her and become part of the Court Guard. If he couldn’t keep Luke, Suleyman would at least have the Varangians who, with some polishing, might make a fine embellishment to his retinue one day. Luke was relieved.

  They’ll be close to Anna.

  Suleyman himself had gone to straight to Constantinople, partly to resume the siege and partly to escape the necessity of explaining to Zoe why he’d not returned from Nicopolis with Luke. Suleyman had missed Zoe. He’d not taken her on the campaign because he believed carnal diversion before battle to weaken the sword arm. After it, he’d wanted nothing more than to lie with her.

  Bayezid’s party came back through Thrace and the birds had seemed to travel with them, or at least those that had not already gone south for the winter, and they were fat, black creatures that had perhaps gorged themselves on the flesh of two thousand Christian martyrs.

  Luke knew that the memory of that slaughter would stay with him forever, that his worst nightmares would be of men kneeling silently on blood-soaked ground, of exhausted executioners turning their old eyes to their sultan for some small measure of mercy and finding none within those cold, bloodshot eyes.

  Approaching the town of Stenia, they’d seen the walls of Constantinople in the distance, defiant above the mist of an autumn morn. Here they’d crossed the Bosporus and ridden down its banks to the new castle of Anadolu Hisar, built four years past to stop help coming from the Black Sea.

  Now it was a prison.

  As they rode up to its gates, men were being paraded along the cliffs overlooking the channel and many were familiar to Luke. De Nevers, Boucicaut and d’Eu were standing in chains and all had days of dirty beard on their faces. Their once-splendid hauberks hung from gaunt bodies stripped of armour and they were wrapped in filthy bandages still black with their blood.

  Their guards pushed them into line and the Sultan drew aside his curtains and laughed at their misery and drank toasts to the ransoms they’d fetch. And these men who’d once commanded armies turned their heads to look at the tall Greek who rode with Bayezid in clean clothes and no chains and their hearts were filled with hate.

  The Sultan had come here for a purpose. Helped from his litter, he walked over to where he could see the waters below. Then he clapped his hands, toothache forgotten. ‘Is that him?’

  A long line of ships was making its slow way down the channel.

  ‘Yes, lord. In the front boat.’

  Bayezid clapped his hands again and turned to the line of chained men. ‘De Nevers!’ he shouted in French. ‘See! Hungary still comes to your rescue!’

  The Turks roared at that; even the grave imams raised a smile. The guards slapped each other on the back and yelled insults and challenges to the boats below, and in the first of the galleys, the King of Hungary clutched the foredeck rail and looked up at his former allies through a film of tears.

  Luke could do nothing except look as well but he’d have given his fortune to be somewhere else. He saw Sigismund below, his long cloak wrapped around his hunched frame, and he saw de Naillac by his side: two men sailing home to tell of the catastrophe that was Nicopolis.

  A voice came from the line of prisoners behind him. ‘Traitor! May you rot in hell!’

  Luke turned and saw Boucicaut staring at him.

  Then de Nevers spoke. ‘We will get home one day, Greek. And when we do, you will pay for what you have done. This I swear.’

  In Edirne, Anna was sitting in misery with Suleyman’s grandmother.

  The Valide Sultan Gülçiçek, now seventy, was a woman smelt but seldom seen. Among the many scents of the harem, among its shifting essences of food and flowers and mastic, hers was a very specific smell of decay.

  It was autumn when the Valide Sultan became most tetchy, being prone, at this time of year, to confront the issue of her age and, in confronting it, to banish the younger women from her presence.

  It was also the time of year that the Chief Black Eunuch, the Kislar Agasi, spent most time planning how best to distract his mistress by way of entertainment. In a month’s time, winter furnishings would be introduced to the harem, soft velvets hung in place of sullen linens and the calm of milder weather would descend like manna upon the rooms, pools, courtyards and lawns of his little kingdom.

  Until then, he needed to extemporise.

  On this particular evening, he’d invited a travelling bard-poet and his apprentice to give of their best. First, the ozan had told amusing stories to the strum of his disciple’s baglama. Then he’d dared suggest a musical rhyming contest between the quartet of wives allotted to Bayezid by the Koran. Each kadin had embellished the game further by suggesting forfeits for those unable to find a suitable quatrain for the rhyme. There was little love between them.

  The mother of Bayezid, unquestioned ruler of the harem and much beyond, was sitting on a low couch in the shadows of a little alcove before a tall window covered by an intricate wooden grille. Behind her, the evening light was caught in coloured glass and horn so that it arrived around her as tiny shards that exploded among the beads and sequins of the cushions.

  She was, as she liked to be, almost invisible.

  The room outside the alcove was blue and gold. Tiles from Iznik rose in patterns on all four sides to a height where gold mosaic took over. Above the mosaic, on a frieze beneath the dome, the calligraphy of earnest Koranic injunction swirled. In the centre was a small pool, strewn with the flowering of late roses and, drinking from it, a child sambar, its spindly legs mirrored in the water. Around the marble floor were bowls of apples and almonds and clear mastic sweets. A single cushion was propped against the pool’s wall and on it rested a zither, a tambourine and a little drum. Carpets were hung on the walls and before them knelt bare-breasted servant girls who stared at the ground. They were young and had gold bands on their upper arms and had, it seemed, escaped the Valide Sultana’s injunction on youth.

  Anna had no idea why she’d been summoned to this room. She sat in uncomfortable silence next to the alcove listening to t
he ozan’s game and smelling the smell of Bayezid’s dying mother.

  Then there was a cough and quiet fell upon the women.

  Gülçiçek spoke. ‘You do not like this game, Anna Mamonas?’ The voice was muffled by its journey through the veil but no softness had attached to it. It was low and there was malice in every word.

  ‘I am sorry, highness, my mind was elsewhere,’ she said into the stillness.

  A pause. Only the sambar dared lift its head, its tiny horns hooped in question.

  ‘I think you were thinking of a Greek. Am I right? One who betrayed his kind at the field of Nicopolis?’

  There was stifled laughter from within the alcove. It belonged to Nefise, the Sultan’s aunt and Gülçiçek’s constant companion.

  Anna didn’t reply. She had heard Suleyman for herself. She didn’t believe it.

  The ozan and his apprentice were quietly gathering up their instruments and preparing to depart. Gülçiçek addressed them.

  ‘You haven’t finished,’ she said sharply. ‘The lady wishes to play our game. Give her a rhyme.’

  The older of the men looked at Anna and then round at the kadins. No one spoke or moved. The apprentice carefully lifted his instrument.

  ‘Give her a rhyme about the Prince Suleyman since he is to be her husband. What could be more fitting?’

  The ozan sat and gazed at the floor. Then he lifted his head and cleared his throat as his apprentice began to strum the strings of the bağlama.

  He sang:

  ‘

  The prince before the city walls

  Calls out to those that guard

  This gilded shadow of ancient Rome

  …’

  There was silence. The rhyme was deliberately easy. Three lines were all that Anna had to give, three lines of poetry that would deny what was left of her empire.

  Three lines she could not say.

  The silence rose into the dome and stayed, pregnant, above them. Anna felt her anger rising.