The Towers of Samarcand (The Mistra Chronicles)

by James Heneage

  Luke got up and picked up a wolf skin, ignoring the cries of those who’d lain beneath. He stumbled to the door and pulled it open and the savagery of the night outside almost flung him back inside. He could see nothing beyond a swirling darkness that tore at his hair and clothes. He turned back and grabbed a torch from the wall, shielding its flame with his body. He moved out into the night, pulling the door shut. He turned his head to left and right and called and felt the sound thrown back at him on the wind. He jumped from the wagon into the snow and called again. There was no answer.

  He heard a sound to his right. He felt his way along the side of the wagon, the torch held close within his cloak, the wolf skin balled against his stomach. Every step was a fight to stay upright. He stumbled against something, something alive and huddled against a wheel, something that moved quickly away when he leant forward to touch it. He bent and felt the tangled hair of the girl, crusted with snow. He moved his torch from within his cloak and, in its scattered light, he saw her.

  A bare arm circled the neck of a horse. In her other hand was a knife. There was a cut in the skin of the animal’s neck where she’d opened a vein and blood ran from the corners of her lips. Luke recoiled. He pushed the skin at her and it was snatched from his hand. He looked again but there was nothing there. Nothing. She’d vanished into the storm.

  *

  A week later, they arrived, quite suddenly, at the valley. For the first time in weeks, Luke saw trees climbing the slopes up to the jagged teeth of an escarpment that ran as a high ridge on either side. Below the trees were fields, thick with snow, some of which had the shapes of old walls around them.

  Further on, they met another valley that ran across theirs. A little river ran through it, outcrops of snow coasting on its currents like driftwood. They stopped to let the horses drink. Dried milk curds were produced from pockets and passed around and the men’s faces curved into smiles as they chewed. Luke looked around for the girl. There was no sign of her.

  Soon they were on their way again and the going was easier. The men leant from their saddles to laugh while women climbed down from the wagons to walk with their children. The horses held their heads a little higher and the jangle of harness told of a journey’s end.

  By the afternoon, they had reached a flat piece of ground where the river broke into separate paths that gurgled their way around islands on which large birds stood on one leg watching them. The men dismounted and looked around at the snow and filled their water bottles from the river, sweeping aside the ice with their hands.

  Luke helped Arkal lift the bales of felt from the wagons and stretch out the frame of the ger. Together, they unrolled the layered felt and wrapped it around the latticed wall, securing it in place with ropes. The work was done in silence broken only by the barked command of Berta. The little boy helped by clearing snow from the ground and dragging the wooden flooring from the wagons. Occasionally he stopped to wipe his nose on the felt.

  In less than an hour, the ger was up and Luke was helping Berta to hang the wooden door on its frame. Arkal had brought rugs from the horses and was arranging them on the floor. Then the sleeping pallets were brought in and the animal pelts, and after that came an old wooden chest and a range and utensils for making food. Soon the smell of cooking wafted up into the dusk and the tribe congratulated each other that another trek to their winter pastures had been made in safety.

  Luke saw it all and felt a sense of foreboding. Winter was on its way and he was a stranger in a strange land among people who didn’t want him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MISTRA, NEW YEAR 1397

  Snow usually covered only the head and shoulders of Mount Taygetos. That year it came down from the mountain and into the Vale of Sparta and the wolves came with it. At night, the mothers of Mistra would put palms to their children’s ears to shut out their howling. Some said that the Milingoi would follow, that starving savages in animal skins would soon be climbing the city walls.

  Inside the city, the streets were treacherous. People slid their way down to break the ice on wellheads and a donkey carrying food up to the citadel turned cartwheels. Monks prodded the ground of their little gardens for survivors and every morning the Despot checked the city’s stores for grain.

  Anna Laskaris was just thankful that the snow would keep away the Turks.

  From the balcony of the Laskaris house, she looked out over the Vale of Sparta and saw fields without movement, a frozen landscape of suspended windmills and skeletal trees. Birds screeched their hunger in a sky of hard blue and columns of smoke rose from the hearths of a hundred farmsteads. Anna remembered when it had been filled by a Turkish army, fifty thousand strong. She’d been fifteen then.

  She looked down at the tall cedar tree in the courtyard and saw a girl of seventeen standing beneath it waiting for her father to ride through the gate with the boy who was to be her husband: Damian Mamonas. She saw herself then, unruly red hair as defiant as the mood beneath it, ready to do her duty by this marriage, to do it for Mistra, for Byzantium.

  She watched a small bird, yellow and blue on its wings, swoop down to land on a stone engraved with a name and a date.

  Alexis.

  It was the stone from which her brother had mounted his horse for the last time, engraved by their father after his only son’s death. Alexis had fought and died trying to keep Mistra free. She was destined, instead, to marry for the Empire. First Damian. Now Suleyman. And not Luke.

  She heard a sound behind her and turned. Her mother, Maria, was standing in the open doorway. She seemed much smaller these days.

  ‘You were looking at the tree, remembering when he came to get you.’

  ‘Yes, I was thinking about Alexis.’

  Maria was silent for a while, then she said, without emotion, ‘You will be leaving soon.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘Because Suleyman will come for you shortly.’ She paused. ‘Will you marry him?’

  Anna drew apart. She studied her mother, marvelling at her calm. ‘If I must, yes. The Empire requires it.’

  Maria let out a long sigh. ‘First a husband, then a son. Now a daughter. The Empire is demanding.’

  Anna remembered Zoe’s words in the chapel. This empire that devours its children. She had been right.

  ‘You could come and live with me. I’ll look after you.’

  But her mother shook her head. ‘No. I’ll stay here. Mistra is my home.’

  Anna hugged her. ‘And mine. I don’t want to leave.’

  *

  The Emperor Constantine had, ten centuries earlier, decreed that the Christian Christmas should be celebrated on the twenty-fifth day of December and that year in Mistra, Christmas Day and the twelve to Epiphany were a time of untrammelled celebration. The philosopher Plethon was there for the festivities, enlisting the services of Anna, some shepherds and the repaired donkey to stage a nativity play, written and narrated by himself. The Patriarch found himself playing Joseph.

  ‘They do it in Italy,’ Plethon explained to the Despot, adjusting his toga and smoothing it over his belly. ‘Some saint from Assisi came up with the idea and it’s caught on. We need to learn Catholic ways if we’re to unite our Church with theirs.’

  The Despot sighed and nodded. It was all part of Plethon’s second plan. The union of the Eastern Church with the Church of Rome so that the Pope would sanction a crusade to lift the siege of Constantinople: the second plan to save what was left of the Empire of Byzantium.

  If Luke fails in the first plan: to bring Tamerlane to fight Bayezid.

  *

  Plethon’s play was a success. Staged in front of a roaring fire on New Year’s Day, it was set to a score written by the Despoena Bartolomea. Afterwards, the party went on until the pages were asleep on their feet.

  Omar came to visit but wouldn’t say where he’d been. He was scarred and tired, too tired even to prevent Plethon volunteering him as a magus. When they weren’t rehearsing, the two men spent long hours talk
ing alone. The engineer Benedo Barbi arrived one day from Chios, summoned to hoist angels on pulleys up to Plethon’s strange heaven.

  Christmas came and went in the little city on the hill and the new year brought new foreboding. Spring would arrive soon and surely the Turks would come then. After all, there was little to stop Bayezid now. At Nicopolis, four months ago, he’d defeated the best that Christendom could send against him and, to make the point more keenly, had had two thousand knights executed on the field of battle. If it hadn’t been for Prince Yakub of the Germiyans, Luke would have been among them.

  Now it was February and a brilliant sun shone down upon Mistra, making the eaves of the Metropolitan and, beneath them, the nose of St Demetrius, drip with equal purpose. People looked out from the city walls and saw the glint of metal in the distance.

  The Turks had come.

  Anna was upstairs in the palace with the Despot, Plethon and the man who had succeeded her father as Protostrator, Michael Frangopoulos.

  ‘It’s Suleyman, lord,’ Frangopoulos was saying, turning from the messenger, ‘but his army’s not large. Perhaps ten thousand.’

  Plethon nodded. ‘All that can be spared from Constantinople, I imagine. Enough to take our little city.’

  The siege of Constantinople had been resumed as soon as the Ottoman army had returned from Nicopolis. Bayezid had entrusted it to his heir, Suleyman, who knew that his best chance of success lay in cannon cast in the foundries of Venice.

  ‘So why has he come?’ asked the Despot.

  Anna knew. ‘He has come for me,’ she said quietly. She was standing at a window looking down across the plain, her back to the gathering and her long hair falling to her waist. She turned and two green eyes, pooled with sadness, settled on her ruler. ‘He’s come to take me back to Constantinople so that he can marry me in the Church of Hagia Sophia once the cannon arrive and the city has fallen and the church has become a mosque. He’s come for me. And Zoe.’

  Zoe Mamonas, daughter to the Archon of Monemvasia and twin sister to the man to whom Anna was still married. She shuddered. She looked down at hands that were as pale as milk-gourd and found them still.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ve always known I’d have to go. I’d just hoped for a little longer.’ It had been an impossible dream: waiting in Mistra until Luke returned with Tamerlane. He wouldn’t return from such a task. She turned to Plethon. ‘He will want Zoe as well. Will you release her?’

  Plethon nodded. ‘What choice do we have?’

  ‘She tried to bury me alive and her father is helping the Turks get cannon from Venice.’ She paused. ‘But you’re right, philosopher. What choice do any of us have?’

  She lowered her head and Plethon took her arm.

  ‘Where is he?’ she asked softly, turning. ‘Can I at least know that before I go?’

  Plethon looked at her for a long time. ‘Luke is with nomads, Anna. Learning their ways. Preparing for Tamerlane.’

  ‘Does he have friends?’

  Plethon nodded slowly. ‘There is someone. A girl. She will be his friend.’

  Anna frowned. Something cold had entered her spine.

  What girl?

  ‘I should get ready,’ she said.

  *

  The Ottoman army that Anna, Plethon and Zoe rode out to meet was indeed much smaller than the one brought by Suleyman five years ago. Anna had tried to bring help from Monemvasia, but Suleyman had found her outside the city and ridden with her on his saddle right up to the walls. He’d threatened to kill her unless the city surrendered. She’d defied Suleyman and in return he’d fallen in love with her.

  Now she saw him ahead of her, mounted on the same stallion, black as night, with its horned head and coat of mail down to its hooves. He was wearing gold armour and a tall helmet from whose top sprouted silk in flower. On either side of him were two of his bodyguard, one holding the Horsehairs, one the green flag of the prophet. Beside them stood the rest of the Kapikulu, his household cavalry drawn from the conquered nations of Christendom and now slaves to Islam. They held pennanted lances and had wings on their backs. Behind, formed up in crescent, was the army: janissary ortas in the centre and sipahi knights from Rumelia and Anatolia on either wing. It was, as usual, silent as the breeze.

  Anna glanced at Zoe. She was looking straight ahead and her eyes were bright as diamonds beneath the fox fur, pulled down to cover her ears. Her head was tilted to one side and the tip of her nose was a pinker olive than the rest of her flawless face. Her breath came in little mists from lips curved into the smallest of smiles.

  Plethon turned to her and said: ‘We are releasing you, Zoe, in the hope that you and your father might prove more loyal to your empire in future. Mistra needs your father’s wealth and talent more than Bayezid does.’

  Zoe smiled and shook her head, still looking ahead. ‘You are releasing me because you have no alternative, old man.’ She paused. ‘My father is interested in trade and trade has no loyalties. As usual, you deceive yourself.’

  Plethon was forty and didn’t consider himself old. But it was true: whatever Zoe’s crimes, they’d had no option but to obey Suleyman’s instruction to deliver Anna and his mistress to him without delay. He said: ‘If you harm one hair of Anna’s head, we will find you and kill you.’

  Zoe laughed. ‘Harm her? Why would I do that? She will be company for me when I visit the harem.’ She looked across at Anna. ‘If she’s not too tired, that is.’

  Anna looked ahead at the man waiting. Suleyman had watched only her as they’d ridden across and was not smiling. At Nicopolis, she’d promised to submit to him. But she’d run away instead.

  ‘You have kept me waiting,’ he said as the three of them approached. ‘Four months, in fact. I’ve been waiting four months for you to return from your father’s funeral. As you said you would.’

  Anna didn’t reply. She looked into his eyes and saw the pride, the arrogance, the hurt.

  ‘So, in the end, I came to get you.’

  Still Anna said nothing. She sat on her horse and looked at him. Suleyman had changed. There was a new, brittle quality to his voice.

  He turned to Plethon. ‘I want whatever cannon you have in the city.’

  Plethon shook his head. ‘I regret we have never had cannon, lord. You may send men in to scour the walls and armouries. We have no cannon of any size.’

  Suleyman knew this to be true. But then that was not why he was there. Someone spoke to his front.

  ‘Is there no greeting for me, lord?’

  Suleyman’s beard lifted in smile. His messenger had demanded two women be delivered to him and he’d greeted one but not the other. ‘But of course,’ he said, bowing from the saddle. ‘We have much to discuss.’

  *

  The discussion that took place later was conducted on the bed in Suleyman’s tent. On entering, Zoe had seen a large stove with a chimney that disappeared through the roof. Its doors were open and the scented heat made beads of sweat gather quickly at her temples. In the middle was a bed with the skins of antelopes upon it. The only other objects were a table with a jug and two cups and a basin of petalled water. Towels were draped over its side.

  Zoe began to undress while Suleyman poured the wine. One took longer than the other since Suleyman had not greeted her out on the plain and could wait. At last she was lying naked on the bed, her body the colour of honey in the firelight, her long hair spread across the pillows.

  ‘It’s been some time,’ she murmured, her fingers tracing their way from her breasts to the triangle of hair between her legs. ‘You’ve looked forward to it?’

  Suleyman’s face was half in shadow so that only a part of his smile was visible. There was no sound beyond her breathing and the smell was of sandalwood. ‘Of course.’

  In fact Suleyman had looked forward more to seeing Anna, however unreciprocated the pleasure would be. But there was no doubt that Zoe’s body gave him satisfaction beyond anything derived from the harem.

  Zoe sai
d: ‘Come here.’

  She had opened her legs and her fingers were deep inside the space between. Suleyman emptied his cup, rose and removed his mail. He wore a simple caftan of silk beneath. He took off the caftan, walked over to the bed and lay down beside her.

  ‘Now,’ said Zoe, ‘we will discuss.’

  *

  The first discussion involved few words and went on for an hour. At its end, they both lay staring up at the roof of the tent, enjoying the feel of sweat upon their skin and the smell of consummation all around them. They were thinking of different things: Suleyman, a siege; Zoe, what had been different about this lovemaking. It was certainly different, containing a desperation that could not just be explained by the passage of time. Suleyman had changed. She rose from the bed and walked over to the basin, splashing water over her face and drying it with a towel. ‘Tell me about your father,’ she said, returning the towel to the basin.

  Suleyman yawned. ‘My father? Why do you want to know?’ He paused. ‘He is mad.’

  ‘Madder than before?’

  ‘Madder. He’s been getting letters. From Tamerlane.’

  Zoe considered this. Bayezid’s obsession with Tamerlane had been there before she’d left for Mistra. The world did not seem big enough for both of them. ‘What do the letters say?’

  Suleyman rolled on to his side, watching her. ‘They taunt him, call him vassal. Sometimes in verse. They’re quite funny.’

  Zoe walked over and sat next to him on the bed. She put her hand to his cheek, stroking his beard with the backs of her fingers. ‘And you? How does he treat you?’

  Suleyman looked down at his hands. ‘He hardly talks to me any more, just Mehmed, even Musa, and they tell him to lift the siege and go east to prepare for Tamerlane. Bring the Khanates of the Black and White Sheep on to our side.’