The first clap of thunder was not much more than a rumble, the heavens clearing their throat. The second brought her to the ground. It was louder than any she’d ever heard and its effect on her horse was dramatic: it stopped, reared and threw Anna from its back. She landed badly and for a while feared that she’d be trampled. She rolled away and waited for the horse to calm. Then another thunderclap.
‘Anna!’ Luke had turned Eskalon on the first roar and ridden back. He jumped to the ground and ran to her. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘Only my pride,’ she laughed, the rain splashing her face. Anything could happen and she didn’t care. She was alive and here and so was Luke. And he loved her. ‘I’m so tired.’
‘Of course.’ He looked up. The steppe stretched all around and the rain was drilling into the ground. ‘We must find shelter and you must sleep.’
‘But …’
‘No, you must sleep and then we’ll go on. There are hills ahead. We can find shelter there.’ He lifted her in his arms and walked over to Eskalon. ‘We’ll ride together.’ He put her on to his horse and then went to hers. He gathered its reins and tied them to his saddle. Then he mounted Eskalon behind her. ‘Hold on to me.’
And, in a dream, she did. She cradled herself in his arms and felt the warm, strong embrace that she’d felt in a cave on the Goulas of Monemvasia long ago. She wanted so badly to stay awake, to live this moment of pure, rain-soaked joy for eternity. She drifted into sleep thinking of a runaway horse and the moment when he’d held her for the first time. She felt the comfortable rhythm of power beneath her and against her and she fell asleep, smiling.
When she awoke, it was daylight and she was lying on the ground beneath an overhang of rock. She was in dry clothes, warm and covered by blankets. Beside her was Luke. ‘How long have I slept?’
He smiled. ‘A night. You talked a bit.’
‘About you?’
‘Mainly me.’ He kissed her. ‘Others too.’ He looked at her for a long time and she looked back. So much time had passed since they’d last met. He dared ask the question. ‘Did he hurt you?’
‘Suleyman? No. I don’t think he would ever hurt me.’
Luke raised himself to his elbow. ‘Why didn’t he marry you?’
Anna pulled the blanket higher, enjoying the soft wool on her cheek. ‘I kept finding reasons for delay. Then I used his seal without his knowledge and Bayezid found out. He forbade the marriage after that.’
‘And yet you have your annulment.’
‘I have it but don’t need it,’ she replied. ‘Damian’s dead. He fell off the Goulas when he was drunk.’
Luke had not heard. He shook his head, surprised at the pain of the news. Flashes of long-ago memory came to him: Damian, Zoe, him on a donkey led by his mother; the three of them looking for kermes outside Monemvasia. They’d been the best of friends once. Then Eskalon had charged and Damian had been in the way and he’d not forgiven Luke or his horse. Now he was dead.
Anna leant forward. She put her hand to his cheek, hoping to draw some of the sorrow. ‘We can marry, Luke,’ she said softly. ‘You are a hero.’
Luke frowned. ‘On Chios perhaps. But what will I be when Tamerlane sacks Constantinople?’
Anna said: ‘Shulen will bring Mohammed Sultan. He’ll stop Tamerlane.’
‘No he won’t. He didn’t stop him at Aleppo or Damascus. Tamerlane cannot be stopped by anyone.’
‘Except, perhaps, by Zoe. Show me the ring.’
Luke raised his hand and turned it so that Anna could see the ring. It was of gold and pitted with age, its edges worn. On it was some ancient script.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she murmured. ‘What’s written on it?’
Luke shrugged. ‘I showed it to Ibn Khaldun once. He said it was ancient Hebrew. I don’t know what it says. A name perhaps.’
They both examined it in silence. The wind over the steppe made a strange, keening sound as it parted the grass. There was low cloud and the sun was warming some other landscape. Eskalon neighed.
‘We should go,’ said Luke at last.
Anna leant back and stretched. Then she rolled herself towards him so that they were face to face. She kissed him. ‘Not yet, tarkhan.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
THE ROAD TO CONSTANTINOPLE, AUTUMN 1402
It took Luke and Anna only three days to reach Chios. They rode as hard as the rain and road allowed and stopped only once for Anna to change horses. They spoke little: Anna numb with the pleasure of a recent transaction, Luke thinking hard of how to stop Tamerlane from entering Constantinople. He remembered again and again what Mohammed Sultan had said to him in the church.
The last time that our armies came into Europe, they were stopped by the death of the Khan … It might happen again.
But how? Shulen had poisoned him once but she was a long way behind, bringing Mohammed Sultan to his grandfather slowly on a litter. Anyway, Zoe was apparently with Tamerlane every moment of the day and night.
They reached the sea in the evening and commandeered a boat to take them to Chios. And as they crossed the straits, Luke’s thoughts turned to something else. He’d been aware of a strange excitement growing alongside his worry, gradually nudging it aside as they got closer to Chios: he was to meet his son. He was about to meet Giovanni on Chios and he felt giddy with yearning.
But it wasn’t to be. They arrived late at night at the Giustiniani Palace to be told that Tamerlane had left and that Fiorenza had taken Giovanni to Sklavia and was not expected to return within the week.
So Anna was surprised to wake up the next morning to find a woman of great beauty standing next to her bed holding hands with a boy. She knew immediately who they were.
Fiorenza. Fiorenza and Giovanni.
The woman spoke. ‘We are deserted. The men have all left. Luke too.’
Anna looked at the pair. Fiorenza was dressed in a high-collared tunic of brushed silk, cream and without pattern. Her head was uncovered and on her feet were green slippers. The boy was dressed in Genoese miniature: doublet and hose, both in matching blue, and boots of calfskin. He was looking at the floor and his hair was the colour of corn.
Fiorenza spoke again. ‘I’ve been at Sklavia. I came back when I heard that Tamerlane had left. But it seems he’s taken my husband with him.’ She paused. ‘Luke has told me much about you.’
Anna sat up in the bed, studying the woman. ‘As I of you. You’ve been kind to him. Do you know where he’s gone?’
Fiorenza produced a scroll. ‘I found this in his room.’
It was addressed to Anna. She took the scroll and opened it. Inside was a ring and a message: ‘Catch up with Plethon and give this to him but avoid Zoe at all costs. I will join you as soon as I can. I love you.’
She reread the message, certain that someone else had done the same. She looked up to find her hostess guileless and smiling, two dimples bracketing her perfect mouth. She wondered again where Luke had gone. Had he had a message from Shulen? Probably.
Fiorenza turned to her son. ‘Giovanni.’ The boy lifted his head and Anna’s breath left her. A wave of panic surged up her body and she put a hand out to steady herself on the bed. She had to stop herself from crying out.
Luke.
The boy bowed from the waist and straightened up. He smiled. He was Luke. Luke with dimples. There was no doubt. If it wasn’t obvious in his size, his hair, his chin, then it shone from his blue, blue eyes.
You are Luke’s son.
She was aware that she was staring at the boy but couldn’t wrench her eyes away. It was as if Luke was reborn, refashioned in the skin of a child. She wanted to touch him.
‘I see you are taken with my son.’
Anna forced herself to look up at Fiorenza.
She knows I know.
Small spots of colour had emerged high in the Princess of Trebizond’s cheeks. The dimples had disappeared and there was calculation in her eyes. ‘It is possible he reminds you of another?’
; Anna felt the blood rush to her face. She knew that she was trembling and cursed the hands that betrayed it. She breathed in. ‘I’m sorry.’ She put out her hand. ‘Giovanni.’
The boy bowed again, still smiling, and took her hand. Fiorenza said: ‘I mean to go to my husband. You?’
Anna nodded. ‘I’ll go to Plethon. And your son?’
Fiorenza paused for a moment. Then she said: ‘He will return to Sklavia. There are horses waiting.’
*
The stench of Smyrna was more than even Tamerlane could stand. The smell of rotting corpses, lifted by fire and autumn wind, penetrated every corner of the citadel so that half of his court performed their duties masked. Tamerlane soon left the city for Constantinople. He travelled by elephant with just Zoe and a servant in his howdah and Pir Mohammed, Sigismund, Manuel and Plethon in the howdah behind. Marchese Longo and the signore rode at the head of a regiment of gautchin that brought up the rear. The army was left to rest in Smyrna and would follow later.
The road had been Byzantine, therefore wide and level, and the ride was comfortable. The summer had extended its reach into autumn and a hot sun turned leaves into fire before they fell from the poplars that lined the road. Beyond the trees were villages without people and fields without livestock. Humanity had disappeared with its food. It was if the last judgement had come and gone without anyone caring to tell the Mongol army. Only the kourtchi, riding ahead, had seen the road into Bursa clogged with people desperate to seek refuge behind the city’s walls.
So none saw the passing of this strange calvacade. None saw the two elephants, their mahouts sitting astride painted faces whose steady grins rocked between giant tusks; or the jornufa or ostrich or two donkeys wearing the tall white hats of the janissary corps. None saw the four bullocks that followed, pulling a wagon with a cage upon it in which a clown sat in misery: Bayezid; Yildirim; Sultan of the Ottomans, a man hardly visible through the filth on his bars.
News came from Ankara. Mohammed Sultan would meet his grandfather somewhere along the road to Bursa. For Zoe, this was the first piece of bad news for some time; she’d hoped Mohammed Sultan would be too ill to travel and didn’t want his words of reason anywhere near her lover’s ear.
Tamerlane had started the journey in the best of spirits. Zoe had used every skill in her repertoire to bring him to grunting ecstasy in the bed of the Grand Master of the Hospitallers. Now he lay against the cushions of the howdah while she read to him, watching the of the young mahout as it swung from side to side with the rhythm of the beast. The music was sweet and the air sweeter than anything he’d breathed in a week. Tamerlane was happy.
*
Having sent Giovanni to Sklavia, Fiorenza joined the party as it left Manisa. She rode alongside her husband as it passed through Akhisar, barked at by dogs and stared at by cats but otherwise unnoticed. On the third evening, they arrived at the bridge at Sultancayir, just short of the city of Karasi, capital of the beylik of that name, the first neighbour to be annexed by the Ottomans sixty years past. They were two hundred miles from Constantinople. There was a Byzantine castle on a hill there, abandoned by its Turkish sipahi owner, where Tamerlane’s guests would be housed for the night. Tamerlane would pitch his tent at the bottom.
*
Much later, one guest awoke to receive a summons to meet Tamerlane in his tent, alone. Matthew dressed quickly, woke Nikolas to tell him where he was going, and tiptoed from the room. He assumed the summons had something to do with Luke. In the castle stable, he found his horse, saddled it and led it across the sleeping courtyard, through the gate and on to the path outside. He mounted and rode down the hill. He had no difficulty in recognizing Tamerlane’s ger. It was the largest and had the flag of the Celestial Conjunction outside, just visible in the moonlight. Two gautchin stood guard on either side of its entrance. They recognised Matthew and lifted the flap for him to enter.
Inside it was dim and very warm and the air smelt of wine. Tamerlane’s giant bed, with braziers at each corner, stood in the centre. Veil upon veil of diaphanous material had been ripped from its frame and a copper bath was up-ended at its foot. The remains of a meal were scattered across the carpet. At first Matthew thought that he was alone in the tent. Except for the crackle of fire in the stove, it was entirely quiet. Then he saw a shape move on the bed and his heart missed a beat.
Zoe.
He turned to go.
‘It’s all right. He’s on the floor, too drunk to know anything. I’ve seen it before.’The words were muffled, as if spoken from below a pillow or from broken lips. It sounded like the voice of one in pain. Something was wrong.
‘Are you hurt?’ he whispered.
She laughed. There was the brush of fur on fur as she moved. ‘Yes, I’m hurt.’
Matthew strained to see. ‘Tamerlane?’
He heard slow, careful movement from one finding movement painful. ‘I am split and torn and bruised in places I didn’t think it possible to hurt.’ She paused. ‘He is an animal.’
Matthew heard a snore from the far side of the ger, then a grunt, like some beast stirring in its bestial dream. He moved slowly over to the bed. She was lying on a sheet beneath furs and her back was to him. She was probably naked. He said: ‘He called for me.’
Zoe sighed. ‘He didn’t call for you, I did. I wanted to talk to you.’
‘Zoe, his guards are outside.’
‘No they’re not. I told them to go as soon as you arrived. They’re getting drunk somewhere.’
Matthew glanced at the tent entrance. ‘What did you want to talk about?’
‘About Chios,’ she said. Her palm patted the bed behind her. ‘Sit. We can talk and then you can go.’
Matthew sat.
Zoe turned her head slightly to him. She paused before speaking. ‘Temur tells me that Luke saved Mohammed Sultan’s life at Ankara. He says they love each other as brothers now. Which is why Luke stayed there instead of coming here.’
Matthew frowned. ‘Luke stayed at Ankara because he was too sick to travel.’
‘Are you sure? I think Luke has deserted you. He has new friends now.’
Matthew was shaking his head. ‘Luke is a Varangian.’
‘He’s also ambitious. Just look at what he’s learnt over the past two years. He’s left the rest of you behind.’
Matthew remained silent. He wanted to leave.
‘You know that he has Plethon’s trust,’ went on Zoe, ‘particularly in the matter of the treasure. What you don’t know is how he’s abused that trust. We went into Constantinople, he and I, before Nicopolis, to look for it. He wanted to take it for himself.’ She paused and her head turned a little further. ‘Just like his grandfather.’
Matthew rose. He’d never believed the story that Luke’s grandfather had stolen the treasure. He wouldn’t believe it now.
‘Sit down, Matthew,’ Zoe said quietly. ‘I haven’t finished.’
He took a deep breath. ‘I don’t want to hear any more.’
He heard the rustle of sheets as Zoe turned her body. He didn’t look round.
‘I have a proposition for you, Matthew,’ she said. ‘Help me rule Chios. I’ll need someone to keep all those signori in order, someone strong. You can bring the other two as well. You’ll all be rich.’
Matthew exhaled slowly. His mind was churning. ‘And Luke?’
‘Luke has made other plans. And they don’t include you.’
Matthew said: ‘Temur won’t honour your agreement any more than he has any other. He’ll tire of you, Zoe. He might kill you.’
She laughed then. ‘I’m sure he might. But I will poison him before that happens. I have good poison from Venice. Look, I have it here. I carry it always.’
Zoe tossed a narrow belt on to the floor. Matthew stooped to pick it up. It had two lumps in the fabric. Two doses of poison; two just to be sure. Matthew stared at it. He wanted to be as far away from this tent as it was possible to be. He had to get out into the air, away from her musk,
away from her madness. Away from the monster asleep on the floor. He made to go.
‘You’ll regret it.’ Her voice was calm.
He walked to the door of the tent.
‘Did you know that he means to take Constantinople?’ she asked. ‘How big will the guard he takes inside the city be, do you think? Just his regiment of gautchin? What will he do to the poor citizens when he knows that Manuel ferried Suleyman’s army to safety?’ Her voice stayed low. ‘And what do you think he’ll do to Anna when I tell him that she tried to bring a crusade to fight him?’ She paused. ‘I wouldn’t leave, if I were you.’
But Matthew suddenly needed more than air. He pulled aside the tent-flap and stepped into the night.
Outside the tent were four soldiers of the gautchin, their swords drawn.
*
A mile to the south, Anna was riding towards the bridge at Sultancayir, with her paizi as apparent as she could make it in the moonlight and a ring in her pocket. In her mind was only one thought, one question.
How can he not be Luke’s son?
And how could Marchese Longo not see it? Or perhaps he did. Why did Luke do it?
Why did you betray me?
The first campfires of the gautchin appeared on either side of the road and a soldier rose from the sleeping figures. She raised her veil and showed him the paizi and went through. Soon she was climbing the path to the castle. At the top, she dismounted and led her horse under the gate. A Mongol appeared and she showed the paizi. ‘The Lord Plethon,’ she said.
The servant didn’t understand. She managed to convey a toga and length of beard and the man nodded. He led her up some steps and along a passage to a door. He left her.
She pushed the door half open. ‘Plethon?’ She hoped she sounded less frightened than she was.
The Towers of Samarcand (The Mistra Chronicles) Page 41
