There was commotion amongst the gautchin at the bottom of the bridge. Some had taken off their helmets and were kneeling on the ground. A deep murmur was spreading through the ranks. Someone was making their way through them. Someone important, someone who could make the gautchin kneel.
Mohammed Sultan.
Tamerlane had turned and was watching the scene before him unfold. In front of him, the ranks of the gautchin had begun to part. By now, every soldier was on his knees, every head bowed, every helmet clutched to a chest. The men’s murmur had subsided, leaving only silence in its place. Luke could hear the squeak of wood on stone. Something with wheels was being pulled. Two heads came into view.
Shulen and Khan-zada.
They were dressed for mourning: long, heavy gowns reaching to their feet. Their faces were hooded, hidden. They were walking on either side of a litter being pulled by men.
Tamerlane took a step backwards. He didn’t want what these women were here to give him. He didn’t want to hear what they had to tell him. He fell to his knees and his head hit the ground in front of him, his hands covering his ears. Luke heard a deep moan.
The wheels stopped but the women kept walking until they were standing over him. Khan-zada knelt and took Tamerlane’s shoulders in her hands and raised him from the ground. She brought the terror of the world, sobbing, into her breast.
‘He is come,’ she whispered.
Tamerlane’s great shoulders were heaving with the fathomless grief rising within him. He hadn’t shed tears like this since the death of Jahangir. But he was much older now and it seemed that his ancient frame could no longer contain such sorrow. ‘When?’ he asked.
‘A week past. It was a fever. There was nothing we could do.’
He said: ‘It was the journey. I made him do it.’
Khan-zada shook her head. ‘It would have happened anyway. It was his time.’
The two women turned and, Tamerlane between them, walked slowly back towards the kneeling gautchin, Luke following behind. As they approached, the ranks opened as men fell back to let them pass. A wagon harnessed to two horses came into view. On one side of it stood Yakub and Anna, on the other Pir Mohammed and Plethon.
The women led Tamerlane up to the wagon and then stepped back. The old man put his hands on its sides and leant over. For a long while he stood there without moving, perhaps without breathing. He looked down upon the man who had been his grandson and his heir and whose goodness was now hidden forever from the world behind closed eyes. He let out a long, agonised groan and Pir Mohammed stepped forward lest he fall. Tamerlane turned to him.
‘Grandson, we go home,’ he said quietly. ‘Tell the generals that the army marches home to Samarcand. The Khan is dead.’
There was movement from within the gautchin and Zoe, no longer mounted, came forward. ‘Lord, we have unfinished business here,’ she said.
Tamerlane was shaking his head. What other business was there but taking his heir back to Samarcand? He stared at her.
‘The Genoese, lord,’ she whispered. She removed the phial of poison from beneath her tunic. ‘Remember their plot? They must die as you planned.’
Tamerlane turned to Shulen. He looked bewildered, lost. Shulen said: ‘I have your glasses, Temur Gurgan. To help you see.’ She proffered them.
The old man took the glasses and put them on. He was fumbling as old men do. ‘What would you have me see, Shulen?’ he asked.
‘I would have you see your friends, lord.’ She paused. ‘And your enemies.’
Zoe stepped forward. ‘Temur Gurgan doesn’t need your glasses to see treason when it is before him,’ she said. ‘You have killed his heir as you planned to kill him.’
Shulen looked at Zoe for a while. They were so alike: both dark, both clever. Both strong. ‘He needs them’, she said quietly, ‘to see you better.’
But Tamerlane wanted to see someone else. He looked down at his heir and reached down and parted his hair, leaving his hand resting on Mohammed Sultan’s cold forehead. He looked back at Shulen and there was mist on his glasses. Gently, she removed them and wiped them clean on her sleeve. She put them back on to his nose. ‘Temur Gurgan, I could not have killed Mohammed Sultan,’ she said softly.
Zoe said: ‘No? You’ve been nursing him since the battle. You needed something to stop Temur Gurgan from taking Constantinople. You killed his heir and brought him here.’
Khan-zada had come forward to stand next to her daughter, taking her hand. She said: ‘Father, Shulen was Mohammed Sultan’s sister. She loved him as a brother. She would not have killed him.’ She paused and looked at Yakub. ‘Temur Gurgan, you must know that I loved another before Jahangir. Our child was Shulen.’
Tamerlane stared at her, his mouth open. ‘You loved another before Jahangir?’
She lowered her head. ‘As I learnt to love your son, lord,’ she said softly.
‘Who was he?’
Yakub said: ‘It was I, lord.’
Tamerlane was shaking his head, his mind exhausted by revelation. He suddenly wanted very much to be in a tent in a garden outside Samarcand. But a realisation was slowly taking shape. He turned to Shulen. ‘You are of Genghis’s line,’ he said quietly. ‘If you are daughter to Khan-zada, then you are of the blood.’
There was noise behind them. They turned and saw that Zoe was pushing her way back through the ranks from which she’d just emerged. Men were rising to let her pass. They looked towards Tamerlane.
He saw her and said: ‘Let her go.’
Luke looked at Tamerlane as he watched her leave. His eyes, enormous in their magnification, were old and tired and full of grief. But they were no longer mad. Luke looked at Tamerlane and knew that he was now free, that Constantinople would remain free. Zoe had known it too and Luke knew that she wouldn’t come back.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CONSTANTINOPLE, WINTER 1402
The city of Constantinople did play host to a marriage, but this one did not include a single Mongol amongst its congregation. In fact, the only trace of Tamerlane was in the dress of the bridegroom, who’d added some tarkhan dash to his Varangian dress in the form of a five-circled brooch, his parting gift from the Lord of the Celestial Conjunction. The city had been saved and it seemed only fitting that it should celebrate the wedding of the man who many saw as its saviour.
And celebrate it planned to do. The monks of the great Church of Holy Wisdom swept away all signs of supplication and set themselves to turning the church into a place of festival. The patterned marble floor was polished, the mosaics repaired and Barbi was once again summoned to pitch angels into the firmament. The Emperor wanted a spectacle worthy of the hour and the city frothed with excitement as the hour drew near.
In truth, Luke and Anna would rather have been married in the cathedral in Mistra than the Hagia Sophia. But Plethon had spoken of the importance of ceremony and civic pride and Luke had nodded and smiled and kissed Anna again. They were to marry and the where was unimportant. The when, however, was. Something had happened on that night ride from Ankara and quite soon its consequence would begin to show, no matter how loose the marriage gown.
Anna had told Luke on their arrival in Constantinople as they’d waited for their audience with the Emperor.
‘You’re sure?’ he’d whispered, unable to hide the excitement in his voice and cursing the echo of the marbled antechamber.
‘Of course I’m sure. Why else am I eating like Eskalon?’
Luke had nodded. ‘And your freckles show. You look happy.’
The Empress had guessed at once. Helena Dragaš had looked at the bloom of pregnancy in a dozen mirrors and knew the signs. She’d come to the rescue. ‘They should marry immediately,’ she’d decreed as the couple stood before her. ‘Or the people will forget.’
When the day arrived, a winter sun shone down on the capital of Byzantium. It was a kind sun that bathed everything in a general, mellow light, hiding the patches and fraying of its battered cathedral. Luke
and Anna stood in its narthex, awaiting the entrance of the imperial couple, Luke dressed in the ceremonial armour of the Varangian Guard and Anna in a long white tunic of crushed silk embroidered with gold thread. Her red hair, littered with tiny flowers, swept past her shoulders in brilliant sheen. Matthew, still bruised, stood behind them in the dress of the Akolouthos, Luke having insisted his friend be given nothing less than the highest Varangian title there was. Next to him stood Shulen, handmaiden to Anna, also in white but without decoration, flowers or any flush of fertility; she would rejoin Tamerlane later. Behind them all stood Luke’s three Varangian friends. Arcadius held a cushion on which rested Luke’s dragon sword.
Trumpets sounded and they looked across the square to see the imperial party approach. The procession was led by six Varangians of Constantinople, axes on shoulders and eyes straight ahead until curiosity to see their new Akolouthos got the better of them. Then came a frieze of priests, court pages and high officials, the churchmen with their forked beards, stiff hats and long white robes spattered with crosses, the courtiers in towering, elaborate headwear, brocaded skirts and soft boots. There was the Master of Horse, the Megas Doux in his paper-boat hat, the Grand Vestarios and the Candidatoi with their golden wands. This was Byzantium, faded but fine.
At last the Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos appeared with his wife on his arm, the imperial family behind. The Emperor and Empress wore the same: the imperial mitra with its curtain of jewels above long white robes sewn with double-headed eagles and fringed with ermine. They looked ethereal.
The procession swept solemnly into the church and only the Empress Helena cast a smile and a wink at Anna as she passed.
There was a clearing of throat and they looked up to see the Patriarch in a vestment that seemed too heavy for his frame. He was telling them to exchange rings in a voice that quivered to find volume. Then he turned and led them into the church.
It seemed that the whole of Constantinople had come to see them married. Thousands sat in the nave and many more stood behind, and those that were not inside the church filled the square outside. Walking slowly, Luke looked up and remembered what the Emperor Justinian had said when first he saw the finished glory of the Hagia Sophia:
Solomon, I have outdone thee.
Despite age and pillage, the church was still a thing of splendour. The walls glittered with mosaics of the Holy Family, saints and emperors: arch-browed, straight-nosed, their heads buckled with diadems. They walked beneath heaven’s aristocracy, beneath archangels and six-winged cherubs, the vast dome above seeming to float on a halo of light that came in through the windows ringing its base.
Then they were in front of a table of green and white marble on which were set two golden crowns. Beside it sat the Emperor and Empress on backless thrones and on either side of them, straight-backed and solemn, sat their mothers: Rachel and Maria. Luke bowed to them and, rising, saw beyond them Marchese Longo, Fiorenza and Giovanni, seated with the rest of the signori. Beside them sat Plethon, Omar, Yakub and Benedo Barbi.
The Patriarch lifted each of the crowns and placed them on their heads. Then he offered them a chalice of sweet Malvasia wine to share. Luke looked over its rim at his bride and his face creased into a smile.
At last.
Psalms and incense rose around them in scented litany as they walked three times around the table, each holding a candle. The cathedral echoed with holy chant and the saints looked down on it all, moving to the rhythms of light that cascaded from a million tiny tiles. Heaven was inside the Church of Holy Wisdom and its glory touched everything and everyone within it.
At last it was over and the Patriarch was telling them to leave. They turned and walked back to the narthex, their crowns heavy on their heads. Outside, the winter sunshine, soft as spun syrup, made them blink. The crowds in the square cheered and waved and threw their hats in the air. They were joined on the steps by the imperial family, the Despot and Despoena, their mothers and friends. A shower of rose petals, somehow preserved, was released from the windows above. A trumpet sounded from the waters of the Propontis and twenty thousand heads turned to see the twelve triremes of the imperial navy bedecked in bunting, their oars lifted in salute. Beside them were twelve round ships flying the flag of Chios, rocking like tipsy monks in the winter swell. A cannon sounded, then another. The crowd roared its approval and more hats went into the air. The Empire was delivered from Tamerlane and its saviour was before them with his bride. Byzantium was still Christian.
There was a flutter of wings and they looked up to see doves rising into the sun, tiny olive branches tied to their feet.
The Emperor laughed. ‘It’s to celebrate the peace treaty with Suleyman,’ he said. ‘He’s given us back Thessaloniki.’
Luke knew this but perhaps the mothers didn’t. Ferried to safety, the heir to Bayezid had established himself at Edirne and seemed keen to make peace. Thessaloniki, second jewel in Byzantium’s crown, had been returned.
Plethon stood beside the Emperor. ‘Suleyman’s still dangerous, majesty,’ he said. ‘He’s just buying some time.’
The Empress smiled and pressed his arm. ‘Tush, philosopher. Be merry like the crowd. We are delivered. Look.’ She was pointing towards the hippodrome where a single horse stood on a plinth. ‘Now, that is a wedding gift.’
It was Luke’s gift to the city. The four horses of the hippodrome had gone to Venice two hundred years earlier so Luke had replaced them with Eskalon, carved in Chios as the quartet had been centuries ago. The bronze horse shone like a god.
Luke turned to his wife and raising her crown with one finger, kissed her on the lips.
EPILOGUE
MISTRA, CHRISTMAS 1402
The snow was falling thickly on the hill of Mistra and the little courtyard of the Peribleptos Monastery was deep with it. It was the hour before dawn on Christmas Day and the monks were sleeping in, having enjoyed their annual holy supper the night before. With twelve dishes for the twelve apostles, and straw beneath the table for when the baby saviour chose to come, it had been more fun than last year. The Turks had been defeated and Mistra was still free. They’d even drunk wine.
For the three people in the crypt below the monastery church, the padded silence of snow and sleeping monks was welcome. Although Varangians kept guard at the doors and windows, what they had before them could never be revealed to anyone. For two of them, it was known. For the other, it was a revelation.
Luke, Anna and Plethon were kneeling by the side of an open casket and none of them had spoken for several minutes. Beside them was an empty grave with earth piled to one side. There were torches on the walls and their light made a nativity of the scene. It was very cold and a night creature howled from deep inside the woods beyond the city walls.
This seemed to stir Plethon. ‘We should replace the ring now and bury the casket. It’s nearly dawn.’
Luke nodded. What he’d just seen was beyond comprehension. He leant forward and placed the ring in the casket. Then he took Anna’s hand and found it trembling either from the cold or something else. ‘When do you think we’ll need it?’ he asked, his voice a whisper.
Plethon rubbed his eyes. The casket always made him so tired. ‘Soon. Bayezid might be beaten but Suleyman lives on. And he still has a powerful army. We don’t have much time.’
Luke knew this to be true, just as he knew that the next part of Plethon’s plan would be played out in the west: in Italy. They’d talked long about Popes and Medicis and the union of Churches. Soon he’d have to go there, but not yet. He’d been appointed Protostrator of Mistra, the youngest yet. And the Protostrator’s new wife was with child, a brother or sister for Giovanni. No one would stop him being in Mistra for the birth.
He let go of Anna’s hand and, very slowly, closed the casket’s lid.
HISTORICAL NOTE
The Mistra Chronicles take place in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the decades leading up to the fall of the Constantinople in 1453. It w
as a time of colliding empires: the Ming in China, the Timurid in central Asia, the Mamluk in Egypt and Syria, the Ottoman in Turkey and the Balkans, and what was left of the Empire of Byzantium: Constantinople and the Greek Peloponnese, where The Mistra Chronicles begin and end.
The Byzantine Empire had once been one of the greatest powers on earth. Its citizens had always called themselves Rhomaioi, never Byzantine, because they saw themselves as directly descended from Romulus and Remus (or Aeneas who himself was Greek). They were right. The Empire had once been the right-hand half of the Roman Empire, the part not overrun by the barbarians in the fifth century, and its capital was Constantinople, founded by the Emperor Constantine in AD 324.
The Empire had waxed and waned in the thousand years leading up the start of our story. Under the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, it had recovered much of the western half of the Empire. But his successor Maurice fought a twenty-year war of attrition against his eastern neighbours, the Sassanids of Persia, so that the Byzantines were in no shape to withstand the Arab invasions that swept out of Saudi Arabia after the death of Mohammed in 632. But the walls of Constantinople, greatest in the world, had held, helped by the Byzantine secret weapon of ‘Greek fire’. This was a liquid that, when spouted from a siphon and ignited, could burn on water. How it was made was a state secret known only to the Emperor and a few others and it was particularly lethal against besieging ships. It wasn’t until the thirteenth century that Constantinople’s walls were finally breached by an entirely unexpected enemy: the Christian Fourth Crusade.
This was a story of pride, greed and ignorance, and led to one of the worst cultural rapes in history. The aged Doge Dandolo of Venice had agreed to build ships to carry the crusade to Egypt. But when the crusaders couldn’t pay for them, he did a deal: take back the city of Zara for Venice and the debt would be repaid. But once the crusaders had a taste for pillage, they found the offer of 200,000 marks to help the son of the deposed Emperor of Byzantium recover his throne impossible to resist. They put Alexios Angelos back on the throne and waited outside Constantinople to be paid. After a year, they stormed it, led over the walls by the blind nonagenarian Doge. Only fifty years later was the city recovered by the Byzantines and by then, most of its riches were in Venice.
The Towers of Samarcand (The Mistra Chronicles) Page 43
