Porphyry and Ash

by Peter Sandham

  Sleep seemed a hopeless ambition, and so, as the night hours grew and the sound of Anna returning was still not forthcoming, Zenobia took herself up the curve of the palazzo’s tower staircase to sit in its belvedere and stare blankly at the void.

  For a long time there was simply darkness, an impenetrable blackness out where she knew the water of the Horn must lie. Beyond it, the soft glow from Pera gave a smudgy impression of the Galata Tower, but the waters between there and the equally grey tiled rooftops beneath her had appeared as nothing.

  Then, without warning, a tongue of brimstone flickered out of that void, followed almost at once by a thunderous roar.

  The water was momentarily lit up in a frozen tableau: two ships – large merchantmen – made comically fat by their bundles of wadding, and darting between them a sleek war fusta, going like an arrow towards the shore.

  The darkness fell back over the water, but now pin pricks of light peppered the shroud as the men on the fusta let go a fruitless volley of hand cannon shot. Zenobia stood transfixed.

  Another fiery tongue flickered out, followed immediately by a second. The batteries on the shore began to probe the dark, and almost immediately one of the fat transport ships erupted in a geyser of wood and wool. A stone ball had clattered right through its side.

  An indistinct stirring of voices reached her, carried up from the houses below. The whole Venetian quarter had an amphitheatre’s view but hers was the kathisma seat. Out on the water there was a sudden kindling of flames as two small fireboats were ignited and released.

  Now that section of the Horn was fully visible in the flickering glow: the heroic fusta, darting before the merchant cogs, trying to draw the cannon fire away while more fireboats were made ready; the entrenched positions of the Turks on the shore; the flotsam of the stricken transport.

  A Latin war galley hovered at the edge of the darkness, seemingly in two minds whether to retreat or press ahead now that surprise had been lost. There seemed no such confusion on the part of the Turks.

  The fusta took a dreadful hit to the stern, which slewed her almost completely around. A second shot crashed into her side, and even at a distance, Zenobia could see that she was listing already like a punch-drunk fighter.

  In less time than Zenobia could utter a paternoster prayer for her crew she was under the waves, and the water was thick with desperate, drowning men.

  With the fusta gone, the transports began to limp back into the darkness, chased by the angry coastal guns. They left only one of the Turk boats smouldering – scant reward for their own losses.

  ***

  It had seemed a sound enough plan in the making, but Anna was less certain now as she waited for it to unfold.

  The first hurdle had been cleared easily enough. The camp around the St Romanus Gate had been in confusion – something appeared to be going on back at the Horn and had all their attention.

  That had allowed her to slip unnoticed under the canvas of the command tent, but as time passed, she began to worry that whatever the useful distraction was, it might prevent the protostrator from coming back here at all.

  There were suddenly a hundred other things that could go wrong, none of which had crossed her mind earlier. What if someone else came and not the protostrator? What if Giustiniani returned with a whole conference of his commanders? She wondered if Cleopatra had suffered the same doubts.

  It was not a carpet she was wrapped up in, but the warm bear furs of the condotierro’s bed. They were old and matted, and the tickle against her flesh had become an irritating rasp that made her worry about fleas. Still, like the Egyptian queen, she needed to make an instant impression on her Caesar, and she thought the long alabaster limbs rising, akimbo, from his mattress would certainly do that.

  There was another doubt that pestered her, an altogether less practical concern; a nagging pain in her heart that suggested Plethon, the wisest man she knew, might be wise even in one more regard. ‘Don’t be a child,’ she told herself. ‘Life is life. We must make what we can of it and not cling to a hopeless dream of what could never be.’

  She tried to shut out the face that appeared, repeatedly, in her mind. She tried to picture instead Giustiniani’s noble features.

  This was not Barbo, she told herself. If there had never been a meeting at Hagia Euphemia, if there had never been a carnival, if her father had chosen Giustiniani and not the Venetian, would she have gone happily to him with her trousseau? She would have, she told herself.

  She would have.

  But there had been a meeting.

  ***

  Giustiniani had chosen not to stay and watch the attack from the harbour. He was reluctant to tarry even a minute from the real fighting up at the land wall, and so, having put in an appearance to wish Coco and the other captains good luck, he had made his excuses and ridden, fast, for his command post.

  When he first came from the night’s darkness into the candle-lit inner tent, the contrast of light, combined with his distracted mind, conspired to hide from his attention the body among the furs of his bed.

  ‘Hello, Protostrator,’ a voice said behind him as he removed his cape. ‘Does Lemnos content your heart, or do you wish for something more?’

  He had an unspoken terror of assassination and the shock caused him to jump. When he whirled around, he saw her for the first time. There was certainly danger here, he realised, but not from a blade.

  He recognised her instantly, the flying columbina from the carnival, the daughter of the megas doux. He had not seen naked female flesh for months, and he was not sure he had ever seen it wrapped in such an exquisite form as this.

  She held the bedding fur almost coyly over herself. The dark brown hairs against her pale, lithesome legs made his thoughts instantly leap to what lay hidden beneath the bearskin.

  ‘An unexpected pleasure,’ he purred as he swaggered across the tent and began to unlace the stays of his hose.

  A blush was rising on her neck. He could see the edge of the fur heaving quickly about her bosom, but the conclusion he drew from it was wide of the mark.

  Her mouth flickered into a nervous smile. ‘You are a hard man to get the attention of,’ she said.

  ‘You seem to have hit upon a means,’ he replied as his shirt came away.

  He stood for a moment, naked, at the end of the bed. He was proud of his body; it would befit a man of half his years, and he liked to display it and have it appreciated. To his slight annoyance, far from enthusiastically throwing away the covers, the girl hardly seemed to look at him and began to talk instead.

  ‘I have a proposition,’ Anna began.

  ‘I can see that.’ He tore the fur cover away from her and almost growled in anticipation. The tocsin bell could sound at that moment and he would be deaf to it.

  ‘Wait,’ she said. Her hand flashed to cover the dark triangle between her thighs.

  He almost fell upon her in his haste, pressing her into the mattress with large, calloused hands. She wriggled under his grasp and tried to keep on with what she had to say. ‘You’re a man of ambition and ability – our empire needs a leader like that.’

  He wasn’t listening. He was pressing his whiskered face into the lovely, soft neck. She thrashed a hand to push him off. She could hardly breathe for the weight on her chest.

  ‘Wait, let me speak first.’

  Rough fingers clamped around her wrist and manacled it back beside her head. Others came running along her thigh and began to force her knees apart.

  ‘No, listen.’

  She dug the nails of her free hand into his shoulder, trying desperately to push him off, but she hadn’t half the strength required.

  ‘Be quiet, damn you,’ he growled.

  The hand released its painful grip on her wrist and went to the aid of the other at her knees.

  ‘Stop! Please stop! We could…’ Her words were choked off as he entered her violently.

  During the weeks she had spent resolving to follow Constantine�
��s example and make a pragmatic Latin union for the sake of a crown, she had practiced the encounter many times over in her mind. She had re-read Plutarch and saw clearly how the protostrator would quickly be captivated by the spell of her beauty, charmed by the sudden appearance of a bold coquette in his tent, and after a whole night of generous, tender and increasingly passionate intercourse, he would be utterly besotted with his future empress.

  It did not play out that way at all.

  The man was a beast. He stank like a pig, and his matted hair dripped with sweat as he grunted and pounded away inside her. The best that could be said was that it was mercifully quick.

  Not soon enough, the Latin moaned and pulled out with as little ceremony as he had entered. He strutted to a coffer, took a draw from a jug of wine and retrieved his braes from the floor.

  ‘That was a mistake,’ he said without glancing at her.

  On that she could certainly agree. She wanted to cry – had wanted to from almost the moment he had lain hands on her and she had realised he had no interest in her words, only in what lay between her legs. She had thought her body would be a small price to pay for the opportunity she might engineer. Now it seemed steep indeed and had bought her nothing.

  Pride held back her tears. She curled up on the mattress and pulled the rough furs over herself. It was clear the bestial man was as indifferent to her as any camp whore, but that hardly mattered now; she could not even bring herself to speak to him, let alone raise her plan for their partnership. She would rather die than have him touch her again.

  The hot rush of bile surged up her throat. She fought it back and felt the first tear squeeze itself loose down her cheek. Shame welled up from deep within, and infuriatingly it coalesced in her mind into the face of a blond Scotsman.

  Giustiniani pulled on his hose and without casting her a second glance, strutted like a rooster out of the doorway. Anna wasted no time in snatching up her clothes from the bedside and when only half-dressed crawled back out under the tent flap.

  ***

  Zenobia had cried herself to sleep in the belvedere. For the lost men in the Horn, for the lost girl in her care, for the lost future; for all of it.

  The sky had started to lighten when she woke and crept quietly back down the dark spiral of the tower. She heard the murmur of Theodosia Notaras keeping vigil in her private chapel, then, a floor lower, she heard another feminine murmur and her Lazarus heart began to beat again.

  There was a small loutros within the palazzo; a tiled private chamber with a round, unheated plunge bath. Zenobia found Anna there. Her wet hair hung limply over her arms as they hugged together about her knees. Her eyes, when they looked up from their contemplation of the water, were as red and raw as Zenobia’s own, and a low, juddering, almost animal growl came in accompaniment with each breath from her throat.

  Heedless of her gown, Zenobia stepped into the icy pool and gathered her beloved mistress into her arms. She cradled Anna’s wet head, infant-like, against her bosom and smoothed her fingers tenderly down a tear-besmirched cheek in silent reassurance.

  XXVI.

  Morning arrived beneath mackerel-streaked skies and clouds of recrimination. The camp at the wall was afire with news of the failed attack in the Horn and wild rumours of lighted signals to the Turks from within Genoese Pera’s walls.

  ‘It seems Boccanegra deserted in the night,’ Fieschi said grimly. He and Sambucuccio sat on stools in Grant’s casemate, sharing a breakfast of thin porridge and camp gossip.

  ‘We should prepare for more to slink away in the coming weeks,’ said Grant. ‘It’s inevitable.’

  ‘They say the emperor could be next,’ said Fieschi. ‘His ministers are already making plans to relocate the court to the Morea and abandon Constantinople. There’d be no room aboard for the likes of us I suppose.’

  There was a mood of deep gloom breezing like a miasma through the camp. Ever since the ships had sailed over the land into the Horn it had begun to feel as though the scales of fate had shifted their balance away from the defenders.

  Grant shook his head. ‘The emperor’s going nowhere. He’s in this to the bitter end with us all.’

  ‘I’ve heard that before,’ Fieschi muttered and unconsciously rubbed the brand scarred across his forehead.

  Grant took a swig of water. Thanks to the ancient cisterns there was still no shortage of that for the troops.

  ‘They’re going to send a boat out today,’ he said. ‘Rigged with Moslem pennants, the crew all got up like Turks. It’s to sail down the Marmara and look for signs of the Venetian fleet approaching from the Aegean.’

  He had been privy to a meeting of Giustiniani’s more senior men early that morning. The protostrator had been candid about the night raid’s failure and the fact that the Turks appeared to be shifting every artillery piece they had to focus on the mesoteichion. Their intention seemed plain: a final concentrated bombardment before an all-out assault on that weakened point.

  As he dismissed them, Giustiniani had looked at Grant in a manner the Scotsman did not care for.

  ‘The Venetian fleet is a myth,’ Sambucuccio said. ‘And if that boat’s crew has any sense, they will keep a full sail and run all the way to Italy.’

  ‘No,’ said Grant. ‘The Greeks were smarter than that. They handpicked the crew. Locals all, with families still in the city. They’ll be back, one way or another.’

  ‘Back to what, I wonder,’ Sambuccucio said.

  Fieschi shook his head. ‘They won’t be bringing a Venetian rescue with them, let me tell you that much.’

  ‘Some of the Greek lads were talking about a painting in Chora’s monastery,’ said Sambucuccio. ‘Got a picture of every emperor, right back to the first Constantine. After each coronation, they paint in a new portrait, and when they crowned the latest Constantine, they used up the last portrait space.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, it’s a sign!’ said Sambucuccio as if it were obvious. ‘No more emperors. The sultan is destined to take the city. A Constantine founded it and a Constantine shall end it.’

  ‘What sort of nonsense is that?’ said Grant. ‘Just start painting on a new wall!’

  The blanket at the casemate arch was pulled back, and the earnest face of one of the local militia appeared. ‘Captain, you should see this.’

  Grant had become accustomed to the view from the wall. The patchwork mass of tents stretching across the plain, the jagged scar of earth works in the foreground from which the cannons puffed out their fire. Now a new monstrosity had joined the panorama.

  A line of stakes, a dozen feet in height, planted in a row behind the gun trench and spanning from beyond the St Romanos Gate past their own tower.

  On each stake, spitted like a joint of meat, a body hung, forming a ghoulish line of scarecrows. Some were naked, others partly clothed, and as Grant and the Genoese took in the horror, they could see another stake being levered up into position. There must have been nearly fifty in all.

  ‘Who are they?’ said Fieschi from beside Grant.

  ‘Captives,’ Sambucuccio said, ‘from last night’s naval raid in the Horn. That’s Zuan Maragon, a Venetian.’ He pointed with his dagger at the body opposite their tower.

  ‘Oh sweet God, no!’ Fieschi cried out and pointed to their left, at the broken body on the stake two down the line. It was Boccanegra.

  ‘You dogs!’ Sambucuccio screamed. ‘You filthy, whoresons!’ He was not alone. The whole wall seemed to ring with the bellow of curses flung impotently out at the macabre scene.

  Shouts came from behind them too. They turned to see a mob moving along the rear of the yard, led by the three Bocchiardi brothers.

  ‘Come!’ Troilo Bocchiardo beckoned, ‘let us pay the heathen back in kind!’

  ‘The prisoners!’ the mob’s voice demanded, ‘bring out the prisoners!’

  As Sambucuccio moved to join them, Grant grabbed his wrist. ‘No. There’s no helping Leo now. This horror was designed to cloud our ju
dgement. Don’t act in wrath and regret it later.’

  ‘Let go, John,’ growled Sambucuccio. Grant could see there was no reason to be spoken with in his eyes. He released his grip. Without hesitation, the squat Corsican-Genoese descended the steps and fastened himself to the mob.

  There were nearly three hundred Turk prisoners within Constantinople on that morning. Most were chained up in the Noumera dungeon, guarded by the teenage soldiers of Loukas Notaras’s reserve. They were handed over to the baying crowd without protest.

  Within the hour, Sambucuccio was back at the wall dragging an ashen-faced Turk by his beard. Grant knew better than to try and stop him. They were all rabid with hatred at that moment.

  All along the remnants of the wall the scene was repeated. Prisoners shoved, kicked and beaten up the stone steps to the parapet and given a grizzly end.

  Sambucuccio thrust his man’s head over the edge between two crenulations. ‘You like sacrificial lamb?’ he called to the distant camp. ‘Here! Let me halal this beast for you!’

  He jagged his dagger back across the bearded throat and stained the wall beneath deep crimson.

  The bloody geyser seemed to drain with it the anger from him. Sambucuccio flung the body by its heels over the parapet into the ditch below and moved back down into the yard in silence.

  All down the line the act was mimicked and repeated until the white stone wore a bloody necklace nearly a mile long.

  In other places men were noosed together and hanged, like purple-faced marionettes, from the crenalations.

  He could not speak for the Turks, but Grant knew for their part that the defenders had not been capable of such brutality when the siege had begun. Something had changed in them, something had been taken away from their souls that could not be regained. The killing, the endless pounding on their nerves by the guns, the lack of sleep and increasing shortage of food, it was a process that stripped away the veneer of humanity and revealed the beast beneath. Holy men spoke of man as set apart from the animals, as chosen by God to be more like God. He knew man better than they did. He had seen what man was capable of, and he knew, if God had chosen a creature to be something more than the others, man was not his choice.