Plethon looked to his mature sons. ‘Well, there are three of us, but I hardly qualify as either holy or a child!’
‘And it is an angel!’ said Anna. ‘The Hebrew symbol: Michael, the archangel.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Plethon. ‘It has a certain alchemical symbolism to it. Like a summoning. Perhaps these maniacs are trying to summon an angel.’
‘But why?’ said Zenobia.
‘Why?’ laughed Plethon. ‘With the heathen at the walls I imagine an angel would be of great help.’
‘That’s what the emperor said,’ cried Grant, who had remained mute until then. ‘The night of the feast, Anna’s lady mother mentioned an old prophecy about St Michael, and he said something about an angel swelling the ranks.’
‘You’ve a good memory,’ said Anna.
‘That evening left an impression,’ he replied with a look that matched her own.
‘There was an angel who gave Our Lord comfort at Gethsemane,’ said Zenobia. ‘And a guardian angel in the furnace, but what about poor Baltus? I don’t recall a story of an angel and a drowning man.’
‘Hmm,’ said Plethon. ‘I believe I vaguely do. There might be something along those lines in the Athonite Paterikon. I have a copy in the library. Come, help me hunt it out.’
While his sons returned to guard the workshop, the old philosopher led Grant and the two ladies into the great library. The long ranks of shelves, groaning under their papery burden, stretched away on either side.
‘It might be anywhere, I’m afraid,’ said Plethon. ‘So why don’t you two start looking at the far end and we can begin at this one.’
He had taken Zenobia’s arm as he spoke, drawing her away from Anna and Grant. She huffed out a breath of disapproval and then dutifully followed him towards the nearest stack.
Anna gave a pointed glance to her old tutor and then began to step down the library’s aisle.
Grant followed. ‘You know how poor a help I’ll be with this,’ he said to her in a low voice. His illiteracy had never shamed him in Italy, but in Constantinople it seemed even the serving women were lettered. He was glad Plethon and Zenobia would not see him standing dumbly among the books.
‘I shall just have to find a way to make you useful,’ Anna said as they reached the far end of the room and turned into an alcove. She stopped and faced him. ‘Here, stand still and put out your hands.’
He did as instructed, then watched as she bent down and removed the largest codex from the bottom shelf. Blowing the dust off, she placed it onto his palms as if he were a lectern. ‘You see,’ she said with a mischievous smile, ‘you are proving useful already.’
Then, without opening the first, she took another book from the shelf and placed it ontop. She added a third, then a fourth and kept going until the pile of musty paper and ivory-clad diptychs had reached the bottom of his neck.
‘Are you looking for the Athonite Paterikon or are you testing my strength?’ said Grant.
Anna moved along the shelves and came staggering back with a large codex, boarded in expensive treasure binding. She could barely carry it.
Much to the relief of his aching arms, she put it on the floor at his feet. Then, to Grant’s surprise, she used the book as a step and brought herself up to eye level with him.
‘I don’t think Plethon would approve of you doing that,’ he said.
‘Really? I think it is exactly what he had in mind,’ said Anna, steadying herself with a hand on each of his shoulders.
Aloeswood had replaced the library’s damp must in his nose. She leaned forward and kissed him.
Books cascaded from his arms onto the floor. ‘I don’t think Plethon would approve of you doing that,’ she whispered, and then as she kissed him again, she found herself floating on air. He had kicked the book out from under her feet and taken her into his arms.
‘You’ll ruin your good name like this,’ he said.
She smiled and, touching foreheads, looked deep into his eyes. ‘What use is a good name if it stops you being happy?’ said Anna. ‘Am I as heavy as the books?’
‘Not a bit. I could hold you forever.’
A throat was cleared from the end of the book shelf. ‘If, Barbarian, you are quite finished destroying a thousand years of culture,’ said Plethon, ‘I believe we have located the relevant Paterikon.’
Grant gently lowered Anna to the floor.
‘Certainly you have,’ she said. ‘This whole room is thoroughly catalogued. It was always among the alphas, and you sent us to omega.’
‘I suppose I did,’ said Plethon with a wink. ‘Well in any event, we all appear to have found what we were looking for.’
He began to march back to where Zenobia clutched a codex at the far end of the library. Grant followed, his hand securely entwined with Anna’s.
‘Here it is,’ said Plethon, looking up from the book as they sat once more about his cabinet. ‘The holy Archangel Michael showed his power when he miraculously saved a young man, cast into the sea by robbers with a stone about his neck on the shore of Mount Athos.’
‘That confirms it then,’ said Anna. ‘Baltus was drowned in just that manner.’
‘And the Baths of Athanasius are dedicated to St Michael,’ said Zenobia.
‘That prophecy is in here also,’ said Plethon. ‘When the walls of Theodosius crack, the holy Archangel Michael shall appear over the column and smite the enemies of the true church.’
‘They really are trying to summon an angel,’ said Anna. She turned to Plethon. ‘It’s not safe for you to remain here. They might well come back and try again. Why not move with your sons into the Rose Palace. There are always armed men from the reserve stationed there.’
‘Yes,’ said Grant. ‘I must return to the wall, but I can escort all five of you to the Rose Palace on my way.’
Plethon nodded. ‘Very well. Let me gather some books to take with us first. Perhaps I can deduce where else they might try to perpetrate these atrocities.’
The little group set off across the old citadel as the afternoon shadows measured out their height before them.
Anna hung back at the gates of the palazzo, reluctant to let go of Grant’s arm. ‘Must you go back there?’ she said.
‘I’ve set a poor enough example already,’ said Grant.
Heedless of who might be watching from the house, Anna cupped his face in both hands and kissed him again. ‘Must you go back there right now?’ she said softly.
‘Well… I suppose a wee while longer wouldn’t matter.’
‘There’s a gate around the back,’ she said. ‘Wait there, and once I have settled Plethon and his sons I can slip you inside.’ She kissed him once more and then was gone through the gate.
Grant leaned back against the wall and felt the balmy kiss of the day’s dying sun.
His feet were practically on the spot where he had despondently set down the boat only a few months before.
‘If only that day had gone like this one,’ he thought. There had still been time then. And how much time remained now? A month, a week, a day?
He moved from the wall and followed it around to the back of the property. Nothing had changed, he realised. Who ever knew how much time remained? Whatever they had left together he would savour it and think himself richer than Croesus.
XXVIII.
The moon was high in the dark heavens as Grant shimmied over the wall of the Rose Palace and began to make his way, heavy-footed with reluctance, back to his post on the wall.
He entered the empty forum of Constantine and was about to turn along the Mese when he heard the footsteps closing in from behind. He stopped just beyond a burning cresset and turned around.
The flamelight shone from the studs in the stuffed pourpoint of Manuel Iagaris and glimmered over an ugly, twisted smile. ‘You’re a long way from where you should be, Scotsman,’ said the stratopedarch.
‘Not a bit,’ said Grant with a good-natured smile. ‘I had business at the Notaras palazzo.’
‘Delivering a message from the Turk grand vizier,’ said Grant and his smile morphed into a grimace. ‘Ah, no, wait. That would be your business now, wouldn’t you say?’
For a moment the eyes, cold, ill-tempered and abraded with swallowed pride, did nothing but glare back at the bigger man. Then they narrowed to needlepoints and, almost tripping on a laugh in his malign glee, Iagaris said, ‘It was you who told the emperor about the megas doux, wasn’t it? Well, well, I wonder what his daughter will make of that.’
In a city beset on all sides, with Turk boats in the Horn and Turk guns thundering all through the night, there were few who slept much that May in Constantinople. Many of those lodging in the old stone houses around the forum threw open their shutters that night, drawn by the noise in the street, to see a man stumble against the old column and fall into the dirt at its base.
Then, before he could pick himself up there was another figure – bigger you could tell even at a distance – swinging his boot at the fallen man’s ribs. The first man curled up as a second kick landed, and even Nik Goudeles, who had seen many a tavern fight, winced.
A few shutters banged in rebuke, but no one was prepared to come between those pitiless fists and their quarry; it rarely paid to interfere in other men’s troubles. Now those closer to the Mese got a front row view as the brute picked up his victim and hurled him in the direction of the Forty Martyrs shrine. The cressets had not yet burned themselves out and more than one witness saw clearly the bruised and bleeding face of Manuel Iagaris and the evil glare of that terrifying blond mercenary.
***
It had grown almost routine for the mistress’s door to remain closed through the morning and for Zenobia to bring up a noon meal. She rapped on the door and waited longer than normal and, even though she knew it to be in other ways impossible, felt a relief to find Anna alone in her bed.
There was nothing routine about the smile on Anna’s face or the way her eyes, glassy and distant, washed over the handmaid as if she were made of air. In a voice, drowsy and smooth as Candian honey, Anna said, ‘Oh Zen, my soul is all vertigo this morning.’
‘The meridian is past us, Despoina,’ said the handmaiden dryly. ‘You slept more than half the day away.’ She set the tray down on the table by the window and began to open the shutters.
Anna hardly seemed to hear her. She stretched out her arms, sighed and lay back into the pillows. ‘Sophocles was right, Zen, one word frees us of all the weight and pain of life.’
‘Death?’ ventured Zenobia.
From the bed, which still bore the trace of her lover’s scent, Anna tried to cast a withering glance at her handmaiden, but her mood was too buoyant to summon much vinegar into it. ‘Love! Gracious, Zen, has the siege made you forgetful of all else?’
The handmaiden had not moved away from the open shutters. From the moment of her entry, she had kept her eyes averted as much as possible from the happy face of her mistress and now they remained fixed over the rooftops towards the high-domed basilica.
Anna, who had already detected this reluctance, was not surprised at her moral guardian’s disapproval. It never occurred to her that some other matter might be weighing on the handmaiden’s mind. In her bliss that morning, Anna had half-forgotten that there was a siege or even a world beyond the bubble of her chamber.
But then Zenobia turned from the window and said, ‘I have some news in that regard,’ and there was enough in her voice to puncture the bubble and put Anna on guard.
The lotus-eater became suddenly sober and sat up. ‘Of John?’
Zenobia nodded. ‘Three bodies were found this morning, all burned in a lime kiln furnace. One of them has been identified as Manuel Iagaris.’
‘Three?’ said Anna. The vertiginous soul was now plummeting from its height in terror.
‘They have arrested John for the murders,’ said Zenobia sitting down on the bed.
‘What?’ said Anna. ‘That’s ridiculous. That’s impossible.’
‘He was seen in the forum last night, beating Iagaris half to death,’ said Zenobia. ‘Despoina, forgive me for speaking ill of John Grant, but I fear your strong regard for him prevents you from seeing the truth. He is a barbarian – killing in cold blood is what he has spent his whole life doing.’
Zenobia reached out a hand in comfort towards her mistress, but Anna recoiled from the touch.
‘How could you even think that!’ said Anna. ‘Three deaths – it is the angel cult, it must be, or do you suppose John is one of them?’
With a sigh full of sadness, reminding Anna that her opinions of people were not always shared by her maid, Zenobia said, ‘No, Despoina. I just know Manuel is dead.’
***
Elsewhere in the Rose Palace, Loukas Notaras, the man charged with rounding up deserters, was getting ready to desert himself.
From the tower belvedere, the mast of a carrack he owned was just discernable. It would shortly put out under the cover of darkness and sail for Venice.
The Turks would not stop it; an exchange had taken place in Pera that morning, and the papers bore the grand vizier’s personal seal.
The megas doux would put his wife and children aboard, by force if necessary, under the care of trusted servants. He would remain in Constantinople, to the bitter end, seeking to shape whatever was to follow the fall.
He trusted that his good relationship with Candarli, and the sultan’s need for Greek statesmen to assist in administering the populace, would enable him to maintain some status after the inevitable occurred, but it was prudent to put as many valuables beyond the clutches of the rampaging army as possible.
So the halls of the palazzo rang to the footsteps of servants ferrying title deeds, strong boxes and accounting ledgers up from the stores, while the megas doux himself sat and wrote instructions for his banker and eldest daughter, both already resident in Venice.
There was also the small matter of the siege to attend to. He was scrutinising an order for a half-dozen men to be found to join a perilous counter-mining detail when his youngest daughter arrived. The Turks had started digging tunnels to bypass the stubborn walls; time was running out for his beloved city.
‘Father.’
He looked up and smiled at the sight of Anna in the doorway. There was so much to do and so little time to spend with his family. He had not seen his wife in weeks; she had virtually shut herself away in her private chapel in a near-constant vigil of prayer.
He put the paper aside. The siege could wait. After tonight he may never see his beloved daughter again, but at least she would be safe.
‘Anna, my dearest heart.’ He could see she was flustered as she came across the room, her hair tangled, her eyes circled from a sleepless night. The strain of the siege had them all worn to a nub.
‘I came to talk about Iagaris. They have arrested the wrong man,’ she said.
He steepled his fingers. ‘Hmm. That seems unlikely. Do you know something of this ghastly business?’
‘I know John would not do such a thing. Tell me, was there anything found near the bodies? Markings perhaps, Hebrew?’
Loukas Notaras flinched at the name of John Grant. He had thought his daughter’s infatuation with the foreign soldier a thing of the past. ‘There are witnesses, my little one. Several people saw him last night fighting with Manuel in the forum. He must have knocked him senseless and then tossed him onto a lime kiln down by the Forty Martyrs church.’
‘And threw in two others for good measure?’ she said. Her eyes, deliberate and clear, held his in their unflinching vice. ‘Was he seen fighting them also? Aside from a brawl, was he actually seen doing anything else?’
‘I’m not sure why it should be of your concern,’ said the megas doux, trying in vain to close the matter down.
Anna slammed her palms down onto the desk. ‘S
acred mother! Listen to me, Father, something is wrong here, something is very wrong. Iagaris’s death fits a pattern. There have been several murders, starting with Baltus.’
‘Baltus? Baltus took his own life.’
‘And carved a line of Hebrew into the bathhouse wall?’ said Anna. ‘Come now, do you credit him capable of such an act? His old limbs could barely light the tapers much less swing a mason’s chisel, and even his Greek was patchy.’
She came around the desk to where the megas doux had a map of the city rolled out. She swept it clean of his other papers and touched her finger to the Baths of Arcadius, then ran it up the Mese to hover over the St Mary Peribleptos. ‘There have been other killings: a woman dead in a garden here, the same Hebrew word burned into the grass. Zenobia informed Jacob of it. The watch was supposed to have investigated.’
‘The watch has been busy,’ said the megas doux indignantly. ‘There is a siege on, in case you are unaware.’
Anna’s finger now hovered over Mangana. ‘Someone broke into Plethon’s workshop the other day and tried to feed him and his sons into a fiery athanor. The same Hebrew name was written on the wall. Michael – the archangel.’
‘Are you accusing the Jews?’ said the megas doux.
‘No. It is not the Jews. Gethsemane proved that. Hebrew is also the language of alchemy and this is all about a summoning.’
Anna could see her father’s confusion deepening with every word. ‘There seems to be a group convinced of the prophecy of the protective archangel, and they have attempted, three times now, to summon that angel through reperformance. Check around the lime kiln and you will find marks, Hebrew lettering. Plethon can show you what to look for.’
‘Prophecy? What prophecy?’ The megas doux glanced with annoyance at the scattered pile of papers he should be working on. He could almost hear his wife mocking him for indulging the girl’s fantastical story with his precious time.
Anna continued, ‘Apparently there is a legend of Archangel Michael appearing above the column of Constantine when the wall cracks.’
The megas doux sat back in his chair. She was right, there was such a prophecy, but then there were a dozen similar superstitious myths.
Porphyry and Ash Page 27
