‘How far will his people be?’ Parmenio murmured as they hurried along behind, rubbing his lower back, familiar with the sheer scale of the city and how much walking could be involved.
Skiouros pursed his lips. ‘The bulk of the Romani peoples live by the land walls, either in Sulukule out by the Rhegion Gate or in Ayvansaray, among the Blachernae ruins. Two miles at least, and some of it at a punishing gradient.’ He was unable to suppress a slight shudder as he mentioned the two regions. Throughout his time as a youth in the city, living by his wits among the streets of the Greek enclave, few folk had ever had anything good to say of the Romani. The Greek residents of the city considered the strange Roma people to be no more brothers than were the conquering Turk; less in fact. While the Turk were Muslim and held few cultural links with the conquered Greeks, they had generally been surprisingly accommodating to the erstwhile people of Byzantium. The Ottoman culture had even promoted the inclusion of former-Christians into the circles of power on a conversion basis, in just such a manner as had befallen Lykaion.
The Romani were also predominantly Muslim, though they held tight also to some of their own mystical beliefs that likely predated the wanderings of Mohammed, and rumours of their witchcraft and wicked magick had been rife throughout the Greek quarter. The fact that they were oft times insular and secretive did little to endear them to their host cultures.
Of course, to look at Dragi brought into question all those old prejudices, and despite the strange sailor’s constantly shifting personae and the secrecy and mystery of his goals, it was hard to equate him with witches and seers and practisers of dark magick. Still, after years of shunning the Romani neighbourhoods as places of wickedness, it was hard to think of strolling into them without an involuntary shiver.
Strangely, his mind furnished him with a picture of that old crone he had encountered years earlier while on the run from the angry victims of his pick-pocketry. The woman sitting on the dusty ground and filleting a crow for some unknown – and seemingly ungodly – purpose. Perhaps there was something to the tales, after all…
Passing through the Neorion Gate from the port into the city proper, the four men entered a wide street largely cast in shadow by the late, low sun and the combination of the looming city wall and the high Ottoman-Byzantine blocks that crowded this great conurbation. The remains of a far more ancient defensive wall here marched down from the hill above, its crumbling, unused end severed to allow the passage of the street where the old defences had once met the waterline. One of the many ancient city walls that had long been outgrown by the ever-increasing metropolis. The wall of Severus, Skiouros seemed to remember. His sour-faced uncle had made him memorise them – had made him learn much of the fallen city to preserve its Byzantine memory in the face of the occupying Turk. The walls of Byzas, of Severus, of Constantine, Theodosius and Anastasius. The penultimate remained tall, despite their battering by Mehmet, but the rest existed now only as sad fragments here and there.
Their legs straining, unused to the steady earth and such distance after so many weeks of rolling and bucking timbers aboard the ship, the small party followed the city wall along the Golden Horn, past seven more gates piercing the defences. It all looked at the same time achingly familiar and strangely new to Skiouros. Though he knew parts of the city well, much of it had been far too dangerous for a Greek boy to wander around freely, and he had only rarely forayed to such places. Besides, he had spent some of the most earth-shaking years of his life away from the city since those days, and he was slightly dismayed at the fact that some views seemed almost alien to him now. In fact, despite the fact that he had been looking for the crumbling remains of Constantine’s wall as they walked, he somehow contrived to pass the site without noticing.
But then, as the eighth wall gate came into view, he felt a wrench inside, and his gaze strayed from the fortifications to the street opposite, which ran up a steep incline lined with narrow, poor, wooden housing. If he could just see around the bend at the top, the deep red walls of the ‘bloody church’ awaited his gaze, etched with a decade of secret messages between Lykaion and himself. The urge to turn and climb the slope was almost impossible to resist, but Dragi was already striding ahead, along the flat land inside the walls at the water’s edge, into Balat – the Jewish quarter.
Here too, as he passed, the sights were all so familiar and enticing. Shops where he’d bought… shops where he’d made off with... life’s little essentials, sometimes with the owner’s angry shouts echoing in his ears, jumping trader’s carts in the street and ducking past horses, seeking a safe place to hide while he ate his hard-won bread and cheese. It raised a sad smile that had Don Diego casting him an oddly sympathetic look, though it was still infused with the distrustful bitterness that had infected the Spaniard’s attitude since Skiouros’ betrayal in Heraklion.
‘Old neighbourhood for me,’ he explained. ‘A little strange being back.’
Diego looked around with a frown.
‘This is a Jewish neighbourhood.’
‘You don’t feel the cultural or religious divide as keenly when you and the Jews share a common place beneath a foreign power,’ Skiouros explained blandly. ‘Besides, the Jews here are well-placed and can often acquire things that the poor Greeks cannot.’
His own gaze took in the newly-constructed and refurbished structures among the older, dingier ones. ‘It does have to be said that it looks as though there’s been something of a rebirth around here, though. It was never this densely-packed… or well-kept.’
Dragi turned and smiled over his shoulder. ‘Kemal Reis has brought many hundreds of the cleverest and wealthiest Jews from the west to the city, and the great sultan has welcomed them. There has been an influx of deep thinkers and of thriving Jewish business into the city that promises to strengthen the empire immeasurably. The Reis saves the world and the sultan embraces it. Pray that it is always so, and when the time comes, make sure to do your part.’
As the man turned away and marched off again, Skiouros found he was grinding his teeth at the latest in a long line of strange half-reveals of what Dragi felt his future might contain. Had such a life debt not been held over him, Skiouros might well have walked away by now. Despite the debt, the Skiouros who had once live here would have done.
Their walk took them on tired legs in the failing light past the great ‘Hunter’s Gate’ and the ‘Palace Gate’, separated by three wide arches that had once led to the Blachernae Palace harbour but had long since been blocked with hastily-cut and badly-mortared stones and bricks, the palace not having been used since before the fall of Byzantium. Skiouros could remember happy times in the few hours he managed down here – or at least on the other side of the walls – stealing the catches of the poor Greek and Jewish fishermen who plied their trade along the water’s edge.
As they passed the gate named for the church of Saint Thekla, Skiouros watched the ruinous walls of the Blachernae looming over the tops of the buildings. They had crossed the whole city now, and those crenelated remnants marching up the slope marked the start of the ancient, once-impenetrable land walls of Theodosius that crossed two of the city’s seven hills before reaching the water again at the Propontis, some four miles to the south. The four travellers were on the very edge of the Romani settlement. Indeed, the architecture had changed as they had passed, and not in a way that promoted a positive view of this strange insular people. Behind them, ancient, if often ramshackle, wooden houses rubbed shoulders with brick and stone structures as old as the empire that had created them. They had been packed together in an urban spread.
Here already the streets were wider, less crammed with buildings, filled with dust and wreckage. Here and there rose jagged pieces of ancient masonry, often sporting an arch, a once-glorious marble window, a column or tower. Some had been adapted to become places of residence, though they were clearly only a strong sneeze away from being mere rubble. This, along with the Tekfur Sarayi at the hill’s summit, was most of what
remained of the great Blachernae Palace that had been the home to generations of Byzantine emperors, including the last one – the ill-fated Constantine, whose murderous nephew now stalked the Papal palaces in Rome. Ruins, fragments and shattered sub-cellars spread out across the hillside, reminding the viewer of just how enormous this complex had once been, perhaps half a mile across, including numerous churches and basilicas, stables, gardens, residences, palaces, government halls and so much more.
But it was here that Mehmet the Conqueror’s cannons had done their worst, flattening the walls and the city behind them, granting them access to the heart of Byzantium. Here the first desperate clash had taken place, from building to building, the Byzantine emperor and his Genoese general battling like lions to retain their hold on Constantinople. Blachernae had been the second casualty of the Turkish assault, after the men on the walls. Only two parts of the palace could still be truly considered intact, one of which was used as a prison and a place of pain, the other as a residence for foreigners the sultan could not countenance hosting too close to his own centre of power.
Among the great ruinous stumps of the palace, the wild had once more taken over, areas of grass and bramble and small burgeoning copses fighting for prominence with the shattered stonework. And around the whole area, new structures had sprung up that had the look of ramshackle shanty-town temporary buildings, formed from the wasted ruins of the palace, any timber that could be found – including parts of old boats and carts – scrap ironwork and the like.
It did not appear conducive to a comfortable stay in the city, and in many ways it lent support to those long-held, bred-in prejudices Skiouros held against the area and its denizens. He could quite easily picture that old crow-dismembering woman living here. She probably had.
He tried not to think of her. On the rare occasions she had slipped back into his mind, he remembered the almost supernatural premonitions of the woman, warning him to leave because a storm was coming. Well she had been right, but then he had been just as right not to heed her, for if he had, the conspirators would have eventually found a way to end both the reign and the life of the great Bayezid the Second in favour of a strict, Mamluk-supported sultan. The mystery of her knowledge and her interest in him personally was as irritating as Dragi’s own inscrutability, and led him to an inescapable conclusion that no matter what he had done in this past five years, he had somehow always been influenced or even directly pushed by the Romani.
And now he was in the heart of their world.
As if to lend weight to all his fears, the sun chose that very moment to disappear completely from the horizon, and the level of light in the area deepened noticeably. He shivered again. He was gratified to note that neither Parmenio nor Diego looked any more comfortable than he, and each was walking with his hand on the hilt of his sword. Even Dragi looked a touch apprehensive, which was the most nerve-wracking thing of all. But then, how long had it been since the Romani sailor had been here? Certainly more than half a decade.
‘Where now?’
Dragi simply nodded ahead and began to climb the slope, quickly stepping off the main street – though it was doing it a great kindness to give it such an appellation – and taking a narrow side alley, bordered by a low wall of ancient stones, sporting a few Greek inscriptions, and overhung by healthy young trees rooting themselves in the houses of emperors.
The alley was too narrow for a cart, and the four were forced to tread in single file, with Dragi ahead. Now, Skiouros found himself walking with hand on hilt as well, his eyes seeking out potential danger in the dimly-lit overgrown ruins. Their path took them up flights of steps formed of broken marble lintels and around sharp bends, back down into what was perhaps once a noble garden. Clearly there had been an arcade along one side, and broken marble statues rose at odd angles from the overgrown flora. The city wall loomed quite close here and, turning to face uphill once more, Skiouros could see the great ornate square bulk of the Porphyrogenitus Palace – the surviving residential section, crowning the hilltop.
Dragi stopped in his tracks and Skiouros’ knuckles tightened automatically on his sword hilt.
The Romani tipped his head curiously to the side, and a smile crept across his face that loosened Skiouros’ grip again. Then he heard it too.
Music.
Lively music played on the strings, pipes and drums of at least a dozen instruments, with an oddly pleasant discordant chorus of voices, both male and female. The music seemed to be coming from what looked like a cross between a dishevelled junk heap and an upturned boat across the lawn of the former imperial garden. Dragi called something in a language with which Skiouros was completely unfamiliar, a curtain was twitched aside, and a welcoming golden light shone from a window. Moments later the door was thrown open. The music continued in the background, though with fewer voices and instruments as their owners hurried to the door to greet the newcomers.
Skiouros peered at the dark shapes emerging. There was, in truth, little to tell them apart from their Greek or Turkish neighbours. Their clothes were perhaps poorer and more basic than Ottoman apparel, and more colourful and cheerful than the generally-drab Greeks, but in terms of their skin and hair, they could have passed for either, had they wished.
And they probably had, Skiouros found himself thinking.
Yet for the first time since he had set foot on a previously undiscovered land far to the west with a Portuguese crew, Skiouros realised that he was being genuinely welcomed by people who had never even seen him before, and that fact somehow overrode decades of prejudice and brought a smile to his face.
Three hours later, Skiouros sat back with an explosive sigh, feeling fat on a seemingly endless meal of rice, beef and chicken platters with yogurt-based sauces, pastries, stuffed vine-leaves, bread, cheese, fruit, chickpeas and beans, and continuously-refilled glasses of ayran and sahlep. His head felt slightly muzzy following a strange foray into an almost certainly lethal syrupy wine made locally which, when he’d spilled some, had taken only seconds to change the colour of the table’s surface. The room was also tinted with a faintly blue-grey haze as Dragi resumed his habit of burning hemp, which was so much more headache-inducing in such a confined space than on an open ship’s deck.
As the incessant cheerful music, the warm light, the inebriation and the bursting stomach did its work on him, sending him slowly towards blessed unconsciousness, Skiouros rallied one last time. One of their hosts, a smiling man with four teeth who seemed to be an elder of some sort, had come to sit close to him.
‘I… I wanted…’ His suddenly suspicious gaze swept the area round him, but then he remembered how he’d put Lykaion’s remains in a small container outside, not wanting to offend their hosts by bringing body parts into their home.
‘Is the sint… the shurrrr… the…’ he concentrated, ‘the church of Saint Saviour… now a mask? Mosque?’ he corrected hurriedly, blinking to make at least one of the old men disappear.
The man laughed and shook his head.
‘The vizier Hadim Ali Paşa is still set upon its conversion, but the task is slow, kral yapımcı.’ Skiouros frowned at the unfamiliar phrase. He was familiar enough with the Turkish tongue to translate it, but not in this advanced state of inebriation. The old man was still speaking and he tried to concentrate on the words. ‘…so it is still a construction site. It will be years yet before it is opened to the faithful.’
Skiouros tried not to see the phrasing as a slur on his own religion, for he was sure it was not meant as such. The man nodded at him as though awaiting a further question, but Skiouros’ mouth seemed to have decided that no further questions were necessary, although a small amount of drooling was clearly acceptable.
Good. He would be able to bury Lykaion there then. He would make that his first task in the city, if Dragi would allow him the freedom. Tomorrow morning, when he was bright and alert. After he’d…
Five minutes later, Parmenio crossed the room with an almost paternal smile and dra
ped a blanket over the snoring form of his friend. It had been a long road home, after all.
Skiouros gripped his blade in whitened knuckles, desperation pushing the blood through his veins at break-neck pace. He shifted his footing slightly and thrust, knowing he was too slow. His foot slid on the strange, fluted surface and there was a precarious moment when he almost fell, before recovering himself and shuffling back into position.
The enemy’s sword came in for two quick strikes, like a cobra, one piercing his upper arm, the other carving a hot, fiery line across his brow, above his left eye.
Skiouros struggled and lashed out again, but once more missed and almost fell. He could feel the disapproval of Don Diego, his former fencing master, at his failure, even if he couldn’t quite see him, as well as the aura of desperate hope emanating from Parmenio.
And the man was moving again – the man he couldn’t quite see, yet somehow felt so entirely familiar. He couldn’t get away. Skiouros couldn’t remember what the oh-so familiar man had done, or perhaps what it was he had threatened to do, but one thing was certain: he must not be allowed to get away with it… or possibly to do it.
Taking a breath and wiping away the blood from his eye, he stepped carefully and deliberately forward along the ancient fallen column towards the grinning medusa head at the far end, near which his quarry was already clambering.
No. He would get away. And if he got away…
What? What would happen if he got away?
Skiouros leapt. It was the only way he could possibly stop him.
But the man was too far away. The medusa head seemed to leer at him as he landed awkwardly on the horizontal column, his boots struggling to maintain his stance on the curved, fluted surface. But with the added momentum of the jump there was no chance.
Pasha's Tale Page 8
