James Heneage - The Towers of Samarcand

‘They do it in Italy,’ Plethon explained to the Despot, adjusting his toga and smoothing it over his belly. ‘Some saint from Assisi came up with the idea and it’s caught on. We need to learn Catholic ways if we’re to unite our Church with theirs.’

The Despot sighed and nodded. It was all part of Plethon’s second plan. The union of the Eastern Church with the Church of Rome so that the Pope would sanction a crusade to lift the siege of Constantinople: the second plan to save what was left of the Empire of Byzantium.

If Luke fails in the first plan: to bring Tamerlane to fight Bayezid .

*

Plethon’s play was a success. Staged in front of a roaring fire on New Year’s Day, it was set to a score written by the Despoena Bartolomea. Afterwards, the party went on until the pages were asleep on their feet.

Omar came to visit but wouldn’t say where he’d been. He was scarred and tired, too tired even to prevent Plethon volunteering him as a magus. When they weren’t rehearsing, the two men spent long hours talking alone. The engineer Benedo Barbi arrived one day from Chios, summoned to hoist angels on pulleys up to Plethon’s strange heaven.

Christmas came and went in the little city on the hill and the new year brought new foreboding. Spring would arrive soon and surely the Turks would come then. After all, there was little to stop Bayezid now. At Nicopolis, four months ago, he’d defeated the best that Christendom could send against him and, to make the point more keenly, had had two thousand knights executed on the field of battle. If it hadn’t been for Prince Yakub of the Germiyans, Luke would have been among them.

Now it was February and a brilliant sun shone down upon Mistra, making the eaves of the Metropolitan and, beneath them, the nose of St Demetrius, drip with equal purpose. People looked out from the city walls and saw the glint of metal in the distance.

The Turks had come .

Anna was upstairs in the palace with the Despot, Plethon and the man who had succeeded her father as Protostrator, Michael Frangopoulos.

‘It’s Suleyman, lord,’ Frangopoulos was saying, turning from the messenger, ‘but his army’s not large. Perhaps ten thousand.’

Plethon nodded. ‘All that can be spared from Constantinople, I imagine. Enough to take our little city.’

The siege of Constantinople had been resumed as soon as the Ottoman army had returned from Nicopolis. Bayezid had entrusted it to his heir, Suleyman, who knew that his best chance of success lay in cannon cast in the foundries of Venice.

‘So why has he come?’ asked the Despot.

Anna knew. ‘He has come for me,’ she said quietly. She was standing at a window looking down across the plain, her back to the gathering and her long hair falling to her waist. She turned and two green eyes, pooled with sadness, settled on her ruler. ‘He’s come to take me back to Constantinople so that he can marry me in the Church of Hagia Sophia once the cannon arrive and the city has fallen and the church has become a mosque. He’s come for me. And Zoe.’

Zoe Mamonas, daughter to the Archon of Monemvasia and twin sister to the man to whom Anna was still married. She shuddered. She looked down at hands that were as pale as milk-gourd and found them still.

‘Don’t worry. I’ve always known I’d have to go. I’d just hoped for a little longer.’ It had been an impossible dream: waiting in Mistra until Luke returned with Tamerlane. He wouldn’t return from such a task. She turned to Plethon. ‘He will want Zoe as well. Will you release her?’

Plethon nodded. ‘What choice do we have?’

‘She tried to bury me alive and her father is helping the Turks get cannon from Venice.’ She paused. ‘But you’re right, philosopher. What choice do any of us have?’

She lowered her head and Plethon took her arm.

‘Where is he?’ she asked softly, turning. ‘Can I at least know that before I go?’

Plethon looked at her for a long time. ‘Luke is with nomads, Anna. Learning their ways. Preparing for Tamerlane.’

‘Does he have friends?’

Plethon nodded slowly. ‘There is someone. A girl. She will be his friend.’

Anna frowned. Something cold had entered her spine.

What girl?

‘I should get ready,’ she said.

*

The Ottoman army that Anna, Plethon and Zoe rode out to meet was indeed much smaller than the one brought by Suleyman five years ago. Anna had tried to bring help from Monemvasia, but Suleyman had found her outside the city and ridden with her on his saddle right up to the walls. He’d threatened to kill her unless the city surrendered. She’d defied Suleyman and in return he’d fallen in love with her.

Now she saw him ahead of her, mounted on the same stallion, black as night, with its horned head and coat of mail down to its hooves. He was wearing gold armour and a tall helmet from whose top sprouted silk in flower. On either side of him were two of his bodyguard, one holding the Horsehairs, one the green flag of the prophet. Beside them stood the rest of the Kapikulu, his household cavalry drawn from the conquered nations of Christendom and now slaves to Islam. They held pennanted lances and had wings on their backs. Behind, formed up in crescent, was the army: janissary orta s in the centre and sipahi knights from Rumelia and Anatolia on either wing. It was, as usual, silent as the breeze.

Anna glanced at Zoe. She was looking straight ahead and her eyes were bright as diamonds beneath the fox fur, pulled down to cover her ears. Her head was tilted to one side and the tip of her nose was a pinker olive than the rest of her flawless face. Her breath came in little mists from lips curved into the smallest of smiles.

Plethon turned to her and said: ‘We are releasing you, Zoe, in the hope that you and your father might prove more loyal to your empire in future. Mistra needs your father’s wealth and talent more than Bayezid does.’

Zoe smiled and shook her head, still looking ahead. ‘You are releasing me because you have no alternative, old man.’ She paused. ‘My father is interested in trade and trade has no loyalties. As usual, you deceive yourself.’

Plethon was forty and didn’t consider himself old. But it was true: whatever Zoe’s crimes, they’d had no option but to obey Suleyman’s instruction to deliver Anna and his mistress to him without delay. He said: ‘If you harm one hair of Anna’s head, we will find you and kill you.’

Zoe laughed. ‘Harm her? Why would I do that? She will be company for me when I visit the harem.’ She looked across at Anna. ‘If she’s not too tired, that is.’

Anna looked ahead at the man waiting. Suleyman had watched only her as they’d ridden across and was not smiling. At Nicopolis, she’d promised to submit to him. But she’d run away instead.

‘You have kept me waiting,’ he said as the three of them approached. ‘Four months, in fact. I’ve been waiting four months for you to return from your father’s funeral. As you said you would.’

Anna didn’t reply. She looked into his eyes and saw the pride, the arrogance, the hurt.

‘So, in the end, I came to get you.’

Still Anna said nothing. She sat on her horse and looked at him. Suleyman had changed. There was a new, brittle quality to his voice.

He turned to Plethon. ‘I want whatever cannon you have in the city.’

Plethon shook his head. ‘I regret we have never had cannon, lord. You may send men in to scour the walls and armouries. We have no cannon of any size.’

Suleyman knew this to be true. But then that was not why he was there. Someone spoke to his front.

‘Is there no greeting for me, lord?’

Suleyman’s beard lifted in smile. His messenger had demanded two women be delivered to him and he’d greeted one but not the other. ‘But of course,’ he said, bowing from the saddle. ‘We have much to discuss.’