James Heneage - The Towers of Samarcand

THE ROAD TO CONSTANTINOPLE, AUTUMN 1402

It took Luke and Anna only three days to reach Chios. They rode as hard as the rain and road allowed and stopped only once for Anna to change horses. They spoke little: Anna numb with the pleasure of a recent transaction, Luke thinking hard of how to stop Tamerlane from entering Constantinople. He remembered again and again what Mohammed Sultan had said to him in the church.

The last time that our armies came into Europe, they were stopped by the death of the Khan … It might happen again.

But how? Shulen had poisoned him once but she was a long way behind, bringing Mohammed Sultan to his grandfather slowly on a litter. Anyway, Zoe was apparently with Tamerlane every moment of the day and night.

They reached the sea in the evening and commandeered a boat to take them to Chios. And as they crossed the straits, Luke’s thoughts turned to something else. He’d been aware of a strange excitement growing alongside his worry, gradually nudging it aside as they got closer to Chios: he was to meet his son. He was about to meet Giovanni on Chios and he felt giddy with yearning.

But it wasn’t to be. They arrived late at night at the Giustiniani Palace to be told that Tamerlane had left and that Fiorenza had taken Giovanni to Sklavia and was not expected to return within the week.

So Anna was surprised to wake up the next morning to find a woman of great beauty standing next to her bed holding hands with a boy. She knew immediately who they were.

Fiorenza. Fiorenza and Giovanni .

The woman spoke. ‘We are deserted. The men have all left. Luke too.’

Anna looked at the pair. Fiorenza was dressed in a high-collared tunic of brushed silk, cream and without pattern. Her head was uncovered and on her feet were green slippers. The boy was dressed in Genoese miniature: doublet and hose, both in matching blue, and boots of calfskin. He was looking at the floor and his hair was the colour of corn.

Fiorenza spoke again. ‘I’ve been at Sklavia. I came back when I heard that Tamerlane had left. But it seems he’s taken my husband with him.’ She paused. ‘Luke has told me much about you.’

Anna sat up in the bed, studying the woman. ‘As I of you. You’ve been kind to him. Do you know where he’s gone?’

Fiorenza produced a scroll. ‘I found this in his room.’

It was addressed to Anna. She took the scroll and opened it. Inside was a ring and a message: ‘Catch up with Plethon and give this to him but avoid Zoe at all costs. I will join you as soon as I can. I love you.’

She reread the message, certain that someone else had done the same. She looked up to find her hostess guileless and smiling, two dimples bracketing her perfect mouth. She wondered again where Luke had gone. Had he had a message from Shulen? Probably.

Fiorenza turned to her son. ‘Giovanni.’ The boy lifted his head and Anna’s breath left her. A wave of panic surged up her body and she put a hand out to steady herself on the bed. She had to stop herself from crying out.

Luke .

The boy bowed from the waist and straightened up. He smiled. He was Luke. Luke with dimples. There was no doubt. If it wasn’t obvious in his size, his hair, his chin, then it shone from his blue, blue eyes.

You are Luke’s son .

She was aware that she was staring at the boy but couldn’t wrench her eyes away. It was as if Luke was reborn, refashioned in the skin of a child. She wanted to touch him.

‘I see you are taken with my son.’

Anna forced herself to look up at Fiorenza.

She knows I know .

Small spots of colour had emerged high in the Princess of Trebizond’s cheeks. The dimples had disappeared and there was calculation in her eyes. ‘It is possible he reminds you of another?’

Anna felt the blood rush to her face. She knew that she was trembling and cursed the hands that betrayed it. She breathed in. ‘I’m sorry.’ She put out her hand. ‘Giovanni.’

The boy bowed again, still smiling, and took her hand. Fiorenza said: ‘I mean to go to my husband. You?’

Anna nodded. ‘I’ll go to Plethon. And your son?’

Fiorenza paused for a moment. Then she said: ‘He will return to Sklavia. There are horses waiting.’

*

The stench of Smyrna was more than even Tamerlane could stand. The smell of rotting corpses, lifted by fire and autumn wind, penetrated every corner of the citadel so that half of his court performed their duties masked. Tamerlane soon left the city for Constantinople. He travelled by elephant with just Zoe and a servant in his howdah and Pir Mohammed, Sigismund, Manuel and Plethon in the howdah behind. Marchese Longo and the signore rode at the head of a regiment of gautchin that brought up the rear. The army was left to rest in Smyrna and would follow later.

The road had been Byzantine, therefore wide and level, and the ride was comfortable. The summer had extended its reach into autumn and a hot sun turned leaves into fire before they fell from the poplars that lined the road. Beyond the trees were villages without people and fields without livestock. Humanity had disappeared with its food. It was if the last judgement had come and gone without anyone caring to tell the Mongol army. Only the kourtchi, riding ahead, had seen the road into Bursa clogged with people desperate to seek refuge behind the city’s walls.

So none saw the passing of this strange calvacade. None saw the two elephants, their mahouts sitting astride painted faces whose steady grins rocked between giant tusks; or the jornufa or ostrich or two donkeys wearing the tall white hats of the janissary corps. None saw the four bullocks that followed, pulling a wagon with a cage upon it in which a clown sat in misery: Bayezid; Yildirim; Sultan of the Ottomans, a man hardly visible through the filth on his bars.

News came from Ankara. Mohammed Sultan would meet his grandfather somewhere along the road to Bursa. For Zoe, this was the first piece of bad news for some time; she’d hoped Mohammed Sultan would be too ill to travel and didn’t want his words of reason anywhere near her lover’s ear.

Tamerlane had started the journey in the best of spirits. Zoe had used every skill in her repertoire to bring him to grunting ecstasy in the bed of the Grand Master of the Hospitallers. Now he lay against the cushions of the howdah while she read to him, watching the of the young mahout as it swung from side to side with the rhythm of the beast. The music was sweet and the air sweeter than anything he’d breathed in a week. Tamerlane was happy.

*

Having sent Giovanni to Sklavia, Fiorenza joined the party as it left Manisa. She rode alongside her husband as it passed through Akhisar, barked at by dogs and stared at by cats but otherwise unnoticed. On the third evening, they arrived at the bridge at Sultancayir, just short of the city of Karasi, capital of the beylik of that name, the first neighbour to be annexed by the Ottomans sixty years past. They were two hundred miles from Constantinople. There was a Byzantine castle on a hill there, abandoned by its Turkish sipahi owner, where Tamerlane’s guests would be housed for the night. Tamerlane would pitch his tent at the bottom.

*

Much later, one guest awoke to receive a summons to meet Tamerlane in his tent, alone. Matthew dressed quickly, woke Nikolas to tell him where he was going, and tiptoed from the room. He assumed the summons had something to do with Luke. In the castle stable, he found his horse, saddled it and led it across the sleeping courtyard, through the gate and on to the path outside. He mounted and rode down the hill. He had no difficulty in recognizing Tamerlane’s ger. It was the largest and had the flag of the Celestial Conjunction outside, just visible in the moonlight. Two gautchin stood guard on either side of its entrance. They recognised Matthew and lifted the flap for him to enter.