James Heneage - The Towers of Samarcand

Tamerlane had begun to limp slowly towards him. He said: ‘I have favoured you, Luke, because you are brave and beloved of my heir. If you stay with me, you can have everything you want. A kingdom? It’s yours.’ He came on. ‘We can conquer the world together.’

Luke said: ‘Come no closer, lord. I have already conquered with you. I want no more part in it.’

Tamerlane had stopped. His head was on one side. ‘Then I have lost?’

Luke looked beyond Tamerlane and nodded. He lowered the bow and lifted Giovanni to the ground. The boy ran to his mother, soon joined by Longo. Luke kicked Eskalon and came up to Tamerlane. He dismounted. ‘We have both lost, lord,’ he said quietly. ‘Look behind you.’

There was commotion amongst the gautchin at the bottom of the bridge. Some had taken off their helmets and were kneeling on the ground. A deep murmur was spreading through the ranks. Someone was making their way through them. Someone important, someone who could make the gautchin kneel.

Mohammed Sultan .

Tamerlane had turned and was watching the scene before him unfold. In front of him, the ranks of the gautchin had begun to part. By now, every soldier was on his knees, every head bowed, every helmet clutched to a chest. The men’s murmur had subsided, leaving only silence in its place. Luke could hear the squeak of wood on stone. Something with wheels was being pulled. Two heads came into view.

Shulen and Khan-zada .

They were dressed for mourning: long, heavy gowns reaching to their feet. Their faces were hooded, hidden. They were walking on either side of a litter being pulled by men.

Tamerlane took a step backwards. He didn’t want what these women were here to give him. He didn’t want to hear what they had to tell him. He fell to his knees and his head hit the ground in front of him, his hands covering his ears. Luke heard a deep moan.

The wheels stopped but the women kept walking until they were standing over him. Khan-zada knelt and took Tamerlane’s shoulders in her hands and raised him from the ground. She brought the terror of the world, sobbing, into her breast.

‘He is come,’ she whispered.

Tamerlane’s great shoulders were heaving with the fathomless grief rising within him. He hadn’t shed tears like this since the death of Jahangir. But he was much older now and it seemed that his ancient frame could no longer contain such sorrow. ‘When?’ he asked.

‘A week past. It was a fever. There was nothing we could do.’

He said: ‘It was the journey. I made him do it.’

Khan-zada shook her head. ‘It would have happened anyway. It was his time.’

The two women turned and, Tamerlane between them, walked slowly back towards the kneeling gautchin, Luke following behind. As they approached, the ranks opened as men fell back to let them pass. A wagon harnessed to two horses came into view. On one side of it stood Yakub and Anna, on the other Pir Mohammed and Plethon.

The women led Tamerlane up to the wagon and then stepped back. The old man put his hands on its sides and leant over. For a long while he stood there without moving, perhaps without breathing. He looked down upon the man who had been his grandson and his heir and whose goodness was now hidden forever from the world behind closed eyes. He let out a long, agonised groan and Pir Mohammed stepped forward lest he fall. Tamerlane turned to him.

‘Grandson, we go home,’ he said quietly. ‘Tell the generals that the army marches home to Samarcand. The Khan is dead.’

There was movement from within the gautchin and Zoe, no longer mounted, came forward. ‘Lord, we have unfinished business here,’ she said.

Tamerlane was shaking his head. What other business was there but taking his heir back to Samarcand? He stared at her.

‘The Genoese, lord,’ she whispered. She removed the phial of poison from beneath her tunic. ‘Remember their plot? They must die as you planned.’

Tamerlane turned to Shulen. He looked bewildered, lost. Shulen said: ‘I have your glasses, Temur Gurgan. To help you see.’ She proffered them.

The old man took the glasses and put them on. He was fumbling as old men do. ‘What would you have me see, Shulen?’ he asked.

‘I would have you see your friends, lord.’ She paused. ‘And your enemies.’

Zoe stepped forward. ‘Temur Gurgan doesn’t need your glasses to see treason when it is before him,’ she said. ‘You have killed his heir as you planned to kill him.’

Shulen looked at Zoe for a while. They were so alike: both dark, both clever. Both strong. ‘He needs them’, she said quietly, ‘to see you better.’

But Tamerlane wanted to see someone else. He looked down at his heir and reached down and parted his hair, leaving his hand resting on Mohammed Sultan’s cold forehead. He looked back at Shulen and there was mist on his glasses. Gently, she removed them and wiped them clean on her sleeve. She put them back on to his nose. ‘Temur Gurgan, I could not have killed Mohammed Sultan,’ she said softly.

Zoe said: ‘No? You’ve been nursing him since the battle. You needed something to stop Temur Gurgan from taking Constantinople. You killed his heir and brought him here.’

Khan-zada had come forward to stand next to her daughter, taking her hand. She said: ‘Father, Shulen was Mohammed Sultan’s sister. She loved him as a brother. She would not have killed him.’ She paused and looked at Yakub. ‘Temur Gurgan, you must know that I loved another before Jahangir. Our child was Shulen.’

Tamerlane stared at her, his mouth open. ‘You loved another before Jahangir?’

She lowered her head. ‘As I learnt to love your son, lord,’ she said softly.

‘Who was he?’

Yakub said: ‘It was I, lord.’

Tamerlane was shaking his head, his mind exhausted by revelation. He suddenly wanted very much to be in a tent in a garden outside Samarcand. But a realisation was slowly taking shape. He turned to Shulen. ‘You are of Genghis’s line,’ he said quietly. ‘If you are daughter to Khan-zada, then you are of the blood.’

There was noise behind them. They turned and saw that Zoe was pushing her way back through the ranks from which she’d just emerged. Men were rising to let her pass. They looked towards Tamerlane.

He saw her and said: ‘Let her go.’

Luke looked at Tamerlane as he watched her leave. His eyes, enormous in their magnification, were old and tired and full of grief. But they were no longer mad. Luke looked at Tamerlane and knew that he was now free, that Constantinople would remain free. Zoe had known it too and Luke knew that she wouldn’t come back.

CONSTANTINOPLE, WINTER 1402

The city of Constantinople did play host to a marriage, but this one did not include a single Mongol amongst its congregation. In fact, the only trace of Tamerlane was in the dress of the bridegroom, who’d added some tarkhan dash to his Varangian dress in the form of a five-circled brooch, his parting gift from the Lord of the Celestial Conjunction. The city had been saved and it seemed only fitting that it should celebrate the wedding of the man who many saw as its saviour.

And celebrate it planned to do. The monks of the great Church of Holy Wisdom swept away all signs of supplication and set themselves to turning the church into a place of festival. The patterned marble floor was polished, the mosaics repaired and Barbi was once again summoned to pitch angels into the firmament. The Emperor wanted a spectacle worthy of the hour and the city frothed with excitement as the hour drew near.

In truth, Luke and Anna would rather have been married in the cathedral in Mistra than the Hagia Sophia. But Plethon had spoken of the importance of ceremony and civic pride and Luke had nodded and smiled and kissed Anna again. They were to marry and the where was unimportant. The when , however, was. Something had happened on that night ride from Ankara and quite soon its consequence would begin to show, no matter how loose the marriage gown.