James Heneage - The Walls of Byzantium

Oh my God .

THE CITY OF MISTRA, SPRING 1392

The darkness in the hole was complete and heavy, clinging to the little girl like a thing from hell. She felt it all around her, closing in with its searching tentacles, clawing its way into her soul with its foul presence. It stroked her hair and sent shivers up her spine with its reeking breath. It moaned with ghastly insistence, rising to a shrill scream when it felt itself denied.

Never before had she felt such fear.

She was curled into a little ball, her head sheltered beneath her hands in supplication to a God she knew had abandoned her for her disobedience.

I swear by my brother’s life I will never again disobey my mother. Let me see the morning and I will be good. I swear it .

The next morning seemed an impossibility. It felt like hours since that awful crash outside had told her that the storm had brought a branch down at the entrance to her hiding place. At first she’d tried to push it away, using all the weight of her seven-year-old body. But as it had refused to budge, she’d felt the first surges of panic rise up in her, quickening her heartbeat to a tempo that seemed to convulse her whole being.

Help. Help me. Help me. Help me .

But the panic had taken her voice. And the noise of the storm outside, as it ebbed and surged through the roots of the giant tree, drowned any tiny sound she could muster.

Please Father Jesus make Alexis come. I will never be bad again. I swear on his life .

To swear on her brother’s life was to promise a lot. There was no one more worshipped in Anna’s world than her only brother, three years her senior and idolatrously close to her God. But her brother didn’t know of this hiding place. One of the few secrets she kept from him was this little cave she’d found amidst the roots of the oak that grew in the corner of the Peribleptos Monastery walls. And she hadn’t told him for the very good reason that it provided the perfect hiding place in their games. Not even the monks who taught them knew about it.

Now she wished, with all her heart, that he knew of this place.

What was that noise?

She had heard a scratching noise. She was sure of it. It came from the entrance. It was closer than the storm. It came again.

They are coming for me .

She turned away from the sound and began to tear at the earth, clawing great handfuls from the blackness in front of her to escape whatever was coming. Dirt flew into her hair, her eyes, her mouth, engulfing her as she scrambled to get away.

Father Jesus, Alexis, Mother Mary … help me, help me, help me .

Then she felt air.

Miraculously, her fingers were free and she felt air on her palms.

Freedom!

She threw every last ounce of effort into widening the hole she’d created. She brought her other arm up and pulled aside the earth and grass to make the smallest of windows. She hoisted herself up and looked into the night, lifting her nose to breathe in the scent of pine.

Then she screamed.

Two eyes, yellow and beyond evil, were staring into hers.

Anna shivered. The night was warm but the memory of that night was still vivid. She’d managed to block it for so many years and it was only in these days of terrible suspense, as the Ottoman army bore down on her city, that it had risen unbidden from the depths of her unconscious.

Had she kept her promise to God? No, she could not claim that. Had she obeyed her mother without question from that moment onward? Assuredly not.

But then had her crime been so terrible? All she had wanted was to see the Despot and his new Despoena, Bartolomea.

But her mother had forbidden her. She’d taken her hand and led her past the honey cakes, plums and spiced chestnuts, past the partridge and quail in saffron with fried mushrooms, past hares baked in wine and grey mullet from Rhegis, past everything that Bartolomea would eat without her.

Once in bed, she’d determined that she would see the new Despoena, whatever it took, and she’d climbed out of her window and on to the branches of an apple tree.

But just as Bartolomea’s delicate toe emerged from her litter, the branch had snapped and Anna had fallen on to a clothes line from which hung some of her mother’s finest dresses.

So Anna had run away to the one place she knew she would not be found.

Now, eight years on, it was night again and a new fear was all around her. Anna was standing on the balcony of her house in the city of Mistra, looking out over the Vale of Sparta where the lights of countless campfires studded the darkness like fireflies and the conversation of fifty thousand Turks drifted up the hill in a single whisper.

Around her, filling the streets, squares, balconies and battlements of their small city, stood people looking on in silent vigil.

Anna felt a presence behind her.

Her brother was watching her. ‘Are you frightened?’ he asked quietly.

Anna turned to look at him. She smiled. ‘Do you remember when you found me, all those years past, wandering outside the city walls in my nightdress?’

Alexis nodded.

‘Do you remember I said then that I couldn’t remember what happened to me that night?’

Her brother nodded again.

‘Well, I’ve remembered.’

She turned back to look over the valley, and Alexis moved to stand next to her at the balustrade. Below them, far out on the plain, a deep drum had begun to beat. Then the squeak of heavy wheels could be heard between its thumps, and from among the campfires emerged horsemen holding torches aloft. Behind them rolled the engines of destruction: trebuchets, mangonels and tall, multi-tiered platforms with dripping hides hung from their sides. Anna had never seen such monsters.

‘And this is more terrifying?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘You see, this I understand. The Turks want our empire because it’s the last fortress to defend Christendom. Once they have it, then they can conquer the rest of the world.’

Alexis took his sister in his arms. ‘Anna, all that is left of the Empire is Constantinople and our little despotate. That’s all there is. We just have to hold them off long enough for the armies of Christendom to gather and drive them back.’

Anna shivered. She pressed her cheek against the hard buttons that ran up the front of his tunic. ‘Will I go into the Sultan’s harem?’ she asked.

Alexis laughed. ‘No, the Turks don’t enslave the well born, and our family is the most honourable in the despotate. You’ll be safe, I promise you.’

But eight years ago Anna had made a promise to God and not kept her faith.

‘Will Emperor Manuel in Constantinople not come to our aid?’ she asked.

‘The Emperor has no money,’ Alexis replied. ‘No emperor has had any money since the Franks pillaged Constantinople two hundred years ago.’

‘But surely Mistra has money?’ asked Anna.

‘Yes,’ said Alexis, ‘we’re rich. But not rich enough.’

‘What about Monemvasia?’ pursued Anna. ‘You’re always telling me that the Mamonases are one of the richest families in the world. Surely the Archon will come to our aid?’

Alexis turned to look up the hill, to the very top where the citadel’s bulk was silhouetted by a giant beacon blazing from its tallest tower.

‘That beacon was lit a week ago,’ he said. ‘It’s fifty miles to Monemvasia and there are beacons on every hill between. They’ll have seen the signal for days now but still we’ve had no word.’

Brother and sister were silent for a long while. The siege engines had stopped in front of the campfires and, if anything, seemed more menacing in silhouette. Great boulders would be hurled from the trebuchets tomorrow, boulders that would make short work of the city’s walls.