James Heneage - The Walls of Byzantium

Dimitri and Barbi led Luke back through the arch and into a cavernous warehouse full of kneeling camels being unloaded. The air was thick with the smell of dung and spices and dust rose from the straw on which the animals lay. The November grey entered through windows high in the wall and struggled to make headway through the gloom. It was a place to talk and not be heard.

Dimitri sat down on a bale of cotton. He unbuckled a flask from his belt and offered it to his friend. ‘So what happened?’ he asked. ‘The last I heard you were on a ship bound for Venice.’

Luke drank the water and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘The captain of the ship was Venetian.’

‘So you were given to the Turks?’ asked Barbi, who’d sat down as well.

Luke nodded. ‘Then taken to Nicopolis as their captive. To watch.’

Dimitri took the flask and seemed engrossed in it. When he spoke again, his voice was low. ‘I hear it was a massacre. And worse. I heard that Bayezid murdered thousands of knights who might have been ransomed, that he got old men to do it.’ He looked up at Luke. ‘Is it true?’

Luke nodded again. ‘What else did you hear?’ he asked softly.

Dimitri and Barbi exchanged glances. News of Luke’s treachery had reached Chios already.

Luke leant forward and took Dimitri’s arm. ‘Dimitri, what you’ve heard about me isn’t true. You know me. I’m no traitor.’

The two men looked at each other for some time and then Dimitri smiled. ‘Marchese will be relieved. It was the only thing clouding his happiness.’

‘His happiness?’

‘Of course, you don’t know. Why should you? Fiorenza is with child.’

Luke stared at him. ‘With child?’

‘Yes. After all these years, their prayers have been answered. The whole island rejoices.’

Luke felt weak. Fiorenza with child? With his child? Of course it was his child. Marchese was incapable.

Dimitri frowned. ‘You’ve gone white, Luke. Is the news so bad?’

Luke forced himself to smile. ‘No, of course not. It was a surprise, that’s all. I thought …’

‘You thought Marchese too old? We all did.’ He was looking at Luke quizzically. ‘It would seem a miracle, no?’

‘A miracle, yes. Please tell them how happy I am.’ He changed the subject. ‘How did the alum and mastic fare in Venice?’ he asked. ‘Did we get a good price?’

‘The very best.’ Dimitri said. ‘With no alum yet through from Trebizond, we got what we asked for. And the Venetian fleet took pounds of mastic to dress the crusaders’ wounds.’

‘And does it fix dye?’

Dimitri shook his head. ‘Alas no. The Florentine chemists saw to that. But it didn’t matter. We sold it before the markets heard the news. The price was astronomical. Do you know how rich you are, Luke?’

Luke didn’t answer. Dimitri didn’t know that every penny of that profit had gone to Plethon, to the Empire.

But Luke wasn’t really considering that. He was thinking of the vines of Sklavia and the orchards of the Kambos and of a child that would grow up there thinking another man his father.

Then he remembered something and turned to the engineer. ‘Benedo. How is the building? How are the villages?’

‘The villages are good. They’re coming up fast and the mastic is reaching its markets. The blockade is no more.’

‘No more?’

‘There was a storm. The Turkish ships were scattered, many sunk. And then the Empire’s fleet appeared and sank what was left.’

Chios delivered .

In a world that had deprived him of Anna, of his freedom, of his good name, of his child, this was a rare bit of good news. Perhaps one day, when he had done whatever he had to do, he could bring Anna there.

One day .

‘I should go back to Omar.’

Dimitri asked, ‘Why not come with us?’

‘Escape? No, they have Anna and my friends. Anyway, where would I go? Christendom thinks me a traitor.’

Back in the courtyard, Omar was haggling for his life. It wasn’t so much the price as the sheer number of people desperate to buy the aphrodisiac now that word had got round of its effects. Luke wondered if the brothels of Bursa would be able to cope.

Beneath an arch on the other side of the square, a dark man in darker clothes was watching the scene, his hand on a short sword at his side.

Luke didn’t see him; nor did Omar or Dimitri.

But Benedo Barbi saw him and he frowned. He’d seen him somewhere before.

It took no time at all for Anna and her escort to reach the walls of the city.

The only creatures abroad at that early hour were dogs and cats and bakers stoking the ovens that would make the city’s bread. Their hooves echoed against the walls of sleeping houses and through the narrow streets that led out of the city. They met a line of donkeys plodding moodily along, their heads sunk low and their backs piled high with the stuff for building. A turbaned man walked in front and stopped to bow deeply as their little calvacade passed.

Then they were out on the plain and around them was all the melancholy of a spent summer. The fields were bare, scraped clean of their harvest and black with the stumps of blasted crops. They passed vineyards shorn of their bounty, with row upon row of stiff yellow leaves that only waited for a passing wind to lay them to rest.

Anna rode with all the energy of uncloistered joy. She swept off her cap and allowed her hair to cascade behind her. She felt the sun on her cheeks and lifted her palms to wipe the tears from her eyes. She felt the thrill of horse between her thighs and the smell of leather filling her nostrils. With every perfect stride stretched out beneath her, the memory of the harem grew fainter.

Whatever the future, for today I am free .

By mid-morning they had reached a small town where a market was in progress. Soon they were passing between stalls of hung game and trussed fowl, between copper utensils and carpets of herbs. There were baskets of over-ripe fruit and vegetables bursting from their skins. They passed forges and entered streets thick with the sawdust of wood carvers and lined with the kiln-fires of potters. The air was heavy with yeast and cow dung and carob and blood.

At midday, they were riding through a landscape of lakes and marshes. There were flamingos and black storks and pelicans strung out along the shores and a blizzard of cormorants taking wing. Anna stopped her horse and watched the sunlight dance across the water and listened to the talk of a million birds.

An hour later they had reached the valley of the Mariza River and its sides were thick with forest. The road they travelled was lined with trees aflame and the floor beneath them was hoof-deep in leaves crisp as parchment. She slowed her horse to a walk and the leader of the sipahis caught up with her.

‘Lady,’ he said as he came to her side, ‘from here we turn south.’

A track ahead branched off to the left and they took it, rising with the hill towards a forest of oak. Soon they were among gnarled, arthritic branches twisted with age and a silence broken only by the soft fall of hoof. As they crested the hill, Anna drew her horse to a standstill and stared at the beauty before her. The path ahead broadened into an avenue carpeted in gold. The trees on either side were beech and their tall trunks rose to form a vaulted roof above. She was in a cathedral through which heaven shone its individual eye.

The sipahi knight rode up to her and coughed politely; she nodded and gently kicked her horse. It was late in the day and the shafts of sunlight shone low through the branches, turning the carpet to a weave of richer reds. Then they were entering the hills where the air was milder and the sound of water could be heard all around. Through the trees they could see the glint of waterfall and the velvet of washed, mossy rocks. They saw deer between tree trunks and once they saw a single boar that stared at them, legs astride, on the path ahead. Anna raised her hand to stop a sipahi arrow and it cocked its heavy head, turned and trotted away.