James Heneage - The Walls of Byzantium

The courtyard was colonnaded with Roman columns resurrected from the earthquake and each one was different. A single tree stood at its centre, planted to mark the birth of the Princess’s first-born, Yildirim.

So absorbed was Anna that she did not hear the soft tread of the philosopher until he was next to her and had spoken the word of the Prophet.

‘“Cursed be the man who injures a fruit-bearing tree.”’

Anna swung around. ‘Plethon!’ she cried, jumping up from the bench and hugging the togaed midriff of the man before her. The sunshine glanced from his balding head and two cats tiptoed away to sleep in the trimmed borders that ringed the square. ‘Are you really here?’

‘In person,’ said the sage, performing a little bow. ‘It is, after all, my home. Or was.’

Anna smiled. She was dressed, from head to toe, in the whitest gown and her hair tumbled to her shoulders in waves of copper. Her face had thinned and there was shadow where once there’d been curve. Her eyes held something distant in them as if her mind was elsewhere.

Plethon took her hands and gazed at her, watching the colour creep slowly into her cheeks. ‘Anna,’ he said at last, ‘are you very unhappy?’

She laughed, but it was a thin sound. ‘I am well,’ she said with conviction. ‘I eat, I sleep, I live.’ She smiled. ‘No, I live in luxury and have iced sherbet on call. And I have a horse.’

‘A horse?’

‘Eskalon. He was Luke’s but he lost him. Now he’s mine.’

Plethon opened his mouth to speak but she put her finger to it and leant forward.

‘And he told me something.’ It was a whisper.

‘The horse?’

‘Yes. He told me that I must go to Luke and that he would take me to him.’

Plethon watched her for a moment, wondering if, perhaps, her mind had finally succumbed. How would she take the news he had to give her? Gathering the folds of his toga, he lifted his long beard free and sat down on the bench, patting the space beside him.

‘Anna, you have agreed to marry Suleyman. The world knows it.’

‘I have agreed to marry him in six months’ time if there’s been no word from Luke. There’s been word.’

‘From a horse?’

‘From a horse.’

Plethon frowned. ‘Luke’s destiny …’ he began, but then stopped. For a moment he wondered what right he had to say what he was about to say.

‘Luke’s destiny is to be with me.’

Plethon looked down at his hands, at the fingers that had too often pointed to false truths. But this one he was certain of. It was time to be brutal.

‘Perhaps,’ he said, looking up. ‘But there is something he has to do before he can be with you. I thought it was a question of treasure. Now I see that it’s also something else.’

Anna sat very still, dread climbing up her like a weed. She had given so much to this empire; given her brother, her freedom, nearly her mind to its ravenous maw. Must she now give Luke?

She looked away towards Yildirim’s tree. ‘What does he have to do?’

She looked back at him, the misery clouding her eyes a darker green.

‘You’ve not mentioned Prince Mehmed,’ she continued. ‘Mehmed would take the Turks east, away from Constantinople. Why not talk to him?’

‘Because Tamerlane is not ready yet. He needs to be persuaded that he wants to fight Bayezid. Mehmed is not the prince to do that.’

‘So find another prince.’

Plethon took her hand. ‘Anna,’ he said softly, ‘Luke is that prince.’

She frowned. Luke was no prince. He was a Varangian. The numbing dread was in every part of her now.

A Varangian sent to persuade Tamerlane. Luke is going to Tamerlane .

She had to think of something else. ‘Will Constantinople hold?’

‘Constantinople will hold until the Turks get their cannon. I come from Venice where I tried to persuade the Doge to sell them instead to the Empire.’

‘And will they?’

‘Before the crusade, perhaps. Now, no. They are Venetians.’

She frowned. ‘They’re also Christian … And the Varangian treasure, have you given up on that?’

Plethon shook his head. ‘While you were at Nicopolis, I entered Constantinople to search Siward’s tomb which is in the Varangian church there. But someone had been there before me.’

‘It was empty?’

‘No. The top had been removed. It was full, but with a body. There was no room for anything else.’

‘So where do you look now?’

‘Mistra,’ he said. ‘I go there next. There was a mural in the church that had been covered over with recent paint. Whoever did that wanted to hide its message.’ He paused and smiled. ‘I expect a proposition quite soon.’

Anna only half heard him. She was thinking of Mistra and of her yearning to be there. She said, ‘Tell me, Plethon, what is my destiny?’

‘To marry Suleyman.’

Anna shook her head. ‘Not if I can be with Luke.’

Plethon said nothing.

‘So you are on your way to Mistra. Why have you come here?’ she asked.

Plethon saw the fragility of her mind and the despair that made it so. He had dreaded this moment. ‘To take you with me.’ He paused. ‘Anna, your father is dead.’

At first the words held no meaning for her. Then they did. Of course he was dead. He’d been dead since Alexis had gone. He’d been dead when she’d seen him at Serres.

I shall never speak with him again .

Anna rocked back on the bench, embracing herself.

Plethon continued, very softly: ‘I’ve come from the Emperor Manuel to seek peace. To see what can be rescued from the ruins of Nicopolis. I’ve also come to ask the Sultan if I can take a daughter to Mistra to see her father interred.’

Anna tried to smile but the ice that had entered her soul froze it on her lips. ‘And what does the Sultan say?’ she whispered.

Bayezid had been drunk when he’d received him. The fair page from Trebizond had supported his more extravagant gestures of contempt as Plethon had argued the case for peace. But he’d agreed to Anna leaving because it would upset his eldest son.

‘He said yes.’ Plethon unravelled a fold in his toga. He put two fingers to his closed eyes and rubbed them. Anna saw how tired he was. ‘He even agreed to allow Matthew, Nikolas and Arcadius to come with us: a Varangian escort. He must want to annoy his son very much.’

Plethon glanced around the courtyard. He’d seen movement among the tulips but it was only a cat, its grey-silk body flowing from the flowers like mercury. He rose and took Anna’s hand. ‘We leave tomorrow at dawn. The funeral is in three days. We’ll have to ride fast.’

Later that night, in that part of the palace reserved for honoured guests, Plethon’s drift into platonic sleep was disturbed by the arrival of a woman in his bedroom.

At first he thought he was dreaming. He sat upright in his bed, drew in his exposed stomach and rubbed his eyes. When he reopened them, she was still there.

The room was big and cool and had two large windows that looked on to a little garden of scented flowers. Diaphanous curtains filtered the moonlight into gently moving squares of white that stretched across the room to the foot of his bed. Standing, silhouetted in one of these, was the woman, and the moon made a mockery of her caftan as a thing of modesty.

He had guessed immediately who she was.

‘Zoe,’ he said.

There was no answer. He wondered how he would react to an invitation. She was rumoured to have a taste for the bizarre and it was just possible that she saw philosophers as such. A waft of jasmine travelled to him on the slightest of airs. The curtains moved fractionally.

‘Am I to be blessed?’

Now certain that she had entered the right room, Zoe glided down the path of silver that led to the bed and sat on it.