Emperor's Winding Sheet (20 page)

That evening, as the boy rode beside Stephanos, a few paces behind the Emperor, making the evening inspection of the walls, he said to Stephanos, “Can it be true that there are Christians in the Sultan's army?”

“There are some,” said Stephanos. He was keeping a solicitous eye on the figure of the Emperor in front, riding as always with Phrantzes on one hand, and Don Francisco on the other.

“How can they?” demanded the boy.

“Well,” said Stephanos, “on our side there is Prince Orhan, and the men of his court, who are Turks, and Mohammedans. Should they not fight for us?”

“Oh,” said Vrethiki, his swelling indignation suddenly pricked.

“Still wanting everything simple?” said Stephanos with a half smile. The Emperor had halted to talk with a Genoese captain. “You're all the same, you Westerners! Hungry for simplicity, like Crusaders! Did you know the Crusader Lords were scandalized that the Emperor had dealings with the infidels; but the Emperors have had a frontier with Islam for nearly eight hundred years! Nothing is simple here; time complicates.” He was talking quietly, almost as though to himself. “The Emperors are Christ on earth, the chosen of God, like Solomon, like David. Yet they have been usurpers, image-breakers, adulterers, torturers, tricksters. An Empress once put out her own son's eyes that her lover might reign unthreatened. Time weaves complexities. And this place, this City, the seat of majesty, the throne of Christ on earth, it was once a palpable glory, and is now a ruin, a memory—a memory clad in a web of dream. Look around you, Vrethiki,
and see this amazing thing. Here are good men ready to fight and die for it—for a ruin, a memory, and a dream. And over there”—he pointed to the Turkish camp below them and beyond—“more brave men, and what are they fighting for? It is a dream of their own that brings them here; a promise their prophet made them, a blessing on the army, on the prince, that should conquer us. Why us? Why did the heathen prophet set his men on us? Because this place was crowned with a dream of Christendom, with the ideal of Christ's kingdom upon earth. It is because of what we dream this place to be, because of what it never in truth has been, that they, too, lust and long for it, and come marching against us to wrest it from us. If all men saw the world for what it is, Vrethiki, this City would be left to molder peacefully in its powerless old age, and the Sultan would stay at home and build his palaces and gardens, and not a drop of blood would be shed!”

“You know, Stephanos,” said the boy. “I think you're wrong!” But at that moment the Emperor finished talking to the captain, and rode on, and although Stephanos looked at the boy with an amused inquiry on his face, there was time for no more talk just then.

 

THE EMPEROR CALLED A MEETING OF THE CHIEF VENETIANS
in the City. Since Minotto had sent urgently to Venice for help, nothing more had been heard. “Would it be possible,” inquired the Emperor, “to sneak a ship past the Turks, and go in search of the fleet that is on its way to help us? They may not realize how desperate is the need for haste.”

“I should think it could be done,” said Minotto. “A small, fast ship—a brigantine, or such like. It's taking a chance on the Dardanelles being unguarded, but I expect they've left it open by bringing every ship they have up here.”

“God knows, we could do with good news,” said the Emperor. “If we could tell the people help was coming …”

“We will make a ship ready,” said Minotto.

 

THAT EVENING WHEN STEPHANOS AND VRETHIKI WERE SERVING
the Emperor his supper, and the three of them were alone in the cells of the Chora, the Emperor said to Stephanos, “Tell the boy about the ship that is going. I am putting on board her, safely concealed in the hold, one or two elderly ladies who served my mother, or my late wife. I have a duty to save them from suffering if I can. And I have it in mind that I have injured the boy, too, in bringing him into peril whether he would or no. Tell him he may go to safety with them.”

Vrethiki saw Stephanos glance at him, with an expression full of pain. Then Stephanos translated the Emperor's words.

“But what about the prophecy?” cried Vrethiki, wildly. “He needs me because of that! I've got to stay!”

Stephanos made this answer to the Emperor, who was sitting slumped with weariness in his chair, gazing at the flames of the fire in the little stove and turning his ring of state round and round on his delicate long finger. The Emperor looked up at Vrethiki with a trace of surprise, and spoke with sudden passion.

“He says,” said Stephanos, “do you think he is a fool? Do you think he cares for prophecies? He says he brought you here to please Plethon, and he thinks even if the citizens here all knew about it, they have forgotten by now. He says why should he take thought for the prophecies, since whatever he does, and whatever happens, the people will hold him to blame? Do you think he doesn't know how they blame him even for his name, saying it has been prophesied that
Constantine, son of Helena, shall be the last Emperor, as also was the first? Do you think he hasn't heard them say that the Turks will break in, and get as far as the Column of the Cross in the Forum of Constantine, and then will come an angel with a fiery sword and give it to a simple poor man, who happens to be standing by, and he will turn back the Turks, and lead the Romans to victory? If that simple poor man who can do so much better than my Lord would only present himself now, how gladly would the Emperor lay down his burden! What use is it to seek to avoid blame by a people such as that? The Emperor says he wishes to die with a clear conscience, with no one having a cause of complaint against him, and he thought you longed to go home.”

But Vrethiki was shattered and confused. The solid ground was cut from beneath him and he floundered in a conflict of feeling like a man in a quagmire. At last, “It's true, I did want to go home,” he said miserably. “But to leave now! And the Emperor, and Justiniani, and you, Stephanos, all stay here still, and I am to go, and have no share in what is to happen! Let me stay!”

“There's nothing to stay for,” said Stephanos quietly. “Nothing for you here, and those who stay will die.”

“What is he saying?” asked the Emperor, watching them.

“He says he will die for the Empire,” said Stephanos. But Vrethiki had been hearing Greek for a long time now, and the sentence was simple, made up of familiar words. He understood it.

“No,” he said. “To die for the Empire is the Emperor's privilege—but lesser folk may dare for lesser things. And you, Stephanos, you with your ‘nothing here,' your ‘ruin and memory and dream,' you are quite wrong; the people here are real, and so their courage is, and while the Lord
Constantine is alive, and fighting for it, ruin, memory and dream are all alike real for me!”

“So, he would stay,” said the Emperor gently, when Stephanos translated that. “Tell him to take care what he wishes, in case it is given to him. Tell him that when I was a young man I wanted above all to be Emperor, to inherit my brother's place. I plotted and maneuvered, and quarreled with my other brothers, all to further my ambition. God punished me by granting my desire. I have got what I wished for, and it is a heavy and a long ordeal, that I am hard put to to bear with dignity. A little while ago the boy wanted release; and now it is given to him he draws back and says he wants another thing instead. So tell him he shall have what he asks for; tell him to be sure of what he asks.”

“Let me stay!” said Vrethiki, stubbornly, near to tears.

“Let him stay, then,” said the Emperor to Stephanos. “And out of all possible lesser things, what is it, I wonder, that keeps him?”

As though for an answer, the boy fell on his knees, and with a swift clumsy gesture took the Emperor's right hand, and managing at last to get his tongue round two words of Greek, he said, “A ff endi mou!—My true Lord.”

“If I had a son, you know, Stephanos … “ said the Emperor.

“Yes, Sire, I know,” said Stephanos.

 

THE VENETIANS MADE READY THEIR BRIGANTINE. IT HAD A
crew of twelve volunteers, who blackened their faces with char coal, and wore turbans and Turkish trousers and jackets. She slipped through the boom on the night of the third of May, flying the red crescent from her masthead, and she got safely away, though Vrethiki was not on board her.

D
ays passed. Twice a day the Emperor rode along the walls. He spent less time than he used to in churches, though he visited one church or another nearly every day; he spent much more time conferring with his council, with his captains. The ambit of his days had shrunk down to al most nothing but the walls and the few churches near the walls, for he had no time to ride through the middle of the City. Thus it was that neither Stephanos nor Vrethiki, and perhaps not the Emperor himself, had realized the change in the feeling of the people—what the wear and tear of hunger and fear, and the leprous creeping growth of despair had done to the mood of the citizens.

But when one morning the Emperor visited the Church of the Holy Wisdom, the people turned their faces from him in the street. They hissed and spat as he passed, and screamed curses after him, crying that it was because he had united the churches that the curse of God had fallen upon the City. The Emperor took not the least notice of this; but Stephanos and Vrethiki, knowing their master, flinched on his behalf, and hated his accusers.

Rumors began to reach them of quarrels and brawling between the Venetians and the Genoese; at first just rumors,
and then complaints. At last several of the demarchs came to the Emperor, and told him that they could not keep the peace in the streets of their districts, so widespread and bitter had disorder and fighting become; the foreigners fought each other, or threatened and insulted each other, and the demarchs could not control them because they would pay no heed to orders given by Romans. The Emperor called the leaders of the Venetians and the Genoese before him, and asked what was the cause of the trouble between them. There was a sullen silence at first. The two nations had ranged themselves on either side of the hall like antagonists before a battle. They glowered at each other, and so sulfurous was the atmosphere in the room, thought Vrethiki, that had anyone put a match to it, it would have exploded like a charge of powder. “Come, gentlemen,” said the Emperor sternly. He had robed him self in purple, and put on his crown for this audience. He sat on the Gospel-book side of his throne, and held in his right hand his orb of state, in his left his silken bag of dust. “What have you to say for yourselves?” he demanded, frowning at his turbulent allies.

“They provoke us,” said one of the Langascos, the Genoese, at last. “They say it was our fault the attempt to burn the Turkish fleet failed. They taunt us with it …”

“It was your fault!” cried Minotto. “Because of you there was delay, and delay brought failure. Can you deny that? You said you wanted it put off so that you could join in, and that gave you time to get a message to your precious accomplices in Pera, and they gave the game away, like the stinking traitors they are!”

“It's a fine thing to be called a traitor by you!” cried Cattaneo, his hand on the hilt of his sword, “when you Venetian rats have been sneaking ships out to safety whenever you get the chance!”

“Our ships,” snarled Minotto, “have their rudders un shipped, and their sails and gear folded and stored within the City, so that all men can see we mean to stay. And yours? They are all ready to run at a moment's notice!”

“We certainly have no intention of making our vessels unseaworthy when they may be needed at any time to fight. We aren't cowards!” retorted Langasco.

“You are all in league with the men of Pera, and they are hand in glove with the Sultan!” said Minotto, ostentatiously turning his back.

The Emperor sat listening to them with his lips tight and a curious gray tinge on his sallow cheeks. Vrethiki, looking anxiously at him, thought he might be going to faint. But his voice was steady enough as he suddenly cried out to them, “For the pity of God, gentlemen, is not the enemy without enough for you, that you must start a war be tween yourselves?”

There was a silence. The nobles and captains looked ashamed. There were bowed heads, flushed cheeks. “In deed we must strive and work together,” said the Emperor. “God knows we will die together if we fail. Come now, there are no traitors here, but only brave and honorable Christians. Let me see you friends again before you leave my presence.”

Very slowly, very slowly and reluctantly, the two groups drew near each other. The movement was started by Justiniani, who had been standing quietly among the Genoese. He walked over and saluted Minotto gravely, and then took his hand. Then one by one the others followed suit.

But when they had trooped out, leaving Phrantzes, and Theophilus, and Notaras, and one or two other Romans standing round the throne, the Emperor said, despairingly, “We get weaker and less united by the day.”

Phrantzes said, “My Lord, I think we should negotiate.”

“Is it possible we will get any good of that?” said the Emperor doubtfully.

“I think there is a faint chance, my Lord,” said Phrantzes. “There is a peace party in the Sultan's camp. He must be disappointed at finding us so tough a nut to crack; he has failed on both sea and land. It is true we are weary; but then he has to keep his vast army in the field, and well fed, and in good heart. Time wears heavily on him too, we may be sure.”

“I will not deal openly with him,” said the Emperor. “But if it can be done secretly.

“We can do it through the men of Pera,” said Notaras. “We can find out what his terms would be.”

“Very well, find out,” said the Emperor wearily, rising to go to his prayers.

There seemed to be difficulty in getting an answer. A sealed letter was delivered to the Emperor two days later. The Sultan would give his word as a Moslem, that if the City were surrendered without conditions, the people and their property would be safe. The Emperor might go to the Morea if he wished, with his courtiers and his property. If the City were not surrendered it would be stormed.