The Walls of Byzantium (40 page)

‘A dye fixative?’ asked Fiorenza. ‘Like alum?’

‘Like alum,’ said Luke, and kicked his mount into a trot.

An hour later they were sitting on their horses on a hill overlooking the new, and still largely unbuilt, port of Limenas. It was currently made up of two large warehouses with some quays and jetties, all under construction, which stood on the flat ground at the head of a long, enclosed bay. The water was deep here and, with its natural leeward protection, the port could shelter large numbers of ships of any size and would, hoped Luke, eventually be the main place of export for his mastic.

A single square-rigged cog was being unloaded at one of the quays, which surprised Luke, who’d not believed the port yet open to business. A dark shape was in the water beside it with two smaller shapes on either side.

‘Is that a horse?’ he asked.

‘Yes, it looks like one,’ said Fiorenza, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand.

‘What’s it doing in the water? I think it’s coming ashore from that boat. There are men in the water with it.’

‘Shall we go and look?’ suggested Fiorenza and she put her heels to the side of her mare and started down the hill. Soon they were cantering across the levels towards two men who had emerged with the horse from the water and were, more or less, nude.

But as they got closer, it was only the horse that Luke saw. It was a magnificent stallion of perhaps fifteen hands and blacker than the deepest shade of darkness. It had a powerful neck that curved into a head held high, its mane clamped to it like seaweed. Beneath was a broad chest that shone with sea and muscle as the animal moved in its fear. Its legs ended in socks white as snow. Luke was transfixed.

‘What is he?’ he asked the older of the men, who was hurrying into a pair of cotton breeches.

But the man didn’t answer and Fiorenza, looking up at the arms of the Kingdom of Seville and Leon which were emblazoned on the ship’s pennant, said, ‘They’re from Spain.’

But one of them had understood. The younger man bowed low to the Princess, straightened and said in Greek: ‘It is the Horse of Kings, Sir. The Cartujano in our tongue.’

‘Cartujano?’ asked Luke, dismounting. ‘What is that? Is it a breed?’

‘It is the horse of Al-Andalus,’ said the man, ‘and it is the great-grandson of Esclavo. It has been bred by monks, the Carthusians of the monastery of Cazalla in the foothills of the Sierra Morena. It is where we are from.’

‘You’re monks?’ asked Luke, walking over to the horse and taking its big head with slow and practised gentleness in one hand while stroking its neck with the other.

The young man laughed and then said something to his companion and they both bowed from the waist so that two globes of sunburnt flesh appeared before Luke like pomegranates.

‘Monks indeed,’ said Luke. ‘What is Esclavo, Father?’

Fiorenza answered. ‘Esclavo was the foundation stallion. You can tell from the horns on his head.’ She smiled and took his hand. ‘Happy birthday, Luke.’

The horns turned out to be low protruberances of bone behind the horse’s ears which, like the warts beneath its tail and the whorls of white hair on its rump, confirmed its Esclavo provenance. Asked to name him, Luke in his joyous bewilderment had chosen the one he already had: Norillo. It seemed appropriate.

Luke had hardly waited to thank the monks or Fiorenza before leading the horse away to the shade of a nearby tree to
make its acquaintance in the way he knew best. The monks watched how the animal became still as Luke talked quietly into its ear, how its high head fell to nuzzle Luke’s hair and face and how, eventually, it allowed Luke to saddle and bridle it with leather that still dripped with the sweat of another horse. Then he was on Norillo’s back and patting the huge neck with his palm.

Fiorenza turned to the two monks.

‘Thank you, Fathers. You have brought a horse from the sea worthy of one who will understand it like no other. Please convey my thanks to His Majesty.’ Then she climbed on to her mare and, with the cry of the hunt, smacked its rear with the flat of her hand and sprang into the gallop.

The rest of the day passed as a blur of passing landscape. Leaving the juvenile port of Limenas behind, Luke and Fiorenza raced each other up the coastline with all the speed that the terrain would allow. Norillo turned out to have a balance and instinct far in advance of his three years and his reaction to even the subtlest instruction was instantaneous. Luke looked down at the ears, alert as antennae, and at the mass of black, glossy mane that submerged the proof of special parentage. He felt the muscle moving beneath him and a joy he hadn’t experienced since Eskalon.

At midday they stopped by a windmill at a point that overlooked the little island of Nisaki where stood a chapel that sailors used both as a place of worship and a lighthouse. A month before, Luke had built a stone beacon next to the church which, along with a chain of others along the coast, would be lit in times of danger. Now there was no flame apart from the reflection of the sun on the sea and the tiles of the chapel roof and they ate a lunch of bread and cheese and melon in the
shade of the windmill’s white walls and talked, languidly, of horses.

Afterwards they slept for a while until Luke was awakened by the wet, puckered lips of a big head that leant down to him with the shyness of early friendship. Luke opened his eyes.

‘Norillo!’ he laughed. ‘You want to go on. Of course you do.’ He reached up and scratched the soft, velvety pad of the nose and then in the hollow beneath the jaw. The horse snorted and blew and tossed his head high in his impatience to be off.

‘I think the message is plain,’ came the voice of Fiorenza who was sitting, back against the windmill. She had been watching Luke sleep.

Luke rose to his feet and helped Fiorenza to hers. He tightened the horses’ girths and held out cupped hands for her to mount. Then he swung into his saddle and broke into a gentle canter down the hill in the direction of the coastal track.

The afternoon was drawing to a close when they finally reined in their exhausted horses at the top of Cape Pari. Although no breath disturbed a hair of their heads, there was wind out on the sea before them, and the carpet of waves was patched with white as its fingers passed over it. Luke had seen dolphins here and, once, the gigantic mass of a whale. Now only fishing boats sat like fat, gaudy women with nets spread like skirts. Fiorenza sighed with contentment and leant back in her saddle.

‘Trebizond,’ she whispered.

‘Is that where you think of when you look at the sea?’ asked Luke.

‘Sometimes. When I’m happy.’

Luke looked at her happiness and said, ‘We’ve talked of everywhere in the world except Trebizond. Why is that?’

‘Because to think of it in any mood less perfect than this makes me miss it.’

‘So can we talk of it now?’

‘If you like. But not here. Not in view of the sea.’

They turned their horses away and walked them, side by side, through a field strewn with poppies that fell gently to a thickly wooded valley. Once amongst the trees, the shock of sudden shadow left them both blinded for a moment, and the cool beneath the canopy of luminous leaves, green as if painted on glass, made them shiver. Here were ancient oaks with gnarled and bulbous branches that twisted their limbs in dark embrace like widows at a funeral. As their eyes adjusted to the gloom, they could see that they were riding on a thick carpet of fern and moss tattooed by the shifting light above them.

Further on, the gradient of the slope steepened so that they were riding into a deep ravine, at the bottom of which could be heard the rush and gurgle of a stream. As they drew closer, their horses rocking from side to side as they placed hooves amidst the pebbles of the track, they could see that the stream had high banks that were swathed in sunshine. At their end was a waterfall, its glottal sound spreading down the valley like organ chords.

Closer, where the stream gathered into pools and the banks were lower and sunlit and dotted with flowers, there were butterflies that danced in and out of the light like child ballerinas. It was a place of overwhelming beauty and Luke knew that Fiorenza had come here before.

They tethered their horses in the shade of the trees and walked out into the sunshine amidst the butterflies to sit by the side of the stream. There was a fungoid smell of earth and
leaves and hidden flowers and something sweeter that must be attracting the butterflies.

‘Tell me about Trebizond,’ said Luke, lying back on the warm grass with his hands cradling his head. A dragonfly fanned its haphazard way through the ferns and he stretched his toes towards it.

‘Ah, Trebizond,’ said Fiorenza. She seemed lost in a memory and a faint smile lifted the corner of her lips and deepened her dimples into tiny dots of shadow. ‘There are three jewels remaining in the imperial crown of Byzantium,’ she said, ‘and they are Constantinople, Mistra and Trebizond. And much the finest is Trebizond.’

She paused to pick yellow verbena from the ground beside her, crushing it to powder between her fingers and lifting them to her nose.

‘Imagine a city of marble and gold rising in its own amphitheatre to look out over a sea called Black but which is in fact bluer than lapis lazuli,’ she murmured. ‘Imagine it built on a table of rock which sits in front of pine-forested mountains that march inland for fifty miles. Imagine deep, wooded ravines either side that plunge to boiling cataracts, fed by springs from those mountains. Imagine walls of the purest white within which are palaces and orchards and temples and libraries and baths and everything that provides comfort for the mind and body. And imagine the smell of incense mixed with myrtle and citrus fruit and musk, and imagine it with you every day of your life.’

Luke’s eyes were closed. ‘I can imagine.’

‘Then you are in Trebizond,’ said Fiorenza.

And when she said that, Luke saw a man and woman seated on backless ivory thrones within a palace, perched high as an
eagle’s nest, where every window and terrace looked out over golden domes and the greens and blues of forest, mountain and sea and the speckled verdigris of twin gorges full of tumbling water and birdsong. He saw, standing beside them, three women who looked like Fiorenza holding hands and waiting for something.

‘I was the lucky one,’ said Fiorenza. ‘I was niece to the Megas Komnenos, the Basileus Alexios III, Emperor and Autocrat of the Entire East. Had I been his daughter, I would have been married to a khan or emir that threatened our frontiers. The Komnenoi are famed for their beautiful daughters and use them as coinage to buy peace with local barbarians.’

‘And why is Trebizond so rich?’ he asked.

‘Why? Because much of the silk and spices that end up in the markets of Venice, Florence or Bruges go through Trebizond. And the Basileus takes his cut every time.’

‘Could we sell our mastic there?’

‘Better than that,’ replied Fiorenza, gently rubbing pollen from her fingers. ‘From Trebizond, you could sell it across the entire East. The caravans that come over the mountains have ten thousand camels in them and stretch for fifteen miles. They could certainly manage some mastic on their way home.’

Luke opened his eyes and saw his dragonfly engaged in desultory dance with another of its species above a rash of pink clover. It hummed above the agreeable burble of the stream and the music of the woman by his side who spoke of fabulous things.

‘And alum?’

She glanced at him.

‘You didn’t mention alum,’ said Luke. He rolled on to his side and rested his cheek on his palm to look at the Princess
from Trebizond. He said, as if reading from a report, ‘Trebizond also exports alum. A great deal of alum. Fourteen thousand
cantara
from the quarries at Karahissar every year, and its quality almost matches Phocaea’s. The monopoly belongs to Venice, who snatched it from the Genoese using bribery and threat. But it’s expensive because it takes longer to mine and bring over the Kerasous mountains and because the Basileus imposes high rates of duty.’

‘You are well informed,’ said Fiorenza, smiling.

Luke dipped his head to the compliment. ‘And the price of alum is soaring because we can’t get ours off our island and the Venetians can’t get theirs through the blockade at Constantinople.’ He paused. ‘Which is why we must find ships.’ He rolled on to his back. ‘Or I suppose we could make it irrelevant.’

‘Irrelevant?’

‘What if mastic does the same thing as alum? It’s certainly cheaper to produce. What then?’

Fiorenza smiled and studied the tips of her fingers, smudged with dust. ‘Then my uncle would become very nervous.’

‘Nervous?’

She blew the dust with the lightest of breaths so that it rose in a tiny cloud and vanished. ‘Why do you think the Turks have let his tiny empire survive so long? Do you know how big his army is?’

Luke shook his head.

‘Four thousand men. My uncle has survived because of the beauty of his daughters and the tribute he pays into the Sultan’s coffers. Tribute from alum.’

They were silent after that, both thinking of similar things, both staring at the ground.