The Walls of Byzantium (64 page)

He hadn’t slept at all in the night. He’d gone to bed with two words jostling each other in his mind.

Mistra
.

He would leave at dawn, ride back to Mistra, tell Plethon of what he’d found written on the sword. He would see Anna and tell her that he’d come back to her from wherever it was he
had to go, tell her to wait for him. Then he would return to Omar. His note explained it all. He’d be back at the monastery in ten days, maybe less. Omar must have faith in him. He’d even left his bag as hostage.

But now, as the landscape around him became less certain through the rain, as the warnings crashed out from the heavens, as the varied smells of the steppe combined into a single stench of wet leather and horse fear, he was not so sure.

Have I done the right thing?

He looked around him. It was as if he was separated from the world by this curtain of grey. He felt water course its way down his spine and thought of the spiced wine of the night before. He looked down at the sword by his side, saw the rain hitting the dragon head pommel in tiny explosions. He shivered.

Then he heard something beyond the curtain, something faint that wanted to get through: a shout.

Immediately he thought of the group that they’d seen following them on the previous day. It must be them. But where to hide? There were no hiding places on the steppe.

He stopped and listened.

The shout came again, this time closer – in front. Luke strained his eyes, wiping the drips from his eyelashes and nose.

There. A rider. Just one. Approaching fast.

A rider in a hurry
.

Luke waited for the man to draw up to him. He was cloaked against the rain and had large saddlebags strapped to the horse’s flanks. Luke couldn’t see his face.

‘Friend,’ the man said. He spoke in Turkic but it was not his tongue. ‘Is there a monastery ahead?’

Luke uncovered his head. ‘Benedo Barbi,’ he said, smiling. ‘You followed me?’

Just then the sky delivered another bone-jarring crash and Barbi’s horse reared. The Italian swore and grabbed hold of its mane. For a moment, Luke thought he might fall.

When he’d come back to earth and settled his horse, Barbi said, ‘I followed you from Bursa. It wasn’t difficult. You and the old man make strange companions. I came when I remembered where I’d seen the man before.’

‘What man?’

‘One of the men following you.’

Luke frowned. Unease had settled on him like another cloak.

‘His name is di Vetriano,’ said Barbi. ‘He’s Venetian. I saw him watching you in Bursa.’

Di Vetriano
.

‘You know him?’ asked Luke.

‘He’s an assassin. I met him in Cairo. He tried to kidnap one of the Mameluke chemists I was working with. He’d been sent to get what we knew about Greek fire.’

‘By the Doge?’

Barbi shrugged. ‘Probably. Anyway, he’s following you and that can’t be good. You’ve not seen him?’

Luke nodded slowly. ‘Yesterday. We saw him yesterday. With others. I must have passed them when I left this morning.’

A sudden gust of wind blew the cowl up over Barbi’s mouth. He pulled it down. The rain was harder now, almost blinding.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

But Luke was already turning his horse. ‘Later, Benedo. For now, we have to ride fast. There’s a good man in danger.’

In Mistra, the Despot was wiping away a tear. The tear was of happiness, of grief, of guilt. Anna, whom he’d last seen two
years past at Serres, who’d probably saved his life then and whom he’d not expected to see again, was sitting across from him.

With her was Plethon. Zoe had been left at the Laskaris house with Maria, who was still sleeping. She and Anna had talked quietly through much of the night of the one thing that mattered most, that gave hope.

I am in love
.

Maria’s mind had been more fragile than Murano glass and anything that might shatter it – Alexis, her father – had been put to one side to be looked at later when the time was right. Instead they’d talked of Luke, and Anna had woven a tapestry richer than any the Laskaris house possessed. She’d created a fair Varangian, a prince of
England
as Plethon had told her, taller than most, who rode a horse named Eskalon and wielded a sword with a secret. She created a man who could speak languages and dream labyrinths into life. She talked of how he’d saved her life once and then nearly brought her across the sea to Mistra. Her threads were of the real and unreal until they joined in a single weave, as Anna had intended, and her mother fell into the first sleep she’d had in weeks.

Finally, when she’d gently kissed her mother’s forehead and put a blanket over her, Anna had sat and listened to the air around her still ringing with her song of Luke, played to a distant, eastern drum.

Now she sat with Theodore and Plethon at the end of a long table in the Despot’s palace. The windows beyond them were canvasses on which an autumn sky was painted. A fire burned noisily in the grate and warm wine was laid before them.

The Despot spoke. ‘So the Emperor’s given up on negotiation?’

‘There’s no point, Majesty,’ said Plethon. ‘The Sultan laughed at me when I saw him in Edirne. Bayezid has resumed the siege and means to take Constantinople. Then it will be Mistra.’

Theodore sighed. He’d been feeling much older lately, as if the season’s decay had entered his bones. He missed Simon Laskaris with an intensity that had surprised him. He cried a lot these days.

‘How long will it be, do you think?’

‘No time soon,’ said Plethon. He’d not met this man before but had heard much to recommend him, especially from Anna. ‘They need cannon of a size as yet uncreated to bring down the walls.’

‘Which the Venetians are building for them?’

Plethon nodded. ‘Yes, but not always successfully. The casts are too big. They blow apart.’

‘And you encourage this … combustion?’

Plethon smiled. ‘I do what I can. I have a little money.’

Theodore rose and walked to one of the windows. On one side of the mullion, a pattern of leaves had arranged themselves across the glass. He breathed and rubbed his sleeve across its surface.

‘I’m told you do wonders,’ he murmured. He turned. ‘I’ve long wanted to meet you, Plethon I hope you will do me the honour of staying at the palace tonight? I would talk with you further, alone.’

The philosopher dipped his head. ‘The honour would be mine, Majesty.’ He paused. ‘The Emperor wishes me to go to Methoni. There is a bishop there.’

Theodore nodded. ‘The Bishop Adolfo. He is a Venier, cousin to the Doge of Venice.’

‘He is sympathetic to the cause of union,’ said Plethon. ‘He
has the Pope’s ear, and his cousin’s. May soon be made cardinal.’

‘But you cannot believe that another crusade is possible? Not after Nicopolis?’

‘The Christian princes are competitive, lord. Where one fails, another may succeed. It is possible with the Pope’s blessing.’

‘And the price?’

‘The union of the Churches of West and East. As you would expect.’

‘Which,’ said the Despot, ‘I am told you support. But it is not popular with the people. They would see it as another conquest. This time the Pope’s.’

Plethon nodded. He had placed his palms side by side on the table and seemed to be studying nails that needed some attention. ‘The talking may be enough,’ he said at last. ‘If the Venetians see another crusade as a possibility, then they may be persuaded to blow up more cannon. We need time.’

‘Time? Time for what?’ asked Theodore.

There was silence then. It was Anna that broke it.

‘Tamerlane.’

She had hardly moved during the conversation. Now she rose from the table and went over to stand next to the Despot. ‘Tamerlane to come to our rescue. One tyrant set against another. We are all pawns, aren’t we?’

Theodore took her hand. The tears were already in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Anna.’

Anna turned to the man sitting at the table. ‘Why him? Why must Luke do it?’

‘Because Luke
can
do it. He has the talents and he has the will.’

‘And will he return?’

‘I hope so. And when he does he will be a hero. The truth is now known about Nicopolis.’

‘Then I am released from Suleyman?’ she asked quietly. ‘If the Sultan goes to war with Tamerlane, what point is there any more in me marrying his son? Perhaps I can marry the hero instead?’

Plethon spoke with care. ‘Anna, much has to happen before Bayezid meets Tamerlane on the field of battle. We cannot afford to anger Suleyman or Mistra may fall before Constantinople.’ He paused. ‘You must go back.’

Anna nodded. She’d known it must be thus. They’d talked of it only days ago. She went over to a chair on which her cloak had been laid. Her voice was dull. ‘We should leave for my father’s funeral. Plethon, will you come with me to collect my mother?’

In the little church of St Sophia, the body of Simon Laskaris had been dressed in a long tunic of brushed silk of the deepest red dye. His face shone with the embalmer’s oil so that he seemed to be perspiring. He was laid out on a bed of velvet supported by trestles and behind him was a board on which the Laskaris arms looked out with dignity for the last time. There would be no heir to this illustrious name.

Anna had walked to the church, hand in hand with her mother, the Despot and Plethon either side of them. Black hung from every window and whispers hung over the people lining the streets like a shroud.

Simon Laskaris was to be buried at last.

For most, it was a relief. Since Serres, he had acted as a man deranged, walking the streets at night in his bedclothes, his white hair unkempt, his beard brittle with food. People had
ached to see such a man shorn of his dignity and they remembered the cause of it and wept.

Tonight, they stood beneath their torches until the Despot’s party had passed and then followed them up the hill to stand in silent vigil around the church of St Sophia.

Those inside the church took their seats in the side chapel where the leaders of Mistra had been buried for generations. Anna, Maria, Theodore and Bartolomea sat in the front row. Behind them sat the highest-ranking men of the court and their wives.

Now the singing began and the incense swirled and the candles fluttered in the small draught that came through the windows high in the chapel’s walls. The Despot rose to stand beside the body of his oldest friend and spoke a solemn eulogy that told of greatness and friendship.

And Anna watched it all with dry eyes.

Simon Laskaris dead. Alexis dead. Luke as good as dead
.

For no reason, she thought of Zoe. Had she come?

Zoe had come. Her rank permitted it and she was deemed unguilty of the sins of her father and brother. She had crept into the chapel after the service had begun and now stood at the back. Her eyes were fixed on the wall behind the altar.

It was dark by now and difficult to see much above the weak light of the many candles. But she could just make out a figure, then another.

Yes.

It was a scene she’d seen before, a scene she’d covered with paint in a Varangian church in Constantinople..

It wasn’t identical, but the composition was the same: the open tomb, the guards lying asleep around it; one guard, his
sword pointing. But there was something new in this picture.

She looked up. Her heart was beating fast.

Yes. There it was. The risen Christ.

She had lied to Plethon. She’d found nothing in Siward’s tomb in Constantinople. She had come to Mistra hoping to find something.

And there it was.