The Towers of Samarcand (4 page)

‘Because it is a single casket and the casket is not large.’

‘So what do you think it is?’

‘I don’t know. But Plethon does and he thinks it important enough to save an empire. Or destroy it.’ She paused. ‘And Anna knows where it is because she reburied it with him.’

Suleyman rolled on to his back. He sighed. ‘She wouldn’t tell me.’

‘Not under torture?’ Zoe asked softly. ‘I think she would.’

Suleyman didn’t reply. He was looking straight up at the ceiling of the tent and his eyes were unblinking. Zoe sat down again on the bed. ‘I think she would talk under torture,’ she murmured. ‘What do you care more about: her or Constantinople? Her or the bowstring?’

Suleyman sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, his back to Zoe. He sank his head into his hands, running his long hair through his fingers. She could see his shoulders
moving in time with his breathing. She moved across the bed slowly until she was holding him from behind, her breasts pressed to his spine, her arms circling his forearms.

‘You couldn’t do it, could you,’ she said quietly. It wasn’t a question. ‘Even for Constantinople. Even for your life.’

Suleyman was sitting very still, his shoulders the only part of him moving. He was staring into the shadows of the tent. They were both silent for a long time, both acknowledging new boundaries, new vulnerabilities.

‘There is another way,’ she said.

He didn’t reply.

She moved to sit beside him, no longer a lover, now a friend. ‘Luke. She would tell you if you threatened Luke.’

‘But I don’t know where he is. Only Yakub knows and some Venetians who are now dead.’

She took his hand. ‘I could find him. Di Vetriano recruited Karamanids to help him take the monastery The Karamanid lands are next to Yakub’s Germiyans’. The Karamanids might know something.’

Now Suleyman turned to her. ‘You would go there?’

Zoe nodded. ‘And bring him back.’ She paused. ‘For you.’

‘And your price?’

She squeezed his hand and then brought it slowly to her lips. ‘There is no price, lord. I want you to win.’

After six months with the tribe, Luke had learnt their language but still hadn’t got on a horse. Gomil had seen to that.

The chief’s son hated Luke for many reasons. He hated him for helping Shulen. He hated him for humiliating him by the fire. Most of all he hated him for being there at all. Luke’s presence in the camp pointed to a plan that faced east, to an alliance with Tamerlane. Gomil wanted the tribe to look west, to march with Bayezid into the Christian heartland of Europe.

Early on, he’d seen Luke’s ways with horses; how he could talk to them, be understood by them. He saw how Luke loved them above all things and decided that his punishment would be to be removed from them. His father had given him Luke to train. He hadn’t said how.

*

Over the winter months, life in the camp was pared down to the necessities for survival. In the early days, when the sun still had some pale energy, the meat from animals was pegged out to dry and huge vats of ewes’ or mares’ milk boiled to extract butter and the rock-hard curds that would keep through the cold days and be turned into yogurt. Cured meat and millet
meal were stored inside the gers alongside piles of dried cow dung and sheep pellets for fuel.

Afterwards Luke would remember it as a sort of hibernation where all activity was rationed, directed solely to the task of staying alive. He spent much of the time sitting with Arkal in the ger, where the light through the horn of the smoke hole disfigured all that it touched. At first, Arkal just stared at him. Then, by degrees, she began to talk to him. Then to teach him.

First, she taught him the words to describe the pale cocoon of their existence.
Khana
was the wooden lattice, and she stretched her thin arm out to touch it, on to which the
isegei
, or felt, was attached; the poles in the ceiling above were
uni
and the smoke hole, which could be opened and closed by these pulley ropes, was the
toghona
.

When the snow paused, they went outside and he learnt the words for the trees that bunched on the valley sides like teeth, for the freezing river below them and the snow all around. She limped over to the giant open sheds that stretched between poles, pulling his sleeve as they went. She told him about the sheep and cattle and goats that lived there. She pointed high, high into the sky, to describe the clouds and wind that moved them and the black birds that were flung about on its currents.

By now he knew that the strange girl who’d sought shelter from the storm had survived. Her ger had been erected away from the others with the same horsehides and skulls surrounding it like hunched spectres. She never appeared but the old man did, usually to scavenge amongst the bones left outside doors or to gather water from the river. Luke wanted to know about them but Arkal scowled and tapped her head to say they were mad and dragged him away to show him other things.

And so Luke learnt to speak their language, thankful for
the gift that Fiorenza had said was the most remarkable she’d seen. He learnt simple words at first and some names. The chief was called Etabul, his son Gomil. The mad man had no name but he was the shaman who would enter trances to connect the tribe to their ancestors and the old, old gods of the wind and steppe that they’d not quite forgotten in the onslaught of Islam. The girl was called Shulen and might be his daughter and was a witch. It was said that she had the art of healing although few dared approach her for she was unclean and evil spirits walked at her side.

Arkal told him that Gomil was the best archer and bowman in the tribe but that he was a proud and violent man. He’d gone with Yakub to fight for Bayezid at Nicopolis where the tribe had lost many men. He’d returned from the battle full of hate for the infidel West, repeating again and again Bayezid’s threat to water his horses at the altar of St Peter’s in Rome. But his father had shaken his head and talked of Tamerlane and now this infidel, Lug, was living among them. She told him that Gomil hated him entirely.

Arkal became his friend, shy at first then firmer than granite. Luke told her about himself, how he was a Varangian and how Varangians had once been numbered in their thousands, an imperial guard to an emperor that ruled in Europe and Asia. Now they were few and there was little of the Empire left to rule. He didn’t tell her of the treasure but then what was there to tell? Only Plethon and Anna knew where it was. What it was.

As the weeks dragged on and the air turned colder and great drifts of snow piled high against the gers, holding their doors closed fast, the life of the tribe became confined to the tent. Luke came to understand that the ger was a place of individual territories: the right side for the men, their bows and dogs; the
left for the women, the children and the cooking. The hearth was a sacred place where the family spirits dwelt and where no one should tread, positioned such that the noonday sun would strike it daily through the toghona. Luke understood the importance of these rules as the weeks became months and the space inside the tent grew smaller by the day.

Then the first murmur of spring arrived on the breeze. The sun came out and washed over the snow like Cypriot wine and men and women emerged from their tents blinking and rubbing their eyes. Children ran down to the river to break the ice and plunge into its icy torrent. Women joined them to wash away the dirt of weeks and the men checked the horses which, to Luke’s astonishment, had almost all survived.

But it didn’t last. After a few hours, clouds hurried in to mask the soft heat of the sun and an icy wind came down the valley from the north, shaking snow from the trees. Soon people retreated back to the warmth and doors were pulled shut.

Another storm hit them that night and the gers trembled and rattled beneath its assault. Great forks of lightning fractured the dark and thunder shook the earth, making Berta and Arkal cling to each other with every crash. The boy rose from his pallet and stood there, shaking with fear. He turned to his mother and, in his rush to be with her, tripped and fell headlong into the fire.

At first, no one was quite sure what had happened. Then lightning lit up the tent and the boy was crouching there, his face a contortion of burns, his mouth open, too shocked to scream. Torguk leapt from his pallet and rushed for the bucket of water, hurling it at the boy while Berta thrashed at his smoking clothes. Then he screamed.

Arkal was shouting at Luke and gesturing to the door. ‘Take
him to the shaman’s daughter! My father is too frightened.
Go!
’

Luke lifted the boy in his arms as Arkal opened the door. However he held him, he seemed to touch a burnt part of the body and the boy writhed and clawed and bit to be free. Outside the tent, the air was a confusion of snow and flying debris. Luke hunched his big frame into a shield for the child, turning his back to the wind and moving slowly towards where he thought the shaman’s tent stood.

‘
Shulen!
’

The wind picked up the shout and scattered it into a thousand fragments.

‘
Shulen! Where are you?
’

He could hardly see anything in the darkness and the snow was in his eyes, blinding him. He opened his mouth to yell again. In an instant, his mouth was full of freezing water, choking him. The boy beneath him was no longer struggling. Perhaps he was dead.

A flash of lightning lit the world around him. He thought he saw skull-poles away to his right. He lurched forward, pulling his cloak over the boy and feeling the heat of terrible burns against his arms.

‘
Shulen!
’ he screamed into the night, wiping the snow from his eyes with the rim of his cloak.

He stumbled against the side of a tent, feeling rope against the side of his arm. The boy was shaking in his arms and Luke felt warm vomit wash down his forearm. The boy was alive.

‘
Shulen!
’

He didn’t even know if she would help. She was an outcast, a pariah, a witch. He’d never heard her speak more than a word at a time.

Why should she help him?

His elbow hit something upright and wooden; a door. He threw his weight against it.

He fell into the tent, landing on his elbows to protect the child. He looked up, shaking his head to clear the snow from his face and hair. Someone was standing above him who was tall and slender and free of dirt. She was dressed in a white caftan that fell from the contours of her body like rain.

Shulen
.

Luke looked around him in astonishment. The ger was small and its walls were covered in the skins of different animals. It was tidy and warm and at its centre stood a brazier that threw a scattered light on to everything around. To one side was a low bed and on it lay the old man. Low sounds came from his lips like a chant.

‘The boy needs you,’ said Luke as he laid the frozen body on to the soft pelt. ‘They say you can heal.’ He looked at her but her face was empty of emotion. ‘Can you help him?’

He leant towards her but she recoiled like a snake. She bared her teeth and growled and her hands came up, her fingers splayed like claws.

‘Shulen …’

She hissed something and swayed back and forth on her heels as if preparing to strike. She pointed at the door.

‘The boy will die …’

She sprang forward and pulled the door open. The storm rushed in, lifting the skins from the walls and scattering coals from the fire across the carpet. The air smelt of burnt wool. Luke looked desperately at the girl. Her eyes were entirely white.

She will keep him
.

He looked back at the boy. He’d stopped moving. There was no time to waste. Luke stumbled out into the night and heard
the thud of slammed wood behind. He looked about him but could see nothing. There was no light beyond an occasional spasm from the sky. He sat on the ground and gathered his cloak around him. What should he do? He couldn’t go back to Torguk and Berta, having left their son to the mercy of the witch. And Shulen would rather the boy froze to death than let Luke stay in her tent. He had no option but to wait. But to wait here meant death: his joints were already stiffening in the cold.

The door opened and he felt heat against his back. He turned to see two skins flung in his direction. He rose quickly but the door shut and her name died on his lips. He picked up the furs and wrapped them around him as tightly as his numbed hands would allow.

*

Later, Luke tried to remember how long he’d lain outside the shaman’s ger that night. It could have been one hour or six. All he remembered was the cold: the cold that seemed to freeze the very blood in his veins. The throbbing agony of frostbite in his fingers and toes made him cry out at first, made him dream of plunging them into the hot embers of Shulen’s fire. But soon his head cleared, the messages of pain freezing on their journey to his mind. He tried to fight the drift into nothingness that stole up his body like a vine; tried to conjure back the pain that might keep him alive. But the tide was too strong and he felt an overwhelming longing for sleep, for the oblivion that would finish it all. His last thought was of someone far away.

Anna
.

*

But it wasn’t Anna that looked down on him when he awoke some time later. He was inside the shaman’s tent and he was warm and his naked body was touched by fine fur and the air around him was heavy with the scent of herbs.

Shulen was kneeling on the rug beside him and the fire was behind her so that he could not see her face. She was completely still and the caftan hung from her shoulders without moving. He could see dark shadows below small breasts. He wondered if she was even breathing. Held between her hands was a small earthenware bowl, steaming.

Luke raised himself to his elbow and tried to say something but no sound came from his mouth. The storm outside seemed to have blown itself out and he glanced up at the toghona and could see no glimmer of dawn beyond it. He looked around the tent and saw the boy lying next to the man on the bed. He saw the rise and fall of his little chest, the even breathing of a child in the peace of sleep.