The Towers of Samarcand (6 page)

‘Thank God,’ she said, pulling away. ‘We were worried.’

‘We?’ asked Longo.

‘Me, the dogs, Giovanni. He’d stopped kicking.’ She brought her hands to her middle. ‘There, he’s started again. He knows you’re safe.

She had started calling the child inside her Giovanni, certain that it was a boy. Longo, less certain, smiled and put his hands over hers.

Fiorenza brought his hands to her lips. ‘Was it very fierce?’ She remembered Barbi and turned to him. ‘Did we lose many?’

‘None, lady,’ replied Barbi. ‘The village worked. We have Luke to thank.’

‘And you,’ said Longo, turning to the engineer. The dogs were now sitting on either side of him, looking up with devotion. He held a dog’s ear in each hand. ‘After all, you built them.’

‘But it was Luke’s design, Luke’s dream.’ Barbi glanced at Fiorenza. ‘We just interpreted it.’

Fiorenza thought back to the
kendos
, the celebration of the mastic harvest beside the sea where Luke had had the dream that had brought forth the villages. Her hand went back to her belly. ‘You must be tired and hungry.’

*

Much later, when they’d eaten and drunk and washed away the worst of the dirt, they talked about Barbi’s visit to Mistra. Fiorenza asked: ‘Is she very beautiful?’

The engineer smiled as he thought of Anna. ‘She’s nearly as beautiful as you, lady. She has red hair and green eyes and a face that might launch a thousand ships if they hadn’t already been put out for you.’

Fiorenza threw back her head and laughed. She’d never heard Barbi speak more than a sentence, certainly not one like that. ‘She’s clearly turned your head, engineer. Suddenly you’re a poet!’

Longo leant forward. ‘Unfortunately she’s turned Prince Suleyman’s as well. There’s some story of him meeting her when he first took an army to Mistra five years ago. He is infatuated with her and returned with another army soon after Benedo left. She’s in Edirne now.’

‘Does Luke know?’

Barbi shook his head. ‘I doubt it. It’s probably better that way.’

Fiorenza picked up her glass. Inside was iced water flavoured with lime. She took a sip and put the glass down with care. She turned to Barbi. ‘Does Luke know about me?’ She reached over and took her husband’s hand. ‘About
us
?’

‘That you’re with child? Yes, Dimitri told him at Bursa.’ Barbi paused. ‘He was overwhelmed.’

‘As are we,’ laughed Longo. ‘It’s a miracle, nothing less.’

Barbi said, ‘He told us about Nicopolis as well. He didn’t betray the Christian army. He tried to save it. Plethon confirmed it in Mistra.’

Longo smiled. ‘I never thought that he did. He is a member of the campagna and therefore a man of honour.’

Fiorenza asked, ‘What happened after Nicopolis?’

Barbi stretched his legs. He was tired and wanted to go to bed. ‘You heard about the slaughter of the French knights? That Luke and his three friends survived because a gazi chief pointed out that the Holy Book forbids the execution of prisoners below a certain age?’

She nodded.

‘Well, after that he was sent to live amongst the tribes in the chief’s
beylik
. He’s there now. And he survived a Venetian assassination attempt on the way.’

Fiorenza looked up quickly. She was frowning. ‘Venetian?’

‘A man called di Vetriano whom I’d already met in Alexandria. A poisonous species. He’s dead now.’

She asked, ‘Why did he want to kill Luke?’

Barbi’s eyes still stung from the soot. He put his fingers to them, massaging the lids. ‘The Serenissima seemed to have got it into its head that mastic could cure the plague and that Luke knew the compound that would do it.’ He paused. ‘It can’t of course, any more than it can fix dye. People are getting over-excited.’

Fiorenza had gone very quiet. The frown was still on her brow and she appeared to be thinking hard. She didn’t react when Barbi asked leave to retire. Longo smiled. ‘Benedo, my wife is distracted. Of course you must go to bed.’

The engineer rose, bowed, and removed himself from the terrace.

Longo rose and looked down at his wife. ‘I should follow him.’ He paused. ‘You were thinking of the Venetians?’

Fiorenza nodded slowly. ‘I was thinking that they seem to spread their malice everywhere.’

Longo yawned. ‘Well, the Turks certainly knew where to go tonight. They landed at Limenas and marched straight to Mesta.’

‘You still suspect the Medici agent?’

The Medici bankers of Florence had lent the campagna the money to build the maze-villages. Most of it had been repaid. Longo inclined his head. ‘There’s no reason for Tommaso Bardolli to be still on this island; the bank has no office here. And the Medici are friends with Venice. They’ve lent them the money to re-equip the Arsenale to build ships and cannon for the Turk.’

Fiorenza nodded. ‘And I’m told Bardolli spends much of his time riding around the south of the island.’

Longo yawned again. ‘In six months we’ll have enough money to repay the full loan,’ he said. ‘I’ll go to Florence then and ask for Signor Bardolli to be given a new posting.’

‘No,’ said Fiorenza. ‘I should go since I arranged the loan. In six months, God willing, I will be well enough to travel.’

Marchese Longo might have argued the point had not exhaustion broken over him so that he had to put his hand out to the balustrade. Anyway, six months was a long way away.

After Giovanni has come into our world
.

*

Some time later, in Bayezid’s capital of Edirne, when the harem was awakening from its afternoon rest and applying
mastic to its many mouths and the fires were being lit in the palace kitchens, Zoe was sitting beneath an orange tree in a little courtyard outside the harem walls. Fruit hung above her head like planets. She was thinking about Luke.

She’d not seen him since before Nicopolis, almost a year ago. She knew that he was somewhere in Yakub’s beylik and had a plan for discovering where. But was she bringing him back for Suleyman or for herself? She frowned.

For Suleyman, of course
.

Surely, whatever attachment had come from growing up with Luke in Monemvasia had disappeared, if it could ever be said to have existed. He’d been her servant, after all. And it had surely vanished, at least on his part, when she’d lied about Damian’s accident all those years back. Did she mind? Why
was
she bringing him back?

For me?

She heard someone clear their throat behind her and turned. Pavlos Mamonas was standing there, more supplicant than father. He was dressed, as always, in Venetian black, and wore long riding boots turned down at the top. His hair was darker than she’d remembered it and she wondered, fleetingly, if he’d resorted to dye. He held his hat in his hands.

‘I’m not disturbing you?’

Zoe would have preferred some warning. ‘Of course not, Father. Come and sit.’

Pavlos Mamonas sat. He put his hat on his knees and looked at his daughter. ‘You look well. Mistra suited you?’

Zoe turned to him, irritated. ‘I was imprisoned. It was tolerable.’

‘Why were you there at all?’

This was why she’d have liked some notice. She thought hard.
‘To accompany Anna to her father’s funeral. Someone from our family had to go and it was hardly going to be Damian.’

Father and daughter were silent, both contemplating the feebleness of the lie. Pavlos said: ‘You have some influence over Prince Suleyman.’

Zoe remained silent.

‘He is not in favour.’

‘Which is why you now prefer to run errands for his father?’

Zoe looked back at the tree. Pavlos Mamonas put his hand on his daughter’s. ‘The family is in a difficult situation, Zoe. Venice still wants Chios. Bayezid has forbidden any further attacks on the island because its mastic stops his toothache. Suleyman’s last attempt was repulsed. He’s unlikely to try again. Difficult.’

‘So Venice gives Suleyman the cannon to take Constantinople. Byzantium falls and Suleyman gives Chios to Venice. It seems simple.’

Mamonas sighed. ‘The Doge is disinclined to supply the cannon just now.’

‘And Suleyman is disinclined to go back to Chios.’ She paused. ‘Again, difficult.’

Zoe looked down at her father’s hand still covering hers and removed it. Then she stood and walked over to a column as if a message had appeared on its fluted sides. She looked up at it. ‘Father, why should I help you?’

Pavlos Mamonas shook his head slowly. ‘Zoe, your brother …’

‘My brother is more competent drunk than sober.’

Her father remained silent. Zoe was stroking a ridge in the pillar with her fingertips. She said, ‘If Suleyman gets Chios for Venice against his father’s wishes, it will be risky for him … for me. I’ll want a reward appropriate to the risk.’

Pavlos waited. He was watching her carefully. He wondered,
as he often did, about what might have occurred between her and the Varangian, the one he’d punished for letting the horse trample Damian. He wondered whether it was the bitter residue of loss that had created such ambition within his daughter.

Then she turned and smiled. ‘Your empire. I want your empire when you die.’

Luke’s second spring with the tribe came in a rush. The thaw was sudden and the air crackled with storms that arrived with no warning. Feet sank to the ankle in plushy ground and the frozen river bubbled off its ice, then rose to a torrent.

The grass on the valley sides grew at a speed that astonished him. First came a brown stubble which overnight became green. Then a carpet of flowers rose from the ground, turning shy, insect-hazed heads towards the sun. At night the valley sang a strange, whispered song, lulling the tribe into sleep beneath a giant moon, poised on its rim before beginning its journey through the stars.

Every day, birds flew over in ever-larger formations: geese and duck and ptarmigan homing back to the warm lakes of the south where the carp and perch were already beginning to spawn. The air was full of the shrill cries of their travel, and the shriller cries of animal birthing. On all sides was the sound of forest awakening, of trees released from their blanket of snow, of the creak and crack of stretching limbs, the hiss of sap rising.

It was a time of birth but also a time of burial. Many of the tribe’s old had died in the winter, their bodies placed out in the
freezing snow. Now the dead men’s horses were slain and their bodies put next to them in their graves. Their saddles, bows and bridles straddled them both, bonding man to rider in their journey into an easier world. A few of the horses had succumbed to the cold and their flesh lay drying in the sun and the wind. What couldn’t be ridden or honoured would be eaten.

The tribe wouldn’t move to its summer pastures out on the steppe until the birthing and the first shearing were done. Until then, the shepherds out on the hills would be midwives as well as watchmen. Luke’s daily task was to carry great bales of fleece to the women, who laid them out on the felting mats, beating them hard while the children ran back and forth from the river to fetch water to sprinkle over them. Then the fleece would be layered and tied on to skins stretched between poles and thrashed until a single mat of perfectly smooth felt had been created.

It was tedious work and Luke longed to ride but Gomil had prevented his every attempt to get on a horse. Now there was an expedition gathered to hunt Chukar partridge with hawks around the southern lakes. They would bring back fish glue for the bows and goose feathers for the arrows. Gomil was to lead it. But first he had to bid farewell to his father in his ger.

Luke was helping Arkal tie her younger brother to a pony. The boy had recovered from his burns and it was time for him to learn to ride He’d be tied to the saddle until he became part of the horse; until he became a centaur.

‘Lug!’ shouted one of the expedition. ‘Does he have a name yet?’

Luke looked around, shielding his eyes from the glare of the morning sun. The dew was still on the ground and a low mist rose around the horses as they stamped. The man was grinning.

‘His name is Tsaurig,’ said Luke, glancing at Arkal, ‘And today’s his first ride.’

‘Will you teach him?’

‘I will teach him. With Arkal.’

There was laughter amongst the men on horseback. ‘But, Lug,’ one called out, ‘you cannot ride!’

Luke looked away. ‘I will teach him on the rein,’ he said, yanking the string too hard.

The sound of argument came from the chief’s tent. The riders fell silent and Luke leant into the boy’s saddle, pulling the girth tight. ‘There, Tsaurig, you’ll ride like your father now. And soon’ – he nodded in the direction of the hunting party – ‘you’ll be bringing fat partridge back from the plains.’

The door of the ger flew open and Gomil strode out, his deel flying behind. He wrenched the reins of his horse from a rider and vaulted into the saddle. ‘What are we waiting for?’ he barked, swinging round. ‘We go to Karamanid territory. So keep your bows strung.’

Luke looked across the saddle at Arkal. She shrugged. ‘I heard my parents speak of it,’ she whispered. ‘He’s been told to marry a girl from the Karamanids.’

‘The
Karamanids
?’ said Luke. ‘But they’re your enemies!’

‘It’s come from Yakub,’ she said. ‘He wants an alliance.’

‘With Allaedin ali-Bey? They hate each other!’

Arkal shrugged again. ‘Who can tell these things? But Gomil must go and inspect the girl and not give offence. They say she is ugly.’

Luke looked at the riders, a mass of furred flank muscle in dust shot through with sunlight. The smell of horse rose all around him. He felt bereft.

I want to ride
.

Arkal was watching him. So was someone else. Luke felt it. He turned towards the shaman’s tent. The girl was standing in the shade of a horsehide, her body quite still. She was watching him without expression.

Arkal spat on to the ground. ‘She is no good.’

‘She saved Tsaurig’s life.’

The girl grimaced, shaking her head. ‘The
spirits
saved my brother!’ she whispered. ‘She had nothing to do with it.’