The Walls of Byzantium (37 page)

‘Luke Magoris? Latin?’ She looked at Matthew, who sat halfway down the table and was regarding the angel, or prophet, as if he was mad.

‘Yes, Latin,’ replied Plethon testily. ‘The script we were discussing was written in Latin so it seemed prudent to interrogate it in the same tongue.’

The three boys and Anna exchanged glances.

‘Ah,’ went on Plethon, his voluminous eyebrows raised in new understanding, ‘yes, I see. You share the common conviction that the world is flat and stable. Well, we shall see. The Portuguese King Henry sends his ships further and further south each year and none have yet dropped off.’

There was silence around the table as each considered what
they had heard. Then Anna spoke. ‘We do not know any Luke Magoris who speaks Latin,’ she said carefully.

‘No? Well he’s learnt. And more. I believe he’s competent in Italian as well. After all, on Chios he’s surrounded by the brutes. He has to be.’

For the first time, Anna was daring to fill her senses with the giddy taste of hope. She felt tipsy with its fumes and a feeling such as she’d not felt in months rose within her as this man’s words sank in. ‘He’s learnt? Luke is alive and has learnt Latin? And you are his friend?’

Plethon nodded impatiently. ‘I consider myself to be thus, yes.’ Then he looked quizzically at Anna. ‘But he said you were clever. You don’t sound very clever. He said that you had taught him things in a cave.’

Anna threw back her head and laughed. ‘Luke!’ she cried. ‘You’re alive and you speak Latin!’

Then she rose from her chair and, to the astonishment of all present, walked, or rather danced, over to Plethon and kissed him on his forehead.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said bringing her fingers to her lips as Plethon blushed and put a hand to his brow. ‘I hardly know you. But you know Luke and he’s alive and I will always love you for telling me that.’

Then Anna remembered where she was and why she was there. She turned, wiping tears from her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, this time to her embarrassed audience. ‘It was a surprise. I’m sorry.’

But Plethon was far from embarrassed. He was quietly chuckling to himself and staring with approval at Anna. She was every bit as lovely as Luke had described.

Then a throat was cleared. ‘The news is good,’ said Patrick,
‘and we must thank God for Luke’s deliverance. But time is short and we need to discuss other things. Plethon, I think you want to say something?’

‘I do, indeed I do,’ said the man, still looking at Anna, who was wiping tears of happiness from her cheeks.’ I believe you to be Varangians, yes? Descended directly from those who fled to Mistra from the desecration of our beloved capital by the Franks two centuries past?’

Three beards nodded slowly.

‘Good. Well, I’m speaking to the right men then.’ Plethon paused and stroked the long train of his own. ‘What is it that you believe they brought with them when they fled?’

The Varangians exchanged glances. None spoke.

Plethon waited a while for an answer. Then he asked simply, ‘If Luke has put his faith in me, would it not be reasonable for you, too, to trust me? I suppose not.’

Plethon sighed and a hand disappeared inside the folds at the front of his toga. When it re-emerged, it was holding a ring: large, gold and embossed with a double-headed eagle. It was pitted with age and glowed in the light of the candle.

‘This is the ring of Manuel, our emperor,’ he said. ‘It was given to me by the same five weeks ago when he bade me farewell from the sea gate of the Blachernae Palace. I passed through the Sultan’s blockade in a Genoese round ship from Pera which carried me on to Chios.’

Patrick leant forward and carefully lifted the ring from the open palm. He turned it into the light of the candle, examining it from every side. Then he passed it to David, Nikolas’s father.

‘You may know,’ Plethon went on, ‘that a great army is assembling in the west to march to our aid. They say that the flower
of Christian chivalry is polishing its armour and that the force will be large enough to crush the Turk once and for all.’

Plethon paused and leant forward.

‘Perhaps they
will
defeat the Turk and I can go back to my beloved home and it will be called Adrianopolis again. Perhaps. But what then?’ He looked around at seven people waiting for the answer. ‘Well, what happened the last time that a great crusade came to the aid of Constantinople?’

Patrick began to nod slowly, his thumb and finger at work on his moustache.

‘It’s why you are
here
, Varangians!’ said Plethon with some feeling. His palm came down hard on the table. ‘They can’t help themselves! Last time they sacked our city and raped our nuns when there were a million people inside its walls. This time the citizens number fewer than fifty thousand and most of them are armed with pitchforks.’ He paused. ‘And why did the Franks do it? Because we couldn’t pay them what they wanted.’

Now all three of the older men were nodding, as Plethon, philosopher and orator, used the weapon of silence. Basil was holding the ring and he placed it deliberately on the table before the man in the toga.

‘So the Emperor needs the Varangian gold to pay them off?’

Plethon nodded. ‘Quite possibly. If it is gold.’

‘What did Luke tell you?’ asked Patrick.

‘He told me that he didn’t know anything about the treasure beyond legend. He told me that he would have learnt more from his father but his father is dead.’ He paused, scraping off a vein of wax from the candle in front of him with his fingernail. ‘Tell me, Patrick, why is Luke called Luke? And why is Joseph called Joseph? Why are they both not called Siward?’

The Varangian exchanged glances with his companions.

‘It’s not such an odd question,’ Plethon continued. ‘After all, the Akolouthos was always called Siward. Father to son, always Siward. And the family name was Godwinson.’

‘I will tell you what we know,’ Patrick said. ‘Luke’s grandfather Siward and our fathers quarrelled. Siward left with the treasure. It’s no longer at Mistra.’

‘He stole it?’

Patrick didn’t answer. Matthew, Nikolas and Arcadius stared at him. They’d not known this.

‘Well, I think I can help,’ Plethon said. ‘There was a Siward who rejoined the Palace Guard in Constantinople a few months after Luke’s grandfather left Monemvasia. He spent the rest of his life there and was buried with honour in the Varangian church. I think it was the same man.’

‘Rejoined the Guard? But he would have been fifty!’ said David.

‘It seemed the Emperor intervened.’

‘But he was a traitor!’

‘Was he? Are you sure that he took the treasure? Why would a rich man rejoin the Varangian Guard?’ He lowered his voice. ‘Why do you imagine they quarrelled, David?’

There was no answer. Three Varangians were considering the possibility that it had been
their
fathers, all now dead, that had wanted to take the treasure.

Anna held her breath, watching Matthew, Nikolas and Arcadius watch their fathers.

‘No one knows what or where the treasure is,’ Plethon continued softly. ‘But I believe that it wasn’t gold that was removed from Constantinople that night. I think something much, much more important was taken, something so important that it had
to remain hidden where no one could find it. I think Siward moved it to make sure that remained the case and that a grateful Emperor rewarded him.’

Patrick was shaking his head, the frown driven deep into his forehead. ‘So you think that he simply gave the treasure to the Emperor?’

Plethon shook his head. ‘No, I think he hid it somewhere else.’

‘But where? In Mistra or Constantinople?’

Plethon looked down at the piece of wax, held between his fingers, which he had moulded into a ball. ‘That’s what I’m here to find out,’ he said simply.

Outside the room, the sounds of a little city poised between land and sea were fading as the first noises of the night crept in. A church bell sounded across the red-tiled roofs and some laughter came and went, shut away with the closing of doors and the bolting of windows. Quite soon, the soldiers at the three gates of the lower town would be ushering through the last travellers and, much to the annoyance of the citizenry, the muezzin would call his small, military flock to prayer.

‘I am afraid we will disappoint you,’ Patrick said eventually. ‘The secret of the treasure is lost to us.’

‘Siward left no clue?’

‘He left nothing but his sword,’ said Basil. ‘Which Luke now has. Or had.’

Plethon sat there, twisting the wax round and round between his fingers, staring at the candle.

His sword
.

There was sound from the street, of footsteps and of conversation approaching and then stopping. He frowned and looked
at the window. Matthew got up and opened the door. There was nothing there.

Plethon stood. He turned to Matthew. ‘There is one more thing. The Emperor has need of his Varangians. There are only a few of you left now, here and in Constantinople. He wants you to join this crusade.’

Basil grunted. ‘Well, we’re no longer sworn to the Archon, it’s true. But how would we leave? The Turks guard every gate.’

Plethon went over to Basil and put his hand on his shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean you,’ he said gently. ‘You may not be sworn to the Archon any more, but you’re still sworn to guard a treasure that might yet be here somewhere. I meant your sons.’

Matthew asked, ‘but what about Anna? And Rachel? We can’t leave them here.’

‘So take them with you,’ said Plethon. ‘Find a way to escape. Go to Chios, leave Anna and Rachel there and take ship to Venice.’

Nikolas had risen. There was excitement in his voice. ‘So how do we do it?’

The silence was broken by Anna. ‘I think I may know of a way.’

‘You have a plan?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And something better. I have someone who might help us.’

Yusuf was standing in front of Zoe in her bedroom within the palace. His hands were behind his back and he was trembling. She, fully clothed but prepared to be otherwise, was tracing the contour of a pectoral muscle at exactly eye-level and her breathing was quicker than normal.

Yusuf was ugly but, for Zoe, ugly was new.

‘Where are you from, Yusuf?’ she asked, allowing her hand to drop from his breast and travel slowly down the valley that led to his groin.

‘Edirne, lady,’ replied Yusuf in perfect Greek. The statement ended in a gasp as Zoe’s finger brushed the tip of his penis, prominent beneath the soft folds of his janissary pantaloons.

‘The Devshirme?’ she murmured, her fingernails moving very slowly down its length to rest somewhere beneath.

Yusuf nodded. His face was red and a contortion of vein and perspiration. Zoe turned the hand and slowly pushed it forward between his legs and then up, so that her open palm was suspended fractionally beneath his balls. She lifted a middle finger and began to rub it gently in the place where, had he been a woman, his vagina would have been, getting closer, with each stroke, to a puckered hole behind.

‘And the man she met was also from Edirne … Plethon, wasn’t it? Did you know of him?’

Zoe pressed the hole and discovered that she’d been right. A small convulsion, definitely of pleasure, ran through the man’s great body. He gasped and his hands, still behind him, were clasped and shaking.

‘I knew of him, lady,’ he said dully, fighting for vowels. ‘He … he used to speak in the forum. Of learned things.’

‘And
you
understood him? A great big ugly brute like you understood him? A great
big
 …’ Zoe moved her hand up to grasp the object so apparent between them and began to stroke up and down slowly. ‘What did he talk about?’

‘He talked about … our Greek forefathers. I was a child, lady …’

‘A child, yes. Not so big … then,’ she said, squeezing harder, the rhythm quickening. ‘And what did he talk about with the
girl tonight, Yusuf?’ she asked, rising on tiptoe to get closer to his ear. ‘What did they talk about?’

‘It was hard to hear, lady … something about a treasure. Oh.’

Zoe had stopped the movement and held him, poised, her thumb idly caressing the tip.

‘Treasure? Varangian treasure?’ she asked sharply.

‘Yes, lady … please …’

‘Only if you are very clear, Yusuf. Did they say where it was?’

‘They talked of a sword.’

A sword. Luke’s sword
.

Yusuf had screwed his eyes in the effort of containment and Zoe, still on tiptoe, was smiling up at him and one hand resumed the movement while the other began to unbutton her tunic.

‘Open your eyes, Yusuf,’ she whispered. ‘You can look, if you want.’

He looked down and saw one breast, then two as Zoe drew the tunic apart. They were the colour of satinwood and without flaw and the nipples were darker than mahogany.

‘Would you like to touch, Yusuf?’ she murmured, her tongue at the base of his neck. ‘Would you like to touch them?’ Her hand moved behind him and grasped one huge buttock and a finger found the hole again.

But this was too much.

With a groan, the giant bent forward and the hands left his back and grasped Zoe’s hand as, with one deft and final movement, she pulled him into heaven. His shoulders rose and fell as if in laughter but the sound that came from his mouth was not laughter. He fell to his knees, grappling with the front of his pantaloons, trying to stem the flow, his whole body in unwanted spasm.