The Walls of Byzantium (38 page)

‘I’m sorry, lady … please,’ he moaned, not daring to look up.

But Zoe was not looking at him. She had walked to the other end of the room, buttoning her tunic as she went, to where a towel was folded beside a low bathing pool. ‘Get up,’ she said, dipping her hand in the water and wiping it dry. She threw the towel at Yusuf.

‘Here, clean yourself,’ she said, ‘and then tell me the rest. With accuracy, if you want to live.’

Yusuf, now standing, was feverishly wiping the front of his trousers, his big head bobbing up and down with the effort. ‘He had come from Chios, lady. He spoke of someone there called Luke. The lady was glad of the news. She had thought him dead.’

Zoe clapped her hands together. ‘Hah! I
knew
it. So he’s alive. What is he doing on Chios?’

‘He has learnt Latin,’ said Yusuf, knowing it wasn’t enough. ‘And Italian … from the Genoese.’

‘And how to fill men’s teeth, I don’t doubt,’ murmured Zoe. She turned to the man. ‘Anything else?’

‘The girl means to escape, taking the woman Rachel with her. With the help of a friend.’

‘Ah, a friend. Yes.’ Zoe smiled. ‘You may go. Find Prince Suleyman and ask him to join me.’

Yusuf, still clutching the folds of his pantaloons to cover the stain, bowed in relief and turned to go.

‘And Yusuf?’ said Zoe over her shoulder as she walked towards the balcony. ‘One word of what has happened in this room tonight and you will never talk again.’

It was much later when Rachel was awakened by a freshly
changed Yusuf who signalled to her to dress for travel and brought her, in some bewilderment, to Anna’s bedroom. Anna was already wearing breeches and a thick, woollen smock so as to be ready for either sea-borne or mounted escape.

Rachel seemed more frail than when she’d last seen her, but her frailty was bolstered by a new joy that had been born the moment that Anna had told her that Luke was alive. She felt exultant, ready for anything: in particular ready to join her son on Chios as soon as humanly possible.

Now Anna sat opposite Rachel in a room that was almost dark and they held hands and told stories for comfort and to pass the time. A single lamp stood on the table between them with its wick almost burnt through. It was smoking slightly and its light made monsters on the walls. The palace outside was silent and asleep.

‘Speaking Latin!’ whispered Rachel. ‘He must have been educated.’

‘Was he always clever?’ asked Anna.

‘Well, he shared a few lessons with the twins long ago but they stopped it for some reason. Perhaps Damian was jealous.’

Anna wanted to imagine Luke as a young boy, running barefoot, knees scratched, or riding bareback, his arms clinging to the neck of an animal he already understood better than other people.

‘Were they close once, the three of them?’ she asked.

‘Close? They were inseparable! They shared everything from their toys to the bath. The servants had to be sent down from the palace to bring them home. I loved those twins like my own.’

Rachel was laughing softly at the memory, her hands steepled in her lap.

‘I used to take them with me to gather kermes outside the city. I would put them on a donkey, one, two, three, with the baskets behind, and they would laugh and laugh at its ears and the silly noise it made when they pulled them.’ She paused, eyes faraway. ‘Yes, they were very close.’

‘So what happened?’ asked Anna gently.

‘They grew up, I suppose. But something else as well.’

Anna was still, allowing Rachel to decide whether or not to find comfort in disclosure.

‘She was always a difficult girl,’ said Rachel, looking up. ‘She had everything she wanted but only wanted the things she couldn’t have.’

Anna felt the very first pricking of a new fear deep, deep inside her stomach. It was a fear without name or, for now, explanation. But it was there.

‘Luke?’

Rachel nodded slowly. ‘Luke, money, power. It was difficult to tell which was more important to her.’ She paused. ‘Probably money and power. She was always a clever girl.’

Anna didn’t have time to think further because there was a muffled knock on the door and Yusuf arrived to take them somewhere else. He stood in the doorway and nodded to Anna, who helped Rachel to her feet. Then they walked out into the dark of the corridor and along it until they reached the top of a curving staircase that swept down to the hall below.

The hall was lit by torches held in sconces on the walls that were beginning to splutter. Standing in the centre of the space was Zoe, alone. The janissary guards were either asleep or had been persuaded to absent themselves.

Holding Rachel’s hand, Anna tiptoed down the staircase, stopping every third step to listen to the palace around them. When
they reached the bottom, Zoe put a finger to her lips and beckoned for them to follow her. Anna glanced behind and found that Yusuf had left them. They crept into the lobby where, centuries ago, Luke had stood with Joseph to learn his sentence.

The first glimmer of dawn was framed in the opening at the top of the dome and it cast everything in a spectral glow. Waiting there were Matthew, Nikolas and Arcadius, armed but not armoured; each stepped forward silently to kiss Rachel. One of them gave her a hooded cloak and helped her to tie it at the throat.

Zoe took Anna to one side. ‘You know the way to the cellars below?’ she whispered. ‘You know the door through the kitchens into the street? Go there. It’s unguarded and once outside you can make your way to the gate to the lower town. How you get through that is your business.’

Anna nodded and walked past the three young Varangians who’d formed a little circle around Rachel, and into the deep shadows of the corridor that led to the staircase. Her heart was beating a rhythm of increasing hope. She wanted to run to the stairs but knew that any noise would be fatal.

Then she heard a noise.

Behind her: a command and the drawing of steel. Her stomach lurched and she turned back to see the three Varangians, swords before them, staring up at the balcony. Zoe was standing next to them looking aghast. She glanced in the direction of Anna and her eyes bore into her.

Stay where you are
.

Anna put her back to the wall of the corridor and edged along its shadow to see into the lobby. Lining the balcony were at least a dozen janissaries, each with an armed crossbow pointing below.

With them was Suleyman. And Yusuf.

Yusuf. Do you work for Zoe or Suleyman? Who has betrayed us?

Suleyman’s hands were clasped, his forearms resting on the balustrade.

But this was no thunderbolt. He was unsteady on his feet. He seemed unlikely to wield the sword of Islam to much effect. Perhaps this Burgundian crusade would succeed after all.

He glanced at Suleyman. Surely, thought Luke …

His hands were clasped and his forearms resting on the ledge. He was leaning over and he was smiling. Anna watched, appalled, as he began to walk slowly down the stairs, his black eyes moving around the hall in search of something, someone. He went up to Zoe and walked around her once before stopping beside her, his mouth level with her ear.

‘Someone, I think, is missing, lady,’ he whispered. ‘Where is she?’

Zoe turned so that her face was very close to his and facing Anna. ‘I regret that she’s flown, lord,’ she whispered, quite loudly. ‘She’s flown to somewhere you won’t find her. Somewhere safe.’

‘Safe from me?’ he said, drawing back a little. ‘You know it’s my father she should fear, not me. I am trying to help her. Have you told her
that?
I imagine not.’

Suleyman and Zoe locked stares; then he laughed softly and walked backwards to the bottom of the stairs, still holding her gaze. ‘Yusuf!’ he called without turning. ‘Bring me your sword!’

The giant came down the stairs and handed an unsheathed scimitar to his master. Suleyman, his eyes still fixed on Zoe, put his thumb to its blade and felt its sharpness. Then he pointed at Arcadius. ‘Kneel,’ he commanded.

Arcadius stood still, his big body frozen in indecision. Suleyman walked over to him.

‘
Kneel
!’

Matthew came to stand by his side, Nikolas beside him.

‘If he is to die, then we all die,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Suleyman agreeably. ‘You will if you don’t tell me where Anna is. If she is in the town, she will be found – probably by my father’s men who are already here. Would you want that for her? Now kneel. All of you, or I’ll ask Yusuf to make you.’

It was Zoe who spoke next. ‘I’m sure they will tell you what they know, Prince Suleyman. They will tell you that Anna has escaped to a place they have no knowledge of. That is what they will tell you, one by one, as you kill them.’

There was the sound of a footfall and Anna stepped out of the shadows. ‘I am here.’

Suleyman turned and saw her. The light from the dome was stronger now and it turned her hair into fire. Anna was upright and uncowed and there was challenge in her voice.

‘If it is me that you want, then take me,’ she said. ‘But Rachel and the Varangians go free.’

Suleyman raised an eyebrow. ‘Lady, these men cannot go free.’

Anna walked up to him. ‘If you want me to come with you, prince, they will go free.’

Suleyman pretended to weigh all this in the delicate and capricious scales of his mind, as if this sequence of events had not been rehearsed some time beforehand. He stroked his beard to its oiled and tapered point and looked at Anna with questioning eyes.

‘So, lord,’ said Anna, looking up at him with her head tilted in query, ‘am I to come with you or not?’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHIOS, SUMMER 1396

‘Come out, Lara!’

It was as if the kendos was happening again. Behind the door to Lara’s house in the new village of Mesta, there was a good deal of shouting, some giggling and much singing, all of it female. And Dimitri, waiting outside, felt like joining in.

But then that wasn’t the custom. The custom had it that, on the morning of his wedding day, the groom would arrive at the house of his bride with his family and she would come out, in all her finery, and they would process to the church. Dimitri, however, had no family and Lara, who’d been living with him in flagrant sin for the past two years, no house. So the village had improvised and Dimitri had vacated his house a week beforehand and gone to live with Luke and now he was back, with Luke, Fiorenza, Marchese Longo, Benedo Barbi and most of the village, to collect her.

It was the first day of May and therefore another excuse for celebration on the island. The unmarried girls of the village had risen early and had poured in a giggling torrent into the fields to collect garlands of wild flowers to lay on their doorsteps. That night the young men would roar like bulls through
the streets, stealing them from doorstep and balcony to present to the girl they most admired. Lara’s garland, pinned to her door, was a twisted riot of poppies, butterfly orchids and hyacinths tied together with the woody stem of fennel.

Prometheus had brought fire with a torch of fennel. Dimitri had brought his love.

He was standing with a small plate of candied almonds,
koufeta
, in his hand and wondering what they’d done with his goats. Like all of the new village houses, his front door usually opened on to the cosy domestic arrangements of a goat couple that greeted visitors with even more noise than today. It was all part of the revolutionary plan for this new kind of village. But all plans had to make way for a wedding.

Beside Dimitri stood Luke dressed in his best doublet of flowered silk, belted above a hose striped yellow and red which, Fiorenza had insisted, was the latest thing in Siena. Fiorenza herself was dressed less colourfully, restricting herself to a long coat of pale saffron damask above pointed slippers of Moroccan leather. Her perfumes were discreet and her golden hair was gathered in a jewelled coif with a peacock’s feather behind.

Marchese Longo and Benedo Barbi were both wearing black silk, in pourpoint and hose, and boots that reached high up their calves. The four of them, as planned, exuded an air of prosperity and optimism.

‘Lara, come out!’ called Dimitri again, laughing and shaking the garland with his banging.

There were squeals from within and someone started a song that rang through the door like a challenge.

‘The church will be dust by the time I get you there!’ He turned to Fiorenza, his arms open and palms to the heavens.

‘Try rattling your plate,’ she suggested.

But he didn’t have to, for then the door opened and a handmaiden appeared bearing a tray on which sat two wedding crowns, decorated in flowers, and an empty dish. Nudged by Luke, Dimitri stepped forward and emptied his koufeta on to it and then stepped back to await the coming of his bride.

Lara stepped forward into the sun dressed in a pure white chemise of silk that fell to her ankles. Her black hair would have been blacker had it not been tinged with henna and it hung in flowered waves to her shoulders.

‘God bless you this morning, Dimitri,’ she said, taking the empty plate from his hand and rising on tiptoe to kiss him on both cheeks.