A Place Called Armageddon (33 page)

Mehmet turned to the table. There were books there as well as maps, and he picked one up. ‘You are not such a student of war as I, Hamza. So you may not have read what the younger Caesar did to take Antoninus and that heated bitch Cleopatra in her comely rear. Nor of a marvellous trick once practised by the great emperor Xerxes.’ The smile widened. ‘I will be Caesar. I, Xerxes. For on the morrow, I will lift half my fleet on slings from the Double Columns and roll it on greased logs over the land and down into the Golden Horn.’ He pointed. ‘And I will make those bells toll sorrow.’

Hamza was stunned. Partly by the fact that such had been the secrecy that he had heard nothing about an enterprise that must have been a while in preparing. Mainly by its sheer audacity. Mehmet just grinned at him until he found breath and words. ‘King of kings,’ he said, ‘it is extraordinary.’

‘Is it not? It will make me master of the waters. And soon after, I think, of the city itself.’ He lifted the map with his
bastinado
. ‘But I would have the shock of my fleet’s appearance be very sudden. So I would distract the defenders.’ He jabbed his finger down. ‘Here my land batteries will fire ever more fiercely on the walls. And here …’ he stabbed his finger at the line linking the two cities, ‘the half of my fleet that does not sail across the land will make another assault upon the boom.’ He sucked in his lower lip. ‘But I have no
kapudan pasha
now to lead it.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Yes, of course I do.’ He pointed. ‘You will be that leader, Hamza.’

‘I?’ If he’d been shocked before, he was more so now. ‘Lord, I will, as ever, obey your every command even unto death. But do you think me suitable?’

‘You have fought at sea?’

‘I commanded a trireme for your father for a time, and yes, I raided a few towns, took a few stuffed carracks. But a fleet …’

‘You know as much as most. We were ever a land people and are all learning new skills upon the water. Besides, what I want in my
kapudan pasha
is not just his knowledge upon the deck. It is judgement, it is courage, it is …’ he let the
bastinado
fall onto the older man’s shoulder, ‘you, Hamza Bey. You, Hamza … Pasha!’

Hamza’s mind churned. This swift rising would bring not only status but profit too. The
kapudan pasha’
s share when the city fell would be enormous. Yet extraordinary opportunity brought extraordinary risk. The
bastinado
resting on his shoulder had lately lifted the bloodied head of a man who had found that out. He swallowed, spoke his thought. ‘And Baltaoglu?’

Mehmet turned away, swinging the
bastinado
through the air as if it were a scimitar and he was cutting. ‘You were right, as ever. His death serves nothing. His courage will be rewarded by the sparing of his life. His stupidity punished …’ he slammed the stick down upon a book, making a sharp crack, ‘with a good beating.’ He nodded, raised his voice so all could hear beyond the latticed screen. ‘Let him be beaten, and then let him crawl from the camp. If he survives his wound, let him join the
bashibazouks
and try to regain his reputation in the breaches my cannon shall make in the walls.’ He lowered his voice again, stepped close to Hamza, whispered in his ear, ‘And let you and I rise early to watch our ships sail across the land.’

–
TWENTY-TWO
–

Ultimatum

22 April

The bell had not tolled in the Tower of Christ, but it was the only restraint the Genoans of Galata had shown in celebrating their fleet’s victory. There was as much carousing, as much singing, praying, drunkenness, Leilah suspected, as in the larger city across the Horn. She had slept little, then woken suddenly to a silence more disturbing than the noise that had preceded it. She was out of the bed she shared with the daughter of the grain merchant and joining her at the window in a moment. ‘What is it, Valeria?’ she said, looking down at tense-faced men scurrying along the street.

‘I do not know,’ came the reply. ‘When I came to bed, everyone was still laughing. Now …’ She pointed down. ‘Look, there is Sebastiano.’ She threw open the window. ‘Heh, Sebe! Sebastiano! Here! Here!’

The summoned youth hastened over, his face red with too much wine, and the effort of trying to buckle a sword belt round his large belly. ‘Where is everyone going?’ Valeria called.

‘The walls,’ came the terse reply.

‘Mother Mary! Is it an attack?’

‘Perhaps. There are Turks on the ridge, thousands of them. I must go.’

He staggered off. Valeria turned back – to Leilah, already dressing.

She joined a stream of people on the side street, which fed into a wider way and that surged like a river with a crowd – soldiers in the main, but other townsfolk too – headed to the western walls. The jabber was all of the sudden appearance of so many Turks, the fear of what it might mean – that they had decided to end the so-called neutrality of Galata after the Genoese-led victory of the previous day. There was much bravado too, for Galatans were near as proud of their walls as the Greeks across the Horn were of theirs.

The throng became ever more tightly pressed as it approached the north-western edge of the city. Forcing her way to the side, Leilah took an alley cutting up. There was a gap between two houses high on the slope, a stair beyond. Others knew of it too; she was not alone. But with a shove and a slide she was able to squeeze against a crenel and peer over it.

Almost below her, a ridge ran at a right angle from the walls, its southerly slopes that swept to the water patchworked with cultivated fields and vineyards, the northerly ones largely wooded. Soldiers were spread in a double line along the crest, with a huge line in the middle thrust straight down over the fields, another thickness bulging across a short open space before disappearing into the trees. These centre lines, like the beams of a Christian cross, were abuzz, men in the middle engaged in some activity behind ranks of spearmen facing out. They were a bowshot away, and Leilah could see quite clearly, in the dawn light, the rise and fall of tools – mattocks, spades, poles – and hear both the thump of metal on wood and the underlying beat of a
kos
drum keeping time. Men were chanting too, a rhythmic call of one word: ‘Heave! Heave! Heave!’ Focusing on the cries, Leilah could see a ripple running through the line of men that led into the wood, as if they were one body, breathing out, breathing in.

A different ripple distracted her. Beyond the central bulge, the twin lines were parting, men falling to their knees, laying their foreheads on the ground. A band of horsemen moved down the gap created, at their head a man in gleaming armour, riding under the twin banners of the Prophet and his own
tugra
, slashed across a red sky.

‘Mehmet,’ she murmured. It was the first time she’d seen her man of destiny since Edirne a year before, and she leaned closer to him over the parapet.

The horsemen reined in on a slight rise above the centre of the cross. Men knelt, made obeisance, rose. An officer came up to the sultan’s stirrup, spoke, gesturing to the woods. Mehmet nodded, raised a hand into the air. All labour stopped, the drum ceased. The hand stayed up, as Mehmet slowly looked all about him, along the lines of silent troops, up to the walls of Galata; finally, across the waters of the Golden Horn to Constantinople. Leilah looked there also, seeing heads there too, crowding every crenel.

The hush held … then ended in the fall of the sultan’s hand. Instantly, all was noise – the shriek of dozens of trumpets, the hammering upon scores of huge drums, the ululations of thousands of voices, all seeming to hail some triumph …

… which came, along with a gasp from every single watcher, as a ship sailed from the forest.

Though she had been born with the ability to see beyond the veil of things – from before, her mother would say, Leilah’s rhythmic kicks of the belly answers to all sorts of questions – it still sometimes surprised her when her dream visions appeared quite so literally. For she had dreamed this – oars gouging earth, canvas among the trees. And there it was before her, a
fusta
with all its oars thrust out pulling at the air, its sail bulged by some breath of wind. An officer strode the
histodoke
, cracking his whip over the heads of the rowers. She could see that these were not the usual slaves, but warriors, armed with helmet and mail, laughing as they rowed. Indeed, all who watched on the Turkish side appeared to be laughing, at a sight so incongruous. She looked again at Mehmet, and he was roaring, his closest companions –
beys
, pashas and imams – joining him.

The vessel reached the crest of the hill. For a moment, it perched there, oars still moving above the land. Then, with a shouted command, the five pairs of oxen she now saw were unhitched, and the vessel moved forward again, tipping its prow down the slope. It moved as slowly downwards as it had risen, held, she could see now, by ropes attached to its thwart clamps, many men leaning at a sharp angle back and straining against the pull, letting it slide slowly down the front slope, through the fields. More oxen emerged from the woods, another ship followed, oars digging air, sail full, whip cracking, men laughing.

She could not help her own smile. But she smothered it when she glanced left and right, saw the shock on the faces beside her. Most were mumbling prayers, crossing themselves. Many had their eyes closed. She could not, of course, see more than the heads of people across the water, but she knew that if there was dismay in Galata, there would be terror in Constantinople. It did not take a Caesar to see that the Christians’ flank was turned. Their boom bypassed, a scimitar now jabbed into their back.

As the second ship crested the ridge and began its downward slide, the first was already entering the Horn, rolling along a slipway made from logs. The oars dipped air no longer, but water, the trumpets blared loudly, drums doubled their beat and all upon the hill cheered. A third ship was just beginning to emerge from the woods when Leilah turned back to the stairs. Her time in Galata was over. It had been pleasant to become a Christian again for a while, to ply her trade where her unbound hair drew no mutters. But it was time to make her way back to the Turkish camp, and there she would go veiled again.

Her dreams had not told her what was going to happen next. A major assault upon men in despair that might force a breach? Surrender, when the Christian emperor realised his hopelessness? She must be ready. She had told Mehmet in Edirne a year before that she would come to him for payment on the eve of the city’s fall. She knew what she’d need: a company of soldiers to shepherd her to the library of the monks of Manuel. But her daylight dreams
had
told her the next part: Gregoras already there, reading the ancient Greek, leading her to the aisle where the writings of Jabir ibn Hayyan waited.

‘Geber’ was what the Christian alchemists called the Arab, and more than any other he had illuminated their darkness. Her former lover and protector, Isaac, would shake with an excitement he never felt in her arms when he thought about the sacred text, the one annotated in Geber’s own hand. The Jew believed it contained nothing less than the formula for
al-iksir
itself. And with that elixir, man would at last be able to turn all base metal to gold.

She did not understand the chemistry. But she smiled to herself as she walked. Because certain of the Jew’s correspondents in Basle or Paris would pay a fortune for Geber’s text. So paper would turn to gold – now that was a formula she
could
understand. Paper transmuting the base metal of her life, meaning she would never need to depend on any man again.

Any man
… She slowed, her smile fading. She was surprised how the simple thought of Gregoras affected her. It was far beyond his use to her. She’d felt him close from the moment the Genoese ships had appeared two days before. She had mumbled verses to protect him during the fight, and cheered along with the Galatans when the Christians had broken free. Now he was back over there, she was sure. In Constantinople. Awaiting her pleasure. Her varied pleasures, she admitted to herself, the smile returning.

As she resumed her fast pace, pushing through the sullen, silent crowd, she heard the deep toll of a distant bell. From her brief time in the city of the Greeks, she had learned to recognise its solemn note.

The bell was summoning all to the Hagia Sophia to pray for deliverance.

‘And so,’ Hamza concluded, ‘Mehmet, Sultan of Rum, liege lord of all of us, makes this last and most generous of offers to his brother emperor, also his vassal: that Constantine Palaiologos leaves the city with as many of his followers as choose to go with him and embarks straightway for the Morea, to rule that fair land, with his sons to rule after him for ever. To live in amity thereafter with Mehmet, his sovereign lord and fellow emperor. To save, by this noble sacrifice, the most dreaded sacrifice of all within the walls of Constantinople, sparing its citizens the indignities that will come hard upon the refusal of such magnanimity – the loss of all they own, including their lives, the desecration of their temples, the ravishment of their wives, the enslavement of their children.’ Hamza’s tone softened, as he looked from Constantine to the noblemen and churchmen, the representatives of Venice and Genoa, who flanked him in the hall of the old palace of Porphyrogenitus. ‘And know also that any who choose to remain will be treated with the dignity afforded worthy opponents. Free to keep their property and their gold, to trade as they would and enjoy the protection of that trade under the House of Osman. And to worship for ever as they see fit, in their most ancient and
orthodox
traditions.’ He glanced at the papal legates as he emphasised the word, and away from them at the man he knew to be Loukas Notaras, hook-nosed and fierce-eyed, the
megas doux
and most strident opponent of the surrender to Rome. ‘All this he promises,’ he continued, his voice rising, ‘and this besides: to honour the glory of Constantinople’s history and to restore it to the dignity it once held, to make it again the foremost city in the world.’