A Place Called Armageddon (66 page)

Achmed took the water jar from her, drank deep. ‘I come, Abal. I come. I just needed to …’

His daughter grunted, bent and snatched up the sickle, took his hand, pulled. He was big, yet she moved him, and he wondered how that was, that the little girl was starting to turn into a woman.

When they reached the track, she slowed a little, as he hoped she would, and he could walk while resting his aching arm on her shoulder. She often came to fetch him, because she liked to have him to herself; in their home, with three sons and two other daughters, there was no time to talk. Though in truth, as ever, he talked little now, content to listen to the happenings of the day – which goat had not produced milk; which
gelin
had been caught crying again, unhappy in her new husband’s house; which brother had been cruel, which kind. He loved to listen to her sweet voice, especially as there had been a time, when he’d brought her back from the war, when she had not talked at all. The silence lasted a year, until one day she just began, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Since that day, she had barely ever stopped.

Yet today as he walked he found he only half listened, the last memories he’d had in the field still clinging to him. And so he did again what he rarely did. Thought of his two Abals as separate, when usually he only thought of them as one. He knew they were two, and he knew that he loved them both the same. The one was with Allah in paradise. The other he had his arm around, while she made of his life a little paradise, right there.

HISTORICAL NOTE

The siege of Constantinople was one of the greatest battles ever fought, and its full history fills volumes. I have got as many of the details in as I felt I could, from towers to tunnels, from ship fights to close-quarter combat, from the divisions that nearly pulled the city apart to the love that bound all in the end. There are the large truths of that last all-night assault that I discovered I had to write in one chapter. There are smaller ones, such as the cry of Turks to braid their Greek enemies’ long beards into dog leashes … to Mehmet’s written order to preserve the tiny jewel of St Maria of the Mongols. As a novelist, in the end I weave a fiction into the facts. Though I believe I have covered a lot of ground, there are many, many other extraordinary stories of 1453 that, alas, I have had to leave out. Read the histories. You will be dazzled.

My fictional characters have gone on to live their various lives … yet my historical ones did as well.

Giovanni Giustiniani Longo
was
carried to his ship by his faithful soldiers. But his wound was indeed mortal and his great heart gave out within a few days, either on his ship or on the island of Chios.

John Grant – ‘Johannes’ as he was known in all the chronicles – disappeared back into history and perhaps to Craigelachie, happy at last to be with people who knew he wasn’t a bloody German.

The body of Constantine, last emperor of Byzantium, was never found. Some say he lies in a secret cave beneath the city, awaiting his chance to rise again and make it a Christian capital once more.

For the remaining twenty-eight years of his life, Mehmet Fatih, the Conqueror, was restlessly, constantly at war in both the East and the West. There were many further successes, though perhaps none matched in glory his taking of Constantinople at the age of twenty-one. He never conquered Rome, though he always planned to, and in 1480, an army of his held the seaport of Otranto, on the Italian mainland, for nearly a year. But there were defeats too. In 1456, the White Knight of Hungary, Janos Hunyadi, beat him at Belgrade and Mehmet nearly crossed the bridge of Al-Sirat and achieved the martyrdom he sought, charging into the city scimitar in hand, only just escaping with a serious wound to his thigh. He died, some say poisoned on the orders of his son, setting out for another campaign in 1481, at the age of fifty.

The tanner’s son from Laz, Hamza Pasha, continued his rise as Mehmet’s trusted servant. But in 1462, when sent to apprehend the rebel vassal Vlad Dracula of Wallachia, he was captured, imprisoned and later impaled on the Field of the Ravens before the gates of Targoviste. (See my novel
Vlad: The Last Confession
.) Dracula was known as ‘the Dragon’s Son’, so the sorceress’s prophecy was fulfilled: Hamza would die upon a tree, where a forest had never been, looking down upon a dragon.

Perhaps the character that has had the most extraordinary life after the conquest is the city itself. Though Gregoras wept for it, Constantinople was not dead. More, it thrived, even as its name changed. Mehmet made it his capital, repopulating it from all parts of his empire, bringing back its former inhabitants, allowing religious tolerance, encouraging trade. He also built, including his palace, the luxuriant
saray
Topkapi; while his successors added buildings that dazzle to this day, rivalling even the still brilliant Aya Sophia. The Blue Mosque and the Suleiman Mosque are just two. The city remains fabulous, and it is made so by the descendants of those who fought either side of that stockade. It is still a crossroads of the world where Asia and Europe meet, where all races mingle and trade. And if the scars of 1453 are yet clear upon Theodosius’s still standing walls, so is the glory, the extraordinary courage shown by men and women of all races, fighting for what they believed in. Attackers and defenders blended now by the years and all citizens of fabled Istanbul.

GLOSSARY

NOTE ON LANGUAGE

‘Osmanlica’ was the language of the House of Osman, and spoken throughout the land. It was largely Turkish but with many borrowings from Arabic and Persian. For simplicity, I have rendered it without its many accents – cedillas, umlauts, etc.

‘Greek’ means men of Constantinople. They were not referred to as ‘Byzantines’ at this time.

agha
– senior teacher

alem
– signpost or standard

alembic
– neck of glass vessel

al-iksir
– elixir

al-kohl
– liquor, alcohol

Al-Sirat – martyr’s bridge to paradise

Allahu akbar –
‘God is great’

anafor
– choppy waters before the city

archon
– high ranking officer of no fixed function

azap
– turkish infantry, often on ships

baillie
– chief Italian official in city

barbuta – type of helmet

basmala
– inscribed prayers

basileus
– older military title for war leader and emperor

bashibazouk
– irregular warrior

bastard sword – also known as ‘a hand and a half’

bastinado
– stick

Bektashi – branch of dervish Muslims

belerbey
– provincial governor

bey
– lord

bevor – armoured neck guard

bireme – Turkish vessel with two rows of oars

bolukbasi
– captain of guard

bostanci
– gardener/janissary/executioner

boza
– fermented barley

buckler – small round shield

bura
– cold easterly wind

cakircibas
– chief falconer

cami
– mosque

chaouse
– whip-bearing guard

crannequin – winding mechanism for large crossbow

dayi
– godfathers

deli
– madman

devsirme
– levy of Christian youths

enderun kolej
– inner school

effendi
– gentleman, master

enkolpia
– religious amulet

falchion – wide-bladed short sword

Fatih – the Conqueror

fosse – ditch

fusta(e)
– smallest Turkish vessel

gazi
– holy warrior

galliot – small galley

gelin
– new bride

gomlek
– wool tunic

Gulyabani – fierce Turkish giant

haditha
– sayings of the Prophet

histodoke
– central gangway of Turkish galley

houri
– beautiful young woman in paradise

hyperpyron
– gold coin

inshallah
– ‘as God wills it’

imam – Muslim priest and teacher

irade
– sultan’s order

janissary – elite soldier of Turkish army; former Christian slave

jelabi
– long woollen shirt

jihad – holy war

Kabbalah – Jewish mystical study

kalafat
– elaborate headdress

kapi
– gate

kapudan pasha
– Turkish high admiral

kavallarios
– knight or high-ranking assistant to the emperor

kilim – small carpet

kolibrina
– type of musket

kyr
– title of respect, like ‘sir’

kyra
– lady

lodos
– a south-westerly wind

megas archon
– highest-ranking imperial servant

megas doux
– grand duke

megas primikerios
– high-ranking civil servant, originally master of ceremonies

megas stratopedarches
– high-ranking military officer

mehter
– Turkish military band

Musselman – other term for Muslim

muezzin – calls the faithful to prayer

ney
– Turkish flute

oikeios
– familiar, kin

orta
– janissary company; school class

oriflamme
– war standard

Osmanlica – language of Turks

otak
– canvas pavilion

pasha – highest-ranking Turkish official

peyk
– halberdier of the guard, with spleen removed

podesta
– governor of Galata

ragazzo
– rowdy youth

Rhinometus – Noseless One

sallet – helmet

sabaton – foot armour

saray(i)
– palace

serdengecti
– suicide warrior

sevre
– musical instrument

shalvari
– Turkish baggy trousers