The Towers of Samarcand (52 page)

*

So it was that five days later Anna was looking up at the sandstone walls of Ankara Castle. The sun was setting and the stone above her glowed in the last of the heat, the shadow of her horse stretching out in front like a grave. She had ridden as a boy-messenger, veiled against the dust, and not once had her paizi been questioned. She was on her sixth horse and the animal was tired.

The ride had been uneventful, which had suited a traveller who’d wanted to think. She’d last seen Luke at Kutahya when she’d also met Shulen. That had been at the start of Luke’s voyage to Tamerlane, a voyage that must have taken him and Shulen to the very frontiers of life and death, of mutual dependence. Was it so very surprising that they’d fallen in love along the way? But Anna remembered a night in a cave long ago and a promise that had been made.

I will love you wherever you are and wherever I am
.

The words had stayed with her through every moment of her life in the harem in Edirne. On the rides with Suleyman, she’d meant to scatter them into the air but they’d always come back to her. Luke might be married to Shulen but he still loved her. She was certain of it.

But she was afraid too, and the closer she got to Ankara, the more afraid she became. What if she was wrong? What if Luke also loved Shulen? Was she going to be humiliated at Ankara? Should she turn back?

She’d not turned back and now it was too late. The vast studded doors were closing behind her and she was inside the castle. She was still veiled and a Mongol officer was approaching her.

‘Your message?’

‘Is for the eyes of Prince Mohammed Sultan only,’ said Anna as she dismounted. She handed her reins to a waiting groom. ‘I must take it to him in person.’ The paizi around her neck glowed in the waning sunlight.

The man nodded and turned. ‘This way.’

They entered the keep and crossed a big hall with a long table in the centre, piled high with food and jugs of wine. There was
armour on the walls and crossed weapons. They went through an arch and into a tower and began to climb steps. At last they reached a door and the soldier knocked.

A voice told them to enter. Not Luke’s but a woman’s. Anna’s heart was beating harder than she’d ever known it to do. She took the deepest of breaths and lifted the veil to her eyes. The door opened. Inside were three people, two of them sitting at a table, the other asleep in a large bed. Luke and Shulen were playing chess. Luke was staring at the board while Shulen glanced up.

‘A message from Temur Gurgan?’

Anna waited for the soldier to close the door behind her. ‘A message for the Varangian,’ she said, her voice muffled by the veil and as deep as she could make it. ‘For him to read here. I am to know his reply.’

Luke was still staring at the game. He had a castle in one hand that hovered above a knight. Anna saw that there were strange pieces on the board and that it was bigger than ones she’d played on. Luke held up a hand for the letter and Anna looked at the hand. Then she produced one of two letters on her person.

Luke took the scroll, broke the seal and unrolled the vellum. It contained a simple message: ‘You promised only to ever remove the ring when you stopped loving me. You wear it still.’

Luke dropped the castle. He turned and rose too quickly and the chair clattered to the ground. ‘Anna.’

He ran to her as she pulled down the veil. Then she was within arms that held her so hard that the paizi dug into her breast. ‘Stop,’ she said. ‘The paizi.’ She drew away, holding him at arm’s length, breathing hard. ‘And you are married.’

‘Married? To whom?’

Anna looked into a face wide with joy, astonishment, bewilderment. It was a face with no trace of a lie in it. She nearly faltered.

‘To her.’ She nodded towards the table.

‘To Shulen?’

Anna nodded. ‘It happened in the caravan. We heard.’

Shulen had risen. She was very different from when Anna had seen her last. Now she was smiling. ‘Ah, you heard.’ She laughed. ‘From Venetians perhaps? Or even from the court of Tamerlane?’ She came up to them. ‘Anna, I invented the marriage to try and save us from a madman – two madmen.’ She pointed towards the bed where Mohammed Sultan lay. ‘The only man I have ever come close to marrying lies in that bed.’

Anna nearly sank to her knees with the relief. It was as if a giant vine that had grown around her, that had squeezed the life from her existence, had been cut at its roots. She rose, took a long breath and grasped Shulen’s hand. She said: ‘Thank you.’

Luke had been watching her throughout the exchange, slowly shaking his head in disbelief. A moment that he’d dreamt of for so long had arrived. He felt weak with joy. But why was she here? And how had she got here? ‘Anna …’

But she had turned and was walking over to the bed, partly to hide the tears of happiness that were washing her eyes. She stopped and looked down at the sleeping Prince. ‘Is he too sick to travel?’ she asked.

Shulen followed and stood on the other side of the bed. ‘The wound was very deep. He mustn’t be moved.’

Luke came to stand next to Anna and took her hand. He looked down at the Prince, whose only movement was the rise and fall of his bandaged chest. ‘Where must he travel to?’

Anna said: ‘Tamerlane wants to marry Zoe in the Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Everyone believes that it’s an excuse to put the city to the sword. Only Mohammed Sultan can stop him.’

It was said quietly but it caused the man below them to stir. He opened his eyes and blinked twice. He turned his head towards Shulen and took her hand. ‘I can be moved,’ he said.

Shulen shook her head, kissing each of his fingers as she did so. ‘It will kill you.’ She looked up at Anna, then Luke. ‘There must be another way.’

Anna turned to Luke. ‘Plethon wants the ring I gave you. It’s possible that Zoe can be persuaded to stop Tamerlane but he needs the ring to do it. Whatever happens with Mohammed Sultan, we must bring the ring to Plethon.’

Luke nodded. ‘We should leave immediately, then.’ He knelt down so that his head was level with the Prince’s. ‘And you should obey Shulen. You’re too weak to go to Tamerlane.’

Mohammed Sultan nodded slowly. ‘I am too weak to go with you but I will come on behind, with Shulen and my mother.’ His face wrinkled. Speaking was painful. ‘You’ll need me.’

Shulen began to say something but stopped herself. The Prince continued: ‘Do you remember in the church, when you thought Shulen was Cybele?’ The words were slow, mostly breath. He was trying to smile. ‘I told you that I’d believed what you’d said about the west, about what was happening there.’ He closed his eyes and took several slow breaths. ‘Temur must not destroy it.’

Luke remembered something that had been said and not said. The Mongol army would go home on the death of its khan as it always had. But how? He looked down at a face drained of blood, at eyes lying too deep in shadow. He’d come to love
this man and he didn’t know if he’d see him alive again. Luke nodded, uncertain, if he spoke, whether he would be able to finish a sentence. He bent forward and kissed the forehead, cold as ice. He got to his feet and turned to Anna. ‘We should go.’

*

Anna had ridden five days without sleep and was exhausted beyond reason. But there was no time to sleep now and she had to dig her nails deep into her palms to keep in the saddle. Luke was in front, joined to the back of Eskalon as if the animal were part of him. They hadn’t spoken since leaving Ankara and the night was loud beneath her: the pounding of hoof on solid earth, the rhythmic squeak of leather in motion, the staccato panting of an animal doing its best to keep up with one much bigger. She felt so tired.

On the ride to Ankara, the agony of apprehension had kept her awake but now, with the relief of knowing that Luke was unmarried, something had been released and she thought she could sleep for a thousand years. She felt rain on her brow and looked up. The night seemed blacker above her and there was a tension in the air that spoke of storm. She kicked her horse.

The first clap of thunder was not much more than a rumble, the heavens clearing their throat. The second brought her to the ground. It was louder than any she’d ever heard and its effect on her horse was dramatic: it stopped, reared and threw Anna from its back. She landed badly and for a while feared that she’d be trampled. She rolled away and waited for the horse to calm. Then another thunderclap.

‘Anna!’ Luke had turned Eskalon on the first roar and ridden back. He jumped to the ground and ran to her. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘Only my pride,’ she laughed, the rain splashing her face.
Anything could happen and she didn’t care. She was alive and here and so was Luke. And he loved her. ‘I’m so tired.’

‘Of course.’ He looked up. The steppe stretched all around and the rain was drilling into the ground. ‘We must find shelter and you must sleep.’

‘But …’

‘No, you must sleep and then we’ll go on. There are hills ahead. We can find shelter there.’ He lifted her in his arms and walked over to Eskalon. ‘We’ll ride together.’ He put her on to his horse and then went to hers. He gathered its reins and tied them to his saddle. Then he mounted Eskalon behind her. ‘Hold on to me.’

And, in a dream, she did. She cradled herself in his arms and felt the warm, strong embrace that she’d felt in a cave on the Goulas of Monemvasia long ago. She wanted so badly to stay awake, to live this moment of pure, rain-soaked joy for eternity. She drifted into sleep thinking of a runaway horse and the moment when he’d held her for the first time. She felt the comfortable rhythm of power beneath her and against her and she fell asleep, smiling.

When she awoke, it was daylight and she was lying on the ground beneath an overhang of rock. She was in dry clothes, warm and covered by blankets. Beside her was Luke. ‘How long have I slept?’

He smiled. ‘A night. You talked a bit.’

‘About you?’

‘Mainly me.’ He kissed her. ‘Others too.’ He looked at her for a long time and she looked back. So much time had passed since they’d last met. He dared ask the question. ‘Did he hurt you?’

‘Suleyman? No. I don’t think he would ever hurt me.’

Luke raised himself to his elbow. ‘Why didn’t he marry you?’

Anna pulled the blanket higher, enjoying the soft wool on her cheek. ‘I kept finding reasons for delay. Then I used his seal without his knowledge and Bayezid found out. He forbade the marriage after that.’

‘And yet you have your annulment.’

‘I have it but don’t need it,’ she replied. ‘Damian’s dead. He fell off the Goulas when he was drunk.’

Luke had not heard. He shook his head, surprised at the pain of the news. Flashes of long-ago memory came to him: Damian, Zoe, him on a donkey led by his mother; the three of them looking for kermes outside Monemvasia. They’d been the best of friends once. Then Eskalon had charged and Damian had been in the way and he’d not forgiven Luke or his horse. Now he was dead.

Anna leant forward. She put her hand to his cheek, hoping to draw some of the sorrow. ‘We can marry, Luke,’ she said softly. ‘You are a hero.’

Luke frowned. ‘On Chios perhaps. But what will I be when Tamerlane sacks Constantinople?’

Anna said: ‘Shulen will bring Mohammed Sultan. He’ll stop Tamerlane.’

‘No he won’t. He didn’t stop him at Aleppo or Damascus. Tamerlane cannot be stopped by anyone.’

‘Except, perhaps, by Zoe. Show me the ring.’

Luke raised his hand and turned it so that Anna could see the ring. It was of gold and pitted with age, its edges worn. On it was some ancient script.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she murmured. ‘What’s written on it?’

Luke shrugged. ‘I showed it to Ibn Khaldun once. He said it was ancient Hebrew. I don’t know what it says. A name perhaps.’

They both examined it in silence. The wind over the steppe made a strange, keening sound as it parted the grass. There was low cloud and the sun was warming some other landscape. Eskalon neighed.

‘We should go,’ said Luke at last.

Anna leant back and stretched. Then she rolled herself towards him so that they were face to face. She kissed him. ‘Not yet, tarkhan.’

It took Luke and Anna only three days to reach Chios. They rode as hard as the rain and road allowed and stopped only once for Anna to change horses. They spoke little: Anna numb with the pleasure of a recent transaction, Luke thinking hard of how to stop Tamerlane from entering Constantinople. He remembered again and again what Mohammed Sultan had said to him in the church.

The last time that our armies came into Europe, they were stopped by the death of the Khan … It might happen again.

But how? Shulen had poisoned him once but she was a long way behind, bringing Mohammed Sultan to his grandfather slowly on a litter. Anyway, Zoe was apparently with Tamerlane every moment of the day and night.

They reached the sea in the evening and commandeered a boat to take them to Chios. And as they crossed the straits, Luke’s thoughts turned to something else. He’d been aware of a strange excitement growing alongside his worry, gradually nudging it aside as they got closer to Chios: he was to meet his son. He was about to meet Giovanni on Chios and he felt giddy with yearning.

But it wasn’t to be. They arrived late at night at the Giustiniani Palace to be told that Tamerlane had left and that Fiorenza had taken Giovanni to Sklavia and was not expected to return within the week.

So Anna was surprised to wake up the next morning to find a woman of great beauty standing next to her bed holding hands with a boy. She knew immediately who they were.

Fiorenza. Fiorenza and Giovanni
.

The woman spoke. ‘We are deserted. The men have all left. Luke too.’

Anna looked at the pair. Fiorenza was dressed in a high-collared tunic of brushed silk, cream and without pattern. Her head was uncovered and on her feet were green slippers. The boy was dressed in Genoese miniature: doublet and hose, both in matching blue, and boots of calfskin. He was looking at the floor and his hair was the colour of corn.