The Walls of Byzantium (61 page)

Like this, she drifted into sleep, soothed by the lullaby of a zither.

She awoke suddenly. It was morning and she was in the bed and clothed in a gown of finest lawn. Someone had done this. A servant, she hoped.

She was aware that a voice had awoken her and it was a voice she knew.

Then she heard the voice of her future husband. He was
talking to somebody close to the tent. But she knew it wasn’t his voice that had woken her.

There was a dressing gown hanging over a chair beside the bed and she quickly rose and put it on. She would not greet him from her bed. Her head was still heavy from the wine and the deep, deep sleep that had followed it and she found a little basin and splashed water over her face, blinking open her eyes.

Whose voice woke me?

Anna left the tent to find Suleyman outside but not the answer. The Prince was sitting at a table admiring the view. The horse from which he’d just dismounted was being led away by a groom and behind it followed a larger creature, stepping out elegantly. At its rein was a tall sipahi knight with gold mail and a gyrfalcon held high on his wrist.

Whoever had woken her was no longer there.

Anna walked over to the table and sat down. On it were bowls of fruit and dahl and honey and rose petals strewn between them and a small vase of lilies whose milky filaments bowed under orange stamens. For a while, neither of them spoke and the only sound was the gurgling stream and the music of morning birds.

Eventually Suleyman said, ‘I have brought a poet with me.’

‘A poet? For me?’

‘For us both. He will recite to us as we take our ease.’

‘But I want to ride. You’ve brought a gyrfalcon. We can hunt.’

Suleyman looked up from the peach he was quartering.

‘I told you,’ she continued calmly. ‘that I want to ride.’

Suleyman smiled and lifted the peach to his mouth. ‘And I want to listen to poetry. We disagree so soon?’

It was Anna’s turn to smile. ‘So let’s take the poet with us. Does he ride?’

At that, Suleyman laughed. ‘All right, we will ride. When would you like to go?’

Anna rose. ‘Now,’ she said.

Suleyman watched her for a moment; then he shrugged and rose and walked with her up the meadow, the long grass brushing their ankles. There was a little waterfall near the trees at the top and he knelt to fill his water bottle.

Then she heard it again. The voice that had woken her. It was within the trees.

She turned and walked up to the wood, leaving Suleyman at the stream. She entered the trees and peered into the sudden gloom and saw that he was standing there alone, his two eyes separated by a band of silver metal.

Eskalon
.

He was the captain of the guard’s horse, the one she’d seen led away. His long nose was protected by a shaffron studded with jewels and at his haunches hung embroidered cloth of gold.

Eskalon
.

She breathed his name and stepped forward as the great head came down to meet her. She lifted his chin and rested hers on the bridge of his nose so that they stared at each other, eye to eye.

‘Where have you been?’ she whispered, but she knew it was the wrong question.

His eyes were near to hers and they had tiny pools of light at their centre.

‘Where is he, Eskalon?’ she whispered.

The two pools moved a fraction as if the door to another world was opening. She looked into them and the trees grew still around her, the canopy above closing out the sun and
birdsong. Then she was looking around a landscape of swirling gasses and there was someone coming out of the mist towards her, someone she knew, someone she still loved and who still loved her.

Luke
.

The shape of him was vague but unmistakable. In a moment the face would appear and she was dizzy with longing. He drew closer and she lifted her arms to him.

‘Anna.’

It was Suleyman’s voice.

Anna turned to him.

He said, ‘You are pale.’

She took a deep breath, feeling the warmth of Eskalon’s breath on her neck. ‘Prince Suleyman, I want to offer you a wager.’

‘A wager? It is forbidden for me to accept wagers.’

‘And it is forbidden for you to drink wine and for your father to fornicate with boys from Trebizond but it happens. Call it a challenge.’

‘And it is what?’

‘A race. On horseback. You and me, back to the gates of Edirne,’ she said.

‘And the prize?’

‘If I win, this horse – which, by the way, I will ride.’

‘And if I win?’

She looked at him and her hand came up to touch the lily at her ear.

‘You win me,’ she said. ‘I will marry you without divorce. I will turn to your faith. You can have your red-haired heir within a year.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

EDIRNE, OCTOBER 1396

In the Year of Our Lord 1354, an Islamic God had stamped his sandalled foot and the walls of Gallipoli fell like a camel sinking to its knees in the sand. A passing Ottoman war band then skipped into the fortress and so began the stream of Turkish men, women, children, sheep and saints that, ever since, had poured across the Dardanelles up into the fecund valleys of Thrace. Their ferries had been Venetian.

In that year, too, a philosopher called Plethon had been born in a city not far to the north. Adrianopolis, city of Hadrian. Now Edirne, city of Bayezid.

In that city, on the day following her race with Suleyman, Anna sat on a stone bench in a little courtyard made by Murad for his wife, the Byzantine Princess Gülçiçek Khatun, and stared at a pillar.

The courtyard was colonnaded with Roman columns resurrected from the earthquake and each one was different. A single tree stood at its centre, planted to mark the birth of the Princess’s first-born, Yildirim.

So absorbed was Anna that she did not hear the soft tread
of the philosopher until he was next to her and had spoken the word of the Prophet.

‘“Cursed be the man who injures a fruit-bearing tree.”’

Anna swung around. ‘Plethon!’ she cried, jumping up from the bench and hugging the togaed midriff of the man before her. The sunshine glanced from his balding head and two cats tiptoed away to sleep in the trimmed borders that ringed the square. ‘Are you really here?’

‘In person,’ said the sage, performing a little bow. ‘It is, after all, my home. Or was.’

Anna smiled. She was dressed, from head to toe, in the whitest gown and her hair tumbled to her shoulders in waves of copper. Her face had thinned and there was shadow where once there’d been curve. Her eyes held something distant in them as if her mind was elsewhere.

Plethon took her hands and gazed at her, watching the colour creep slowly into her cheeks. ‘Anna,’ he said at last, ‘are you very unhappy?’

She laughed, but it was a thin sound. ‘I am well,’ she said with conviction. ‘I eat, I sleep, I live.’ She smiled. ‘No, I live in luxury and have iced sherbet on call. And I have a horse.’

‘A horse?’

‘Eskalon. He was Luke’s but he lost him. Now he’s mine.’

Plethon opened his mouth to speak but she put her finger to it and leant forward.

‘And he told me something.’ It was a whisper.

‘The horse?’

‘Yes. He told me that I must go to Luke and that he would take me to him.’

Plethon watched her for a moment, wondering if, perhaps, her mind had finally succumbed. How would she take the news
he had to give her? Gathering the folds of his toga, he lifted his long beard free and sat down on the bench, patting the space beside him.

‘Anna, you have agreed to marry Suleyman. The world knows it.’

‘I have agreed to marry him in six months’ time if there’s been no word from Luke. There’s been word.’

‘From a horse?’

‘From a horse.’

Plethon frowned. ‘Luke’s destiny …’ he began, but then stopped. For a moment he wondered what right he had to say what he was about to say.

‘Luke’s destiny is to be with me.’

Plethon looked down at his hands, at the fingers that had too often pointed to false truths. But this one he was certain of. It was time to be brutal.

‘Perhaps,’ he said, looking up. ‘But there is something he has to do before he can be with you. I thought it was a question of treasure. Now I see that it’s also something else.’

Anna sat very still, dread climbing up her like a weed. She had given so much to this empire; given her brother, her freedom, nearly her mind to its ravenous maw. Must she now give Luke?

She looked away towards Yildirim’s tree. ‘What does he have to do?’

She looked back at him, the misery clouding her eyes a darker green.

‘You’ve not mentioned Prince Mehmed,’ she continued. ‘Mehmed would take the Turks east, away from Constantinople. Why not talk to him?’

‘Because Tamerlane is not ready yet. He needs to be persuaded
that he wants to fight Bayezid. Mehmed is not the prince to do that.’

‘So find another prince.’

Plethon took her hand. ‘Anna,’ he said softly, ‘Luke
is
that prince.’

She frowned. Luke was no prince. He was a Varangian. The numbing dread was in every part of her now.

A Varangian sent to persuade Tamerlane. Luke is going to Tamerlane
.

She had to think of something else. ‘Will Constantinople hold?’

‘Constantinople will hold until the Turks get their cannon. I come from Venice where I tried to persuade the Doge to sell them instead to the Empire.’

‘And will they?’

‘Before the crusade, perhaps. Now, no. They are Venetians.’

She frowned. ‘They’re also Christian … And the Varangian treasure, have you given up on that?’

Plethon shook his head. ‘While you were at Nicopolis, I entered Constantinople to search Siward’s tomb which is in the Varangian church there. But someone had been there before me.’

‘It was empty?’

‘No. The top had been removed. It was full, but with a body. There was no room for anything else.’

‘So where do you look now?’

‘Mistra,’ he said. ‘I go there next. There was a mural in the church that had been covered over with recent paint. Whoever did that wanted to hide its message.’ He paused and smiled. ‘I expect a proposition quite soon.’

Anna only half heard him. She was thinking of Mistra and of her yearning to be there. She said, ‘Tell me, Plethon, what is
my
destiny?’

‘To marry Suleyman.’

Anna shook her head. ‘Not if I can be with Luke.’

Plethon said nothing.

‘So you are on your way to Mistra. Why have you come here?’ she asked.

Plethon saw the fragility of her mind and the despair that made it so. He had dreaded this moment. ‘To take you with me.’ He paused. ‘Anna, your father is dead.’

At first the words held no meaning for her. Then they did. Of course he was dead. He’d been dead since Alexis had gone. He’d been dead when she’d seen him at Serres.

I shall never speak with him again
.

Anna rocked back on the bench, embracing herself.

Plethon continued, very softly: ‘I’ve come from the Emperor Manuel to seek peace. To see what can be rescued from the ruins of Nicopolis. I’ve also come to ask the Sultan if I can take a daughter to Mistra to see her father interred.’

Anna tried to smile but the ice that had entered her soul froze it on her lips. ‘And what does the Sultan say?’ she whispered.

Bayezid had been drunk when he’d received him. The fair page from Trebizond had supported his more extravagant gestures of contempt as Plethon had argued the case for peace. But he’d agreed to Anna leaving because it would upset his eldest son.

‘He said yes.’ Plethon unravelled a fold in his toga. He put two fingers to his closed eyes and rubbed them. Anna saw how tired he was. ‘He even agreed to allow Matthew, Nikolas and Arcadius to come with us: a Varangian escort. He must want to annoy his son very much.’

Plethon glanced around the courtyard. He’d seen movement among the tulips but it was only a cat, its grey-silk body flowing
from the flowers like mercury. He rose and took Anna’s hand. ‘We leave tomorrow at dawn. The funeral is in three days. We’ll have to ride fast.’