Emperor's Winding Sheet (12 page)

Vrethiki soon knew the weak points and strong points on the walls as well as anyone. For anyone could see where the trouble would be. Halfway along the land walls a little river called the Lycus ran into the City from the countryside, and made its way to the Marmara shore. It was ducted under the walls in a huge conduit, but along its flat valley floor the walls faced an open plain on which attackers could marshal, and where they had room to place their guns.

It was riding along this section of wall one morning with the Emperor that Justiniani suddenly seemed to notice Vrethiki.

“Your master has a weakness, after all,” he said to Stephanos who was riding at his side, taking notes of work that needed doing. “He has that lovely slave boy always at his side.”

Stephanos flushed with anger, and answered smoothly, rapidly, in a fiercely muttered undertone. Justiniani apologized, gracefully. A moment later he tried again, asking Vrethiki himself where he came from.

“Bristow? Ah—lnglese!” he said, smiling. “Thence the sunny hair, and summer eyes. So you too have come looking for battles and glory. We are rash bold fellows, you and I.”

Vrethiki glowed with pleasure, but somehow he couldn't just accept such praise, given on a misunderstanding. “I'm not so brave as that,” he said. “I'd be far hence if I were free to go. But a fool dream binds me here.” And he told Justiniani about the
Cog Anne
, and the shipwreck, and Mistra, and Plethon.

“So here you are,” said Justiniani when he had done. “And being here, you will fight with the best of us, eh?”

“I'll keep my place by my master,” said Vrethiki. “But as to fighting, I've only tooth and nail to do it with.”

The next day one of Justiniani's swaggering soldiers came to the Emperor's apartments, bearing a parcel ad dressed L'Inglese. Inside the linen wrapper was an Italian dagger—a steel blade some twelve inches long, with niello inlay on the hilt, and a handsome scabbard of gilded leather work. Vrethiki ran his finger down the blade till he cut himself; wore it at his belt all day, taking it out of its scabbard every other minute, and laid it close beside his pillow at night. It was to be a long time before the boy exchanged words again with the great Genoese. But from that day onward he worshipped him.

T
he emperor took luka notaras, Minotto, the Venetian, and the Turk, Orhan, with him on that morning's ride, round the circuit of the sea walls. The sea walls were simpler than the land walls. They were a single line of towers, girding the shore, with a great wall linking them, and a parapet and catwalk, and battlements along the top. Flights of steps ran up to the strong points from within, at regular intervals. In the northern run of the walls there were many gates, and outside them, on the beaches, was a great clutter of fishermen's boats and shacks. But the Emperor planned to shut off the great curving arm of water from Turkish attack with a boom floated across the mouth, between the tip of the City and Pera. “With God's help, we shall not need to defend this stretch,” he was saying.

“A token force, perhaps,” said Orhan.

“Nevertheless, if they did get through to attack here,” said Notaras, “the walls are at their lowest here, and it was here that the Crusaders got in …”

“You can defend this part,” said the Emperor. “Your house is in this district, Notaras, and the fleet is in your charge, so it is as well you should be near it. You can garrison this wall, and hold your troops in reserve for bringing reinforcements as needed.”

Farther along the wall they drew nearer the mouth of the Golden Horn. They could see Pera, with its fortified towers and walls, perched on the slopes of the point opposite. They began to discuss the placing of the boom to close the channel. Obviously the nearer the tip of the City it could be placed, the more wall could be protected from attack. While they talked Vrethiki stood looking over the parapet. On his left lay Pera, for the City projected farther than the northern shore into the deep waters of the Bosporus. Ahead of him the Bosporus stretched away north ward, with the Sultan's castles out of sight round the bend. On his right the Asian shore, wooded, hazy in the sunshine, with a few Turkish villages visible and, at the nearest point, the pitched roof and minaret of a little mosque. It was so near! Vrethiki measured the distance with his eye. The gulf between friend and enemy, between infidel and Christian, was only this choppy mile or so of dark-blue water; and as the party moved on, turning southward round the point, Vrethiki almost thought he could hear, on a gust of the breeze, the wailing singsong call to an alien prayer.

The party rode onward swiftly, under the ruins of an older Imperial palace, crumbling away on rising terraces above them, and moved round the curve of the walls to the southern shore. The Emperor was not much worried by attacks on this section of the walls, for the current ran so fiercely and swiftly round the point that it would take astonishing seamanship to bring an assault to bear there. But the southern wall had numerous small harbors set into it, and each one needed careful looking at, in case it was a weak point. All would need garrisons. On their left as they rode stretched the bright sparkling sea, with its scatter of shadowy island in the haze.

They had ridden nearly to where the sea wall joined the
land wall again, on the southern shore, when they came to a little church, close within the wall. There was a garden round the church, with cypresses growing. And under the trees was a table, and a party of fishermen and shepherds seated, and eating, with a bride and groom. The Emperor reined in his horse, and looked down at this scene a moment. At once he had been seen. An old man wearing a shepherd's fluffy cloak came running up the flight of steps to the top of the wall, flung himself on his knees, and invited the Emperor to honor him by drinking a cup of the wedding wine.

The Emperor smiled. He dismounted, and climbed down into the garden. Stephanos and Vrethiki went with him, but his noblemen stayed where they were. The Emperor sat on a stool in the porch of the little church. He sipped wine, and ate a piece of grilled fish that they brought him, wrapped in vine leaves. The priest of the church, bowing gravely, told him that the young bridegroom was Basil, a fisherman, and his bride was Zoë, the shepherd's daughter. Zoë kept her face veiled, but Basil came forward, and greeted the Emperor. He was awkward and shy, not knowing what to say, or how to bow. A wrinkled old woman wearing black brought another piece of fish, “for the lucky child.” Vrethiki ate it happily. It was pink and firm and salty, and pungent with some good spice.

Just then the musicians arrived, with shawms, and a psaltery, and a tambour. Basil led his bride forward to dance for the Emperor. She spun and glided, he leaped and stamped, a simple dance like a mayday romp in England. The Emperor watched and smiled. Vrethiki saw with surprise that he tapped with his silken foot to the joyful beat of the dance. At last Basil dropped to one knee, with his arms flung upward. He was a little breathless, and the sweat glistened on his smooth young
face. Zoë, too, stopped spinning, and the fluttering ribbons on her head dress floated to rest. The Emperor rose.

“Fight as bravely as you dance, my son,” he said.

Rejoining the others at the top of the wall, and seeing Notaras' cold disapproving face, he said, “You should have come down, Lukas, the wine was drinkable.”

“Is this a time to marry?” said Lukas as they rode away.

“Soon it may be too late,” replied the Emperor.

 

“HOW MANY MEN DO WE HAVE TO MAN THAT CIRCUIT OF
walls?” asked the Emperor. “We need an accurate count. You see to that, Phrantzes. Get the demarch of each district to bring you a list of every able-bodied man in his district, and all the weapons they can muster. They must do it secretly, not comparing tallies with each other, but bringing the results straight to you. And, Phrantzes old friend, this is for your ears only, take the accounts to your own house, and sit down alone within your own four walls, and make a total, and let nobody know it but you and me.”

 

THE SPRING HAD COME ROUND AGAIN. IT HAD HARDLY SEEMED
like winter to Vrethiki, only storms, rainfall on gusty mild winds, and once a light scatter of snow that had been blown into corners and crevices by the wind, and melted almost as soon as it came. More often the rain was like a mist, a grayness in the air, a fine drizzle faintly caressing the skin. Bright sunlight had shone in between.

But that had been winter, for now it was spring, with an outburst of birds singing on every bush, and an outburst of sudden flowers scrambling all over the ruins, creeping in dusty corners on the streets, waving like fragile flags from parapets, from cracks in masonry. Storks came back, and built
nests on the rooftops; spring plowing was halfway done in the City's fields, and the shepherds were busy with lambing in the flocks that wandered grazing through ruins and copses. The gardeners gathered a first crop of sweet green salad and sold it through the streets on handcarts. The sun shone, briefly interrupted by warm showers, and the air was bright and sweet like wine.

The flowers and birds were not the only ones to flourish unconcerned. Down in the Petrion quarter, where the palace household bought its fish on the teeming shore, the price of turbot was up because some of the fishermen needed new nets. “The old nets will not last above another month or so,” a fisherman told Vrethiki and Manuel.

“Pray God they will have to,” muttered Manuel. But the Emperor liked turbot. Manuel haggled a little, but in the end he paid. There was still a thronging market in the City, full of Genoese traders from Pera, the stalls laden with produce from the farms, with dried figs, with bales of silk, with leatherwork and wool. Among the other merchandise, armaments: swords old and new, greaves, helmets, straps and bows were on sale, and yet the crowds were denser by the shining bales of silk. A strange-looking man in a long blue robe with sun and stars sewn on it in golden sequins, and flasks of brightly colored liquors on his stall, was selling painless poison in little phials, “to bring an end swiftly like a child falling asleep.” But nobody seemed to need his wares, and he changed tune abruptly when a priest came by, and offered a marvelous cure for lumbago instead.

Vrethiki stared as he stood, waiting patiently, holding the fish basket, while Manuel was explaining loudly to a friend that he, Manuel, was buying produce only so that most of the Emperor's household could serve as soldiers; he himself
was thinking of asking the Emperor to let him go … The alchemist drew near to Vrethiki, and whispered to him. “No sweet death for you, eh, my young lamb? For you I've a better thing … look at this …” He opened a little box, and took out a jar of alabaster. He lifted the lid of this jar, and showed Vrethiki a cloudy, gray translucent ointment within. It emitted a pungent oily smell. “This, now, most wonderfully heals wounds—closes open gashes, stems the flow of blood, and brings the skin to heal over instantly …”

“I haven't any money,” said Vrethiki, backing away. The man's long beard had been oiled with some strong sweet-smelling preparation. The wrinkles that lent a little wisdom to his face had been painted on. “Money?” hissed the fellow, grabbing Vrethiki's arm. “Why, such a sweet child as you should not bleed for lack of such a trifle as money … Here, young master, yours in exchange for your dagger …” and still holding Vrethiki with one hand, he began to unbuckle the dagger with the other.

“No!” cried Vrethiki, struggling in the man's grip. “No, no, no!” And Manuel turned round, and came to Vrethiki's aid. “Get off, away with you, or I'll report you to the market archon!” he cried, waving a clenched fist under the ruffian's nose. “After your dagger, was he?” he said to Vrethiki, mockingly. “It sounded as though he was murdering you at the least!”

They made their way homeward. First they had to struggle round the press of women at the silk stalls, and there they saw Theophilus Palaeologos, standing waiting for his wife. “Will there be time to have the dress made up?” he said, smiling wryly toward her curtained litter, to which bale after bale was being carried for her approval. “You well may wonder. The world is coming to an end, and my wife is still buying new clothes!”

Out on the Adrianople road, going toward Blachernae, they came upon a procession. “There seems to be one every day!” thought Vrethiki, and this one was going to St. Saviour in Chora, just within the walls, to beg the Lord God that the citizens might at least be allowed to celebrate Easter in peace.

 

THE DAY OF PALMS CAME. THE CITY WAS FULL OF TERRIFIED
rumors about the size of the Sultan's fleet, that was sailing up from the Hellespont. Even so the streets were decked with green branches, myrtle, laurel and olive on every column, every post along the road the Emperor took. He carried a cross in his right hand, and a mantle of acacia-leaf damask wrapped round his left, in which he held a candle. A great procession of priests and noblemen escorted him, on foot, to the Church of the Holy Wisdom. And when, after the Liturgy, he left the church, a little boy in a white garment came running, and seized a branch with a loud cry, and then all the people took branches, and waved them, and trooped home like a garden on the move.

Maundy Thursday came. They brought twelve paupers to the Emperor's throne room, clad in new white tunics. The Emperor tied a towel round his waist, poured water into a basin, and knelt on the floor. A reader declaimed in a loud voice the passage of St. John in which it is told how Christ washed the feet of His disciples. The Emperor washed and dried and kissed the right foot of each poor man in turn. Then he gave them three golden coins each, put off the towel, and went to hear the Liturgy. And he neither slept nor ate that day, or the night following, for twelve readings from the Bible were intoned in the Church of the Holy Wisdom, and during each of these the Emperor stood before the altar,
holding a great candle. And between the readings he withdrew to his own part of the gallery and rested, while glimmering portraits of earlier Emperors stared down on him. A great marble door divided the Emperor's part of the gallery from the rest, and while the Emperor was within, Vrethiki stood at this door, holding the candle ready for his master to take again as the next reading began. The candle stood half as high again as the boy himself.