Emperor's Winding Sheet (14 page)

“Gladly, Lord Emperor,” said Trevisano.

At nightfall came the Sultan's message under flag of truce. He would spare the people's lives and property if they would surrender willingly to him. This offer the Emperor and his council refused.

 

VERY EARLY IN THE MORNING, VRETHIKI STIRRED IN HIS BED.
Something had woken him. What? He could hear nothing now except the startled calling of a bird a little distance off. Pale light and a clear lemon sky showed through the window. Dawn. But he had woken dreaming of something—a nightmare, for he had woken sweating, for a moment relieved to find it was a dream, and then for a fleeting second had thought it real. What was it? His father falling in an upstairs room, the day the sickness came upon him. They had heard the heavy thud upon the ceiling boards; they had run up the stairs, and flung open the door. His father had been lying with a purple twisted face upon the floor, with his arms thrown up, and the coin he had been counting scattered all around him … Or had it been that terrible moment when the
Cog Anne
was beating through wind and rain, running for shelter
to a port called Modon. They saw, or thought they saw, the lighthouse, the great fiery flare set up to warn them, a little way ahead, but to the right, when it should have been on the left. And then suddenly a great jarring shock ran through the ship from end to end, and she keeled over swiftly in the furious seething waters … How had he come to imagine the dream was real?

Then it came again. A noise so deep and low it could scarcely be called a noise, for he hardly heard it; but it made a tangible tremor on the morning air. He ran to the window, and climbed up to look out. It came again, a deep throated boom, rolling down the slopes in truncated fragments of shuddering low sound, and then a sudden clamor of bells cut through it—bells not rung with the slow rhythm of prayer, but wildly jangled from churches far and wide on a hundred different brazen notes all over the City. The Turks had begun their cannonade, and the alarm was sounding.

The Emperor ate his breakfast standing, while Stephanos and Manuel strapped on his armor. He wore a golden breastplate and greaves and armguards, and a purple cloak, as an Emperor might have done who was a true Roman from a thousand years ago. The moment his armor was secured he put down the round of bread half-eaten, swilled down a draft of wine, and strode out to mount his white Arab mare, and ride to see the impact of the guns.

They were not, after all, firing the great mass of guns in the Lycus valley; not yet. They were firing nearer, on the height, blasting at the Charisian Gate, where Justiniani was posted. First a flash of white fire could be seen, followed a moment after by the ear-splitting noise of the explosion; then the wall quaked, and instantly, while the horse shied and picked up their feet in fear, came the thud and crack of the
ball hitting the walls and shattering into a thousand splinters. Thick filthy black smoke billowed from the guns and rolled toward the walls, enveloping everything. The Emperor calmed his horse, patting her silken neck, mur muring to her, and urged her forward. As they mounted the slope and drew nearer, the gun was fired again. Flash, bang, tremor and thud rolled into one reached them all together now, and the smoke cloud that followed made them cough and weep.

“They are shaking the walls!” said the Emperor to Justiniani, dismay in his voice.

“Somewhat. When they hit them, Sire,” said Justiniani. His face was blackened with smuts from the gunsmoke, and the sulfurous smell of it hung about his garments. When he grinned up at his master, his pink tongue and white teeth showed vividly, like the smile of a swarthy-skinned Turk. “Watch,” he said.

Another gun was being made ready to fire. The morning wind had rolled away the smoke from the earlier discharge, though a plume of it still dribbled from the cannon's muzzle. A team of Turks was charging and loading the fourth gun in their battery. From the parapet of the inner wall, above the Emperor's head, a bowman took careful aim. His arrow transfixed the man who brought a torch to light the fuse. Another man came. The gun fired. The ball hit the ground.

“They don't know how to aim them,” Justiniani said. “With that weight of shot they ought to aim very high. I suppose they'll work that out in a day or two, but no need to worry, Sire, until they do. Oafs! Idiots!” he yelled, at the incompetent enemy, invisible once more in drifts of black smoke.

“We must see what is happening elsewhere,” said the Emperor, urgently riding on.

In the Lycus valley, where the regiments of the heathen were massed thickest and the Sultan's own tent stood behind the lines, the enemy were still working on their guns, building platforms of felled trees, with great boulders to break the recoil, and making a neat stockpile of stone balls of monstrous size. They did not seem ready to fire yet. Varangian John was keeping a hawk-like watch on them. The Varangians were ranged on the wide terrace between the inner and outer walls, and a Cretan bowman was with them, waiting to pick off Urban the gunsmith, who was down there in view, if he was fool enough to step within range.

Farther south Theophilus Palaeologos and Contarini the Venetian were at their posts, watching the vast horde of the Sultan's irregular troops, the bashi-bazouks, and with nothing more to report than the enemy approaching the moat and yelling. Demetrios Cantacuzenos beyond the Golden Gate said the Turks were patrolling the whole Marmara shore with a group of ships. “Let me know at once if they attack,” said the Emperor. “You'd need rein forcements, fast.” From this southernmost stretch of land wall the whole City could be seen in prospect. It was still lovely, and still loud with bells. The Emperor reined in his horse, and said to Cantacuzenos, “Send messengers to bid them stop ringing; we shall need the bells for worse moments than this.”

Slowly, as they rode back to Blachernae between the two great walls, the bells died down, first the near, then slowly, one by one, the distant ones, and, last of all, the great sonorous voice of the Church of the Holy Wisdom.

Once the bells were silent, the remorseless irregular thudding of the guns at the Charisian Gate could be clearly heard all over the City.

•

 

ALL DAY THE GUNS CONTINUED, AND ALL NIGHT. THE EMPEROR
rode next morning to hear the Liturgy in the Church of the Holy Wisdom. The streets were full of agitated citizens, women and old men going to the churches; but the Great Church was nearly deserted as it had been every day since the Latin Mass was said in it by Cardinal Isadore. The Emperor said nothing, but on the return ride he turned aside from the main road, and he and his escort mounted the endless flights of steps that wound up the steep of one of the City's hills, to the Pantocrator Monastery at the top. The square in front of its triple church was full of people, for the churches themselves were packed full. Outside the door folk knelt in the dust, praying and weeping. On the door that led to the cells of the monks a paper was pinned up, ragged from the tugging breeze of the hilltop. The Emperor sent Stephanos to read it. It said, Woe to those who put their faith in the West rather than in God and underneath, in newer, less faded writing, it added, They shall lose both the earthly and the Heavenly Kingdom.

In silence they turned away, and descended the slopes again.

“My Lord,” said Stephanos, anxiously, “do not let him perturb you. When help comes from Venice or the Pope, the people will all flock to your side again.”

“Yes,” said the Emperor gloomily. “They change. And he has changed. He signed in favor of it … Scholarios himself signed … but … if only I were certain he is now wrong!”

“My Lord,” said Stephanos, “what you do, you must. You can no other.”

 

AT THE END OF ANOTHER DAY OF CEASELESS POUNDING, A
section of the outer wall by the Charisian Gate suddenly
collapsed into the fosse in an avalanche of rubble. Behind it, the inner wall was cracked and the battlements tumbled. A cheer went up from the ranks of the janissaries, outside, when they saw the wall collapse—a horrible meaningless whooping and halooing lasting for nearly half an hour, and audible within the walls for half a mile or so. Justiniani, who had been fighting nearby all day, coped with the crisis with great coolness. He went in person to intercept the men leaving the walls for their rest, those who had been relieved by others for the night, and asked them to stay and cart earth. They began bringing earth from the fields tilled by the monks of St. Saviour in Chora just within the walls, and soon a party of monks came out, their robes girded up to the knee and baskets on their backs, to help in the labor. Justiniani praised God for them, and went to drum up a work party to clear the fosse.

When the Emperor rode out after supper to see what was afoot, a great crowd of citizens were toiling away down in the fosse, in the darkness, working without light save for a fire burning up on one of the towers, so that there was a faint light to make work possible but not enough to draw attention to what was happening. Men and donkeys were carrying away the debris of the fallen walls so that it would not make a slope and foothold out of the fosse for Turks to scramble up. Meanwhile a pile of loose masonry was being built, block by block, across the breach in the wall, and beams and timbers were being built into a palisade, with barrels of earth set upon it for battlements, behind which the defenders could fight in shelter as before. The work went on all night.

The moment he woke next morning, the Emperor sent Stephanos out to bring news of the repair work, and to bid Justiniani come and breakfast with him. Stephanos returned saying the repairs were completed and looked robust enough,
but Justiniani would not come till he had had the pleasure of seeing the Turkish captains ride up and see how little yesterday's work had gained them. The Emperor smiled his stiff slow smile at that, and sent out a jug of hot wine and fresh bread to his gallant commander. Vrethiki would have loved that errand, but Manuel was sent.

At noon the Emperor held a council of war. It was not like his other councils. Nobody kissed his feet; nobody remained standing. The Emperor did not put on purple for it, but came in his armor. So also did his captains come, wearing their bronze or oiled steel. A map was on the table, and chairs set round it. Stephanos and Manuel had orders to bring food and wine, and offer it quietly. “A man can neither fight nor think well when he's hungry,” said the Emperor.

“Along the whole length of the wall they are trying to fill in the fosse,” said Theophilus Palaeologos. “We have to keep up a shower of stones and arrows to stop them. They keep trying.”

“They must not succeed,” said Justiniani.

“What more can we do to prevent them?” asked Contarini. “We could sally out, perhaps.”

“That would have to be in massive strength,” said The ophilus, “to be sure of not getting cut off. Once we are fighting in the open they have every advantage.”

“Too dangerous,” said the Emperor. “It would certainly cost lives. Outnumbered as we are, every life we lose is a major victory to them.”

“What we need is a sally port,” said Justiniani. “If only we could rush them from their flank, when they're actually in the fosse …”

At that an old servant, attending Lukas Notaras, came forward on a stick, stammering and bowing. “Forgive me, my
Emperor, my lords … forgive my presumption …”

The Emperor turned to look at him.

“What have you to say, then, old father?” he asked.

“He has a special tone for speaking to his commoners,” Vrethiki noticed. “A special gentleness.”

“My lords, there is a sally port,” said the old man. “A little door that gives into the moat, right down below ground level. I remember seeing my father ride out through it when I was a boy, when the old Sultan was outside. It has been bricked up these many years.”

“Where is it?” demanded Justiniani, eyes glittering with excitement, thrusting the map forward at the old man.

The old man screwed up his eyes, and stared at the map. His finger trembled as he tried to follow the lines, to pin point. Then he shook his gray head. “I can't see as I used to, my lords, but you know where the wall takes a sudden turn, where it juts out around this palace area? Well, the new wall crosses the old fosse there, and in the lee of one of the new towers—it's very well hidden, right low down—there is a little door. Kerkoporta, that's what it was called. Kerkoporta; that's right.”

“We could break out through it, and sweep them out of the fosse,” said Justiniani. “We can take them by surprise. It won't need nearly so much force as a full-scale sortie through one of the main gates … it's a godsend!”

“Open it up, then,” said the Emperor. “And set a guard on it, night and day.”

“Why was it bricked up, I wonder,” said Theophilus.

“There was a prophecy …” the old man said, “that through it the City would one day …”

“Oh, tush!” said Justiniani. “If prophecies were soldiers you Greeks would be in little need of help!”

“We are Romans, sir,” said Notaras. “Ronzaioi. Romans.”

“Yes, yes,” said Justiniani. “So is the Pope. How soon can we open up that door?”

“The Bocciardo brothers are in charge there,” said Notaras. “Perhaps they can open it tonight.”

 

THE NEXT MORNING THE ALARM CAME FROM THE OTHER END
of the City. Watchers on the Acropolis had seen at dawn the Turkish fleet sweeping down the Bosporus, and were waving flares, and sounding trumpets to alert the sleepy sailors along the boom. The Turkish ships seemed to be trying to maneuver themselves into a row, side by side, facing the boom, but smooth though those lovely waters seem, deep fierce currents tug through them; a gusty wind added to their difficulties. Soon the Turkish galleys were fouling each other's banks of oars, with a sound of splintering wood that could be heard on the shore. The Christian vessels were safely tied up to the boom; and being Westernstyle ships, with poop and forecastle, they stood high out of the water, towering above the decks of their enemies, and the sailors aboard them poured down arrows and shot upon the infidels like rain. A galley bristling with armed men like a hedgehog struggled to draw near the boom. She had a great blade fastened to her bow, in hopes, it seemed, of cutting her way through and setting the boom adrift; but the boom was made of steel chain, not of rope; and in any case the galley got nowhere near it. As soon as the de fenders brought up their most powerful weapon—the terrible flame thrower known as Greek fire—the Turkish fleet turned tail and fled. They had been routed in only half an hour. By nightfall a ship chandler from Pera who had been selling ropes and gear to the Turks came over with the news that the admiral had decided to wait for more ships—those yet more ships that were on their way from the Black Sea coast, from Sinope and Samsun.