Master of Shadows (22 page)

‘Whatever storm the messenger had unleashed had passed him by,’ said Constantine, whispering now, ‘leaving him unharmed.’

It was in this way, lying in the warm, perfumed darkness of her prince’s bedchamber, that Yaminah had learned the history of her city, of the empire of Byzantium and of those, like Mehmet’s Seljuk Turks, who would harm it.

‘Out in the corridors it became apparent to one and all that Mehmet was making for the stables, and men began shouting ahead, issuing orders for the grooms to ready the horses,’ said Constantine, his voice high, in harmony with the thrill and foreboding of it all.

‘Mehmet’s gaze was fixed straight ahead, as though focused on a point far in the distance that only he could see.’

Constantine played a tiny mirror, cupped in his free hand, to make a momentary blinding flash.

‘None dared speak to him for fear of rebuke or reprisal. Instead they stole glances at his face in search of understanding.’

‘What age was he?’ asked Yaminah, momentarily breaking the spell of his storytelling. ‘When he learned his father was dead?’

‘No more than seventeen,’ Constantine replied, still playing with the mirror and moving the thin shaft of light around the walls.

‘So young,’ she said. ‘And why such urgency? The throne was his.’

He laughed. ‘The throne might go to whoever had the will and the strength to seize it,’ he said. ‘It is the way of the Ottomans. Where there are many sons – and that is what their harems and seraglios are for – each may claim the throne on the death of the father.’

‘So they murder babies too – just to be sure,’ she said.

‘Little Ahmet,’ he said. ‘I sometimes wish I had spared you that tale.’

‘It is no tale,’ she said. ‘In what sort of world is a tiny child a threat to a sultan?’

‘The Turks are hardly alone in that cruelty,’ said Constantine. ‘Do not forget my own family. Plenty of my ancestors have done away with kin. One of them blinded his own son and also his three-year-old grandson, just to keep them from his throne.’

Yaminah closed her eyes and turned away from him.

To distract her, Constantine returned to his shadow play. All at once, two parties of horsemen approached one another, stopping while they were still separated by a respectful distance.

‘A great horde – common people as well as grand men – rode out from the royal capital to greet him as he approached. When they saw Mehmet and his party on the horizon, they dismounted. Leading their horses by the reins, they progressed in silence while the new sultan came on – and then he too climbed down from his horse and his followers did likewise.’

Constantine brought the shadow parties together so that they appeared as one thronging mass.

‘As they came upon one another, a great call went up – a wailing cry of mourning for the dead sultan, and the ululations rolled across the wide plain. As abruptly as it had begun, the wailing ended, and then every man and woman knelt down before the new sultan and offered him praise.’

32

Rome, twenty-one years before

It was still half dark, but the sunrise was close. Isabella’s right shoulder was exposed to the air. Keeping her breathing shallow and with movements slow, she reached for it with her left hand. Her skin was cold, like that of a corpse. It was just as well. She could not risk falling back to sleep, and the chill made her more determined to rise and be away.

Shrugging aside the covers, she swung her legs off the bed until she could sit upright. Only then, with her back turned, could she allow herself to look down at him over one shoulder. Given the gloom, she sensed rather than saw that Badr was lying on his front. His face was turned away from her, which was a relief. Somewhere outside and far away, a bird began to sing, heralding the rising of the sun. The fragile notes broke her lover’s spell and she closed her eyes, promising herself she would not look at him again.

She heard him groan, mutter some words she did not catch. He was feverish still, radiating the kind of heat that came only from illness. Soon he would be awake. She hated to take her leave of him while he was unwell, but part of her knew it was the perfect time to make her getaway.

She slipped out of the bedroom then, without a backward glance, and stole along the narrow hallway. There was a dim glow from tall windows high up on the walls, and when she stopped to dress by the main door, she could see well enough. There was a mirror on the wall beside her and she paused in front of it for a few moments, long enough to check that she looked respectable, nothing more. Her long fair hair was loose and reached more than halfway down her back. There was no time to fix it now, and pausing only to throw a wrap around her shoulders, she opened the door of the town house and stepped out into the dawn. Black-headed seabirds squabbled on the rooftops above, their keening cries full of hunger and sadness.

As she made her way along a narrow pavement touched by the sun’s first rays, she remembered some of Ama’s words. An old lady now, blind and frail, Ama had been Isabella’s nurse from the moment she drew her first breath. As full of stories as with love, it was Ama, more than Isabella’s mother or anyone else, who had cradled her and loved her. Needed her. As the gulls’ pleading, lonely cries sounded high above and out of sight, Isabella was reminded of Ama’s talk of souls and their twins.

Such a notion was tantamount to heresy, of course, or heathen nonsense at best. The thought had been entrusted to Isabella among many other confidences shared by the pair. Ama had loved her stories, kept them close around her in place of any family of her own, and Isabella couldn’t hear enough of them.

Now old age had taken Ama’s stories along with so much else. The woman who framed Isabella’s childhood, who featured in every other memory, had been robbed of her own power of recall. She embodied Isabella’s past but had access to none of her own. Her stories too had departed one by one, like guests leaving a party in the wee small hours; time to go. She existed now in a warm haze of confusion. Still in Isabella’s family home, though mostly unaware and untroubled by the blur of it all, Ama haunted the tumbledown remains of her own life.

When Isabella had asked where the idea of twin souls came from, Ama said it was a story that came out of the East – from India maybe. Whatever its origins, it had pleased Isabella as a little girl just as it pleased her now. Maybe she wasn’t alone – or at least, not for ever.

Ama said that for the most part each twin followed a separate path, without encountering its other half. But from time to time in an infinite universe they must come together, by accident or design, and the result then was greater than the sum of two parts.

It was only the souls that were identical, of course, said Ama, not the people who embodied them, so the individuals concerned need not look alike. Geography and distance created by the accident of birth played their parts, often keeping twins apart. Gender had its role as well. One soul might be incarnated in a male body, while its twin was female. Sometimes the souls got out of step with one another so that one was newborn when the other was old – and all points in between.

‘They may meet as parent and child, as lovers, as enemies, as strangers from opposite ends of the earth,’ Ama said, brushing Isabella’s dark blonde tresses until they shone. ‘Every once in a while, though, their time coincides, and for as long as they are together there must be consequences.’

‘Will my soul have a twin?’ Isabella had asked at once, gazing into Ama’s face reflected in the mirror. Ama bit her lip, wondering if it had been a mistake to dangle such a hope in front of a heart as needy as little Isabella’s. It was too late. The bait had been swallowed, and the hook was fast.

‘No one knows that about themselves, sweetheart,’ she said, smiling. Ama was as warm and soft as new-baked bread, and Isabella pushed back against her nurse’s tummy as though it was a cushion. Ama stopped her brushing then and rested both hands on the girl’s shoulders. She adopted a serious expression, as of the schoolroom, so that Isabella might pay attention and remember.

‘But here is the most important part … you must never, ever go looking.’ She was improvising, making up rules that did not exist. ‘Never imagine you have a twin. Better think of it as a story to make you smile. But if you did have a twin soul and …’ she was drifting helplessly back into her story, ‘you were to meet, then so be it. You cannot make it happen, though … must not try.

‘And anyway,’ she said, bending down to plant a soft kiss on Isabella’s cheek, ‘what need have you or I of twins, when we have each other?’

She winked at their reflection and Isabella gasped, her heart filled to the brim with the possibility.

‘Maybe we are twins!’ she said. ‘You and I!’

Ama smiled. ‘Maybe my darling,’ she said. ‘Maybe.’

Back in the present, back in the early morning of the Eternal City, Isabella felt the memory of the moment like a lump in her chest. An old memory, but one with such power – a light unfocused by great distance but burning bright.

But for all she had enjoyed the possibility that she herself might be blessed thus – gifted a partner for eternity, one she might encounter in this life or in some other yet to be – the thought made her sad today as well.

She felt she might have loved the man she was leaving behind, but he was not her soul’s twin; of that she was certain. He had caught her eye the first moment they met, but truly they were different people (she had learned that much, at least) and therefore – she was quite sure – theirs were unconnected souls. She realised she was nodding to herself as she reviewed the situation.

It was, however, no fancy thought of souls, entwined or otherwise, that had persuaded her to cut him away and for ever. She might have kept him, twin or not. It wasn’t the infinite possibilities suggested by the world invisible that had persuaded her to turn her back on him. Instead it was the straightforward understanding that if she did not give him up – and if their liaison were discovered – her father would have his life snuffed out like a candle’s flame. She would put away her own sorrow for now, ready to be unpacked later when the job was done.

‘Enough of all this,’ she said out loud.

She was shaking her head, suddenly filled with self-reproach.

Again and again her father had told her she was trouble, and that she had to be watched, and he was right! Stolen moments with one lover might be dismissed as an indiscretion; even predictable in the case of a girl kept always on so short a leash. But with two?

She raised her hand to her mouth to stifle … what? A laugh? A groan? She was not sure herself, and she quickened her pace to distract herself from her line of thought.

Now there was another soul to be considered, of course – the baby growing inside her. A new life. She allowed herself to imagine that her unborn child might have a twin somewhere, a fellow traveller already out in the world and unaware. She was scared by her new-found circumstances – terrified – but the wonder of it all transcended every other consideration.

Her father would be appalled, furious – that much was certain. When he found out, he would roar at her, and shout obscenities. He might call her a whore and say she had disgraced him, brought their family name into disrepute. He would want to hit her – just as he sometimes hit her mother. But she was certain that in spite of the temptation, and the undoubted provocation, he would not raise his hand against her.

Philip Kritovoulos was a violent man, but never to her. She was his most precious possession (possession was quite the right word), and he would not allow her to be damaged, even if her recent actions and their consequences would see his reputation dragged through the mire.

Next, she thought about her lover, lying on his sickbed. Badr Khassan was a good man and would make a good father one day. But their situation was hopeless. If he were to stand by her side now, it would bring down his death sentence, nothing more.

She thought about Badr’s friend, Patrick Grant, and what he had said when she had confided in him, told him about the baby, and that she was leaving …

‘Badr loves you – you should tell him,’ he had said. ‘He will be a good father for the baby, a good husband for you.’

‘I know he loves me – that is precisely why he must not know. I have to leave him behind. It is the only way. And since I have to leave him, since we must part, there is no good in telling him. There will be pain enough to bear – I would spare him the worst.’

‘This cannot be right,’ he said. ‘There must be something more that I can do.’

She had smiled at him and raised a hand to his face.

‘Apart from anything else, more than anything else, you are his best friend,’ she said. ‘He will need you now.’

He had turned from her then so that he was beyond her reach, and began walking away with his chin down on his chest like a chastened child. She left her hand extended towards him, but he did not turn back, and some small part of her was glad.

He was right, in any case. Badr would be a good father for her baby, and a good husband. But not here, and not now.

Two men concealed in the shadows of a dark alleyway waited until Isabella was long out of sight before stepping into the dawn light and crossing the street …

It was Patrick who came for him in the burning bedroom half an hour later – Patrick who found that the flames had already taken hold beyond any hope of extinguishing them. Crawling on his hands and knees beneath the worst of it, he had found his friend by touch rather than by sight. The big man was unconscious, half in and half out of the bed, some of his clothing already on fire.

‘Wake up!’ Patrick bellowed, as he hauled and pulled at the dead weight. ‘Come on, Badr! Wake up!’

33

Yaminah opened her eyes. The room was quiet now, the storytelling over. Much to Constantine’s annoyance, it often happened like this. He would be in full flow, almost lost in the tale, when he would become aware of the change in her breathing. No matter how many times she told him it was a compliment – that he made her feel so safe and relaxed here on his bed with him that a peaceful snooze was all but inevitable – still he preferred to take offence.

‘Some teacher I am,’ he would say, when the time came to wake her. ‘Even the attention of a classroom of one is too much for me to hold.’

‘You’re not my teacher. I have plenty of those. But sleeping with you – falling asleep with you – is my favourite thing,’ she would reply, sitting up and brushing the creases from her clothes, fixing her hair and checking the corners of her mouth for trails of drool. ‘Lying here, with you. Your voice is like soft music to me … it leaves me powerless.’ She would pretend to swoon, falling backwards on to his bed.

He would snort and busy himself putting away the props, opening the curtains and blinds once more so that the daylight might banish the intimacy, like a traitor.

What he overlooked, and what she was careful never to remind him of, was how she pleased him in sleep just as she did when she was awake. Her calm invariably pulled him down like quicksand, so that he almost always followed her into unconsciousness. He was happiest beside her, in this realm or any other.

This time, however, it was different. She awoke with her head in his lap, as always, but now there was a hardness there, unmistakable against her cheek. Gently she raised her head to see if he was awake, but unlike any time before, she had been first to resurface. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow and deep. Gently, so gently, she reached out a hand and touched the solid ridge beneath the sheet. It felt hot, and emboldened by the strangeness of the situation, she stroked it lightly. It twitched against her hand. She almost laughed out loud, but sensed a seriousness and a certainty at the same time and bit into her lip instead. Here was a bubble not to be lightly burst.

Constantine was wont to say that he was half dead already, dead from the waist down. Here, however, hard and heavy as a length of lead pipe, lying tensed and ramrod straight against the lower part of his stomach, was the surest sign of life.

Yaminah, still a virgin at eighteen, had dabbled with boys and they with her – kisses and caresses and wandering hands. She lacked her mother’s height, but the curves that had arrived with her adulthood, coupled with quick wits and a mercurial, spirited manner, meant she had attracted male attention from early on. She was a bolt of energy, enlivening any room she walked into, and boys and men reached for her like a will-o’-the-wisp in hopes of luck and a better life.

Her heart was Constantine’s – always had been – but given the circumstances, there had been dalliances along the way. She had been held tightly enough by one admirer or another to know when a man wanted her. Here now, long after she had accepted things as they were, was proof of Constantine’s desire – like a longed-for guest at a party and certainly better late than never. This might change everything – and if perfection was out of the question, here at least was the hope of a few steps in the right direction.

On an impulse she bowed her head and placed her lips upon the outline of its tip, the gentlest of welcoming kisses. The hardness twitched again, pushed against her mouth of its own free will, and to her surprise she pushed back, softening and opening her lips to feel the whole of it. She felt a wetness, in her mouth and between her own legs.

Constantine groaned, a heavy, gravelly sound deep in his throat, and she stopped at once, suddenly mortified. She sat up, blushing crimson, set both feet back upon the floor and glanced at him over one shoulder. His eyes were open but he took a moment even to notice she was still there. Quickly he bundled his sheets across his middle and ran a hand through his thick black hair. She knew at once that it was not the first time – that he had felt this way before today. She felt a fluttering in her chest and looked away.

‘Some teacher I am,’ he said, as usual.

Yaminah laughed, too loudly. Constantine looked at her with an expression close to pity.

‘I have somewhere to be,’ she said, standing quickly and making for the door.