by David Capel
The road was empty, but for this I was glad. I was suddenly conscious of my appearance, and I did not want the folk of the area to witness me dressed no better than a ruffian, with my unkempt beard, travel worn clothes and crude weapons. What a shock my people on the estate would get when I appeared! No doubt to begin with they would refuse believe my claims to the mastership, until like Odysseus returning to Ithaca, the faithful Bouzanis would recognise me from my last visit many years before.
The affairs of the estate would need my attention, I frowned to myself, and stern action would be required to set matters to rights. I would hold an enquiry as to why the money drafts had not come through properly. Such were my daydreams as I descended into the valley, and smoke rose in gentle drifts from the farmsteads amidst the wheat fields below. I fancied I could make out the rugged shape of the Black Castle of Koloneia in the distance, and then suddenly I came across a pillar of stone with the word ‘Kastoria’ carved into it, and a track leading from the main road into the fields beyond.
I stood there for a minute on the empty road, looking at the pillar set amidst the poppies and then walked my horse off the road and towards my house. There were wheat fields either side, very ripe now in the summer sun, and I disturbed a flock of crows feasting on the corn, who rose croaking into the cloudless sky. I felt suddenly nervous, daunted at the prospect of arriving at a place that I knew little of, and where I was barely known. My presence would unnerve my tenants, especially if matters really did need setting in order. I suddenly dreaded the blank, sullen, but unquestioning stare of the servant who neither agreed nor disagreed with his instructions, but let you know that he resented it anyway.
I saw a dark shape flitting in the shadows of the lane in front of me. A dog? It stopped, perhaps thirty paces in front, and as I cautiously approached it I saw that it was not a dog but a little girl.
She stood there warily on the edge of the tare-infested wheat, looking at me. She had a great bush of dusty dark brown hair, streaked with strands of blond. Her feet were bare and she wore a single ragged tunic. Her skin was very tanned from the sun, probably even darker than my own.
I dismounted, conscious of my fearsome appearance, and walked towards her. She was beautiful in her way, despite her scuffed knees and tousled hair. She had clear brown eyes and smooth skin, like a dark angel. The girl must have been about five or six years old, I guessed, and she was enchanting. Perhaps it was the relief at reaching the end of my long journey, but I felt a sudden affection that I had never before felt for any child, falling for the charm of innocence amidst the trials and labours of life.
“Good morning!” I said. “What is your name? My name is John.”
She stared at me in wide eyed silence, and I stopped a few paces away.
“Is this your home? It is my home too,” I continued, running out of intelligent things to say. I stepped forward again and crouched down to her level on my haunches, but this time, without warning, she turned and ran, not directly away from me, but into the field, where the stalks hid here completely in a twinkling. Then, as I smiled and frowned after her in bemusement, there was a rustle and she re-emerged from the field two dozen paces away from me and sprinted down the lane like a hare.
I fetched my horse and decided to walk it the rest of the way to the house. The feel of the place now seemed familiar. I could remember the long lane from the road, and now I could see the tops of the trees that surrounded the main house. I held an image in my mind’s eye of an extensive, rambling, old fashioned villa, with red tiles and a whitewashed façade, and a terrace and with a portico in the old Roman style. I knew that shortly there would be a bend in the track and then a cluster of cottages where some of the farm workers lived.
I was filled with that warm, tired feeling of the returning traveller, when the feel of aching bones and sunburn and blistered feet becomes a pleasure in anticipation of the relief of food and drink and water.
Then, as I turned the corner, I saw the little girl again, standing outside the cottages I had anticipated. There was a faint clanging noise, and a tethered goat appeared from behind her and bleated. She had her fingers in her mouth. I waved, and she cried something that I could not catch, staring at me still.
In response a woman came out of the door behind her. She was dressed in a single tunic wrapped loosely around her body which covered her head as if she were a widow. I walked slowly towards them, feeling suddenly as if something were out of joint. Perhaps it was her young face, too young to be a widow. Perhaps it was the goat that looked out of place. Then the woman shouted something I did not understand, and a man followed her out, and then several others, men and women, came out of the other cottages. It was the sight of the men that chilled my bones, despite the midday heat. Their narrow faces, and short stature, and tough, wiry look. They moved differently. I walked slowly up to the group, still not fully registering the evidence of my eyes.
“Bouzanis? Is he here?”
Silence.
“This is Kastoria? The Lascaris estate? Lascaris? I want to speak to the factor. Is he at the big house?” and I turned and looked up the lane towards the trees. And then I saw it.
The villa – my house – was a blackened shell. Gone were the red corrugated tiles, and in their place black sticks of charred beams poked into the sky. The walls were partly tumbled in ruin and, where they stood, they were dark with soot and filth. The grand space in front of the house seemed cluttered with shapes that I could not make out at this distance.
“Jesus Christ!” I exclaimed, staring at the wreck of my fortunes.
ι
There was an urgent voice, and one of the men came up to me, gesticulating, and uttering a stream of those ghastly, guttural, liquid words that by now were all too familiar to me. He grasped my arm, pointing at the house and then at me, and ranted on, half angry, half questioning.
I shook myself free from him, and mounted my horse. Still he spoke, but I ignored him and started towards the house, trotting to get away from him. At this point the house was still three hundred paces away, and a number of plane trees were set on either side of the final stretch of the lane, creating a rough avenue as it neared the house. As I approached the first one, I noticed some blackened branches dangling down like broken limbs, moving slightly in the warm air.
A glint of metal caught my eye from one of them, and I stared at it in curiosity and then growing horror as I got closer. For I now saw that the shapes were not of branches, but those of human beings, dangling from the tree. They had been hung there and the ropes still held them by the neck. For I saw at once that the corpses had been there for some time. They were naked, and their skin was blackened by the sun and the flies. Here and there yellow bone protruded, and one hand, stripped entirely of its flesh, curled like the claw of a monkey.
There were three of them, seemingly the bodies of a man, a woman and a youth. I gazed at them, shocked and paralysed in fascination. It was impossible to tell who they were, though the short curly hair of the man, and the longer hair of the other two were still in place. Had not Bouzanis such short hair?
I heard voices from back down the path and looked to see that the group of Turks were walking towards me. I had not seen any weapons among them, but now they seemed to be carrying staves. Then the breeze caught the stench of the rotting flesh above me and I retched in nausea, and my horse whinnied. I moved on up the lane towards the house in a dream now, incapable of thinking clearly or heeding the danger signs around me.
There was rubbish strewn along the path here, the broken wheel of a cart, the shards of smashed amphorae, and scraps of cloth caught in the briar. As I approached the ruined house I saw that the big space in front of it had been turned into a large encampment. There were tents, and cooking fires, and horses tethered, and the brazen clanging of goats’ bells filled the air. Women moved to and fro and some stared up at me when I entered the plaza, while others ran, calling for their husbands.
I gazed at the scene, stunned, as t
he Turks gathered, dropping their cooking spoons and their hoes and drifting over to see what business this strange newcomer might have. For a minute we regarded each other in silence, neither side knowing what to do, they from ignorance and me from shock and bewilderment.
Then the anger rose in me and I cursed them for thieves and murderers.
“What are you doing here?” I shouted. “Go away. This is not yours!” and when there was no reaction I turned and waved at the trees behind me with their gruesome fruit. “And they? Who killed them? You damned, damned robbers. Locusts!”
Still they made no sound, but then I heard a shout from behind me, and the men I had left behind were running now in pursuit and yelling at their fellows in the camp. A mutter arose, and I saw a man duck inside a tent and emerge with something wrapped in a cloth.
The terrible danger I faced suddenly snapped into my head, and I looked around me. Luckily most of those encamped here were women or children, the men presumably being at work in the fields. Still, there were more than enough to deal with a lone rider. I could not go back towards the group behind me, who were waving their sticks and yelling for blood. So I spurred through the crowd, scattering urchins, and clipped across the hard ground of the makeshift encampment, knocking over cooking pots and nearly tripping my horse on tent lines.
I made for the right hand side of the house, where I seemed to remember a track that ran on through the garden into the fields beyond. My memory had simplified the layout of the estate, for behind the house on this side was a yard with stables and outhouses, which the Turkish camp had taken over.
A man ran out from a shed towards me, but I tugged at my sword and he retreated as I cantered past. To my relief none of the men here appeared to be well armed. It seemed unlikely that there was much of a distinction between soldiers and civilians among the Turkish raiders. But clearly these were unprepared for any kind of armed confrontation.
I cantered through a small grove of fig trees that I remembered playing in during my last visit, and then broke into the fields behind the house. I turned and took one last look at it. On this side there was less obvious damage, but the window frames were blackened with soot and the veranda and garden littered with broken furniture and more crude tents. The place was infested with Turks.
Three of them rounded the edge of the house and stopped, looking at me and guttering to each other in their foul language. I trotted on, glancing over my shoulder. But they seemed in no hurry to chase after me, and I pondered once more on their apparent docility, certainly compared to the likes of Erkan and his troop.
Then it struck me like a blow to the stomach – the lack of weapons, the women and children, the rotten corpses. The fact that these invaders had been surprised to see me, a Roman in his own land. The little girl had barely seemed frightened by my arrival! It was obvious that these people had lived here for some time. They had settled on my land!
How long had those corpses been strung up in front of the house? It was hard to tell, but for many months at least. A sense of anger and violation swept through me. As I made my way across my land down to the river I saw more evidence of the occupation. The cottages were either ruinous or surrounded each by a miniature encampment of flat roofed tents and rubbish. The tell-tale clanking sound of goats’ clappers filled the air. There was little sign that the farm land was being managed or the crops harvested. Not at least in the same way as had been done before. And yet there seemed to be more people now than I remembered from my last visit. The place was thick with settlers, and I wondered how they sustained themselves.
What had happened to my own people? Had they all been killed like the three, or driven off? Perhaps some remained, accepting the newcomers, cowed but reluctant to leave their livelihoods. I saw a little church some way off the main track, with a path leading up to it, and I remembered that it served the people of the estate. If anyone was left here from the old days it would surely be the priest, ministering to those that remained.
But as I walked up to it, a goat emerged from its open door and hopped away among the shrubbery when it saw me. I dismounted and looked briefly inside. The floor was covered in animal filth, and a couple of beasts lurked in the shadows within. As my eyes became accustomed to the gloom I saw that the place had been ransacked. The iconostasis was smashed to pieces, the silver coverings ripped from the images of the saints. The rustic frescos on the walls had all been defaced, with the heads scrubbed out and replaced with crude symbols that I did not understand.
There was a broken crucifix on the floor near the door. I picked it up, propped it against the wall and left.
I rode on aimlessly, filled with disgust. Soon it was accompanied by a burning rage born of humiliation. I wanted to clean these filthy people from my ravaged fields. Given the chance, at that moment, I believe I would have killed every one of the Turks that squatted on my land.
At length I came to river which was the boundary of the estate on this side. I looked around me, fearful in case I should be trapped against it my pursuers. But the local Turks seemed to have lost interest in me for the time being. Still, I now had to make new plans. Logically, my next move must be to make for Trebizond. There I would fulfil at least part of my mission by delivering the message from Nikephoritzes. That seemed trivial compared to the greater calamity that had befallen me, but Trebizond was surely also the nearest major Roman city now. There I could take stock and discover how the situation stood in relation to the Turks. It seemed extraordinary that here the enemy appeared to be peacefully settled, as conquerors long established, while in the Halys valley behind there was no sign of them, and further west there was fighting and raiding akin to a frontier war.
I had to find out how the campaign was going, and the progress of the Emperor and his army. All of a sudden I realised now that I had no real desire to return to the City, though the news in Trebizond might make that still the best option. But my overwhelming urge was to rescue my estate and clear the verminious Turks from here and the whole of Asia. That was the only way to restore my fortune, but now I had a new motive – a loathing for the invader and a revulsion at the way they were replacing my people.
Which begged the thought once more – what on earth had happened to my tenants? And what had really happened at the Lascaris estate? Was the hanging man Bouzanis? Something niggled my mind, and then I realised what it was. The estate funds had dried up towards the end of last year. But the three corpses could not have been there so long. There was a story there that I wanted to know. But who could tell it?
I dared not go to Koloneia itself. Judging by unguarded posture of these Turkish settlers, the town must have fallen to the enemy. There I would surely find Turks who were well armed and ill disposed to inquisitive Roman officers. I decided to cross the river and seek to skirt the town from the North, heading into the next range of hills and the coastal plain of Trebizond beyond. My travels through Asia had taught me that refugees head first for the high ground, if they did not flee the region altogether. Surely in my journey I would encounter some remnant of the native population that could tell me what had happened.
The river was not high at this time of the year, and soon I found a pebbly beach where the water flattened out over the stones. Here I crossed and in doing so took thought to destroy the Antiochene document which by now was firmly lodged in my memory. Carrying it around was far too dangerous in an area swarming with the enemy. I tore the paper to shreds and scattered it in the stream.
I started to meander my way through the olive groves and wheat fields of the farmland on the other side. The heat in the valley floor was oppressive in the middle of the day, but I pressed on, working my way north-eastwards into the rising ground, trying to navigate my way via homesteads where I hoped to find my missing Romans.
But everywhere there was the dilapidation of the newly arrived Turk. Makeshift encampments, cottages half ruined, mess and clutter everywhere. At one point I came across a group of men and boys setting nets around the ol
ive trees in preparation for the harvest. I approached them and addressed them in Greek, but there was no response except sullen glares, and so I moved on again.
Here and there were the signs of husbandry – goats being herded, buildings being repaired, and women carrying pots or bales on their heads. The feel of the country was different, but for the first time I thought of it as being changed rather than destroyed. I reflected that to recover this land for the Romans would involve more than just winning a battle.
Perhaps it was this train of thought, softened by the signs of every day life, that prompted me to speak to some Turks. At any rate I was beginning to believe that I would never find someone to tell me the tale of what had happened. So eventually I decided that the best way to discover the whereabouts of any natives was simply to ask the new inhabitants. The risk of being unmasked and reported to the local soldiery seemed remote in this bucolic landscape.
So I approached two elderly women, swathed in black robes, who I chanced upon carrying water down the path that I was using. I dismounted and smiled in as friendly way as I could, holding up my hands in token of peace. To my relief they did not run squawking into the undergrowth, but glanced at each other and then stood waiting for me.
“Romans?” I asked, spreading my arms in enquiry. Then, remembering a word I had half heard muttered by Erkan’s men, “Romali? Romeli? Where?” and I looked around in pantomime fashion.
There was no response from the two crones, so I tried again. “Romeli?” and this time made a little cross sign with my fingers.
“Ah Romali, Romali,” said one of them in a surprisingly loud voice.
“Yes, Romali, that’s it. Where are they? Where do they live? Any of them left, for God’s sake?”