Emperor's Winding Sheet

by The Emperor's Winding Sheet (retail) (epub)

  He howled! Not just with anger—though very angry he certainly was—but with pain. The front of the ancient livery was gorgeous with threads of gold, but the back had long since lost its quilted lining, and was as prickly as a thorn bush with cut ends of wire thread like a thousand needles. “Ow!” he wailed, and the more frantically he struggled the more cruelly it scraped and pricked his skin.

  There was uproar. “Stand still, you ape, you donkey!” bellowed Stephanos, trying in alarm to keep the precious costume from damage by the flailing mass within. Half the servants in the hall, who were standing ready, robed and waiting, came running to his assistance. A dozen pairs of hands held the fierce cloth against its screaming victim. Roughly they seized his arms, and thrust them through the stiffly encrusted sleeves. His wrists emerged scratched and just perceptibly bleeding. Too late it occurred to him that it might possibly have been donned painlessly had he not struggled against it—too late, for he was already smarting from a hundred tiny wounds. He stood limply, sobbing, and scolding voices rose around him on all sides.

  Then sudden silence. The Lord Constantine stood in the door, decked in purple and gold. He, too, was solid with embroidery and covered with gem stones, shining from head to foot. When he moved forward a step he staggered a little under the unaccustomed weight of it. He looked like an icon, stepping out of its frame. He moved stiffly. He shone. He made silence out of clamor.

  “What is happening here?” he asked. Stephanos began to talk.

  “Oh, I won’t wear it, I won’t,” sobbed the boy. “It’s like a shroud!”

  “What does he say?” asked the Lord Constantine, looking at the boy, standing head high, stiff and gorgeous like a doll, with the tears pouring down his cheeks. His dark eyes rested on the boy as though seeing him for the first time. Stephanos translated. The Lord Constantine smiled, half a smile. His smile was as slow and stiff as the rest of his movements that morning, as though his heavy robes had encased and imprisoned even his solemn face. He spoke directly to the boy.

  “He says, ‘Look, my child, we are all here wearing them,’” said Stephanos gruffly, turning, as the Emperor walked slowly out of the room, to follow behind him, leading Vrethiki by the hand.

  THE EMPEROR, CLAD IN A GREAT ROBE OF PURPLE SILK COVERED with eagles embroidered in golden medallions, stood bareheaded in the great hall of the palace of the Despots at Mistra, writing on a sheet of vellum on a lectern standing before him. At his side Vrethiki stood stiffly, offering a tray with ink and sand and pens upon it. On his other hand stood Iagrus, holding wax and the great seal. The hall was thronged with dignitaries and churchmen.

  I, Constantine, the Emperor wrote, in Christ Our Lord faithful King and Emperor of the Romans, with my own hand wrote and inscribed these words …

  The pen scratched lightly over the creamy surface. The Emperor’s hand was small and neat, penning the dancing unfamiliar letters.

  I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth. And in Jesus Christ His only Son, Our Lord, and in the Holy Spirit, Lord and Life giver, who proceeds from the Father—

  The hand and pen stopped together. For a long moment the pen was held suspended a finger’s breadth above the vellum. Then the Emperor wrote, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified … And in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church … Furthermore, I fully confess and approve the Apostolic and divine traditions, and all the provisions and definitions of the Seven Ecumenical Councils … Likewise I promise I will remain the faithful servant and true son of the Holy Church, I will abstain from killing and mutilation, and all such acts as far as possible. I will follow justice and truth. All this I promise to the Holy Church of God, this month of January, the sixth day thereof, the year of Our Lord MCDXLIX.

  Iagrus poured out the wax, and the Emperor pressed the seal into it. A little red drop was splashed onto Vrethiki’s hand and burned him, so that his hand shook, and he came near to upsetting the ink.

  The Metropolitan bishop stepped forward to receive the sealed confession, and bore it away, with his clergy two and two processing after him.

  Suddenly the hall was full of soldiers. They came running, shouting, “Ho, ho, Basileus!” their armor clanging as they ran across the marble floor. They seized the Emperor, and dragged him toward the door, and out into the pale sunlit morning. For a moment the astonished boy thought there had been a revolution, a mutiny, but then he saw that though the Emperor resisted, it was with curiously little force, almost ceremoniously, as though it was expected of him. Outside, on the top of the steps, the soldiers stopped, with the Emperor held between two of them. The crowd outside roared and waved red scarves and ribbons so that the whole square undulated in shades of rippling scarlet. The soldiers put the Emperor on something—a great round dish—a shield—and raised him up on it, shoulder-high, and, shouting and clashing their swords, smacking the flat of the blades on their polished greaves, they carried him round the square, and back up the steps again. And here came Plethon, and Iagrus and Lascaris, and John Dalmata, all marching up the steps to stand in a ring, each with a hand touching the rim of the shield. The assembly in the hall, meanwhile, had pressed forward into the doorway to see, and Vrethiki among them stood gauping like a bumpkin at a Michaelmas fair, astonished and pleased.

  Then they put the Emperor down. His horse was led up to the steps, and he mounted, and slowly made his way through the press of people in the square, with the entire household of the palace escorting him. Vrethiki walked behind the horse, suffering agony from each jostle and bump in the crowd, feeling like cheese in a grater as at each step the encrusted back and front of his stiff robe shifted against his flesh. He had great dignity of bearing, for the only escape from the pins and needles was to walk straight as a board with head held high.

  The great concourse of people filled the little street like a river brimming to its banks. They flowed downhill toward the cathedral church. On the steps of the church the Emperor dismounted and turned to face the crowd. A man appeared beside him, wearing his household purple and carrying a wide basket full of little bundles tied in scarlet cloth. The Emperor made a sign to him, and he began to throw these bundles in all directions among the people. There was jumping and upraised arms to catch them, and a scramble for those which fell. The people laughed and shouted. The servant threw the bright little packets higher and higher, and wider, and one hit Vrethiki on the shoulder and slid into the wide fold of his sleeve. He clutched it.

  Followed by his retinue, the Emperor entered the church, to stand under the painted dome and receive the holy oil, the gleaming crown, the body and blood of the Lord, the interminable blessings. As the ceremony droned on, Vrethiki fingered the little knot of cloth surreptitiously, and, when everyone round him had bowed low and the droning wail of the choir had risen to a climax, he untied it.

  There on the red square of rag lay three golden coins, three silver, and three bronze. A great hope leaped in the boy’s heart—money! A means of escape; the price of a donkey! In his mind’s eye he was at once free of his gorgeous slavery, and riding away somewhere, looking for a friendly ship … in danger perhaps, hungry and cold perhaps, but free, not dragged away to some doomed and beleaguered City … He looked again at the coins. He had seen such before—they were bezants. That City of which these strange Greek Romans spoke must be Byzantium then—Constantinople. What did he know of Byzantium? Only that it was full of devious, cunning men. “And that,” he thought bitterly, “I have already found true.” At the thought he glanced sideways at Stephanos, and saw that he was weeping, openly letting tears fall.

  Gleaming dimly in the angled shafts of light from the ring of windows round the dome, the crown was held high, and lowered onto Constantine’s head. The choir’s chant swelled suddenly and a clamor of bells broke overhead. Outside the people shouted. The Archbishop put into the Emperor’s right hand a golden orb, with an upright cross upon it, and into his left a silken bag. But then, as he rose, and moved toward the door, sudd
enly he was surrounded by men in working clothes; men in dusty aprons, who blocked his path, and jostled round him. The boy, following with Stephanos just behind, stared in amazement. Nobody shooed them off. In the pockets of their aprons were masons’ tools; they showed the Emperor fragments of marble, Carian green, and porphyry. They showed him little models of stone monuments and sarcophagi. “Choose your coffin, Emperor!” they cried. “From whom will you choose your tomb? Come, Emperor, choose your tomb!”

  The Emperor said, “I thank my honest stonemasons. But this choice, which for all my predecessors was an act of humility, would be for me an act of pride.” He gestured them away, and they stepped back, and let him go out to the people who were calling for him outside. The whole populace of the little town was on the streets to escort him home again the full half mile; there were not so many of them as the good citizens of Bristow.

  The Emperor went early to his bed that night. Vrethiki, helping Stephanos fold and put away the silken garments and shining regalia, stole a chance to peep inside the silken bag that the Emperor had received with the golden orb. It was full of common dust.

  A FEW MORNINGS LATER THE NEW-CROWNED EMPEROR RODE up to the top of the hill to inspect his troops at the castle there that capped the conical town. High though his windowed palace towered above the cathedral where Vrethiki had first fallen at his feet, that palace spread its russet roof tiles far beneath them like plowed fields long before they rode through the castle gate. Vrethiki liked the castle long before they got there, though its massive gray masonry looked forbidding enough as they looked up at it from here and there along the winding road that ascended toward it. As they actually rode in, to the sudden clatter of horses’ hoofs on the booming drawbridge, he realized why. It had a familiar look to it that spoke to him of home. It had a slightly pointed doorway arch, and long arrow slits for windows. It was like those many castles that the barons had made in England to hold the people down. He liked it better still inside. The ring of walls enclosed the hilltop, and within its circuit another smaller wall enclosed the final upthrust of the summit with a battlemented crown. There were horses, a cattle pen, and food store and water cisterns all safely within. Soldiers’ quarters were in the towers, and in rooms in the thickness of the walls. Vrethiki and Stephanos climbed the inner wall, and, clutching their cloaks around them in the pull of the wind, looked out over the outer bailey at the rolling land of Lacedaemon and the tall Taygetus mountains with their dazzling cloak of snow.

  Vrethiki shuddered a little, not at remembering coming through them, for that had gone from his memory like the suffering of a fever, forgotten the moment one is well. But he shuddered because he did not remember. Below them the Emperor sat on a dais with his troops standing to attention before him. He was speaking to them, for they were deciding who should come with him, and who should stay.

  “This is a fine stronghold, Stephanos,” said the boy, happily. “It is like the castles of my own country.”

  The wind that rolled over that wide landscape surged like a wave breaking on the crest of that high place, and his words were blown halfway to Parnassus before Stephanos answered them.

  “Yes!” yelled Stephanos, into the wind. “It was built by a Frank.”

  A great sense of safety had embraced Vrethiki. Standing there you could see danger coming for forty miles or more, and wait for it bravely, ringed in by walls within walls. It had the feeling of that little island in the river on which he used to play in summer once; it had the self-sufficient feeling of his mother’s pantry, stuffed with salt meat and vinegar apples and ropes of onions for the winter; it had the evening feeling of the fire well made up, the shutters barred, the doors fast bolted, and all safe within.

  “Stephanos,” said Vrethiki. “This is a fine fortress, and a pleasant town in goodly countryside. And there is a palace here. Why doesn’t he stay and be an Emperor here?”

  “The City belongs to him, and he to the City,” said Stephanos. “This is just Mistra. How could there be an Emperor here?”

  “Why not? In England the court is where the King is. And if the City is beset all round with … Turks …”

  “There was an Emperor once who would have fled the City to save his life,” Stephanos said. “His Empress came to him full of scorn for his cowardice and said, ‘All men die, soon or late; but they say the Empire makes a splendid winding sheet.’ He stayed. Only when the Crusaders came were the Emperors forced out of the City for a while …”

  “I come from a family of Crusaders,” said the boy proudly. He remembered his ancestor lying peacefully cut in gray Purbeck marble in the parish church, legs crossed upon his little dog, covered in wavy lines for chain mail, with his great sword lying like a cross upon his breast.

  But Stephanos was staring at him in pure horror. His bland smooth face was distorted with disgust; his eyes flashed fury and loathing. “So you are one of them!” he said. “One of that cursed brood!”

  Vrethiki was stunned. He simply gaped at Stephanos’ flushed and twisted face.

  “Crusaders!” Stephanos cried. “Coming, as they said, against the infidel, but they dipped their greedy hands to the elbows in Christian blood! Coming in the name of Christ, but they sacked the seat of Christendom, and put a whore upon the altar of the Church of the Holy Wisdom! Coming in justice and truth, but they raped and sacked and plundered, and tore away the glories of the City to deck out Venice and the West! Thieves! Plunderers! Wastrels! Ruling the City like a pigsty, pawning the sacred vessels, selling the Most Holy Crown of Thorns, stripping the lead from the roofs of the very palaces to pay for their filthy vices! When we took back our City all was lost; nothing left of the wealth or glory, nothing to pit against the Turk. Indeed if the City falls into Turkish hands it will be not the Sultan only, but the Crusaders who have laid it low. And now, after so much ruin—now they have left us helpless before the enemy—will they come to our aid? Not without forcing the Filioque, and unleavened bread between our teeth!”

  “But I have done nothing …” stammered Vrethiki, “I know nothing of this …”

  “What else could one look for from that savage pack but an ignorant whelp like you?” screamed Stephanos, fists clenched, head thrown back, howling into the windy void over the battlements. “You and your stupid questions, your bottomless ignorance! Is there nothing you know? Is there nothing you understand? Must I tell over for you the whole history of God and man? Not a word of Greek about you, and your Latin so barbarous it would torment the ear of a saint—God help us, I do not know which is worse, our friends or our enemies!”

  Turning his back on Vrethiki, he strode away along the parapet and plunged out of sight down the stairway of the nearest tower. A trumpet was calling the Emperor’s escort together again, and, reeling from this storm of words and carefully keeping a distance behind, Vrethiki had to follow.

  “But I thought he liked me,” he lamented within himself. “Didn’t he like me? Always kind, patiently answering … but perhaps it was only from duty … his face shows so little, it moves so little, like a shut window, like a still pool … Oh, it’s hateful here; I will run away, I will!”

  Below, the soldiers had made their choice. The Emperor rode down the terraced city to his home. As they went, they left the sun behind them and descended into the heavy shadow cast by the height itself onto the lower slopes, onto the town below. A sharp chill lurked in the shadow. Fear lurked in the chill, and weighed upon the boy’s aching heart. He was to be dragged away farther yet from home, to that hateful City, surrounded and doomed, to which all these people hastened and would not save themselves, like moths drawn to the flame. On the hilltop behind them stood the bright castle, still golden in the evening light; but marching down into the shadows, toward the danger, came most of the Emperor’s soldiers, by their own choice.

  Chapter 5

  A bad time followed. in the bustle of the preparations for the Emperor’s departure, Vrethiki kept casting about for a chance to slip away quietly, lose himse
lf up a side turning, and get out of the town. But there was work for him now, errands in plenty, and Stephanos seemed to be always watching him. After the descent from the castle Stephanos had said not another unkind word to the boy, and seemed as placid, as gentle and as kind as before; but the boy no longer saw his manner as meaning liking, and took no comfort from it. Besides, those impassive brown eyes seemed always to be coldly watching him, as he sought for his moment to run.

  A great cavalcade of men and donkeys, packhorses and carts, was assembled to go to Monemvasia on the coast, there to take ship for the City. Ships had been arranged with the Catalan Company, a fact which mightily disgusted Vrethiki, who remarked that even his Uncle Norton had a ship of his own, and a part share in another. Manuel replied that the Emperor did have some ships, but they were at the City. So the last days at Mistra went by, and the boy had not made good his escape. There was no doubt at all that Stephanos was keeping a watch on him, night and day.

  The boy grew desperate. And so on the last evening at Mistra, when the Emperor had taken leave of the people in the square outside his palace and came to his rooms to pray before sleeping, the boy chanced his last throw, and, flinging himself at the Emperor’s feet, appealed to him directly.

  “Don’t take me; I beg you, set me free!” he said. “Oh, Lord Emperor, don’t take me into danger in a quarrel that is none of mine.”

  The Emperor looked down thoughtfully at the boy’s fair head, at the anxious blue eyes staring up at him. He called for Stephanos to translate the boy’s words for him. The boy waited, still kneeling. He half expected the Emperor to be angry; he only seemed sad.

  Stephanos said, “He would have me tell you that he cannot do what you ask. Necessity compels him to act as he would rather not. He says that surely in the necessities of life we should see the inscrutable will of God.”