Emperor's Winding Sheet

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

  “There is Vrethiki,” said Manuel. “He could do it.”

  “So he could,” said the Emperor, sadly. “Very well. Go, my son. Take care; sell your life as dear as you can. Stephanos, have Vrethiki bring here the best weapons he found today.”

  Vrethiki chose a good sword. He chose a chain-mail corselet, a small one that he thought would fit Manuel’s slender frame. And, especially pleased with it, he found a shiny breastplate, and, staggering under the weight of it, he clambered up the stairs back to the Emperor’s room.

  “He can’t have that one, Vrethiki,” said Stephanos, looking at the breastplate. “It was made for an Emperor. Look, it has the two-headed eagle upon it.”

  “Made for an Emperor, and worn by an Emperor’s man,” said the Lord Constantine, lifting the bronze himself, and holding it against his cupbearer, to examine the fit. “It will do very well,” he said. Together, he and Stephanos did up the leather straps. “Well, then, man, be off with you, and see if Varangian John will have you.”

  Manuel hesitated a moment, as though he would have said something, then bowed low, and clattered away down the staircase. And Vrethiki had to find his way to the cellars, and asked the aged keeper of casks down there which tap to turn to bring wine for the Emperor’s supper.

  THE NEXT MORNING VRETHIKI WAS ALMOST BLASTED OUT OF his bed by a vast clap of raw sound like preternatural thunder. For a moment this sound brought a vibrant silence with it, a sort of singing numbness in his ears; then a detritus of ragged noises came behind it: glass rattled in the windows, tiles slipped, dislodged, and scraped down the roof, there was a wild cawing of frightened birds, a howling of dogs, people screaming, running feet all over the palace, cries of alarm, and then the clang clang of a silly cracked high-pitched church bell, to be taken up in chorus by a hundred others. Through the bells came the repeated thudding of other explosions. The Turks had opened up their guns on the walls in the Lycus valley, beginning with a blast from the great gun Basilica that Urban had cast for them. It was two hours before they got it ready to fire again, but the smaller guns were fired without cease all day long; a continuous thunderous noise could be heard all over the City.

  The people brought mattresses and bales of wool and sheets of leather to hang over the walls, to deaden the earthquake impact of the huge stone balls. Still the walls cracked and crumbled. The balls shivered into a thousand fragments when they struck solid masonry, flying in all directions and showering the defenders with sharp-edged splinters. And the Turks were learning fast to point their guns upward. Remorselessly, as the day wore on, they continued to batter at the same section of the wall. Behind the wall, in the streets leading to Blachernae, to the Studion Monastery, and through the fields and gardens to the gates in the wall, little processions of people wound along, carrying not icons, but stones and rubble, earth and timber, for the repairs that would be done under cover of night. Women carried heavy burdens beside their menfolk; even the children could bring pebbles or earth by the handful, and the mules and donkeys of the poor were ruthlessly overladen and worked half to death.

  THE SHIPS FROM THE BLACK SEA, THOSE THE TURKS HAD BEEN waiting for, arrived at the Turkish admirals’ station, on the Bosporus, a little beyond Pera, the same day the great gun was first fired. Bad though the state of the walls was, it was the defense of the boom that seemed most urgent. The moment the new ships were sighted—for the enemy station could be clearly seen from the tip of the City—Lukas Notaras had come to the Emperor, asking permission to move his reserve contingents to help the sailors at the boom.

  The naval attack was formidable when it came. Vrethiki, standing in the Emperor’s party, watching from the battlements, found himself shivering in the warm sunlight. The Turks had brought up larger ships than before, with decks loaded with cuirassiers and archers. The moment these drew within bowshot, they let fly arrows tipped with burning cotton. The arrows beat down on the Christian decks like burning rain. Barrels of pitch and torches blazed ready on the Turkish decks to set fire to anything within reach. In the bows of their galleys heavily armed men stood with huge axes, ready to cut hawsers, or hack at the boom itself. They even had light cannon mounted on their vessels that threw stone shot at the Christian ships, and added to the confusion and fear of the onlookers by wreathing the whole scene in veils of dispersing smoke. Straining their eyes, the watchers on the walls saw grappling irons hanging ready amidships on the gunwales of the Turkish ships, and thickly packed soldiers ready on the middle decks to board at the first chance.

  The Emperor watched this terrible massed attack approach his people, churning the blue Bosporus to white foam with beating oars. He stood calmly, seeming un moved and immovable, watching from the battlements of the walls, and only Vrethiki beside him could have seen his thumb constantly rubbing and twisting the great Imperial ring on the first finger of his clenched hand.

  There were terrible moments when the Turkish ships were still standing a little way off. Their cannon balls were striking the Christian ships, and the horrible juddering of the wooden hulls as they were struck could be seen as well as heard from the shore. Fires were burning in the rigging and on the decks, everywhere, and sailors running frantically to and fro. But when the Turks pressed nearer, suddenly the impression changed. For the tall galleys of Genoa and Venice, and the Imperial fleet, were higher than even these largest Turkish ships, and so gave the advantage to their bowmen and javelin throwers. Lukas Notaras had set up an incredible living chain of men, passing barrels of water from hand to hand all along the line of the boom, from rafts to ships; the deck fires were swiftly quenched. And when the Turkish captains forced their way alongside, trying to grapple and board, they were met with a simple and devastating answer. Slung from the crossyards of the Christian vessels, high up the masts, were huge cannon balls hanging in nets. The moment the yard of a Christian vessel stretched over a Turkish ship, a man in the rigging cut the rope with a yell, and the ball hurtled downward. It crashed through deck and bottom, leaving a splintered ragged hole, and a rapidly sinking ship. Vrethiki, astonished, threw back his head and laughed—it reminded him of the walnut shells he had floated down the stream at home, and sunk by tossing tiny pebbles.

  Suddenly a gap opened in the boom. For a horrified moment Vrethiki thought it had been breached by the enemy, but then a great Genoese galley moved through the gap, followed at once by another, and another, and they maneuvered as though they would encircle the tangled group of enemy ships. At that the cries of Allah, Allah! died away; trumpets sounded, and those Turkish ships that could still move began to back water, and slip away. “Hurrah, hurrah!” shouted Vrethiki, dancing like a mad man on the wall, and throwing his cap in the air, and all the solemn foreigners around him, as pleased as he, laughed and smiled at him.

  Gleefully they watched the battered enemy struggling back up to their distant anchorages. And before they left their viewpoint, Lukas Notaras, clad in long robes of silk, immaculate and unruffled, came to salute the Emperor, and bow impassively as his smiling master told him he had done well.

  “THERE WILL BE AN ATTACK ON THE WALL SOON,” SAID JUSTINIANI. “Their guns have done a lot of damage; they’re bound to try to get through.”

  In just over a week the Sultan’s ceaselessly pounding guns had brought down a hundred yards of the outer wall into the moat, and broken two great towers on the inner wall behind the breach. An earth and wood palisade, repaired every night, stretched across the damaged section, but the fosse was filled right up with rubble, and offered no obstacle at all to an onrushing enemy. For five days running they expected trouble, bracing themselves at dawn, lined up behind the rickety palisade, staring tensely at the enemy lines so short a distance away.

  They could see every detail of their assailants’ garb and gear. The janissaries, the Sultan’s crack troops, lined up behind their tall standards on plumed poles, wore wide helmets that strapped on over their turbans and came so low on their brows that they had two half-circles cut out of the lowe
r rim for eyes, with brazen flanges for eyebrows. The helmets were chased and fluted, and rose to a point on top, from which great plumes curled and fluttered. These helmets gave them, to the enemy view, heads of monstrous size, and ferocious metal frowns. They wore no cast and polished body armor, as the Romans did, let alone heavy hinged steel casings like Western armor; but coats of chain mail, strengthened round the midriff with rings of steel like the hoops of a barrel. Their legs and arms were clad in cloth or leather, and Justiniani had pointed this out to his men, and expounded the value of flesh wounds for weakening the force of an attack. By contrast, their swords were horrific: very long, with double-edged serpentine blades, or nasty-looking scythe-shaped curves.

  Peering from behind their battlements, or between their earth-filled barrels atop the palisade, the defenders watched for any sign of the janissaries’ standards being carried forward. But for five days the dawn showed them still in place. Pearshaped plates of gold or bronze, each pierced and fretted with the shape of some word from the Koran, they stood on tall poles before blocks of tents, groups of campfires, with horsetails flying from their necks. Five times a day the camp rang with the coarse raucous howling of the call to heathen prayer. In response the Turks spread the ground with little rugs and handkerchiefs, and, kneeling toward the land walls, they beat their brows on the ground, and remained so for some time, with their heads down, and their arses in the air. At first this performance provoked gales of crude laughter from the Christians, and a shower of lewd remarks, dirty songs and rotting rubbish cascaded from the walls among the prostrate heathen. But as the days passed, and each day, five times a day, the prayers were faithfully said, the jeering died away. It is an awesome sight to see a hundred thousand men at prayer; and looking at a spectacle of such barbaric majesty, the Christians uneasily remembered the ferocity of Islam, and how for the hordes outside the City this was jihad—a holy war. And it was disconcerting to have them facing so, toward the City—as though their great hostile God reigned already within the wall, in the heart of the City, instead of at Mecca, far away.

  Five times a day the enemy prayed, and seven times a day they fired their monstrous gun, and all day, every day, the citizens manned the walls, and stood in sun and rain, waiting and afraid. The defenders at Blachernae, Vrethiki noticed—riding with the Emperor on his daily round of the walls—and those at the Golden Gate, could see at least a prospect of the City behind them. At the Golden Gate the whole peninsular of domes and roofs and columns could be seen; at the northern end the defenders had behind them the courts and gardens of the Imperial palace; but all the way in between, the rise of the land behind the wall cut off the view. Even in the Lycus valley, where the men atop the wall could see farther, there was nothing in sight but gardens and open fields, and one or two churches. It was as though they were defending some lonely and remote frontier, winding through desolate country, rather than the circuit of a City.

  And all day, every day, the smell of the enemy reeked across the wall. There was a stench of human sweat and excrement, of the sweat and excrement of horses, of campfire smoke, of the rotting detritus of meals, the sulfurous reek of guns. When the wind blew west or north, it suffocated the defenders, and they prayed for the clean cool air that flowed from the Marmara shore.

  WHEN THE LONG-AWAITED ATTACK CAME, IT CAME NOT AT dawn but two hours after nightfall, when the defenders were fewer, and tired from a long day’s watch. Opposite the broken stretch of wall the enemy encampment was abruptly lit up by thousands of flaring torches; in the lurid pool of sudden light there were fiery men marching in a racket of cymbals and drums, and a great rhythmic howling of Allallallallallaaa! They rushed screeching at the stockade, leaping light-footed over the loose rubble that filled the moat; they brought torches to fire the stockade, and hooks to pull down the earth barrels, and spears and arrows to thin the ranks of the Romans. For a few moments there was chaos among the sleepy defenders; then Justiniani was there, shouting encouragement, mustering men and cheering them. By the light of the Turkish flares they saw scaling ladders being brought up, and little groups crouched ready for them, waiting till the ladder was loaded with climbing men, then stepping from hiding, and pushing it off with a pole, and watching it topple, men and all.

  The Emperor and his escort were at prayer in the Church of the Holy Apostles when the messengers came for him. But seeing the scale of the attack, and seeing Justiniani already there, he went at once to rouse and warn his captains all along the wall, riding from post to post with the news that he feared a general attack was beginning. But everywhere except the Lycus valley was quiet: the camp fires burned as usual in the enemy camps; there was no sound or sign of unusual movement among them. The Emperor made quite sure, riding all the way to the Golden Gate and back, with Vrethiki riding a pace or two behind him, trembling with cold or excitement so that the fittings on his pony’s bridle jingled like little bells.

  They returned to the Lycus valley to find that the palisade had been torn down. It had been broken, not burned. But instead of letting the enemy in, it had allowed the Genoese and the Varangians to surge out, and drive the Turks back across the fosse, killing a good number before they were put to flight. As the Emperor returned, the Turkish trumpets were sounding the recall, and the attack was over. The enemy retreated and the light went too as they carried their torches away with them. Wearily in the darkness the Christians began to repair their stockade.

  At dawn Justiniani reported two hundred enemy dead lying in the fosse. No Christian dead; some wounded. The stockade repaired again.

  “How is this possible?” said the Emperor. “God must indeed be with us!”

  “God, and some other things,” said Justiniani. “They had only a hundred yards of broken wall and filled-in fosse to attack over. They couldn’t make use of their numbers. And man to man they are not so heavily armed as we are. Besides, it’s only a Sultan they fight for; your people fight for you, and for wives and children too. They fight like lions, Sire.”

  “Sit and eat with me, Prince of Lions,” said the Emperor, smiling, “and then we will ride out among them, and praise them.”

  So, by and by, they went out into a cool clear rain-washed morning, side by side, with Vrethiki and Stephanos, and Justiniani’s two dapper swaggering page boys just behind them. On the wall, and in the gardens, and all over the dusty ruins on the stony wastes of the City, flowers crept and bloomed. In hopeless cracks and crevices they had taken root, and in the mild April weather fanned or trumpeted or starred their delicate petals. And between those two brave men riding, between Stephanos and Vrethiki following, taking root on as unpromising a ground, a wild hope grew: an improbable, fragile hope, unspoken, but bravely flaunted in smiling eyes. The Emperor was almost gay that morning. He dismounted, and moved among his dusty soldiers, their garments grimed with smoke, and gray dust from falling masonry, from crumbled mortar. He gave his hand to be kissed; he talked to them, and thanked them; he visited the wounded who lay in one of the great vaulted chambers in the thickness of the walls, and told them that their blood had purchased victory, and then gave the doctor gold to buy eggs and wine and bandages.

  That evening he called all his captains and councilors to dine with him in his palace, and made them all sit down around the board. “This is a soldier’s table as much as an Emperor’s now,” he said. And indeed all the talk was of devices of war, chiefly how to clear the fosse again. With Manuel gone, it was Vrethiki who poured the wine, and that gave him plenty of chances to gaze adoringly at Justiniani, as he hovered behind the great man’s chair, making sure his cup was not for a moment dry.

  Chapter 12

  Next morning the same sweet south wind blew. Neither the Emperor nor his servants had slept well, for the Turks had brought up guns to batter the walls round the Blachernae Palace. The rooms that had belonged to the Empress Helena had been devastated by a cannon ball dropping through the roof, and everywhere tiles had slipped and windows cracked. Phrantzes was with the Emperor
early, telling him that in common prudence he must move his personal quarters to a place of better safety. But as they talked a messenger arrived. The Emperor’s face lit up as he heard the news; even Phrantzes, who always had a harassed brow, looked hopeful, and rising at once they went down to the courtyard, calling for horses.

  “What is it, Stephanos?” asked Vrethiki, as they followed.

  “Ships sighted,” said Stephanos, “on a south wind, coming here.”

  There were four ships, big galleys with poop and forecastle, all with full sail set, beating up the wind off the Marmara. The streets of the City were full of people hastening to see them, for the news had traveled fast. The Emperor went to the southeastern end of the sea walls. His party strained their eyes into the luminous seascape to make out the nationality of the newcomers, but it was an hour or more before they were sure. Looking up at the slopes and terraces behind him, Vrethiki saw a great mass of people like a swarm on a tree, clustering on the arches and walls of the Hippodrome, crowding the ruins of the old palace sloping up behind the walls, thronging the slopes and heights of the citadel. Every viewpoint and high spot was occupied by a clinging anxious watcher.

  After an hour they could make out the banners and insignia of the approaching ships. One of them flew the Imperial purple—that, Stephanos said, was a galley of the Emperor’s own, commanded by Phlatanelas, that had gone to fetch supplies of corn from Sicily. The other three were flying Papal colors—at last, at last, the long-awaited and dearly bought help from the West!