Emperor's Winding Sheet

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

  Anxiously the watchers scanned the horizon for more ships, for the great fleet that was to come and rescue them. But no more could be seen. Meantime an agitated message arrived from Cardinal Isadore, who was in command on the walls below the Acropolis as far as the boom: he could see signs of activity at the Turkish naval station and ships putting out and marshaling there. The Turks too had seen the newcomers.

  The Sultan’s ships swept down the Bosporus, sounding horns, and beating drums, the oars of their galleys creaking and frothing. They came without sails, for the wind was blowing briskly against them, but they came on steadily under oars. They had lashed shields and bucklers round the decks of their boats to make a defensive breastwork against arrows and spears. They had some of the Sultan’s best men of arms on their decks, and small cannon and culverins too. They bore down on the Christian vessels under the eyes of the onlookers on the walls, shouting gleefully, triumphantly—a hundred and forty ships against four.

  It was about noon, just under the lighthouse on the walls, that the Turkish armada came up with the four ships. The Emperor rode along the catwalk on the walls, moving as the ships moved, to keep up with them. They could hear the Turkish admiral shouting to Phlatanelas to lower sail; with the wind behind them the Christian ships swept on. Swiftly the four were among the enemy vessels, and surrounded. A hail of arrows and spears cascaded round them, but, as it had done before, the greater height of the Christian ships gave them the advantage. Frantically the Turks tried to board, scrambling up the tall sides of the Western ships—axes and boathooks awaited them when they reached the gunwales. And all the time—while the whole stretch of water was seething with struggling shipping, the oarsmen contending with current which flowed strongly one way while the wind blew strongly the other—all the time the great galleys were still under way, dragging their assailants with them, moving inexorably toward the Golden Horn. And all the vast crowd that watched them from the shore hardly murmured. Only now and then when they could see some new attack they gasped, or groaned, and then fell silent again, tensely watching.

  Vrethiki was reminded of a hunt—the ships like four great stags, with the running pack bobbing round them, tearing at their flanks … And now the struggling ships had all but rounded the point of the City. They were not a stone’s throw offshore, under the slopes of the Citadel, when suddenly the wind dropped. The great sails sagged and flapped, the bravely fluttering banners sank, and dangled limply from the mastheads. The vessels lay helplessly becalmed in the midst of their enemies.

  Groaning and wringing their hands, the people of Byzantium called out to the sailors, so near, and yet so far from help. Vrethiki looked instinctively at the Emperor’s hand, and saw him twisting his ring … “I’m thirsty,” he said. Vrethiki opened the wine flask that hung with the chained cup on his belt, and offered his master a drink. His own throat was dry, but it was not thirst that made it so.

  The Turkish admiral was marshaling his vessels. They stood off a little way, jostling and maneuvering till they had entirely surrounded the galleys, and then began to fire off their guns, and let fly a storm of fire arrows and spears. But for all the shudders of horror that this sent through the watching crowd, it did very little harm. The guns were discharged at the level, and most of the balls fell short, and dropped into the sea. There seemed to be plenty of water barrels and hands ready to put out fires on deck.

  Then with a blast of trumpets the Turkish galleys moved in. The galley bearing the enemy admiral rammed the prow of the Imperial galley, and hung on to her, while, all around, ships pressed up with grappling irons, or hooked themselves onto anchor chains or anything they could find to grip by, in frantic attempts to climb up and board. And all the while the ships were drifting, slowly drifting, away from the City, and toward Pera or beyond, where the Sultan could be seen, watching with his courtiers on the shore. At first the citizens could see the Genoese sailors on the Papal galley chopping hands and heads as they fought the boarders, and on the decks of the Imperial galley could distinguish the person of Phlatanelas, swinging his sword, and fighting bravely. But as the ships drifted farther off it became impossible to see what was happening, except in outline.

  They could see the Imperial galley using clay pots of Greek fire. They could see Turkish ships falling back from her, mauled and broken, though nothing dislodged the admiral’s ship. And however many Turkish vessels with drew, there were always fresh ones pressing up to replace them, to confront the Christian fighters with gang after gang of eager unwearied men. In a while the Imperial galley seemed to be in trouble, and hard-pressed though they were themselves, the other three came to her aid, and managed to maneuver up beside her. The four ships lashed themselves together, and stood out above the swarming enemy like a four-towered fortress. Flotsam and jetsam and discharged weapons and broken spars and oars so clogged the curdled sea now that the oars could not be properly worked; and so smashed were some of the attacking vessels, so laden with bleeding and dying men, that they could not retire and make room for others.

  The afternoon wore on, and the light softened. Bodies floated in the heaving wreckage on the water. On the walls of the City the voices of the citizens were raised in prayer. “Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison,” they muttered to heaven. The setting sun was gilding the water, and the Turks were marshaling yet another wave of vessels for the attack.

  And then suddenly the wind returned. A great gust filled the idle sails, and the galleys began to move again. They crashed through their tangled opponents, clearing a path for themselves. They put about, and sailed toward the boom, and took refuge beneath the friendly walls of the City. Darkness was falling fast.

  After darkness, blowing trumpets enough for three times as many vessels, and making as much noise as they could, to seem like many, four ships put out through the boom, and escorted the newcomers safely in. The Emperor would not go home till he had himself welcomed his new captains; so they lingered in streets full of excited talk and laughter, with men coming and going carrying torches to gossip gleefully with neighbors. Good news came with their sup per baskets to the cold cramped men who had kept the land walls all day. They sang round their little fire baskets, clapped each other on the back, and spoke of more help coming from the West, and how the Turks could not stop it getting through.

  The Emperor’s council looked gladly over bills of lading showing cargoes of corn, arrows, spears, gunpowder, shot, salt, meat, saltpeter—everything the Pope had thought might be welcome to them. And Phlatanelas, both arms bandaged, laughed as he told them how he had drifted so near the enemy shore he had actually seen the Sultan. “He had urged his horse into the water so far his cloak was draggled in the waves; and there he sat, up to his knees, on his saddle, waving his arms and shouting, and crying curses like a madman … and his officers trying to lead him ashore again.”

  “What does he look like?” asked the Emperor.

  “He was too far off, Sire, to make out his features clearly … But he looks hooked, and cruel, like a bird … like an eagle, and his lips are full and red.”

  Late though it was, the Emperor and his council went from the shore to the Church of the Holy Wisdom, to give thanks. And there was a throng of citizens there, and candles burning … some would accept the Union, this night at least.

  So at last, riding homeward under a brilliant moon, hearing the sound of voices far and near, the contented murmur of the City wreathing the tall columns faintly like the starlight; hearing from a window, and farther on, from a camp of soldiers, the sound of a brave old song, wearily as he rode, Vrethiki thought, “This is what this place was meant for, made for—for triumph and for joy!”

  AT DAYBREAK THE NEXT MORNING—IT WAS THE MORNING OF the twenty-first of April, and Vrethiki noticed it because it was his birthday—mind, and he was thinking of that, and of his cousins Alys and Tom, who would have put on their best, and come and dined with him had he been safe at home. And the primroses would have been thick in the wood. That morning Vrethiki
and Stephanos and the other servants of the Emperor did not go riding with him to see and oversee the battle along the walls, but were busied instead in moving the Emperor’s lodging from Blachernae to the Monastery of Chora, which was near enough the walls, yet out of reach of the pounding guns. The monks of this place had found three small cells together for the Emperor’s bedroom, and sleeping room for his attendants, and beside the church was a funerary chapel, finely painted and adorned, where the Imperial throne could be placed, and the Emperor’s councils held. Around the cluster of domes and buildings was a garden, on the slope, that mounted to the wall, and the wall itself was very near.

  To carry the Emperor’s bedding, his clothes and books, his robes of state, and food and wine enough from the palace stores, Stephanos went out with Vrethiki, looking for porters. But the streets had changed these last weeks. No one was loitering in the markets, looking for work. Only women were buying; few were selling anything. Fish and lettuces and rounds of bread were on sale in the Forum of the Bull; but on carts half empty, and at prices that astonished Stephanos. He began to ask where he might find porters.

  “Haven’t you heard, master?” said a bent old crone who was peddling raisins—last year’s, dried up hard and small. “The great Bactanian Tower fell down this morning, and the Italians have been rounding up everyone and driving them off like mules to help carry rock and earth for repairs. You are too late, master.”

  “Come, woman,” said Stephanos. “Not everyone can be on the walls. Where will I find folk in need of money?” And he added to Vrethiki, “If bread and fish are three times up in price, there must be folk who need to work.”

  “You could try down by the Marmara harbors,” said the crone. “The fisherfolk cannot put out there.”

  So they went down a steep street, with steps here and there, toward the blue and silver expanse of the open sea, to a little harbor closed now with a boom where it broke the run of the sea wall. But the men who could no longer fish, they were told, had gone to defend the walls.

  “Nothing else for it then,” muttered Stephanos. “Have you got that precious dagger the Italian gave you, boy? Well, keep your hand upon the hilt of it, and stand close, by my side.” So saying, he turned his back on the harbor, and they plunged into the back streets.

  Vrethiki found himself in a part of the City like none he had seen before. It was not grand, and it was not ruined—merely squalid and tumbledown. Rickety wooden houses clustered along narrow evil-smelling lanes. Their upper stories projected over the muddy tracks between them, shutting out the light. Rubbish lay rotting in piles, with flies crawling on it. The people were in rags, and standing in the doorways were women who were not veiled, not decently covered even, but whose grimy breasts, like un baked dough, hung out of their bodices in the shadows where they stood. They tittered and laughed when they saw Stephanos and his boy. A nearly naked child was sitting on the body of a mule upon a rubbish heap, singing to itself among the flies. Vrethiki heard footsteps behind him, and swung round to find the lane blocked by a crowd of urchins, creeping along behind them, staring sullenly. They fell back only a pace when he turned on them. Then one of them began to whine, holding out his hands.

  In a few more minutes they came to an open space. It was unpaved, and steeply sloping. Looking up, Vrethiki saw the houses mounting the hill, so closely packed they seemed to be climbing on each other’s shoulders, and above and to the right he could see the great arches of the Hippodrome against the sky. In this place Stephanos halted. He took his great bunch of keys from his pocket, and struck them with his knife, jangling them like cracked bells. “Work, work!” he shouted. “One day’s work, paid this evening!”

  And from side alleys, and muddy lanes, and houses men crept out. Hideous, ragged men. Men with their noses slit, their ears cut off, their hands lopped off at the wrist. Vrethiki stared and trembled. It seemed as though his nightmares walked in daylight.

  Stephanos chose out twelve of these pitiful figures. He turned away a man with only one foot, he took four with chopped and deformed faces, but all their limbs intact, four with no tongues, and four with one hand missing. And with these they trudged back across the City. Up the slummy lanes to the Hippodrome, and in under one of its arches, across the great cursus lying grassy and flowering among its tumbled terraces, and empty, save for two boys who were riding on horseback, and playing some strange game Vrethiki had never seen before, hitting a ball with a long-handled mallet that they could wield from the saddle. Along the spine of the huge oval space they were crossing stood columns and obelisks, and one tall twisted column made of snakes entwined, finishing with their three heads. Stephanos led his limping followers past it, and out of the great enclosure, and so to the road back to the palace at Blachernae.

  He made sure everything was locked and roped before he let them touch it. Those with hands helped to heave burdens onto the backs of those without. Stephanos drummed up from somewhere two sleepy Varangians to guard the procession as it went, and in his own hands he carried the box in which the crown was kept. So at last they got the baggage carried the mile or so to the monastery. At once Stephanos set his workers to bring firewood, and light a little brazen stove to warm the cells, which were bleak, and chill with the thickness of their stone walls. It was afternoon before the workers were paid off. Stephanos opened his leather purse, and called the ghastly crew before him. But the first man refused the money, and in a whining and pleading tone, cringing while he spoke, wheedled Stephanos. Stephanos listened, impassively, and then nodded. He sent Vrethiki to the piles of stores that they had brought, and opening a sack of grain, he doled out a measure of wheat to each man in turn. They made aprons out of their rags to take it in, or held out their caps, and one man took it in his shoe.

  Then at last, to Vrethiki’s great relief, they were rid of them. At first he had to tend the fire, but when it was burning brightly he could talk to Stephanos, who was unpacking, making up a bed, checking over the things he had brought. The monks had brought a plain wooden chest they could use to keep the Emperor’s linen.

  “Stephanos,” said Vrethiki while the two of them worked, “those men—what had happened to them?”

  “What? Oh, they are criminals, bearing their punishments.”

  “Punishments? Mutilations?” asked Vrethiki, sickly.

  “Yes, yes. Those who have lost a hand are thieves, those with no tongues perjurers, those with slit ears …”

  “Ugh! Stop!” said Vrethiki.

  “Why then,” said Stephanos, faintly amused, “what do they do with thieves where you come from, may I ask?”

  “Hang them, of course!” said Vrethiki. “And that’s a doubtful mercy, I suppose,” he thought to himself. “But at least they do not linger in the gutters, creeping reminders of their sins …”

  At last, when the cell was made comfortable, they went to the monastery kitchen to make broth and roast a fowl for the Emperor’s supper. Stephanos tasted the bread that was baked there for the monks, found it coarse but good enough, and gave the wheat he had brought to the cooks there, in exchange for a future supply of bread.

  It was late when the Emperor came from the wall. He was tired. Kneeling before him, Vrethiki pulled off his boots, and brought a cushion for his feet. Stephanos brought a bowl of water for his master to wash his hands, and Vrethiki ladled broth into a pewter bowl.

  The Emperor seemed pleased by his cell. He seemed better at ease there than he ever had in his palaces. He sat sprawled in his chair, with his feet stretched out to the warmth of the stove, and sipped his broth.

  “How has it gone today, Sire?” Stephanos asked him, and Vrethiki took note of that, for when men of rank were near, Stephanos never addressed his master, but just stood silently by.

  “Their guns have brought down the Bactanian Tower, by St. Romanus Gate,” said the Emperor. “As it fell, it took down with it a length of the outer wall. Very bad. Had they attacked in force, God knows we could not have held them; they would have been
through. But they did not attack. They’re so thick on the ground there you cannot see a blade of grass, only white plumes on the janissaries and red fezzes on the rest; white and red as far as the eye can see. But they didn’t attack. There’s a wall of earth and rubble across the gap already, and it will grow higher and firmer all night.” He handed his empty bowl to Vrethiki, and Stephanos brought bread and meat.

  “I wonder why they held back,” he remarked, giving the Emperor his knife and fork.

  “The Sultan was not there himself. I suppose in his absence none liked to make the decision. They say,” he added, smiling suddenly, “he had gone to deal with his admiral, about yesterday. That could be. There’s a lot of cannon fire aimed at the boom today, and the whole of Pera is wreathed in smoke. This is a good supper, Stephanos. Is there enough for you and the boy?”

  “Plenty, I thank you, Sire,” said Stephanos.

  “I’m going to pray, then, before I sleep,” said the Emperor. “No, no, man; no need to come. Take your supper.

  Stephanos and Vrethiki sat and ate. Stephanos’ face was extraordinarily peaceful, suffused with joy.

  “He’s like a dog,” thought the boy. “Like a fawning dog who lives for the moment when his master pats him, or speaks to him.” Then another thought came to him. “It is true that as far as he is concerned I am just something his master has need of, like, it might be, a cushion, or a sword … but then, as far as he is concerned, that is all he is himself.” And by contrast, in his mind, he was thinking of Justiniani, who even at that moment, not half a mile away, was laboring on the ruined wall, leading men like a hero.

  IN THE DARKNESS OF THE NIGHT, VRETHIKI WOKE, SCREAMING. Stephanos was holding him, saying over and over, “Wake up, boy, it’s nothing! Wake up, boy!” and as the web of nightmare receded, Stephanos left him sitting on his pallet and trembling, and went to light a lamp. The flap of sandals along the stone flags of the yard could be heard, and a knocking on the door. As the flame took hold on the wick and a dancing leaf-shaped light leaped up, casting vast hovering shadows on the walls of the little cell, Stephanos opened the door. A monk was outside, asking what was amiss.