Emperor's Winding Sheet

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

  “The boy has bad dreams,” said Stephanos.

  “Ah,” said the monk, entering the cell. He wore a tall hat, that cast agiant’s shadow to the top of the wall and folded over the ceiling. He had a long bushy beard, and spiky eyebrows. But he looked kindly enough. He made the sign of the cross over Vrethiki’s crouching form, and said words to cast out evil spirits. “Tell me what devil possessed you,” he said. Vrethiki shook his head, uncomprehending. Stephanos translated.

  Vrethiki began in a terrified high voice to tell of a great crowd of mutilated faces that had thronged round him with their hideous gaping red nostrils, their loathsome red stumps, all pointing, pointing at him … “Thief! Thief!” they had cried after him, and then had come his uncle’s face, at its remotest, and sternest, and he was wearing the Emperor’s robe. “What hast thou done with the goods that were given thee to trade with? Where is the profit therefrom?” Uncle Norton’s voice had asked. “Thief, wastrel, crusader, stretch forth thy hands …” And there was an ax …

  Stephanos, softly, in a deploring voice, murmured after him in Greek. The monk shook his head, and answered at length before he left.

  “What did he say?” asked Vrethiki, after a little.

  Stephanos had raked up the ashes in the stove, and had set a pan of milk to warm on it. “He bid you remember the text that it is better to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into the fire. And he said you should wake a little before you slept again, and that he is keeping a vigil all this night, and is even now praying for you.”

  Vrethiki nodded. “His text is harsh, but he is kindly,” added Stephanos. He stirred a spoonful of honey into the warm milk. “Here, child, drink this. My mother used to give this to me when I could not sleep. It’s long ago now, but as I remember it worked well enough.”

  “Thank you,” said Vrethiki, taking the cup, and sipping it gingerly, for it was too hot to gulp down. When at length he had finished it he did indeed feel calmer, though wide awake. Stephanos lay down, and pulled his blanket over himself, but he did not extinguish the lamp. Vrethiki watched him lying there, drowsy, with the lamplight gilding his smooth beardless cheeks, his expression of unseason able youth. He wondered …

  At last, “Stephanos?” he said. “What did you do?”

  “I? Do?” murmured Stephanos sleepily. “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” said Vrethiki, flushing with embarrassment, “if all those wounds were punishments … and you … what were you punished for?”

  “Mother of Christ!” said Stephanos, sitting bolt upright. He stared at Vrethiki, not for the first time, in disbelief. Then he seemed to resign himself to explaining. “Eunuchs are different,” he said. “They are not made for a punishment. Do I seem like a criminal?”

  “No, no, of course not,” said Vrethiki, shamefacedly.

  “What was done to me, was done by my own father,” said Stephanos.

  Vrethiki jerked upright on the bed, his flesh creeping.

  “Why?” he cried.

  “When I showed signs of cleverness as a boy. It was for my good. When it was done and healed he took me to a scholar who agreed to teach me, for a share in my price later on. Then when I read and wrote both Latin and Greek, I was sold into the Emperor’s household, there to advance myself. I have done well. I have no regrets. I should be like my brother, otherwise, who toils to scratch a living out of a bare plot of land, laboring like a beast, year in year out.”

  “But why did he have to do that?” asked Vrethiki.

  “Eunuchs can do what nobody else can do. Because they can never be Emperors, Emperors can trust them. They can be trusted in the women’s quarters; because they can have no ambitions of their own they make good servants … that’s why.”

  “But Stephanos, don’t you mind?” cried the boy, with tears in his eyes.

  “No,” said Stephanos, leaning back on his pillow, gazing at the ceiling. “I told you, I have few regrets. I have lived long enough to judge what I have missed—to see what other men have. I don’t mind when I see young men and girls … still less when I see men with their wives … Serving my master compensates well for all that. Only sometimes, when I see a man with his son, I mind … We will hear the great gun soon, I think. They have taken to firing it at night once, as well as all the day. We will listen for it, and then we will go to sleep.”

  The sound when it came was always louder than one remembered it. It shook the building, and left their ears numb. In the humming silence that followed, Stephanos leaned over and snuffed the lamp. But then in the darkness he spoke again. “Listen, boy. There’s no telling what may happen to anyone if the Turks get in. But if … if it should ever matter to you, remember there are worse fates by far than mine.”

  Chapter 13

  Next morning the emperor went early to look at what repairs had been contrived for the gaping hole in the walls made yesterday. The earth wall looked makeshift enough, but it provided cover for the defenders, and an obstacle to hold back any onrush of the enemy. Justiniani had gathered some extra men and placed them on the rubble of the fallen section of the inner wall, so making up for the weaker masonry with a stronger line. But he was worried about the insidious, continuous filling up of the fosse. And the night was not long enough to clear away the day’s avalanche of destruction and rubble.

  That day was Sunday, and the Emperor went to hear the Liturgy in the Church of the Holy Apostles. And there, at the very door, messengers came running, distraught, crying aloud in dismay, and the words they spoke to the Emperor caused uproar among the people gathered round, so that not only did the Emperor remount at once, and ride away, with Theophilus and Demetrios Cantacuzenos, who were with him, but half the congregation left the church and ran helterskelter in the same direction, shouting as they went.

  Stephanos was not with the Emperor that day, having still much to arrange to keep the Emperor’s apartment supplied in a new place, and so Vrethiki had no one to tell him what was happening, and in all the cries around him he could pick out only the words for “Turk,” and “ship.” And he was puzzled by the direction in which everyone was rushing, for they were going northward, toward the only safe stretch of wall—the shore of the Golden Horn behind the boom—and if a disaster had overtaken them, surely it would be at the land walls.

  Puzzled and tense, Vrethiki rode behind his master, and they came in a short while to the length of wall that Lukas Notaras patrolled with his reservists. Lukas was there, white-faced, and talking fast. He led the Emperor up to the roof of a tower on the wall, and they looked across the Golden Horn.

  Already three Turkish ships were afloat there, the crescent of Islam flying from their mastheads. And behind them the impossible explanation for this impossibility could be seen by the horrified Christians. The Turkish ships had not forced the boom. They had been dragged overland. Winding over the hill behind the walls of Pera, and down the slopes to the little bay called the Valley of the Springs, was a slipway of logs, laid end to end, and side by side, that had been built, at least where it was visible from the City, under cover of darkness in a single night. And proceeding down it, with teams of oxen roped fore and aft of each one, a great line of ships was slowly coming, a fantastic cavalcade down the hill, and into the sheltered water. Each ship was being dragged upon a sledge-shaped cradle, but they came with sails unfurled, and all their crews sitting in them, the banks of oars beating steadily in the air like wings; trumpets and drumbeats could be heard faintly in the distance, and the triumphant dancing of a great crowd of heathen, escorting the vessels on their incredible road, could clearly be seen. The Emperor stood watching. The count of vessels slithering into view from behind the folds of the opposite hills rose every moment: forty … fifty … Vrethiki saw that his master was trembling, and he was afraid.

  Suddenly Justiniani was there, and with him Minotto, the Venetian Bailey. They talked in low rapid voices, looking grim. The Emperor nodded, and there was a bustle of messengers being hastily br
iefed, and sent running. The Emperor turned. He descended, and confronted a nearly hysterical crowd in the streets below. Vrethiki had to push and shove, and shout to clear a way for him. He mounted, and then said something to the crowd. A sort of hushed groan answered him. Then they rode away.

  Justiniani lingered awhile, staring across the blue water.

  “The saints preserve us!” he said to no one in particular. “But, you know, that’s magnificent!”

  IT WAS TO THE LITTLE CHURCH OF ST. MARY THAT THEY WENT. it stood just within the sea walls, in the quarter of the City that had been granted to the Venetians. Minotto had called a meeting there. All the Venetian captains were assembled, and some of their officers, and most of the important Venetians in the City. Justiniani, the Emperor and the boy were the only non-Venetians present. Without Stephanos to whisper to him, Vrethiki strained to follow the course of the colloquy, but the words were difficult and spoken rapidly, with urgency and passion.

  “We must ask the Genoese at Pera to bring their twelve galleys and help us attack,” said Minotto. “With them we are a match for seventy Turks.”

  “They won’t do that,” said Trevisano. “They won’t risk their precious neutrality—in case we lose anyway, and their necks depend on it. Besides, what is known in Pera, the Sultan knows within the hour. I’d sooner fight alone at any odds, than allied with that nest of traitors!”

  “Perhaps we could do damage enough ourselves, if we could first knock out the guns they have mounted by the Valley of the Springs,” said Contarini. “Suppose we put a raiding party across to the other shore to spike those guns; and then attack in full force, with every ship we have …”

  “I think that too dangerous,” said the Emperor. “It would cost lives. And we have none to spare. We are in a desperate state already. Now that we must defend the Golden Horn walls as well, I do not know how we are to find men. We cannot risk lives.”

  Thus the talk weaved to and fro. Vrethiki could see that everything suggested was being turned down. Suddenly, a large burly redheaded man, whom he did not know, spoke up.

  “We must burn them,” he said. “By night. Tonight.”

  A clamor of talk broke out, questions, comments. The Emperor said, “How would that be possible, Coco, my friend?”

  “I’ll do it,” said Coco, bluntly. “If you give me, say, two big transports, two galleys, and two little fustae. And plenty of Greek fire.”

  “Who goes with you?” said the Emperor.

  “Let’s keep it among ourselves,” said Minotto at once. “We have ships enough without asking round. And it ought to be kept secret. Let’s keep the Genoese well out of it. Forgive me, Justiniani, but we all know you’re different.”

  “Tonight then,” said Coco.

  “Hold on, hold on,” said Trevisano. “Whose ships are we using, exactly? Can all be ready by tonight?”

  It seemed not. Watching Coco with interest, Vrethiki saw him getting more and more disgruntled. He seemed very surly, and short-spoken, while the others babbled on. At last it was agreed to put off the attempt till two nights hence, by which time all could be made ready. The meeting broke up, and the Emperor, deeply anxious, returned to the wall at Blachernae, to look despairingly at the fleet of seventy Turkish vessels, riding peacefully at anchor in the Golden Horn. Already the Sultan’s numberless army were busying themselves making a floating bridge across the water, above the line of the land walls, which would cut short the long trail round the marshy headwaters of the Horn, and quicken his messengers between army and fleet on the Bosporus. The bridge was floated on barrels lashed together, and covered with planks to make a wide flat roadway.

  By the second day they had finished their bridge. By the third, the morning of Coco’s expedition, they had mounted guns on it, and were firing at the weakest part of the wall, where it encompassed the Palace of Blachernae.

  THE EMPEROR WAS VISITING BLACHERNAE WHEN THE GUNS opened up from the new bridge. He was meeting with Phrantzes and others, and Vrethiki found himself free to go looking for Varangian John, and his old friends, seeking the pleasure of speaking English for a little while. He was welcomed warmly enough. The soldiers were weary from a night spent on the wall, and there was work in earnest to be done, cleaning armor, not just to make it shine on parade, but to remove the grime, the mud and dust of the walls. Vrethiki sat down and set to work with a rag and a pot of oil, and listened to the talk.

  “Think they’re sitting pretty out there,” observed Martin, jerking his head toward the racket over the wall. “Wait till tonight, eh?” And he winked at nobody in particular.

  “Have you seen Coco’s ship? Or Trevisano’s?” said another. “They’ve padded them with bales of cotton like a fat woman bulging through her corsets!” Pricking up his ears, Vrethiki soon learned very fully what the meeting in St. Mary’s had been about. “Don’t talk about it, please!” he said to Varangian John. “It’s supposed to be secret, I’m sure it is!”

  “It’s all over the City,” said Varangian John, “secret or not.” He pulled a breastplate off the pile that was waiting to be cleaned, and Vrethiki saw the one beneath. It was striped with lines of dark clotted blood dried onto it, but there was no mistaking the two-headed eagle. It was—it had been—Manuel’s.

  “Dead,” said Varangian John, when he saw the boy staring at it. “Kaput. Now, don’t take on, boy. He died bravely; and just between you and me, there’s none of us likely to come better out of all this than that.”

  VRETHIKI COULD NOT TELL STEPHANOS AT ONCE, BECAUSE when he found him he was standing behind the Emperor’s chair, in the middle of some kind of audience.

  The men with the Emperor were all Genoese. Cattaneo was there, and the two Langasco brothers, and the Bocciardo brothers, all three. Their voices were raised, barely respectful.

  “We came to fight for you, Sire, not to prowl your walls like nightwatchmen!”

  “How can the City be defended, except by watching the walls?” said the Emperor. “Do we not share that burden all alike?”

  “And when a chance for glory comes, you shut us out of it!” Cattaneo continued.

  “But you must see that it had to be secret. It was not to deprive anyone of glory, merely that tactically it seemed best that few should know …”

  “If you think us not good enough for you … not worthy to be trusted …” said the elder Langasco, between his teeth.

  “If you think you can’t trust us, we’ll go,” Cattaneo said. “We’ll take ourselves over to Pera, and there’s an end of it!”

  “You are well trusted,” said the Emperor wearily. “Why should I not trust you? As you say, you could go off to Pera at any moment, and save yourselves. It is of your good will, of your honesty, that you are here instead. I know that. I trust you well.”

  “Then let us, too, go on this adventure,” said Langasco. “Some of us go too. Right?”

  “Fetch Coco to me,” said the Emperor to Stephanos. And while he went Vrethiki poured out wine for the angry Genoese, and the Emperor talked to them in a careful, soothing voice. When Coco came, the Emperor talked to him first, in the doorway, telling him what was afoot in a rapid undertone. Coco looked distraught. At last he came forward, and confronted the others.

  “Very well,” he said, “I’ll take one Genoese vessel. You’ll have to be ready tonight. You’ll have to take orders from me.

  “Why certainly, brother Coco,” said Cattaneo. “You are the commander. We are no rabble. We’ll take orders. But as for tonight, we’re not ready, can’t be ready so soon. You’ll have to wait for us.”

  “Wait?” cried Coco. He turned to the Emperor. “Sire we’ve been too long about this already. It needs surprise, or it cannot work!”

  “What he says is true,” said the Emperor, turning to Cattaneo with a gesture of appeal.

  “Whose fault is it we are unprepared?” demanded Cattaneo. “If you had told us about it in the first place we would not have been the last to be ready!”

  “Very well
,” said the Emperor. “It has delayed two days already, I suppose another day makes little difference.”

  “Two days hence,” said Langasco firmly. “The night of the twenty-eighth. We’ll be ready then. Don’t beetle your brows at me, friend Coco; see how we’ll fight. There never was a Venetian armada that wouldn’t have been better for a few Genoese!”

  IT WAS TWO NIGHTS LATER, THEREFORE, THAT THE ATTEMPT was made. The monks woke Stephanos at the third hour, and he woke the Emperor, wrapped him in a thick cloak, and went with him to a tower on the sea wall. The moon had set, and the darkness was thick as velvet, but the Emperor had said that there would be light enough to see something by if Coco was as good as his word, and he was determined to see it. Vrethiki hurried after them with a flask of warm wine wrapped in a cloth to keep the heat in, and a basket of little loaves and cheese. Stephanos was beginning to fret a little over his master; and it was true that the Emperor was thinner than ever, and often looked deadly tired.

  Once on the tower they had chosen, the Emperor had them put out the torches they had come by, for standing in a pool of light made them blind to all but blackness be yond. Even without the torches it was so dark that Vrethiki could not make out anything at all beyond the battlements. Footsteps climbed up behind them, and Phrantzes joined them, and Theophilus, and Notaras, to watch with them. Deprived of sight they stood silent, straining to hear. The water slopped and slapped round a little boat anchored below them. The creak of a straining hawser came intermittently from the nearest of the Turkish vessels, as it pulled and slackened its anchor rope. They heard a dog howling on the farther shore, faint and far.