Emperor's Winding Sheet

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

  Here an icy-cold gust of wind suddenly reached them, and with it came hailstones, huge hailstones as large as eggs, which stung and bruised, and battered the cringing people. The canopy over the icon was ripped to ribbons, the banners the people were carrying were beaten down into the mud, their lamps extinguished. Vrethiki put his hands over his head, trying to ward off the stinging impact of the cascade of ice bullets. For a moment more the great thronging mass of people swayed and bowed under the wrath of heaven; then everyone began to run for shelter, helter-skelter, each for himself.

  Vrethiki turned down a side street, and pressed into the first doorway arch he came to, whimpering from pain and cold. As he stood there, under the columned doorway arch of the house, with the rain and hail lashing down an inch from his nose, a cistern somewhere must have flooded or burst, for suddenly a great torrent of water cascaded past him down the street, and a little girl, washed off her feet, was being dragged slithering in the foul muddy cataract down the hill. Vrethiki leaped after her, and struggling on the slippery roadway, with the fierce pull of the water tugging at his ankles, he dragged her to safety with him. A few moments later a distraught woman came struggling after her. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the hailstorm ceased. Vrethiki emerged from shelter into what now seemed the gentle downfall of rain, and went to look for the Emperor’s retinue, leaving the mother comforting her terrified child.

  There was nothing left of the procession that was to have calmed and comforted the people. Banners and flowers lay draggled and trampled in the mud. Forlorn little groups of drenched and dripping people stood in doorways, or fled homeward. And a cold wind still blew from Thrace, driving the storm before it. It blew all the rest of the day, tormenting the men on the wall, exposed to its cruel fingering in their cold armor, and their clammy rain-soaked clothes.

  THE NEXT MORNING VRETHIKI, WAKING, WONDERED FOR a moment where he was. He looked uncomprehending at the stretch of purple cloth gently sagging overhead. He had thought to see the little casement of the dormer window of his attic at home; and what had come to him so strongly was the thought of the ripe fruit in the apple orchard. He got up, puzzled. No one else was yet stirring, so he poked up the ashes in the fire, and put fuel on. He went to the door of the tent. Outside the ground was dewy, and the air was thick. White drifting mist veiled everything. He could see only a yard or two, and the noise of the guns—still spasmodic, for the day’s work was only beginning—came curiously muffled, yet clear, for all lesser noises had been snuffed out. Fog; the faint smell of it tingled in his memory, like autumn mornings in England.

  The moment the others woke up, he gathered that it was an unheard-of thing in the City, in spring. They would have been cast into deep gloom by it, were it not that after yesterday no deeper gloom was possible. The explanation seemed clear to everyone—the Divine Presence was veiling its departure from the City. All day, a still and windless day, the fog lingered. It dissolved the substance of the walls and buildings, which seemed to hover palely, to come and go, to quaver on each movement of the swirling air, like dreams or ghosts. And men loomed up at each other along the walls, all out of scale and context, like ghosts on the march. The enemy could not be seen at all, though they could be heard; apart from gunfire the sound of their voices, of the racket of comings and goings, drifted eerily out of the white emptiness beyond the wall.

  At nightfall a wind sprang up and rolled the fog away. Outside the walls the myriad campfires of the enemy sprang into view. And in the sky above, the stars.

  YET THE ORDEAL WAS NOT YET OVER. IN THE CLEAR NIGHT that followed the misty day, suddenly the citizens were horrified to see a strange red flickering light that played upon the dome of the Church of the Holy Wisdom. The Emperor stood at the window of his throne room in Blachernae, and saw it from far off. It seemed as though the base of the dome were circled with a bright fiery band of light, that mounted the dome, flowing upward, and con verging on the great cross at the apex. “What does this mean?” murmured the Emperor. “What does this mean? I am afraid that Heaven itself has turned against us.”

  He was still staring out of his high window when a group of his courtiers came to him. Phrantzes, his gray grave secretary, and Theophilus, and Don Francisco, the Spaniard who called himself the Emperor’s cousin. Lukas Notaras was there, and Minotto the Venetian, and Jus tiniani, and Cardinal Isadore.

  “Have you seen that?” the Emperor asked them. “What can it mean?”

  “Whatever it may mean, there is no hope for us now,” said Phrantzes. “We have come to beg you, to implore you”—and at these words they all knelt down suddenly as if in church—“to go to a place of safety while there is time.”

  “My dear Lord,” said Theophilus, “think how it has happened before that the Emperor was driven from the City, and yet the Empire continued, and the City was won back again. Go to the Morea; your brothers will come to you, and perhaps Hunyadi, and the Pope …”

  Vrethiki, watching the Emperor, saw the color ebb from his cheeks. Beneath his golden sallow skin the pallor gave him a deathly greenish tinge. His lips were white and bloodless. Suddenly the whites of his eyes flashed; his pupils rolled. He bent at the knees, and fell forward with a soft thud on the floor, while Theophilus was still speaking.

  They ran to lift him, to lay him on his couch. He was breathing through parted lips; a light froth of spittle bubbled on his mouth.

  “Bring water!” cried Phrantzes, wringing his hands in distress. Stephanos came with an alabaster bottle in his hands. He thrust his way through the clustered noblemen crowded round the couch. “He has only fainted, I think,” he said, bending over his master. “Oh, why must you press him so?” And, unstoppering the bottle, he dashed the contents in the Emperor’s face. It was rose water. A faint scent of embalmed flowers rose from the pillow. The Emperor’s dark lashes flickered, and then his eyes swam open. It took him some moments, staring vacantly round at the circle of anxious faces, to recollect himself. Then he said, “No. If it be the will of God, whither could I fly? It was said long ago this City, this Empire, would make a splendid winding sheet. It shall be mine.”

  “Yet, Lord Emperor, hear what we have to say …” began Notaras, urgently.

  “I have said I will not abandon you,” said the Emperor. His voice was weak. “Have pity on me—do not urge it further.”

  Stephanos was kneeling by the pillow, wiping his master’s forehead with a cloth wrung out in rose water. Vrethiki, watching the courtiers, saw them give up, saw the heads bowed, and shoulders drooped. Phrantzes was in tears. And the boy would have liked to take his hand, to embrace these lordly men, each one. They loved their master, and they had tried to save him. Vrethiki knew.

  IT SEEMED TO VRETHIKI, TOSSING AND TURNING ON HIS mattress in the tent, watching the canvas shift on the flowing night air, that the guns were worse than ever. So ceaseless was the banging and rumbling that the noise was almost the element he lived in, like air. But usually they were less rowdy in the night, and that night they were at full force. Hearing him restlessly tossing, Stephanos reached out a hand to him in the dark. The boy held it till he fell asleep.

  THE NEXT DAY WAS SUNDAY; THE EMPEROR AND HIS ENTOURAGE went to hear the Liturgy before going to the walls. It was halfway through the morning, in bright clear weather, as though the storms and portents had never been, when they rode down to the wall in the Lycus valley. A great spectacle stretched out before them in the Turkish camp. Line upon line, the mind-numbing hundreds of their hordes were drawn up across the plain, plumed headdresses rippling like ripe wheat in the wind, the kaleidoscope colors of their dress like gaudy flowers. Banners and spears and standards bristled over their heads; their helms and weapons gleamed and glinted in the sun. And along the lines they could see the Sultan riding, on a horse draped all over with embroidered silks. Trumpeters rode before him and behind, blasting discordantly. Every so often the Sultan stopped and addressed his gathered ranks. And a vast cheer answered him, a cheer that came from so man
y distended throats it seemed not human, but like the shrieking of stormwinds over mountaintops, or the senseless roar of the sea. AllallaaIlaallalaaa! rang toward the silent listeners on the walls.

  The Emperor’s party halted beside Justiniani, halfway along the stockade. “Whatever pleases them so hugely bodes little good for us,” said Justiniani grimly.

  They were all looking intently at what was happening far off. Nearby, Urban’s great gun, leveled at the stockade, and loaded, was being fused and fired. They heard the bang, and the whistle of the flying ball. Then there was chaos, earth and splinters flying everywhere, the horses whinnying, rearing and bolting. Stephanos had leaped for ward, arms extended. Something hit Vrethiki’s cheek, like a punch in the face, and his eyes were full of dust and grit. Something wet and sticky was on his collar. He tugged at it, and then rubbed his eyes, blinking. When he could see again, he saw a terrible sight. A stretch of the palisade was down, and the ground was thick with the writhing and groaning bodies of the men who had been lined up behind it. Already their companions were bending over them, and voices were raised, urgently or in distress. A few dazed men were staggering around in a state of shock. A splinter had struck Justiniani’s arm, and he was bleeding slightly through his chain mail. The Emperor was standing stock still, covered thickly in dust and grime from head to foot, but unharmed. At his feet, on the ground, lay a body pierced in twenty places by jagged fragments of the shattered ball that had been flying toward the Emperor.

  Vrethiki stared at the dead man. A great strip of his face had been torn away. “Why is he wearing Stephanos’ clothes?” thought Vrethiki dully. He looked round for Stephanos. “Why is he wearing your clothes?” he wanted to ask him. He was not there. “Stephanos?” said the boy, shakily. “Stephanos, Stephanos!” And he began to scream in his piercing high-pitched boy’s voice. Justiniani grabbed him, carried him bodily across the terrace, and put him in a corner by the angle of the inner wall. “No panic here!” he was saying. “Noli hic clamare!” with a hand over Vrethiki’s mouth. The boy fell quiet, and nodded, dumbly. For indeed there was panic enough: cries and wails, and shouted questions, and men running everywhere. Then two of Justiniani’s men took the Emperor up on their shoulders, and carried him up and down the line.

  “For God’s sake, Sire, take cover!” cried Theophilus’ voice, from the inner wall behind them. “The Turks can see you too!” The Emperor was put on his feet again. The dead were being dragged across the terrace, to be laid out along the foot of the inner wall. The wounded were being carried through one of the doors to the City. The Emperor came over to Vrethiki. A crowd of men were with him, and the sight of Vrethiki seemed to fill them with dismay. The Emperor was shaking. He looked at Vrethiki with concern, and his and other voices were asking, asking …

  “Oh, oh, what are you saying?” wept the boy. “Oh, Stephanos, get up and tell me what they’re saying!” A dull ache throbbed in his cheek. What were they fussing about? So dazed was he that he did not realize yet that his cheek was cut; it was blood that had run down between his collar and his neck—he had coated his hands with it, and then rubbed his smarting eyes. He had plastered his face with blood, and they thought he was badly hurt.

  One of Varangian John’s men picked him up and carried him, back through a door in the inner wall, along the road behind, and to the Emperor’s tent. He found a cloth, and washed Vrethiki’s face; then he grinned, patted Vrethiki’s cheek, said something to him in a cheering sort of voice, and left. Vrethiki lay on his back for a moment or two, and then slid swiftly into a deep exhausted sleep, as though he had been knocked unconscious. On the wall the Emperor’s horse was led back to him, and he mounted, and rode off to visit other positions. Justiniani went to have his cut cleaned and bound up. Theophilus directed a repair gang for the damaged stockade. And a work party buried Stephanos with fifteen others in a shallow grave at the foot of the inner wall. A priest made one blessing, one prayer, do for them all.

  Chapter 18

  It was dusk when vrethiki awoke. He awoke clearheaded in the empty tent. The cut in his cheek hurt. He sat up and looked around. While part of him wanted to think, to sit and weep over Stephanos, he could see there was no fire lit, no lamps burning, neither wine nor food for supper; and so, getting up, he set to work at once, doing what Stephanos would have done, to make some comfort ready for the Emperor. And when everything he could think of was prepared, and before he had time to sit and think, the Emperor returned. Vrethiki knelt, and pulled off his boots; brought clean water for him to wash in, and fresh clothes, for the grit of the ruined walls still clung to him. Hesitantly, feeling suddenly awkward at such familiarity, he picked up the Emperor’s ivory comb, and creeping up behind him, began gently to comb out the dusty tangles in his hair. They were silent, having so few words in common. The Emperor made the boy sit down with him, and eat a share of what there was, though Vrethiki had not been able to find much, and the meal was only bread and broth. Vrethiki remembered longingly all those gluttonous banquets he had seen, and then felt cruelly ashamed of himself for feeling hungry when another man was dead.

  After supper the Emperor put on his cloak, and with Vrethiki at his side went to pray in the Church of the Chora, because it was nearby. It was three hours after nightfall when they left the church, and yet it was not dark outside. A misty orange sky was visible above them, and the rooftops and domes of the City were all luridly lit up. The Emperor rode at once to the nearest tower of the inner wall, and he and the boy mounted it, and looked out. All over the enemy camp outside the City, huge fires were burning, and bloodcurdling cries could be heard from the blazing camp. The light flooded earth and sky, it lit up the Golden Horn like molten iron, it showed the distant towers of Galata, and the ships lying as far off as Scutari.

  “Their camp is on fire!” thought Vrethiki, with a wild spiraling lift of the heart. He followed the Emperor running down the stairs of the tower, and out onto the terrace. And there the defenders were helplessly watching a huge swarm of enemy workers, with flares and fires to give them light, laboring to fill the fosse. They worked feverishly, like men possessed, and the discharge of the defenders’ cannon, arrows and slingshot, though they reaped swathes of men, did not for one moment cow or stop the rest, but the work went on without pause. And just beyond the fosse, great rings of Turks were dancing and leaping to the crazy skirling of pipes and drums and trumpets, the fire light burning on their crazed faces; some of them whirled on one spot like tops, and others ran up and down, and turned somersaults like tumblers. Vrethiki saw that the fearful noise they were making was not cries of alarm at the conflagration, but howls of frenzied joy. And the glow from the lights and torches showed Vrethiki also the battered walls, and the lines of men on them; many of them kneeling at their posts, in terrified prayer.

  By this time it was midnight. A bell sounded from the midst of that bedlam of bonfires; and suddenly the workers in the fosse retreated. A silence fell, as sudden and stunning as the racket had been. And almost at once the fires and torches were put out. Darkness and silence swept over the plain, leaving the Christians on the wall staring blindly into the night.

  VRETHIKI WOKE IN THE NIGHT, LURCHING OUT OF NIGHTMARE, and crying out. From the darkness a hand came, and held his firmly. “Stephanos?” murmured the boy, sleepily. He was drowsing again almost at once. Only, as he slipped away into sleep, he noticed fuzzily that the hand he held had thin long fingers, and a great chunky ring … In the morning Vrethiki reckoned it part of his dream.

  THE MORNING DAWNED STRANGE AND SILENT. THERE WERE no guns. No shouting, but a quiet brightening of the light. Vrethiki woke early and went out. He walked a little way in the open, through the wilderness that was now the Lycus valley, through a cluster of ruined houses. The silence made all the world seem made new. The sound of the stream came as sweetly as music to the boy’s ears, battered into deafness by all those weeks of gunfire. He stood for a while beside a rambling clump of wild rosebush, its arched sprays breaking out in f
ragile papery pink petals, and listened enchanted while far and near the air was full of the melodious exotic chanting of all the tribes of birds. He did not think of yesterday, or of today, but simply drank in the morning moment all around him. It was a short moment; he had to return to his duties.

  He had to poke up the fire, and warm a pan of milk. Then run across to the Chora Monastery, and bring bread and olives for the Emperor’s breakfast. There hadn’t been much else to eat this long while past, and now even this was a luxury. When that was done Vrethiki opened the huge wooden chest that held the Emperor’s clothes. He chose a clean linen undercoat, to go next to his master’s skin, picking out the one he liked best, that had a border of fruits and flowers woven in black on white. He laid that out ready, smoothing the creases away. Then he fetched the corselet of gilded chain, and the golden breastplate, and all the polished war gear. Then a pair of undershoes: a sort of slipper and legging in one that went under the greaves; there was only one clean pair of these left, and they were of purple silk, woven with golden eagles. Then he found the Emperor’s boots, of purple hide with bands of pearls sewn on the seams, and, last, the great purple surcoat the Emperor wore, that came to his knees over his armor, and was blazoned all over with golden embroidery. Then he woke his sleeping master, brought him his breakfast to eat sitting in his nightshirt, and then helped him dress.