“Who will you send?” Bayazid asked.
Anthony hesitated a moment, and then half turned his head; his son Henry stood to his left.
“I will send Henry Hawkwood here. He can speak with his brother and with Omar, and they will bring the prince before you.”
“See that it is done,” the Sultan said.
*
Prince Djem stood on the hills above Brusa and surveyed the approaching horsemen.
“There are no more than sixty of them,” he remarked.
“Your regiment of sipahis will make short work of them, Omar Pasha. Do so now.”
“With respect, my lord prince,” Omar said. “It is undoubtedly an embassy from your brother. It can do no harm for us to hear what he has to say.”
He looked at William Hawkwood for support. Once recovered from their dismay at Djem’s decision, and his manner of implementing it, the two commanders had had several private discussions during the last month. They had even contemplated binding Djem and delivering him to Constantinople themselves. But that way lay grave risks. No one could tell what the Sultan truly had in mind.
Furthermore, they could not be sure whether their men would follow them. Whatever his private faults, Djem was a popular prince. He had taken care to make himself so since his arrival in Brusa. There was little doubt that his army would fight for him, if he offered them sufficient rewards.
From William Hawkwood’s point of view, the idea of opposition to the prince was nearly impossible. Sereta and his sons had been taken into the prince’s own harem, out of reach of all save the prince’s eunuchs.
“Your family will be safe with mine,” Djem had said, “until we have gained our victory.”
To abandon his family was unthinkable, but to fight against his family was equally unthinkable. William was uncomfortably aware of his youth and his inability to make a decision. He could not overcome the feeling that his father would never have submitted to such a humiliation, would have reacted violently, and either triumphed or died. And sacrificed his family in doing so, if necessary.
Did he, then, lack the stomach to be a Hawkwood?
But…perhaps the crucial moment was now approaching. William’s eyes narrowed as the cavalcade drew closer: a bright picture of flashing lance-heads and floating pennons, of multi-coloured silk cloaks and burnished, cloth-wrapped helmets, of small and powerful horses.
But the man in front was larger than the rest, and rode a larger horse in a distinctive manner.
William’s heart swelled. “The ambassador is my brother Henry, my lord prince,” he said. “Now we shall discover truly what is in your brother’s mind.”
*
Henry Hawkwood stood before the prince’s divan.
“My lord and yours, the Sultan Bayazid, sends greetings, lord prince, and wishes to inquire why you have refused his invitation to Constantinople?”
“Does he take me for a fool?” Djem demanded.
“My lord the Sultan has requested me to inform Your Highness that he cannot accede to your desire to divide his empire. He says that such a procedure has never been undertaken in the history of our people, that it is against the anyi, and that the Grand Mufti can find no excuse for it. But my lord the Sultan has commanded me to say this to you: that he wishes only to honour you, and to preserve your life. To this end, he has instructed me to assure your highness that he has issued a safe conduct which will ensure your journey is not interfered with.”
“And when I reach Constantinople?”
“He is preparing a palace for Your Highness. It will be close to the Seraglio. My lord the Sultan wishes to have his brother ever at his right hand.”
“He takes me for a fool,” Djem said again.
Henry looked at his brother William. “Our father has asked me to enlist your help in persuading his highness to do nothing rash.”
“Willingly,” William replied. “I am certain that Bayazid means what he says, my lord prince. He would never break his word, given so publicly.”
“Young Hawk is right, lord prince,” Omar said. “The way of prudence is here the way of justice and fortune.”
Djem turned his head to glare at them each in turn. Then he looked back at Henry Hawkwood. “And if I refuse to act the fool?”
“My lord, if you do not return with me to Constantinople, the Sultan will declare you a rebel and hurl all the armed forces of the empire against you.”
Djem stroked his beard. “And who do you suppose will command this host?”
“Alas, my lord prince, the command will undoubtedly be exercised by Hawk Pasha.”
“Then let him have a care. He will war upon his own family.”
Henry gulped, and looked at William for guidance.
William could do nothing more than raise his eyebrows, hoping for a private conference later to explain the situation.
Henry faced Djem again. “Is this the answer I must carry back to the Sultan, my lord prince?”
“No,” Djem said. “You will carry nothing back.” He looked at the man standing by Henry’s shoulder. “How are you called?”
“I am Enver Pasha, lord prince.”
“Then do you take this message back to my brother Bayazid. Tell him he is a usurper. Tell him that my father had long ago selected me as his successor. Tell him that I declare myself to be Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and that I will defend my prerogatives to the death. Tell him that in the course of time I will assert those prerogatives in Constantinople itself. And tell Hawk Pasha that if he marches against me, he marches also against his sons.” He pointed then at Henry Hawkwood. “Seize that man!”
Guards ran forward. Henry’s hand had dropped to his scimitar, but he did not draw; he knew he was outnumbered.
William made to move, but was restrained by Omar’s hand on his arm. The general had no wish to lose his artillery commander before the first shot was fired.
“Do not harm the young Hawk,” Djem instructed the captain of the guard. “But place him in secure confinement until I have further need of him.”
He pointed at the thunderstruck Enver Pasha. “You had best now make haste to my brother and tell him my words.”
*
“You have fathered a brood of vipers, Hawk Pasha,” Bayazid said, speaking as softly as ever.
“Not so, Padishah. We have Enver Pasha’s evidence that my son is under restraint.”
“And your other son?”
“It is Enver’s opinion that he too is acting under duress.”
“I care not,” Bayazid said. “They are in my brother’s camp. And my brother has now defied me to the death. He threatens my power. He is hateful to me. He is declared outlaw and rebel. How long will it take you to mobilise my armies?”
The lead in Hawkwood’s stomach grew heavier; the one thing he and every pasha had feared was civil war on the death of the sultan, such as had blighted the beginning of too many Ottoman emirates in the past. And to have his own sons involved, however inadvertently…
“They were already summoned by your father for his coming campaign. They will be fully mobilised within three months.”
“You will ride to meet them, Hawk Pasha. You will assume command, and you will lead my army against Brusa.”
“With respect, Padishah, three months from now will see the leaves falling. It is not less than a month’s march to Brusa; within another month there will be snow on the high ground. Your father did not intend to begin his Persian campaign until next spring. It would be wisest for us to do the same, even against Brusa.”
“And let the usurper enjoy a winter pretending to be sultan, raising armies, seeking allies? Hawk Pasha, you will march on Brusa as soon as your men are levied. I do not care if you have to wade through snow as deep as your waist. You will bring this brother of mine, and all the vipers who support him, before me here so that I may judge them. Carry out my command, or yield your wand to another.”
Hawkwood hesitated but a moment. If anyone was to destroy Djem’s army it
had to be himself; that was the only way he had any hope of saving the lives of his two sons.
“I will deliver the rebels before you, Padishah,” he said. “My son John will ride at my side.”
Bayazid’s eyes glowered at him. “As you wish, Hawk Pasha. Your wife and daughters will remain in Constantinople, anticipating your return.”
*
“You will lead an army against your own sons?” Anna Notaras stood before her husband, her body quivering. Only two years younger than Anthony, she was now forty-seven, but in many ways remained the girl of fourteen he had first seen and loved and then hated for her betrayal of him.
She remained, equally, the girl and then woman after whom he had lusted. On the day Constantinople had fallen he had led her away, with her mother and with his sister Catherine. The other women had been confined; Anna Notaras he had bidden his servants to strip again, so he might gaze upon that slender, white-skinned dream.
Anna had understood that her only choice lay between submitting to him or being thrown to the Janissaries. He was in a dark and unpredictable mood, and she knew that he was strong enough to break her arm with a twist of his fingers, or else could summon his servants to hold her down while he raped her.
Yet although she had lain down for him without protest, in her mind it had still been rape. She had wept and called him every name she could think of, while still unresisting. In his anger he had beaten her until her buttocks were raw, and she had not resisted him, save with her mouth.
He had often been in despair at her intransigence, and his hopeless passion for her. His sister Catherine, hating no less the brother who fought for the anti-Christ, had been no more amenable, and she had joined her curses to those of her sister-in-law. Sometimes he had contemplated putting them both in a sack and throwing it into the Bosphorus. When, to remove the constant hostile nagging of the sister he had once so loved, Anthony had given her in marriage to a Turkish pasha, Catherine had gone off without demur, and no doubt Ziglal had also had to beat her. In his harem she had died only recently, and he hoped she had found some happiness in the end.
Anna had refused to soften. He had indulged himself on her in every aspect of physical love which he had learned at the hands of the Emir Valideh. He had mounted her as a Turk and as a Christian. On occasion he had refused to mount her at all, and instead had stimulated her with his hands. He had gained a triumph there. Not even Anna Notaras, hating him with every fibre of her being, had been able to withstand the art of a man taught by Mara Brankovich.
But it had been a barren victory. She still hated him and everything about him. She hated being the inferior wife to Laila, she hated the Turkish way of life. She hated the fact that her husband was an apostate, and she would chant her own Orthodox rituals by the hour in the hopes of angering him.
Small wonder that he had willingly ridden away to war, had fought with a desperate and careless courage which earned the plaudits even of the Janissaries. He had no happiness to go home to. But his obsession with her prevented him disowning her.
Then she had become pregnant. Her obvious pleasure at the birth of her son John had pleased him, and taught him the way to continue. He had kept her pregnant for the next ten years. Some had died in childbirth, some of fever in infancy. But five had survived; three strong boys and two sturdy girls.
Inevitably she had found fresh causes for hatred, in his determination to teach his children English and Latin, but not Greek, and in his even greater determination that they should be brought up in the Roman rather than the Orthodox faith. But by the time these new hatreds surfaced, they no longer mattered: he had gradually ceased lusting after her. If his Christian upbringing deterred him from taking a second wife after Laila’s untimely death — dearest Laila who had been his constant solace amidst the discord in his home — he had instead added concubines to his household, and ultimately left his wife in peace.
By then too he had almost forgotten his mother — who had not long survived the fall of Constantinople — and even his father. But he had named his sons dutifully: the eldest after his father, the second after his grandfather, and the youngest after the brother whose execution by the Byzantines had turned Anthony into the man he was.
But they were Ottomans now. If he did not kneel to Mecca, still less did he consider attending Gennadius’s masses, or even those held in the Genoese church according to the Communion of Rome. He had become the renegade of all renegades. He had become the servant of the anti-Christ.
His children, born of a Greek woman and an English father, looked and acted like Franks. But he did not expect the Hawkwoods to survive another generation, so had married them all to Turks — a fresh cause of misery to Anna. He did not even suppose that any of his grandchildren would be taught English in their turn.
Even more than his father, he had sold his soul to the devil, glorying in the devil’s progress and in his own success as his henchman.
He had no other happiness.
But even devils die. And now his sins were coming home to roost. If he could not love his wife, and had long since lost any contact with his daughters after he had sent them into harems, still he had loved his sons. Now he must lead one to war, and perhaps destroy the other two in the process.
Only two months ago the world had lain at his feet.
“Yes, Anna,” he said. “I will lead an army against my sons. And, if they have betrayed the Sultanate, I will deliver their heads to Bayazid. If they have not, then I will deliver them to you, safe and sound.”
He left her weeping.
8
The Envoy
“There are so many,” growled Prince Djem, pulling at his scanty beard.
With his officers he stood on a high bluff overlooking the road that followed the winding valley of the Gok. It was early in the morning, and the sun, just risen above the mountains in the east, played over the valley like a huge lamp. That tree-lined road, winding to and fro alongside the river between the steeply rising cliffs to each side, came from Sakarya in the north. Along it, for as far as the eye could see, were stretched the various detachments of the Ottoman army.
Standing next to the prince, William Hawkwood could make out the advance guard of sipahis, the conglomerate mass of the bashi-bazouks, the green tunics of the Anatolian infantry and, at the rear, the red and blue uniforms of the Janissaries, their white horsehair plumes nodding as they marched.
Back there, too, would be the pashas commanding the Sultan’s men. Back there would be his father.
And behind the Janissaries and the pashas, escorted by another squadron of sipahis, rumbled the guns. These were vastly different from the bombards his grandfather had built for the Conqueror to knock down the walls of Constantinople. These were guns developed by his father, and were for use in the field. They were smaller, more manoeuvrable, and fired a lighter missile. And well handled, they could destroy an opposing army.
William Hawkwood knew they would be well handled.
Behind the guns, and again guarded by sipahis, came the baggage-wagons, the commissariat, the remounts, and the servants and harems of the pashas; a Turkish army on the march was a moving nation.
More than once in his life William had stood and cheered as the Ottoman horde had marched away to war, to bring death and destruction wherever it was pointed. He had never suspected that one day he would watch that horde marching on him, equally determined to deal in death and destruction.
“I would estimate that army to number sixty thousand men,” Omar Pasha remarked.
William looked over his shoulder, to some miles behind their vantage point, where, also in the valley of the Gok but as yet out of sight of the approaching force, Djem’s army was encamped close to the village of Yeni-Shehr, from which it presently drew its sustenance.
It was quite an imposing force, for in the desperate summer months since Djem had thrown down the gauntlet to his brother he and his officers had recruited far and wide. There were some forty thousand men encamped down
there. Only the pashas knew how uncertain was their fighting quality. There was one regiment of Janissaries, who had agreed to follow the prince because of the lavish donation he had given every man — but would they truly stand and fight against their brothers-in-arms?
There were several squadrons of sipahis who, William thought, could be relied on; they had been raised by the prince himself. But, these apart, the rest of the rebel army consisted of hastily-raised foot soldiers. Djem called them his Anatolians, but they were more like bashi-bazouks, good for irregular warfare, but not certain to hold their place in a line of battle.
And there were the four cannon which he commanded. Cannon were the decisive arm in modern warfare; the side which possessed artillery, with resources large enough to permit the building and transportation of these iron monsters, was invariably victorious.
But here each side possessed artillery. And the Sultan’s was commanded by perhaps the greatest gunner in the world.
“We must meet them on the road,” the prince decided.
William looked at Omar.
“With respect, O Padishah,” the general addressed him, for Djem had insisted upon all the trappings of the sultanate, “it would be better to retire upon Brusa, and make them attack us there.”
Brusa was only twenty miles to their rear.
“Brusa is not a fortress,” Djem pointed out.
“It can nonetheless be defended. Its natural position on the side of the mountain means that it cannot be surrounded, and can only be assaulted up a steep slope. Also your men will be heartened, despite the numbers against them, by the knowledge that they are fighting beneath the tombs of your ancestors.”
“Then there will be a siege,” Djem grumbled. “How may we withstand a siege?”
“We would not have to for very long, Padishah.” Omar pointed at the sky, which was darkening with cloud. Despite the sun, the breeze coming down the mountain was chill enough to have them all wrapped in their cloaks.
“October is late for campaigning,” Omar said. “I see the hand of your brother in this; he is impatient. Had the decision been left to Hawk Pasha, that army would not have approached you before next spring. In this your brother has erred. Within a month the winter rains will have started, and then the winter frosts. Even Hawk Pasha will then have to raise the siege. He will be hoping that you attempt to meet him in the open field, so that he may settle the matter quickly. It would be best not to oblige him.”
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