Grant followed Maruffo downstairs where a three-man escort had gathered, ready to accompany the podesta to the palace.
Maruffo introduced them one by one as they strolled down Pera’s hill to the harbour: Aluigi Sambucuccio from Corsica, a stocky ball of muscle with an oarsman’s tight shoulders, close-shaven hair and a pointed black beard; Leonello Boccanegra, the youngest of the trio, slender-framed with a shaggy chestnut mane, wide staring eyes and lips that would have been better placed on a courtesan; and finally, Isnardo Fieschi, whose face was difficult to look at, but harder still for the eye not to be drawn toward. The pink, cycloptic welt of a branding scar sat across his forehead, still raw even after two decades.
White tentacles of tissue had robbed the brand of its original form, but it was still possible to make out the letter P, and everyone from Lombardy to Ragusa knew what that meant: P for Portafino – the shame of Genoa.
‘John’s a Scotsman,’ Maruffo told them. ‘He kills like Jacopo Bellini paints. A true maestro!’
‘Good, we’ll sign you up today!’ Boccanegra said, looking up at Grant who had a full head of height on all of them.
‘Oh, I’m not sure about that,’ said Grant. ‘The podesta tells me it’s a hopeless cause for fools and glory hunters. Maybe I’d do better to see if the sultan’s hiring instead.’ Maruffo gave a pained grin, Boccanegra looked stunned and Fieschi made a grunting cough that might have passed for a laugh.
Back at Pera’s harbour, the water was still alive with traffic. A low-hulled skiff was found, the ferryman paid, and with the flick of an oar they were heading across the narrow channel of the Golden Horn to Constantinople’s shore.
The sun threw its dazzling rays off the gilded domes, picking out the gold, the sea-green copper, the red-veined marble; revealing the city skyline to Grant in all its glory. A masonic Venus Anadyomene rising from the water. Red-roofed streets of houses splayed across the gentle slopes, running from the dark line of the low seawall to hilltops crowned by onion-domed monasteries, white-washed belfries and slender carillon towers. A forest of church steeples and spires, crosses and cupolas. On the acropolis point, a pair of sea birds lazily circled over a broken turret, and through a gap in the rooftops the sunshine caught on the golden statue of Emperor Justinian atop his column in the square before Hagia Sofia.
‘Truly, this is the city of God,’ Grant murmured.
‘No city like it on earth,’ Fieschi said seeing the awe on Grant’s face. ‘It’s an odd place too. The Greeks are enigmatic – so pious and holy and yet also debauched and decadent at times.’
Sambucuccio slapped Grant across the back. ‘Which means the girls won’t bed you until they’ve finished their prayers.’ He grinned, and the twinkle of his eyes matched the flash of the garnet stone in his ear.
Horses were rented once they reached the Constantinople side. They were needed. Constantine’s palace lay at the far north-western end of the city, tight up against the land wall and tellingly far from most of his people.
To get there the little party made its pilgrimage along an ancient brick road, known as the Mese, that ran arrow-straight through a series of wide forum squares.
Grant glanced around as they travelled and began to take in the scale of Constantinople’s faded magnificence: the pagan monuments, the shadowed churches, the time-worn palaces.
Other sights were more familiar: dirty, haggard beggars and barefoot children; piles of festering waste, broken roof tiles and tumbledown houses; everywhere ruin and dilapidation, mud and manure. A sordid air hung in the half-dawn over the stained marble colonnades and filthy walls, where stoop-postured men loitered, gripped by the desperate boredom of unemployment. This could have been Genoa, Brescia or a dozen other broken towns he had seen, where sadness and poverty had settled like a thick blanket of snow.
He felt a twinge of disappointment. It was not the city of God he had dreamed about as he crossed the Aegean. Whatever glory, whatever spiritual magic that might have once invested this queen of cities, it had long since ebbed away, leaving only a rotting hulk.
He recalled something a priest had told him once, about the significance of the Son of God’s appearance on earth – not in the form of a king but the simple, fragile, common shape of a carpenter’s son in an anonymous, upcountry village.
Perhaps, he told himself, the poverty, the shabby ruins and grimy passageways of Constantinople were exactly how God intended his city to be. Perhaps there was still a hope that his sacrifice on its dilapidated walls would not go unnoticed.
‘What’s this emperor like then?’ asked Grant, seeking an alternative source of inspiration.
A sigh came from the youngster, Leonello Boccanegra, ‘He’s an emperor, nothing more needs saying. One tyrant differs little from another.’
Maruffo twisted around in his saddle. ‘That’s unfair, Leo. Constantine’s a good man, far better than his brother or father.’
‘He’s honest,’ Fieschi added, ‘but that makes him weak. He sees too much good in people and misses too much evil.’
‘I’ll say this for the emperor,’ said Sambucuccio in his Corsican drawl, ‘he’ll stand and fight. That’s enough for me.’
Half a league from the old citadel, the tightly bunched houses gave way to fields and waste ground. The city that had once teemed with nearly a million souls had dwindled to less than a hundred thousand. Old and frail, it no longer filled out the clothing of its walls, so that swathes of land had fallen back into nature.
The remaining inhabited districts formed an archipelago of life scattered across a sea of abandonment, where a haunting wind howled through roofless ruins and livestock grazed freely; a land of opaque green, mottled like jade here and there with the yellow stains of late autumn.
At last, the tall cliff of the Theodosian walls loomed in the distance, marking the very limit of the city, and there, nestling in its lee, sat the imperial court of Blachernae.
With its solid, square shape and checkered arcade of brick and marble, the inner palace of the Palaiologoi emperors recalled more the fondachi warehouses of Venice and less the classical grandeur of Rome’s Palatine Hill. It squatted beyond a fountain court, sturdy as a linen chest, surrounded by a complex of prettier churches, terraced gardens and dome-capped chanceries.
The party of Genoese ran their mercantile eyes over the fixings as they were escorted along tapestried corridors, which gave off an odour of camphor and damp. ‘So, this is what tyranny smells like,’ said Boccanegra, earning a brief glare from Maruffo, just as they reached the palace’s large audience chamber.
The room, echoing, vaulted, wreathed in the fog of sweet incense, felt more chapel than council chamber, and the men gathered inside kept firmly to their rival congregations.
Here stood the Byzantine court in all its distended majesty; men of average means wearing the most ostentatious of titles like jewelled brooches upon their chests: the parakoimomenos, the kanikleos, the protovestiaros; keeper of the gowns, holder of the imperial seal, nobles of the bell. They jostled for position around a broad oak table and peered at Grant, gouty in their conceit, through the billowing incense haze thrown out by wrought copper censers.
As he stood among the Genoese contingent, awaiting Constantine’s arrival, Grant began to wonder how much of the old empire’s dwindling resources had been squandered on hollow grandeur; how much effort put into protocol or the petty squabbles of patronage while armouries rusted and defences rotted away? He had no use for a royal gown carrier if the man could not also hold a wall.
Around the fawning nobles, the Latins circled like buzzards. The Venetians warily eyed the Genoese from the table’s far side. Girolamo Minotto, their leader, provided the corpulent hub to a pinwheel of merchants and money lenders who composed their local council of the twelve, a lading bill of the great lagoon families: Barbo, Badoer, Corner, Contarini, Venier. As Venice’s bailo in Constantinople, Minotto held much the same brief as Maruffo did for Genoa.
Spread across the table i
n their midst, a map of the region lay supine beneath the press of heavy candlesticks on its corners. One might think a game had been interrupted; the hand-painted land dotted by sandalwood chess pieces. It was easy to guess which side each colour represented – they had employed two sets of black and not even a full set of the white.
A murmur grew among the Greeks as a figure bustled his way through the room. By the way the man held himself and several courtiers bowed and fawned, Grant thought for a moment that it was Constantine. Only the purple robes and mitra were missing from this uncrowned emperor. ‘The megas doux, Loukas Notaras,’ Boccanegra mumbled at Grant’s ear. ‘If Byzantium’s court is a labyrinth, behold its minotaur.’
Catching the comment, Notaras cast a frown in their direction. A whiskery eyebrow of silver arched up in disdain, and a hand aimed itself, dagger-like, at Grant. The florid jowls shook, and a voice of pomace said, ‘Who is this, Maruffo?’
‘This,’ said Maruffo, ‘is kyr John Grant, a knight of Scotland and veteran of many conflicts.’ Grant kept silent, cheerfully wondering how he had missed his elevation to knighthood in the twenty-four years away from home.
‘Oh, just what’s required, another mercenary!’ Notaras sneered. ‘You condottieri turn war into mockery – the better to fleece your employers – but the Turks don’t playact their battles. Was this one with you at Anghiari? Four hours of combat and nobody dead until some fool fell from his horse!’
‘Why, kyr Notaras!’ said Maruffo, sending his voice booming around the vaulted ceiling. ‘I was not aware you were such an old campaigner!’ He spoke in Greek, so no one would miss the mockery; despite the ceremonial maces, tall hats and martial titles, Loukas Notaras had never shot or swung a weapon in battle – playacted or real.
Notaras ignored the barb. ‘Why is it, when my emperor asks you for Genoa’s alliance, all you bring him is a soldier-of-fortune or two? Could it be that Doge Campofregoso has no intention of sending aid and only toys with us Greeks to block any treaty we might otherwise conclude with Venice?’
‘Do you ask such questions of the Doge of Venice?’ Maruffo shot back. ‘I see no army from there either, just this fat man and his pestilent friends.’ He swept his hand in the direction of the Venetians, who bristled their contempt in return. Any reply they might have given was lost under the noise of men coming through the chamber door.
Emperor Constantine, eleventh of that name, swept in, trailed by a small train of churchmen and velvet-covered hangers-on. He took his seat, and with a nod about the room said, ‘Good souls, I trust I find you all well.’
Loukas Notaras dipped his head. ‘As well as might be expected, Basileus, while our enemies gather and our allies dither.’
The grand logothete, George Sphrantzes, made to speak, but was eclipsed by an extravagant flourish from Maruffo in Grant’s direction as the podesta said, ‘Basileus, might I present to you John Grant, a knight from Scotland come seeking to be of service to you.’ Grant bowed and tried to look as competent and noble as he could.
‘You are most welcome, kyr Grant,’ said the emperor.
‘I am at your disposal, Basileus.’
Constantine smiled and said, ‘Do you have any specialty, kyr Grant?’
‘Basileus, I trained in the longsword with maestro...’ Grant began to reply but Maruffo cut him short. ‘Countermining, Basileus. He is a maestro of the countermine. In Lombardy they call him La Talpa – the mole.’
It was not an outright lie. Grant had been involved in a countermine once before, but it was certainly an outrageous exaggeration. ‘Messer Maruffo is too kind,’ he muttered through a grimace.
‘I’m sure those skills shall prove most useful,’ the emperor said with a nod, then gave a quizzical look around the room. ‘Has the envoy from Rome arrived?’
‘Not yet, Basileus,’ George Sphrantzes said quickly, hopeful of wrestling the meeting back onto its agenda. ‘We believe Cardinal Isidore’s boat was delayed at Candia, but with favourable winds he should make his arrival very shortly.’
‘Any other pressing business?’ said Constantine, eager to bring the routine morning audience to a swift conclusion. There was a chestnut Arab pony being saddled for him by the tzykanion playing field, and several others around the table had come dressed in soft leather kamptotouva riding boots that reached up to their thighs.
‘One more item, Basileus,’ said Sphrantzes, who was not a lover of ballgames or horses. ‘You may recall that last year a man came to court named Orban.’ Constantine looked back at him blankly, so the grand logothete added, ‘He was a master cannon founder.’
‘Ah yes, the Hungarian,’ said the emperor wistfully. ‘He wanted to cast great bronze cannons for me.’
Sphrantzes nodded. ‘But we could not meet his price, despite the efforts of our nobles to raise the funds.’ He glared at Notaras with a look that made clear he felt the megas doux guilty of hoarding a great fortune.
‘A pity.’ Notaras muttered, without betraying a glimmer of guilt.
‘Well, it seems the Turk sultan met his price.’ Sphrantzes let the words fall on the meeting like a blacksmith’s hammer. ‘We have learned that Orban is at Adrianople, building a bombast larger than any made before; a monstrous machine so enormous, it shall be capable of firing gunstones the size of horses and will need an ox train of ninety to pull it.’
‘I am sure we know where Sultan Mehmed shall look to employ it,’ Constantine said. There were a few solemn nods. The land walls. All their thoughts were the same in that moment: could ancient stone resist a weapon of that power?
‘Orban made a prototype,’ Sphrantzes said. The room’s sudden hubbub fell silent again. ‘To prove his skill and secure the sultan’s patronage, he built a smaller gun, but a beastly cannon none the less.’
The right hand of the logothete spread out and placed itself over the gaggle of four black rooks sat on the map at the narrowest point of the Bosporus, a mere six miles upstream from their council chamber.
‘That gun is now here,’ said Sphrantzes. ‘A cannon so powerful no ship can pass without sailing beneath its grasp. The Turks have given it a name – the Throat Cutter.’ The map before them told its own tale. A mood of deep gloom fell swiftly over the table.
Nonchalantly, Maruffo picked up a white queen from where it lay disused beside the map and placed it onto the island of Chios. Everyone in the room knew Chios for a Genoese stronghold, and a low mutter enveloped the chamber until the podesta spoke. ‘Basileus, I have received word from Genoa. The doge has an answer to His Imperial Majesty’s request for aid.’
Maruffo paused, wallowing in the attention. A shadow of panic passed across the faces of the Venetians. ‘It has been decided that in the coming war, Genoa must... remain neutral.’
A gasp came from the back of the room, mutters and whispers erupted all around, and a look of confusion replaced the panic on the Venetian countenances.
‘Formally neutral, that is,’ said Maruffo, once the noise had ebbed. ‘Informally, Basileus, Genoa shall give full support to you from Pera and, more importantly, a company of fanti under the command of Captain Giovanni Giustiniani shall depart Chios when the winter sea abates. Bowmen and men-at-arms to bolster your strength. They will nominally be sent by the maona of that island, but be sure they carry with them the best hopes of all Genoa.’
Giustiniani!
Once again, that famous name sent a ripple of fevered chatter around a war council, turning hard-bitten soldiers into gossiping market women.
Sphrantzes allowed himself a smile and a knowing nod of the head. Maruffo’s announcement was a master stroke of politics from the Genoese. They had caught the Venetians cold, leaving no room for manoeuvre. Now Constantine could not possibly offer them Pera, since Genoa had just pledged to use it as a base of covert support. And Genoa would provide tangible aid in the form of lances and a commander of some repute, all without sacrificing Genoese neutrality – at least officially – for the maona was a chartered company, set up to admin
ister and farm the taxes and alum mines of Chios and Phocaea, and its actions, they might claim, were its own.
Constantine shone with visible delight. ‘I am grateful to Genoa for every brave man she sends,’ he said. ‘I hope our other allies can match this stout support.’
The Venetians sheepishly avoided his eyes. They had no maona to hide their actions behind.
But the sour looks on their faces were as nothing compared to the taut-muscled horror of Loukas Notaras.
II.
‘H ave you ever marvelled at how many men of talent the small republic of Genoa produces?’ said Baldo Maruffo. ‘It’s like a hot spring in the earth through which greatness comes gurgling out!’
He did not seem to care that nobody was listening. There was more than a whiff of triumphalism in the podesta’s broad smile and merry patter as the Genoese sat shoulder to shoulder on the side benches of a cart swaying and rattling along the Mese from Blachernae. As a means of transport it was far from elegant, but on departing they had found the palace stables short of horses and the cart had been suggested as faster than a long walk.
Amused voices heckled them from the roadside, ‘On your way to market?’
‘Well, we do look a rather jaunty harvest,’ Maruffo conceded. ‘They should invent a collective noun for us. A brood of hens, a siege of herons, a charm of Genoese!’
Leo Boccanegra shook his head mournfully. ‘The Venetians are taking a boat back down the Horn. They would never make themselves a joke like this.’ He was not the only glum-looking passenger. The only contented faces belonged to the effervescent Maruffo and the Corsican, Sambucuccio, who was singing a dirty song about a girl from Bastiglia.
‘A sinister of Venetians!’ Maruffo declared, ‘It shall be an unhappy vessel, I assure you. We have done good service for Genoa this morning, men.’
Boccanegra sighed. ‘Somehow we always win the battles and Venice always wins the wars.’
Porphyry and Ash Page 2