Porphyry and Ash

by Peter Sandham

  ‘Nice to meet you, kyr.’ Demetrios moved to shake Grant’s hand.

  Kallinikos continued speaking. ‘My sons and I give life to the old designs. Who knows, perhaps we may yet discover something that can tip the scales against the Turks. Now then, allow me to ask a question of you in return. Were you shocked by the riot today?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Grant bluntly. He took a seat on chest beside the door.

  Kallinikos inspected his son’s handiwork while continuing the conversation. ‘Hmm, shocked to come here to defend a city and find it so divided in the face of approaching cataclysm no wonder.’

  ‘I don’t understand why the people seem all a bother with what the emperor’s trying to do,’ said Grant. ‘Surely they want help from Rome?’

  ‘The people, dear boy, do not think they have so much to lose under an Ottoman regime,’ said Kallinikos. ‘The sultan already has many Greek subjects. They are free to practice their faith and they pay less tax than we do. You missed a screw here, Demetrios.’

  ‘Will they not fight then?’ asked Grant.

  ‘Oh, the people will fight like lions if it comes to it. They are not cowards or faithless. Quite the opposite. Their faith is of such strength that they cannot abide the emperor sacrificing the Greek Church to secure their safety. Constantine, naturally, will do anything to win – he has everything to lose. The hoi polloi, less blessed with material wealth, count their faith as their most precious – their only – jewel. In their place, which ruler would seem the more just? The Greek who forces you to become a Latin, or the Turk who allows you to remain a Greek?’

  At that moment, as if in answer, the crisp evening air was sundered by a rumbling boom that echoed like close thunder and made the panes in the windows rattle like chattering teeth. Unmistakably, it was the roar of the Throat Cutter.

  III.

  The merchant quarters of the city strung themselves like a cowry necklace along the Golden Horn shore; barnacled in their nations so that Venetian concession ran into Florentine, into Catalan, into Aragonese. The land behind these districts rose sharply, affording the finest views of the water to the houses sprawling across the chain of hilltops.

  On the highest of these summits, its gilded rotunda blooming like a lotus amid the unripe buds of smaller residences, sat the house of the megas doux, Loukas Notaras.

  A creeping rose bush crawled along the property’s white-washed outer wall, giving locals reason to christen it ‘The Rose Palace,’ but it was a palace in more than just its plentiful size, being home to the richest man in Constantinople.

  Unkind observers noted the grand audience chambers, the cloisters filled with scholars, the regular couriers received from foreign climes, and suggested it was in danger of becoming a second imperial court. Unkind observers made comparisons to antipopes at Avignon.

  Between his wealth and his titles, Loukas Notaras was a man unused to a closed door anywhere, but that morning, scandalously, he found himself confronted by one within his very own home. With his golden chain of office rattling about his neck, the megas doux thumped a fleshy palm against the stout oak timber of his youngest daughter’s bedchamber door and bellowed once again for her to open it.

  ‘Anna, they are already waiting downstairs, stop this nonsense immediately and come out!’

  His words rebounded off the panel, but no answer came back with them. His son Jacob, the runt of his litter, put a hand to his father’s broad shoulder. ‘Shall I break it down, Father?’

  The megas doux shrugged the hand away. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, that’s quality timber. Anna! Open this door!’

  The landing was starting to crowd with servants loitering over the trimming of tapers or folding linen to catch a glimpse of the confrontation.

  There were few in Constantinople who could claim to be as stubborn and pugnacious as Loukas Notaras, but his seventeen-year-old daughter Anna might be a candidate for that crown.

  ‘It’s your own fault,’ said Theodosia Notaras, the lady of the house. ‘You indulge her Loukas. You have always indulged her. All those dreadful books she reads, I said it was unwise. There’s only one book a girl need concern herself with.’

  His wife’s barbed comment seemed to give the megas doux an idea. He tapped at the door again more gently. ‘Anna dearest, kyr Argyropoulos is downstairs. He has brought your old tutor with him. At least come down and give him your regards.’

  This time a reply did come back. ‘No! I will have nothing to do with any of it.’

  The megas doux growled with frustration and rested his head against the door. ‘There is not the time for this,’ he muttered.

  ‘Leave her be,’ said Theodosia. ‘I’m not sure I understand why you wanted to involve her in the first place. I was certainly not consulted about anything when our wedding arrangements were made. Nor was Helena, nor Theodora, nor Maria when we planned theirs. You’ve spoiled Anna; I always said it.’

  ‘Be quiet woman!’ Notaras snapped. He kicked the door with his heel and stormed away to the stairs as the crowd of servants bolted like rabbits from his path.

  ‘Well really!’ said Theodosia to Jacob as they watched him go. ‘That was quite uncalled for.’ She waited a moment longer outside the locked door in case Anna was foolish enough to open it at the sound of her father’s departure. Then checking her veil in the corridor’s grand mirror, she accompanied her favourite son down to greet their guests.

  The tiled triclinium floor had been cleared in preparation by the servants, the couches pushed back against the walls to make space in the middle of the room.

  A pair of more obedient Notaras daughters stood demurely beside their husbands in one corner, and smirking at this latest minor family scandal, Jacob scuttled his boyish frame across to share out his gossip. As Theodosia followed her youngest child through the doorway, she could see a chest had been placed in the middle of the floor and was now ringed by a group of admiring men.

  Her husband’s voice called to Theodosia with all trace of his earlier irritation now masked before outside eyes, ‘Come and see! Messer Baldini has brought the cassone designs and this beautiful example.’ The men stepped aside to allow her a view of the cassone.

  It was an Italian custom for the bride’s parents to give such ornate wedding chests as a gift to the couple, and although being Greek it was not her tradition, it was the least of the compromises she had already consented to swallow among the arrangements.

  This particular specimen fitted the general form she had seen before. Similar in shape and size to an ancient sarcophagus, its lid was flat topped and beveled with gilt about the edge, and its sides were clad with elaborately carved panels. The panel facing her now showed a woman riding a dragon-yoked chariot while the trees and crops all around her wilted.

  ‘The rape of Persephone,’ said the man sitting on a couch to her left. ‘An odd choice of subject for a wedding gift, yet appropriate this time perhaps?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ Theodosia said with a flint glare towards the speaker.

  He was an old man, with a long snow-white beard and a smile of pure mischief on his rubicund face. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re no weeping Demeter. Where is your sweet Persephone, not trapped in the underworld until spring I hope?’

  ‘She is not feeling well and has taken to her bed. I did mention to her that you were here,’ the megas doux said from across the cassone. ‘As to the design, this is merely a craftsman’s example. Our cassone will have a more appropriate motif. Messer Baldini, perhaps you could show the drawings to my wife?’

  A meek-looking man in rather shabby clothes stepped around the side of the chest and opened out a sheaf of paper under Theodosia’s nose.

  ‘Three holy children in the fiery furnace,’ said Loukas Notaras. ‘Your favourite psalm.’

  ‘It will look magnificent at the foot of the marital bed,’ said the spindly figure standing to the right of the megas doux. He was a man in his mid-twenties with an Italian’s colouring and long, lank hair. His doublet wa
s of very fine silk and his hose were parti-coloured and very tight, as was the fashion among the Venetians that season.

  ‘This is the most magnificent cassone I have every seen, finer than even my own mother’s,’ he added.

  ‘Messer Barbo is too kind,’ said the craftsman Baldini as he refolded his paper.

  ‘It ought to be, given the cost,’ the megas doux muttered under his breath.

  ‘So, if that is the cassone details concluded, might we move on to discuss the trousseau, Your Grace?’ said Barbo to his prospective father-in-law.

  ‘Now Paolo, the trousseau can wait,’ said Girolamo Minotto, the other member of the circle.

  ‘There are other matters to discuss and other men waiting. Perhaps we should hear what verse kyr Argyropoulos has composed for the wedding’s epithalamium.’ He turned as he said this towards the couch and the man sat beside the white-beard who had needled Theodosia before.

  ‘No, no, bailo, I can wait,’ said Argyropoulos without looking up from the paper he was still furiously scribbling on.

  ‘Do you perform this service for all your Venetian flock, bailo Minotto?’ asked the white-beard. ‘It seems rather beyond a bailo’s call of duty.’

  Girolamo Minotto, the long-serving bailo for the Venetian community in Constantinople, was not a man who rose to such vinegary bait. He flashed an equally empty smile back and said, ‘It is not every member of my flock who finds themselves betrothed to so significant a lady. In these times of trouble, this wedding between a famous old house of Venice and a most illustrious Greek family takes on special diplomatic significance.’

  ‘Times of trouble indeed,’ said the old man. ‘How wise of Your Grace to make such arrangements now and entrust your precious jewel of a daughter to the stout strongbox of Venice before it comes to war with the Turk.’

  ‘It shall not come to war. It simply cannot,’ Theodosia said with a glance at her husband in search of reassurance.

  ‘What news on that front, Your Grace?’ asked Barbo.

  ‘Little good,’ said the megas doux. ‘You all heard the gun last night.’

  ‘It was firing upon one of our ships, I’m told,’ said Minotto. ‘Antonio Rizzo’s boat; good man but fierce proud in matters of the sea. Looks to have tried to clip past with the current and found the Throat Cutter to be well named. Must have broken the boat in two. The lucky ones drowned. A galley came in this morning from Caffa. Their captain had been of the same mind as Rizzo, but he saw the smarter course when they spotted those impaled bodies dancing atop their pikes.’

  Loukas Notaras shook his head. ‘The sultan appears to be in the thrall of his court’s war party. But there are still reasonable men at the Turkish court, we must pray that cooler heads win out.’

  ‘I fear you’ll find Mehmed’s the coolest head of all and yet firmly set upon war,’ said Minotto. ‘Put yourself in his position. Newly crowned, his toughness doubted by many of his viziers, what better way to demonstrate strength, what surer means to yoke his more bellicose advisors than by setting them on a campaign against the greatest symbol of Moslem frustration? He will either take Constantinople – and in so doing crown himself the greatest of his line – or else he shall break his army against these walls and make it a contrite, gelded beast.’

  ‘Bailo, you would appear to be well versed in Moslem court intrigue,’ Theodosia said. She did not in general warm to Latins, but she made an exception of Minotto.

  ‘Venice is as concerned by this young buck as Byzantium,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I doubt that,’ said the megas doux. ‘It is not Venice this barbarian plans to march upon.’

  Minotto scratched his beard. ‘Perhaps not today, Your Grace, but should he succeed here then what of next year, or the year after? I do not think this sultan will be content with Blachernae Palace. I have heard it said he dreams of using St Peters in Rome for his stables.’

  ‘The wall will see him off, as it did his father and a thousand years of heathens before,’ said Jacob Notaras.

  ‘And failing the wall, the saints and Theotokos,’ added Theodosia.

  ‘The men of Pompeii claimed as much whenever they saw the mountain smoke,’ muttered a voice from the couch, which sent them all into an awkward silence.

  Ioannis Argyropoulos, still frantically trying to turn his notes into flawless verse gave the old man a sharp kick. ‘Keep quiet before they throw us out,’ he hissed. ‘I’ve quite forgotten why I even brought you.’

  ‘Guilt, most probably,’ said his neighbour on the couch. ‘You would hardly enjoy the feast later while your mind stewed with thoughts of old Kallinikos sat alone in his cold house with nothing but a bowl of porridge. I am a salve for your conscience, a charitable deed to balance the sin of gluttony while half your fellow citizens go hungry.’

  ‘You are a dreadful windbag,’ Argyropoulos said, ‘but at least I shall eat in peace while you lecture the table.’

  Kallinikos smiled. ‘Old habits die hard.’

  The circle around the cassone had moved on to talk about arrangements for the sailing to Venice. ‘It would of course be best to sail with the spring muda,’ said Minotto.

  The muda were the large Venetian merchant fleets that moved in great convoys from the Levant to the lagoon and on west as far as Flanders at set times of the year.

  Loukas Notaras nodded, ‘I agree. If you might arrange for my own ship to join the rolls of the fleet, I would be most grateful, bailo. It could sail from here with Messer Barbo and his bride, accompanied by her mother and brother, in March and meet the muda as it arrived into Modon. I shall have a cargo of olive oil to send to Venice from the Morea, it would be most propitious to send it together with them.’

  ‘I am not sure I want to enter Venice on an oil barge!’ Theodosia protested.

  ‘Mother,’ said Barbo, who seemed, incorrectly, to think Theodosia would find it charming for him to address her in that manner, ‘we shall depart the boats at Malamocco and then make a most splendid entrance across the lagoon. Swans, leopard wranglers, jugglers, floats with sugar sculptures – it will be like Ascension Day, and the boat we ride upon shall rival even the doge’s bucentaur.’

  ‘That sounds expensive,’ said Kallinikos, who had not missed any of the winces that seemed to cross the face of the megas doux each time Barbo recalled another integral part of Venetian wedding ceremony.

  ‘Is the spring muda not too long away for Messer Barbo to wait all that time in Constantinople?’ said Jacob Notaras. Four months kicking heels through a Bosporos winter sounded interminable to a fifteen-year-old boy who was longing to see the famous Serenissima and its girls.

  ‘For the beautiful Anna I would wait forever,’ said Barbo. ‘But as it happens, I also have a little business to complete here, so the spring muda suits me well.’

  ‘Whatever your business, Messer Barbo, marriage to the daughter of the megas doux should soon see it happily concluded,’ Kallinikos said and began to chuckle. No one joined him.

  Argyropoulos snatched his cup from the side table and jumped to his feet. ‘Let us toast the marriage of Barbo and Notaras.’

  ‘Another union of Latin and Greek,’ said Kallinikos. ‘Is Your Grace equally pleased to see our faiths united?’ He added this last question with well-practiced innocence, earning himself another kick from Argyropoulos who could see a lucrative commission evaporating.

  ‘Are you trying to be clever with me?’ growled the megas doux. The pale eyes narrowed within their fleshy purses. ‘The emperor might adore you, but that cuts no ice with me. You know very well what I think of this church union, every man in the city knows it. I would rather see the Turkish turban in Hagia Sophia than suffer the Latin mitre there, and I have said as much to the emperor.’

  ‘Oh, pay me no mind, Your Grace,’ Kallinikos said. ‘I’m just an old man with little left of me but bones, piss and vinegar. I just find it a strange contradiction that so ardent a patron of our church – the man who the people seem to hope will defend Hagia Sophia from d
ebasement by their emperor – should be standing here arranging for his precious daughter to be married in the Latin rite.’

  ‘Surely you are not drawing equivalence between a daughter and our most blessed holy Church?’ said Theodosia in horror.

  ‘There’s no hypocrisy in my position,’ said Loukas Notaras with more calm. ‘We can surely continue to have individual diplomatic and civic relations with those of other faiths without sacrificing our entire creed and culture to that end. Moreover, when it is time, Jacob here will marry a Greek girl, not a Latin.’

  Kallinikos nodded as if satisfied by this and then said, ‘Yet on the subject of our Latin friends, I cannot help but notice, Messer Minotto, as I take my morning stroll about the harbour, that most of the paladins flocking to defend us sport the griffon of Genoa and rather fewer the lion of Venice.’

  ‘Mercenaries, my mischievous friend, as well you know,’ said Minotto, wagging a finger at Kallinikos. ‘Neither Venice nor Genoa has declared alliance with the emperor. Those men are nothing but swords for hire, and men find that trade through defeat more often than victory.’

  ‘Nonetheless,’ said Theodosia, ‘it is unsettling to see so many foreign troops within the walls, regardless of their intentions.’

  ‘That condottiero, kyr Maruffo, draws many here from Genoa,’ Jacob added.

  ‘Maruffo is a dog we would be well rid of,’ said Minotto.

  ‘We? Do you speak for Constantinople or Venice when you say that?’ Kallinikos said with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘I speak for the whole world in this,’ said Minotto with a tired laugh.

  ‘Forgive my friend’s manner,’ Argyropoulos said, cutting in before Kallinikos could further rile the others. ‘He fancies himself something of a Socrates in his style of debate.’

  ‘He would do well to remember how Socrates turned out,’ Loukas Notaras muttered just as Baltus, his bent-back majordomo, chose to loom at his shoulder and whisper into his ear. Notaras touched Barbo on the arm. ‘It seems the empire’s business never rests. You will have to excuse me.’