Porphyry and Ash

by Peter Sandham

  ‘Please, kyr, it is necessary to keep your arrival at the house of the contessa a secret. If the wrong people were to learn you had visited her...’

  ‘I am not stupid,’ Barbo said. ‘You do not want me to know where you have taken me. You think I would cut out the middleman.’ Abramius gave a shrug.

  The carriage ride had been an uncomfortable, claustrophobic ordeal that showed no signs of ending as yet. Barbo was sure they had made a loop or taken a route designed to disorientate and ensure he had no notion where the contessa and the ikon of St Mark resided.

  Finally, there was a wrap on the roof that appeared to indicate they were arriving, and with a final, neck-cracking jerk, they came to a halt.

  ‘May I?’ Barbo asked sardonically as he made to pull the curtain back once more. This time Abramius waved him on.

  They were in the high-walled courtyard of a large property. The wooden gates onto the street were being pushed closed even as Barbo stepped down from the carriage. What he saw made him hopeful and nervous all at the same time.

  The house was a rambling pile of crumbling stone. Creepers half shrouded it, dangling from the roof past the empty sockets of upper story windows. A fine surface of velvety moss and ferns had taken root in the weathered cracks of the walls, affording it the air of a place given over to nature.

  It hardly seemed a suitable abode for a holy relic or a titled lady but then such large properties were expensive to maintain and if the contessa was on hard times, she might be more open to a sale.

  Abramius must have read his thoughts. ‘Do not let the state of the place put you off, kyr. As I said before, we have learned to be more careful in hiding our riches. Come.’

  Barbo took a final look about the courtyard. The servants had vanished, leaving a moss-eaten statue as the only other presence. The statue was of an angel, head bent, hands clasped together in prayer. It stood before the right-hand wall among tangled weeds and a spreading canopy of ivy. ‘Before long,’ he thought, ‘nature will have swallowed this place whole.’

  ‘I hope she has maintained the ikon better than she has her home,’ Barbo said as he mounted the stone steps of the frontage.

  ‘This is not her only house, kyr, but she has only one ikon of St Mark,’ said Abramius. ‘I am to take you to the main sala, up this staircase on the piano nobile, but please be careful, kyr, I believe some of the boards are a little loose.’

  ‘Rotten more like,’ said Barbo as he picked his way carefully across the floor. A cat shot from the shadows and bounded ahead up the stairs.

  The floor creaked like a ship’s timbers as he climbed the sweeping staircase and saw the glow of light grow brighter from the upper floor. Here, Barbo was pleased to see, the house was maintained rather better. The ground floor had appeared almost derelict, but the upper floor had rich, faded rugs and the hanging odour of damp was gone. It was as though a beggar’s disguise was being slowly discarded.

  The sala they entered was like any to be found in the casa of a good family along Venice’s more prominent canals. The floor was fully covered in an ornately patterned rug, the room warmed by a blaze in a large stone fireplace. An escutcheon was painted over the fire and a cascading fresco of angels and saints undulated across the other walls. A group of chairs stood arranged by the fire, and as the two men entered, a woman rose from one and came across to greet them.

  ‘Thank you so much for coming,’ said the contessa and offered a hand, which Barbo dutifully kissed.

  He was momentarily confused; she was not at all what he had expected. The crumbling state of the house had only strengthened his assumption that she would be an equally disheveled dowager, but instead the contessa was young and beautiful in a slightly strange way; tawny skinned, with large, liquid eyes and jet-black hair, she had plump lips and the fine-boned elegance of the Levant in her face.

  Barbo put on the full charm of his patritian manners. ‘Contessa, it is my absolute pleasure, and I most humbly thank you for affording me the chance to view this piece from your collection.’

  ‘Kyr Barbo has had an interest in this particular ikon for some time,’ said Abramius. ‘Perhaps you could tell him a little about how it came to be under your family’s care?’

  The contessa corrected him. ‘Not exactly my family. I must confess I am not that long acquainted with the ikon.’

  She ushered Barbo to a seat by the fire while Abramius quietly took another. In a shy, delicate voice she said, ‘Kyr Barbo appears to be an astute man. He may already have gathered from my appearance that I am not a native of this city. I was brought up on Cyprus. It was my husband’s family who owned this house. Have you heard of the family of Kastamonites?’

  ‘I confess not, kyria.’

  ‘It was once something. Families rise and fall like empires. My husband was the last of the Kastamonites,’ said the contessa. ‘An old man already when he married me. Alas, he was unable to gain an heir through our union. So, the burden of that family now falls upon my shoulders alone.’

  ‘It is a heavy responsibility for one so young,’ said Barbo.

  She gave a little nod. ‘When your agent approached me, I thought you must be heaven sent. Constantinople is endangered. It might go the way of Alexandria. It seems almost God ordained that Venice should be its next home.’

  ‘Yes, it must be God’s will that has brought me to you,’ Barbo said. He was almost breathless with excitement. She was small and delicate as a bird. A demure little widow, lonely and frightened. He had expected a struggle but instead the contessa appeared to be offering the ikon to him on a platter.

  ‘Shall we take a look at the ikon?’ Abramius suggested. The contessa gave a nod and led them to a door at the rear of the sala.

  The room beyond was a small space, dimly lit by candles. The table in the centre of the room was spread with a velvet mantle on which nestled a small, painted wooden panel. The ikon of St Mark.

  Breath held, Barbo craned his neck over the ikon and examined the picture. A nimbused saint, palms pressed together in prayer. Behind him a lighthouse, symbol of Alexandria. At his feet a contented-looking lion, the motif of St Mark. It was all here.

  ‘There is a problem, I’m afraid,’ Barbo said without taking his eyes from the ikon.

  ‘What is that?’ Abramius’s voice was full of anxiety.

  ‘This is a fine piece, but it is not the ikon of St Mark.’

  ‘And what makes you say that?’ The contessa’s voice remained level, as though she had expected this.

  ‘Contessa, there are few surviving accounts that describe the ikon, but all I have seen say the same. It is a round picture. This one is square.’

  The contessa gave a nod. ‘You are very well informed on this subject, I can see, kyr Barbo. Let me assure you that this is the ikon. The Kastamonites have not kept it safe from thieves these past centuries without employing a little guile.’

  She lifted the ikon gently from the cushion of its bed and slipped a hidden clasp at the rear. The edge of the picture came away. She lowered this frame back to the velvet so that her hand was left holding the centre piece.

  The section of the original painting – now shorn of its border but still encapsulating Christ, lion and lighthouse – was a perfect circular shape. ‘You have passed my little test,’ she said, and her smiling eyes twinkled rather less demurely at him in the candle light.

  Barbo laughed. ‘Ingenious!’

  The contessa laid the ikon back onto the velvet mantle. ‘Shall we return to the sala to discuss the price, kyr Barbo?’

  ‘Price?’ He feigned surprise. ‘I was under the impression you were entrusting the safe keeping of this precious artifact to me. As you said, it seems God-ordained to go to Venice.’

  ‘Indeed, that would be delightful, kyr, but I am just a widow with little else to sell. I need a boat west and funds to establish a new life. I can sell the ikon to you – this would be best – or else I must take it with me and sell it somewhere else. Pera perhaps.’

&nb
sp; The thought of the ikon falling into Genoese hands was almost too much to bear. ‘I can see this is going to be a tough negotiation, contessa.’

  Her eyes smiled at him once more. ‘I will be gentle, kyr.’

  X.

  The snow, which had first threatened to fall on the day of Hagia Sophia’s bitter consecration, now arrived to shroud the city in a quilted carpet of white. The spires and domes of churches glittered under their delicate frosting of ice, while beneath them the snow, heaped away to the roadside, slowly turned the colour of sepia ink and the consistency of gruel. That winter on the Bosporus was one of the harshest even the elderly could recall. The wind blew hard and keen off the water and buffeted the promontory of land with fearsome strength.

  The portents had worsened as Christmas approached. The ground was shaken by strange tremors, the sky filled with dark clouds that massed, billow upon billow, until their iron-grey edges frayed and tore with the crack of lighting and boom of thunder. Squalls of rain lashed for days, turning steep streets into cataracts and flat roads into thick quagmire. The message could not have been clearer. Constantine had allowed an act of heresy to be performed in Hagia Sophia and God was more than displeased. A crop of misery bloomed in that winter field and was diligently harvested by Gennadios and his disciples.

  That morning, however, no ink-black rain clouds blotted the manuscript of the sky, and the wind, though still cold, was barely enough to ruffle the folds on a thick cloak. With the repair work at the walls enough in hand, Grant had escaped, back down the Mese towards the ferry to Pera where Maruffo and a pot – no, a barrel – of wine were waiting.

  Ahead he saw a pale blue cloak picking its way carefully between the rut marks of wet mud. She was walking with another woman who was older and had the prim air of a chaperone. He thought perhaps she was the same woman he had seen accompanying Anna to the tavern on the night of the brawl.

  He stepped into her path, ‘A fine winter’s morn, Despoina.’

  The cool hazel eyes studied him from beneath their lashes. ‘So, you’re a hero now,’ said Anna, nodding at the red and gold scabbard that hung from his waist. It was a Byzantine tradition; a mark of valour, bestowed by emperors on favoured officers.

  Grant had received his scabbard personally from a grateful Constantine after his rescue of Cardinal Isidore. They had also promoted him to the rank of akolouthos, which in the past would have brought him command of a legion but was now just an empty title. It had amused Maruffo no end. ‘Don’t turn Greek on us,’ he had laughed.

  ‘Your father was the real hero that day,’ Grant said. ‘If he’d not climbed the staging and put reins on that crowd, how many more might have been trampled? What’s a street brawl next to that?’

  She slipped her arm under his and began to walk with him back along the street. ‘You are being too modest. As the cardinal tells it, you fought off a pack of armed abductors single handed.’

  ‘Three men in sackcloth against one in armour. I’d be cheery at those odds on a battlefield any day.’ They were moving away from the direction of the Pera ferry, but Grant did not object. The chaperone fell into step behind.

  ‘Do you know who they were?’ said Anna.

  He shrugged. ‘Two fled and two died and nobody seems prepared to claim the corpses, but soldiers blether worse than barbers. The wall’s fair wild with theories. Some have it they were clerics of Gennadios, others that they were agents of the sultan, disguised as monks.’

  ‘If only you had let one of them live, we might have discovered who sent them,’ she said.

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Grant, thinking more deeply than before. Better the Turkish turban.

  ‘Sorry, that was not meant to sound so critical.’

  ‘It sounded almost as if you’d have preferred a dead Latin churchman to a Greek one,’ said Grant.

  ‘Is that what you think of me?’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Of course, we are all cruel Byzantines in the eyes of your kind! You think us little better than the Turks.’

  ‘I hardly know what to think,’ he said. ‘You only ask questions of me, and never offer a thing about yourself.’

  ‘I am Anna Notaras. That is all anyone has ever had to know about me,’ she said. At first, he thought she had spoken out of pride, but then he quickly saw her eyes were bright with tears. ‘Sad, isn’t it. For all the jewels and fine silk, for all that I can snap my fingers and receive attention, my only possession is a name, and it is not even really my own.’

  Grant felt suddenly overcome with pity. ‘You’re more than a name,’ he said. ‘You’re sharp as a broadhead, and if there’s a lady with more grace and beauty on God’s green earth, well I’m yet to come across her.’

  Anna turned her eyes downward and a deep flush broke over her skin like dawn. ‘You’ve learned flattery since our last meeting,’ she said. ‘It suits you.’

  The houri of the vizier’s feast was gone, replaced by a picture of modest aristocratic virtue, hair covered by a fallow scarf of taffeta, face plain of any paint or promise.

  Still, Grant noticed the people follow her with their eyes as she passed. On several occasions she gave a nod, had a word for an old man sat in the sunshine or patted the head of a passing child, and Grant began to see her as something deeper than he had previously considered. Before, she had been a beauty, an enticing siren, an out-of-reach child of privilege, but now it dawned on him that there was more to her than met the eye. She was dear to the hearts of these ordinary people of Constantinople and moved among them not with the aloof air of other nobles he had seen, but as one of them. She was Byzantium in flesh and blood and in this the people loved her as their symbol; their champion; their despoina.

  ‘It is not just soldiers who gossip. There are plenty of colourful stories about that day flying around the imperial court,’ Anna said as they crossed the near empty augustaion. ‘People have suggested that the stabbing in the crowd was planned, perhaps to divert attention and allow the cardinal’s abduction or else for an attempt at the emperor himself. I have even heard some slander my father by recalling those who start fires to play the hero.’

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself with that nonsense, Despoina. I witnessed your father’s intervention. That wasn’t playing hero but the genuine thing.’

  She came to a sudden halt. ‘I heard another rumour you might confirm,’ Anna said and lent her head closer to his. ‘They say Giustiniani and the Genoese reinforcements are already at Ainos. They say he has been there a full month. Rumour has it the emperor is holding them back so it should appear to the people that his arrival is the bearing of fruit from Hagia Sophia’s desecration.’

  Her hot breath clouded in the crisp morning air and seemed to almost caress his cheek. Being so close to her face now – a face his mind had conjured up again and again over the previous few weeks – threw him into confusion. He found himself drowning in her candid eyes.

  For a moment he could not answer, thinking only how he might draw out their encounter; wanting to stand there, close to one another, and go on basking in the warmth of her attention. At last he said, ‘I’ve no light to shed on that I’m afraid.’ She did not appear to detect the lie.

  ‘Tell me, John, what brought you to Constantinople?’ she said, catching him off guard. ‘Did someone sell you a false dream of riches and glory?’

  ‘No, Despoina, in truth I came to die.’

  For once, it was her turn to be floored by his words. ‘Are you sick?’ she said at last.

  ‘Perhaps in the soul,’ he said. ‘The hard truth is I’m no more than a man who kills for money. I’d the notion that my one hope of salvation lay down the path of crusade.’

  She laughed.

  He had confessed his most precious secret, admitted to her his innermost fears, and she laughed. ‘You really are a viking!’ she said. ‘What could be more varangian than the idea of attaining paradise in Valhalla through glorious death on the battlefield? It is what brought your blond-haired predecessors south all those centuries ago
and now it brings another.’

  ‘Do you find the idea ridiculous?’ he asked, trying and failing not to show his wounded pride.

  ‘I find it fanatical’ said Anna. ‘You have spent your life operating under the moral code of a mercantilist – fighting wars for profit. Now you decide this to be damnable behaviour and bend to the opposite extreme by seeking martyrdom. John, the shipmaster who sails too far to port does not correct his vessel’s course by veering too far to the steerboard side.’

  ‘My crimes won’t be absolved by a few Ave Marias. A confessional priest would pronounce my soul a hopeless cause.’

  She smiled. He had seen her cruel smiles and her mischievous smirks but this time her smile was warm and balming. ‘No one is a hopeless cause,’ she said.

  ‘You overlook Rouen,’ said Grant. ‘I helped burn a saint. There’s no getting past that.’

  ‘And you are overlooking St Longinus,’ said Anna.

  ‘I must be,’ said Grant, ‘since I never heard of the rascal.’

  ‘Longinus was a centurion – a soldier like you,’ Anna said. ‘He also took part in an execution, but not of a mere peasant woman. Longinus commanded at Golgotha. He killed the Son of God, Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Grant.

  ‘Yes. Oh,’ said Anna. ‘Later he repented, converted and ended up a saint himself. So, you see, even if your French warrior maiden was holy, her death does not ensure your damnation. No one is beyond salvation. Of course, all that assumes there is such a thing as sin. If there is no sin you really have nothing to fear at all.’

  He scowled. ‘How can there be no sin when there’s such evil in men’s souls?’

  They were moving through one of the abandoned quarters. Anna pointed to the hollow doorway of an empty, dilapidated house. ‘Evil is like darkness,’ she said. ‘It is not a substance. It cannot be defined in itself but only as an absence of something else. So, just as darkness is merely an absence of light, evil is merely an absence of virtue. We can rid darkness from a room simply by bringing in light, and we can cure our souls of evil in a similar manner. A man is good in so far as he resembles God and evil in so far as he is imperfect in that resemblance, lacking in some virtue or other. We are all imperfect in some sense, John – there is capacity for evil in all our souls, but that does not mean we are destined for damnation. What kind of God would give us this capacity and then blame us for it?’