‘Until now?’ Argyropoulos ventured.
‘Indeed.’
‘A woman?’ said Argyropoulos hopefully.
‘The very same. Theodosia Notaras.’
Grant pricked up his ears at the mention of Anna’s family name. ‘Notaras? As in the megas doux?’
Argyropoulos gave a nod. ‘His wife. Like Gennadios, she has had something of a conversion to devout piety in recent years. A reformed sinner shall we say; the worst kind.’
‘She visited me some days ago,’ said Kallinikos. ‘And among the pleasant reminiscences of old times she mentioned the burned book and her curiosity to see what all the fuss had been about. Did a copy still exist? Ninnyhammer that I am, I lent her the manuscript, the only surviving record.’
‘You old fool,’ said Argyropoulos with a look of deep sympathy.
‘Will she not return it then?’ said Grant.
‘Far worse,’ said Kallinikos. ‘Her daughter tells me Theodosia has already handed it over to Gennadios. So you see it is gone now, lost forever. A building can be remade in exact copy even after its architect is dead, but a thought, a philosophy like that can never be restored without the original mind.’
The monokythron was finished and a salver of dates passed about. Grant was about to make his way out into the gloom when Kallinikos guided him to a door beyond the chapel. ‘Come take a look what we have in here.’
A library lay beyond the door, but not like any Grant had ever seen. The room ran away from him, alcove after alcove, each stacked high with crumbling, book-lined shelves. The beautiful, mysterious, ornate tomes lay, rank upon rank, silently waiting to be read, some under a deep blanket of dust, others showing the frayed attentions of insects. Paper and papyrus, codex and scroll, a battalion of a thousand, several thousand works; the collected thoughts of a millennial empire.
‘It is all that remains of the Imperial Library of Constantinople,’ said the old man. ‘The last, the very last, of the great libraries.’
Argyropoulos, who had followed them inside, said, ‘This is the real treasure of Constantinople.’
‘Yes, it’s fairly impressive,’ said Grant. ‘I happen to have started a collection of my own recently. Do you have the Triumph of Chastity?’
‘Petrarch?’ said Argyropoulos. ‘Yes, we have Petrarch. Somewhere down that end.’ He ran a finger over the nearest shelf. ‘Here we have Agathon and Agatharchides; Archimedes and Aristophanes; Aristotle and Avicenna. Philosophers, doctors, hermeticists and engineers. We have the annals of emperors and generals, histories written by Byzantine princesses and heresies of Babylonian prophets.’
‘And we have this,’ said Kallinikos as he placed an especially heavy codex onto a lectern. ‘This is the most precious book of all. The combined work of a thousand years of Byzantine grand engineers. In here is the secret of Greek fire. Try to imagine the horror the sultan could wreak with the knowledge in this book; he could burn whole cities.’
Grant tried not to, but unbidden, he had a vision of flames and heard a woman’s screams of torment. His fist had clenched.
‘It is not just about machines of war,’ Argyropoulos said. ‘This library represents the last thread connecting us to the golden age of philosophy. When Alexandria burned, what was saved of that collection came here. Works lost when the Goths sacked Rome survive in this room, to say nothing of the Persian, Hebrew, Arab and Greek texts, which the papacy has long suppressed.’
‘Some of these great thinkers have been entirely forgotten by the rest of mankind,’ said Kallinikos.
‘Even Plato, the greatest of all minds, had vanished from their teaching until Plethon reintroduced him to Italians at the Council of Florence,’ Argyropoulos said. He nodded towards Kallinikos, ‘We have spent years passing on the knowledge from here. There are good men and bright minds in Italy. There is a Florentine, Messer Bracciolini, an agent for the Banco Medici. He had some copies made, but it is no quick task to faithfully transcribe a manuscript, and little time remains.’
Grant stood in the center of the library with a feeling of complete unworthiness. The vaulted alcoves were stacked to their keystones with paper and ink. Thought and argument, expressed in a babel of languages; minds preserved, like dragonflies in amber, while the mortal bodies that had once encompassed them lay in a tranquil grave.
The taste of parchment and mold hung in the moist air, thick as the fog outside, and settled on his tongue as he opened his mouth to speak. ‘Why are you showing all of this to me?’
Kallinikos patted him on the arm. ‘So you might understand the stakes.’
Grant stood gazing around the room of books; the precious jewels of paper and ink compiled by a thousand thinkers across more than twenty centuries. It was like standing inside humanity’s collective consciousness. He had a feeling of absolute unworthiness.
As Argyropoulos shuffled away down the avenue of manucripts, Grant turned to Kallinikos and said, ‘Someone told me recently that sin is merely the absence of virtue, as darkness is the absence of light, and that the whole bloody world is just a shadow on a dreary cave wall. Did that moonshine on the water come from one of these books?’
Kallinikos gave a smile. ‘You have been speaking with Anna Notaras.’
‘Yes,’ said Grant, scratching the back of his head.
‘My greatest pupil,’ the old man said. ‘Even if she has not learned when it is best to keep one’s thoughts to oneself. Why she decided to dazzle a poor boy like you with heavy philosophies is beyond me. Showing off I expect. She does that a lot.’
‘Can you explain it to me? I know I’m just a soldier but...’ Grant began to say.
‘Just a soldier? Just a soldier! Whoever told you being a soldier precluded you from using your mind?’ said Kallinikos. ‘Why Plato, the very originator of those ideas, was himself a soldier. Here, we shall begin with the demiurge. Mark what I draw here.’ He took a poker and began rendering a shaky circle in the ashes of the fireplace.
Later, having tried his best, the old sage sat wearily down onto a chair and saw the puzzlement still stamped across the Scotsman’s face. Grant said, ‘But if God is not hereabouts – if our existence is just something emanated from his image – where does that leave us?’
‘It leaves us free,’ said Kallinikos. ‘It leaves us to govern the world of mankind and take responsibility for it rather than toss the blame for imperfections at the feet of a creator.’
‘Was this what Plethon wrote in his book?’
‘Yes, but he was far from being the first.’ Kallinikos said with a gesture to the shelves.
‘No wonder Gennadios wanted it burned,’ said Grant. ‘You said your copy of the book was taken by the megas doux’s wife. Was it Anna who told her it was here?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Kallinikos with a weary shrug. ‘Or else Gennadios always suspected a copy lay here in this library and used Theodosia to winkle it out. Such a dizzard I was, giving so precious a thing to that harpie.’ The old man’s eyes fell heavily upon Grant. ‘The windows upstairs give a good view onto the street. I watched you escort Anna here the other day and I saw you break your fist against the wall outside once she had entered.’
Grant glanced down at the bandage wrapped around the skinned knuckles.
‘I was frustrated,’ he said.
Kallinikos roused himself from the seat and touched Grant lightly on the arm. ‘Well, she did not try to murder the brickwork, but I detected a frustration in the lady’s demeanour also that day. You arouse in one another a form of discomfort – she is not used to enigmas she cannot fathom, and you are not used to them altogether.’
‘First time I’ve been called a mystery,’ said Grant with a smile.
‘You’re not one in the least,’ said Kallinikos. ‘The enigma she is struggling to grasp lies within her own self.’
‘Ah, well. I’ll admit to this: I cannot figure her out,’ said Grant. ‘Truth told, part of me’s been wondering if she’s not unlike her mother with yon book – winkling secr
ets from me on behalf of another.’
‘No,’ Kallinikos said. ‘In the matter of your goodself, she is acting as principal, certainly not as agent.’
That sent Grant’s mind whirling away. The old man continued talking, but the words ricocheted from his preoccupied mind like arrowheads meeting plate.
‘You should take care,’ said Kallinikos. ‘I’m reminded of a book by Acacius, about the old imperial menagerie. The hunting cats they kept, he said, came in three types. There are the cubs, whose paws are soft, who have known nothing but their cage and are content; there are the older felines, whose claws are drawn, who have learned to accept their world and even treasure it. Of these two types, Acacius says, there is little to fear. It is the third variety, the juvenile leopard, whose claws are death, whose senses have just begun to detect the smell of blood and be stirred by it but are yet to understand fully what it means. These are the beasts around which a man must not act carelessly. Do you follow my meaning?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Grant, who had taken none of it in. He tossed his cloak over the crook of one arm and with the smile of a happy fool was soon making his way back to his tavern bed.
XIII.
On a clear day, the courtyard of the podesta’s palazzo in Pera became a late afternoon suntrap. Out of the wind, under a sky unsullied by cloud and vitrified to a glassy blue by the firebrick sun, a man could forget it was still winter. The miserable weather of the prior weeks felt as if it belonged to another age. The only sound in the courtyard was the soft tinkle of a fountain and the occasional stirring of Baldo Maruffo, lounging half-asleep on its bench. The wine in his cup was a superior quality Ranaysii, imported from the Duchy of Savoy by way of Genoa. When it was finished there would be no more; the merchants had confirmed the last of the wine shipments had been and gone. They were running down their stocks, and then it would be the local muck or sobriety. Dark days indeed.
He was contemplating this disagreeable choice when the looming form of John Grant stepped from the palazzo into the courtyard, followed by a triple shadow – Boccanegra, Sambucuccio, Fieschi.
‘Twelve ducats,’ Maruffo called out to them as they appeared. ‘That’s the going rate for my assassination. My deputy was offered it in the market this morning.’ Maruffo wore a grim look, but Grant fancied that was more than anything because he felt the price insultingly low.
‘You’re lucky Angelo is a wealthy man then,’ Sambucuccio said. ‘If they’d offered it to someone as poor as me, you’d be meeting St Peter by now.’
Grant moved across the tiles and loomed over the bench, throwing his shadow over the podesta. ‘Something’s going on across the water,’ he said, using the favourite Pera euphemism for Constantinople.
Maruffo propped himself up on his elbows. ‘That is what I’ve always admired about you, John. Always specific. Never a vague generalisation from your lips.’
‘Yes, well, come take a look and tell me how specific you can be from a third of a mile away.’
‘Fine,’ said Maruffo rising from the bench. ‘But if it’s to cost me any more of this fine day, it had better be more than a brigantine at the dock.’
From the palazzo roof it was clearest, a distant column of dark smoke spreading like a miasma over the Venetian quarter.
‘Yes, well that is something,’ Maruffo admitted. ‘How specific do you want? It’s a riot, but I suspect even you had guessed as much. That anti-unionist monk, Gennadios, was holding a rally at the hippodrome today, spirits have doubtlessly been raised overfar. Naturally, the Jews and Latin merchants suffer for it. It’s one of the joys of Pera – a thousand-foot moat between ourselves and the more excitable Greeks. I hope they burn every Venetian business out.’
Interest sated, Maruffo yawned, turned and made his way back to his bench and his wine.
***
Sheets of flame appeared to leap like cats from rooftop to rooftop, bursting into life on the crest of a new building or pouncing with the collapse of a gutted house to make a road that had been safe moments before suddenly impassable. The sloping vista now resembled a forest hillside touched by summer lightning. The evening light played on the smoke clouds, creating luminous phantoms that danced and then vanished as quickly as they had appeared, while above, the dark clouds were painted in streaks of gamboge.
Whatever plans Paolo Barbo had of taking shelter in the Rose Palace had gone up in that smoke.
Incited by a public sermon by the rebellious priest Gennadios, a mob had begun to loot and burn their way through the Latin quarter. He found himself trapped at the foot of the hill, far from the safety of the fortified Notaras palazzo, dangerously close to where the worst rioting continued around the hippodrome.
The air was full of the mob’s roar and the pungent aroma of burning merchant stores: cardamom and pepper; nard and clove; curcuma and mustard seed, each spicing the base odour of the paraffin clouds, giving the urban chaos the flavour of an exotic Levantine recipe.
Barbo stumbled along the seawall road, hoping to skirt the trouble. He passed the long low buildings of a tannery and was reminded of the porters who had identified the distinctive smell at the widow contessa’s villa.
The road became a long avenue of broken-fronted, abandoned houses. A dog lay chewing on something unidentifiable in the gateway of a former iron forge; crows cawed like proud owners from the shattered roof of a once-grand property. A brume of old, dead leaves whirled in the street like a puppet dancing on the strings of the wind. There was no fire or zealous mob, and yet the air felt more sinister here to Barbo than at the riot’s edge.
Then ahead, an answered prayer; a familiar gate and courtyard; a creeper- strewn frontage that was as welcome as it was surprising.
On his first visit, the contessa’s villa had appeared a shabby wreck, but now it loomed as a shining island of civility to a man adrift in an ocean of decay. What luck, to come across it by accident when shelter was so desperately sought! ‘You are truly blessed by the saints, Paolo!’ he said aloud and clapped his hands in glee. What better way to see through this night of civil unrest than another roll-me-over tumble with the merry widow!
He dashed into the lee of the courtyard and wrapped his knuckles against the tall wooden doors.
Silence.
He tried the doors and found them firmly locked. ‘Perhaps she is not here,’ he thought, ‘or perhaps she has sensibly secured herself from the mob.’
He scrambled back down the steps and around the perimeter, hoping to find another entrance. He peeled away the thick tendrils of vines that grew in wild tresses down the walls and uncovered a small flight of steps to a cellar door.
The door was open, jammed two inches ajar by stubborn vine roots. He pulled at it, shaking it loose from its clotted position until there was a gap wide enough to clamber through, into the dark, musty cavern beyond.
The blackness was impenetrable. He lost his nerve, stepped back out and set about ripping down the curtain of creeper vines from around the doorway. He yanked at the door more violently, forcing it fully open to let in the moonlight and dilute the shadows.
A face peered back at him, caught in the silvery glow. Barbo stumbled backwards in shock.
The figure did not move, and then he recognised the fixed gaze, the bearded face, the nimbus, and realised it was not a man at all but a painting. An ikon. His ikon.
He stared back at it for a moment, stunned. His initial thought was that somehow it had been stolen from the Garzoni bank strongroom in the Venetian quarter.
Indignation flared within him. He would find the contessa and her accomplice at the bank and teach them to play him for a fool.
Then he noticed the saint’s hands were missing. The stumps of arms simply petered out into nothing where the palms should have been.
He lurched through the doorway and snatched the ikon from where it had been propped against the wall. As he dragged it out, deeper into the moonlight, he caught the edge against another wooden frame propped beside it, sending it crash
ing onto the cellar floor in a cloud of dust.
He turned away, thrusting the ikon in his arms out through the door so that it was fully washed by the moon.
Now he could see that more than just the hands were missing. The painting was half completed. The lighthouse and lion, the entire lower half of the saint were no more than crude brush strokes in a skeletal, abandoned copy.
Leaving it on the steps, he dashed back into the cellar and turned the fallen frame over in the dust.
The same bearded face stared back. He felt his guts knot and his breath catch. Beyond, deeper into the darkness, he could half-see, half-sense the rank of similar-shaped shadows that lined the cellar wall.
Light! I must have light!
He rushed back out of the cellar, up the steps and through yard gates onto the street. There were plenty of rags strewn about the road, but the nearest flame from which to kindle a torch was a cresset burning by the gate of a mill back along the street.
His legs were trembling as he staggered back through the courtyard with the burning torch; he hardly dared look inside that cellar and confirm the awful truth. Still, he had to know. He had to be sure.
He walked slowly through the cellar, swinging the torch from left to right, and every sweep of light illuminated another face on a painting, another half-formed saint.
‘Oh God!’ he moaned. ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God!’
There were thirty in all, some abandoned after a slip, some fully completed and then rejected as inferior.
Ikon after ikon after ikon.
Valueless wood and egg tempera, just like the one in the Garzoni strong room; the one he had bought for a fortune.
He was ruined. Utterly, utterly ruined.
He thought of his brother, of the family casa he had placed as collateral to buy his worthless fake. The experts in Venice would doubtless see through it in seconds.
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