‘You ran and caught a boat to Maruffo, in far-off Pera.’
‘Did he tell you?’
‘No. It’s a common enough tale.’
‘I was happy at first. Isn’t that crazy? On the boat east, I suddenly felt so free. The university had not suited me at all. All my youth I’d had my head filled with stories of my uncle, the dashing condottiero. I wanted to be like him. I thought I could be like him, I thought it was in my blood in a way studying never would be. I know now that it’s not. I wanted glory, John, but I’m no soldier. I lack courage.’
Grant clapped a hand on the younger man’s shoulder and smiled. ‘Leo, you’re lying on an unstable, ancient stone tower that’s being slowly pounded into powder. Don’t tell me you lack courage. There’ll be time enough for glory.’
With a shy smile Boccanegra nodded and said, ‘We used to talk so boldly at the university. We used to be so wise in our young heads about how the world was and how it should be. We used to scorn even God himself. If only we’d truly known what it is to be out here, at the edge of the world facing all of them with little but a prayer and a sword. I can hear the sanctimonious voices of boys in the drinking houses of Bologna right now, being so falsely clever about “the situation in the east.”’
‘Let them talk,’ said Grant. ‘It’s youth’s privilege to be brash and life’s lesson to discover how foolish you’ve been. Fegs, but listen to me! You’ll turn me into a silvery bodach with this talk. Enough thoughts of pompous students and absentee gods. Think only of the enemy and watch for signs of an attack. It’ll better serve.’
‘Wait,’ said Boccanegra, reaching for a pouch lying in the shade beside him. ‘Share some of this with me?’ The pouch yielded a parcel of damp cloth, which he proceeded to unwrap, revealling a piece of cheese, large and white like a lump of quicklime. He had bread too, flat and unleavened but fresh enough, and the smell of it alone was enough to make Grant’s mouth tremble.
‘Where’d you get this?’ asked Grant as Boccanegra tore off a chunk of bread and offered it to him.
‘The women came from the city earlier on. You were at the conference of captains. I like their cheese; it’s peculiar, but not unpleasant. Not as good as the cheese from Romagna, but their lamb is better. Their lamb is the best I have ever tasted.’
Another ball thudded into the tower, sending a gusher of dust shooting up past the broken parapet. Boccanegra hugged his lunch parcel close to his chest.
‘When did you have lamb here?’ Grant asked, fearing it had also come that day and he had missed his chance at meat.
‘Last summer, before you arrived. There was a wedding I went to with Maruffo in Pera. Not mutton – lamb! The real thing, roasted on a spit and stuffed with olives.’ He closed his eyes to summon up the taste. ‘I wonder where that young couple are now.’
‘The groom’s hereabouts, I don’t doubt.’ Grant said and broke off a bit of the cheese.
‘I had a girl, back in Bologna, you know,’ said Boccanegra. ‘It’s now more than a year since last I saw her. I could have had a son by her and never be the wiser. I left things badly there. God, I wish I could have spoken to her again.’
‘How old are you, Leo?’
‘Seventeen.’ He lowered his eyes. ‘Like your Anna.’
‘She was never mine,’ said Grant. ‘I left things badly there too.’
He lay back on the stone floor and gazed up at the sky. The clouds stretched out above like a cloth of white satin, speckled here and there by the dark fleck of kites circling as they pleased among the thermals. Nature seemed completely indifferent to who held claim on this modest promontory of land.
The silence seemed to unsettle Boccanegra.
‘What will happen when we die, do you think? Sambucuccio says there will be darkness and then a great light, brighter than the sun, and a voice, more beautiful than words can describe, will call you forward by name. Fieschi says it will be like the reverse of birth. Just the nothingness you knew in the time of your grandfathers. Which do you suppose is correct?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Grant without losing sight of the slowly wheeling birds. ‘How can anybody be sure until that time? And then it’s too late to send a message back. If there’s a place for me beyond this, I’m not sure it’ll have pearly gates.’
‘You fear hell, don’t you John, but we are in it now,’ said Boccanegra. ‘How can there be torments more than this?’
Grant never had to answer. From behind them came a noise louder than any he had ever heard. It sounded like the howl of a demon breaking loose of the devil’s chains and exploding up from the earth.
It brought the pair of them leaping to their feet in shock. The earth had quivered and been followed by a great hiss. Both men feared it was the sound of a terrible, new weapon, but as Grant peered hestitantly over the lip of the battlement, his eyes were drawn immediately to a thirty-foot flame roaring straight up from the position of the Basilica bombast.
The tents all around it lay flattened, and the gun itself, capsized in a shallow crater, was the source of the hissing, from a jagged, thin, serpentine mouth splintered in its side.
The Basilica gun had blown itself to pieces.
An enormous roar came from the walls; the sound of a thousand voices raised in cheer. It began at the point directly opposite the gun and rolled like an ocean breaker along the line, swelled by the addition of voice after voice. Boccanegra leapt about like a child and began to dance a jig in celebration on the tower roof.
As demoralising as the loss of their great fieldpiece was, as stunning to the senses as the blast and the shockwave had been, the crews of the other guns were professionals and exploding cannons were part of the trade. They soon recovered from their shock and looked up, and some near the mesoteichion saw a new target, dancing like a fool at Pentecost on top of an inner tower battlement. Swiftly, they adjusted their range accordingly.
Boccanegra was still hopping about with delight when the first ball came screaming past.
‘Get down, you gowk,’ Grant shouted, ‘before you bring every gun on us!’
Even as the words left his lips a second ball smashed into the tower and scattered stone fragments across the rooftop. He scrambled on all fours towards the ladder. ‘Come on,’ he cried, ‘we’d best not stay here.’
As they came down the stairway and out into the compound, both of their spirits were still soaring. The great gun was gone, and now the battering of the walls would slow considerably without the Turk’s most powerful hammer.
‘Did you see that!’ Boccanegra cried in delight. ‘God is here! God is with us! Who else could have smote that thing so?’
He was speaking so loudly his words echoed across the whole yard and a few heads turned to listen. ‘The Turk camp looks like a giant hand has slapped it from the clouds above. The fist of God!’
‘Maybe the sultan is dead!’ Theophilos cried excitedly. ‘Perhaps he has been killed in the blast.’
‘We can only hope.’ Grant said. ‘If he is, we’ll soon see parts of that army breaking off in retreat.’
He became aware, as he spoke, of a sudden look of horror on Boccanegra’s face and turned around, half-expecting to see a wave of white turbans swarming over the stockade.
Instead, his heart froze. He found himself looking directly into the countenance of Anna Notaras. ‘Holy Virgin!’ he said in shock.
‘You know better than that,’ said Anna, and her nose crinkled as the wryest of smiles curled her lip.
Janissary borks would have been preferable.
He wanted to speak but found himself incapable. He forced himself to smile, but it felt more like a grimace and he immediately abandoned the effort.
‘Are you keeping fine, Despoina?’ he asked. The title had never sounded colder on his tongue.
She reached up a finger and stroked a line through the brick dust that clung to his cheek. ‘I should be the one to ask that question, shouldn’t I?’ said Anna, glancing pointedly about the stockade and
the avalanche of rubble they were living in.
‘Was there something you wished from me?’ he said.
A look of mild embarrassment briefly glimmered across her face, and he realised that it had been fickle coincidence that brought her across his path. She was not there for him at all. She had been merely passing through the yard.
‘I was on my way to see the protostrator,’ she said and could not meet his eye as she spoke.
‘He’s in the big tent, a safe distance behind the gate,’ said Grant, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know.’
‘Well, I’ll get out of your way then, Despoina,’ said Grant.
He stepped aside, but she did not immediately move on. ‘There is one thing,’ she said.
‘Yes?’ he tried to keep his voice steady.
She cast her hazel eyes upon him, and he braced himself to be told, once more, of impossibilities, of the fool he had been to think otherwise, but instead she said, ‘Have you ever known of someone sweating blood? I don’t mean in scripture, I mean an ordinary man or woman. Have you ever heard of such a thing?’
It was such an odd and unexpected question that he was quite floored by it for a moment.
‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘Therage spoke of it.’ Grant felt a quiver in his hand and thought, ‘Here it comes.’
Unbidden, he began to hear the voice of Geoffroy Therage calling for more kindling about the stake. In a moment, he knew, his ears would ring with the screams again and instead of the Byzantine eyes that watched him now, an equally merciless pair would fix their aim upon his soul.
‘Therage?’ The thin line of her brow levered up in query.
‘An executioner,’ said Grant. ‘He said sometimes the condemned sweat blood. Some of them are half-dead from fear already when they see the headstone or the pyre. Usually they just shit themselves, but one or two sweat blood.’
‘Yes,’ said Anna quietly. ‘Scared to death.’ She was looking into the distance, lost in her thoughts.
Another cannon blast barked from the Turkish lines. ‘It’s not safe for you to be here,’ said Grant dashing forwards to usher her towards the gate. He put his hands on her arm and the small of her back and felt her shiver at his touch.
With a release of pent breath, she thanked him as her hands busied themselves in the folds of her veil. ‘Take care,’ she added briskly, then stepped quickly away without a backwards glance.
XXIV.
Beneath the Giustiniani standard, the campaign tent rose like a canvas mountain, embarrassingly similar in its dimension to the emperor’s own pavilion. To gain entry, one had to first move through a smaller vestibule tent, where the aides and staff of the Genoese condotierro did a passable impression of a palace bureaucracy.
Anna’s heart had not ceased its thumping against her ribs as she entered. It had been a nerve-shredding hour.
First the long walk towards the wall, unsure what horror she would find there. For all that Zenobia had warned her of the bombardment’s toll, nothing could have prepared her for the shock of seeing the devastation first hand.
The ancient imperial walls, which for so long had towered proudly in a pair of smooth, unbroken ranks, were now all cracked and jagged, as if a titan had ripped and clawed at them.
The peribolos yard beneath her feet, once a neat track of roman brick, lay pockmarked by the footprints of cannonballs, which the night’s rain had filled into deep, stagnant puddles.
The further down the slope she had walked, the worse the destruction had grown.
At the edge of the mesoteichion, a tower had recently collapsed completely, its shattered side spilling dusty guts across the yard.
The men of this section - those not lying dead in the ruins - had no time to dig out their comrades. Instead she had watched them scamper over the wreckage, fixing a parapet of wooden barrels to form a makeshift fighting platform. Their desperation had hung in the air, thick as winter fog. She had wanted to cry at the sight of it.
Then, when the Basilica had exploded, she had wanted to turn on her heels and flee. What a tumult! She had been in a state of numb shock as she stumbled through the yard towards the St Romanus Gate and then, like a divine joke, she had run into John Grant.
She wished that had gone better. She wished she had found the right words. She wished she knew how to explain herself adequately, or else wake up and find life worked by a new set of rules. There was a chill between them now, where once there had been a warmth.
She pushed the thought to the back of her mind. She needed to concentrate on the task in hand, on persuading the protostrator to relieve her father of the undignified duty of the reserve and reinstate him to a proper position of honour.
So here she was, in the canvas vestibule, and the protostrator’s aide was looking up at her from his trestle as if she were a stray dog that had wandered into camp. ‘Yes?’
‘I wish to see Messer Giustiniani,’ she said.
Being far-sighted and prudent, the Notaras family had gained Genoese and Venetian citizenship two generations before. Being international merchants, they were also fluent in trade’s Italian lingua franca. Anna adopted it now, in preference to Greek, to show this seated martinet that she was not some Ionian bumpkin.
‘He’s busy,’ said the Latin, unimpressed. ‘Can’t you see there’s a war on!’
A few sniggers echoed about the tent. The impression of a court bureaucracy only went so far.
‘Yes, I can see perfectly well,’ she said primly. ‘My name is Anna Notaras. I am the daughter of the megas doux. I wish to speak to the protostrator. Now, would you be so kind as to inform him of these facts.’
‘Forgive the man,’ said an amused voice at her back. ‘We are rarely blessed with such delightful visitors.’
Anna turned and was looking straight into the beaming, bearded smile of the Genoese protostrator, Giustiniani.
He had been inspecting the defences and was still fully clad in magnificent plate up to the chin. The removed helmet had left his hair boyishly tousled. ‘How may we be of service, Madonna?’
The tent air seemed to be warming by the moment. ‘You’re a reasonable man, everybody says so,’ Anna said. ‘I wanted to speak with you about what role my father might play in defending the walls.’ She glanced towards the doorway that must lead into his private quarters. ‘Alone, perhaps?’
As if in answer, an aide placed a stool behind the protostrator and Giustiniani sat down before her. He stuck both arms out like a scarecrow and grinned as the aide began to unbuckle the straps of his harness.
‘Here will have to do, I’m afraid, Madonna,’ said Giustiniani. ‘Dalmata, get the lady a stool as well. Where are your manners?’
With no ceremony at all the aide dropped another simple, low tripod a little way from the first and flourished a hand at it by way of invitation. Anna bit her tongue and accepted the seat.
‘Yes, Loukas Notaras has charge of the reserve if my memory is correct,’ Giustiniani said, wiping at the damp fringe of hair that had been splayed across his forehead by the helmet.
‘It is far beneath the station of a megas doux,’ said Anna. ‘There are simple archons with more prestigious gates to defend. I know there was a malicious rumour a month or so past, but there was nothing to it, I assure you.’
‘I am assured, Madonna, I could only ever find assurance coming from your lips,’ Giustiniani said with a wink.
The top half of armour was mostly off now and Dalmata was working on removing the cuisses from the thighs. ‘If this conversation lingers, how far will they strip him,’ Anna wondered.
‘Then might I rely upon you to consider the idea of giving him a position with greater prestige?’ she said.
‘There is nothing to consider, Madonna. I will see to it immediately. Dalmata, bring me something to write on!’
The aide hurried over to his desk and came back with a tablet. Anna felt the protostrator’s steady gaze upon her as they waited. She touched
the collar of her gown then fiddled with the lie of the pendant at her bosom.
Giustiniani took the tablet in hand and began to flamboyantly scribble on it.
‘There,’ he said. ‘I have appointed the megas doux to defend the seawall. It is the largest area of command under a single name. Five times larger than my own. For you, Madonna.’ He lunged from the stool to kneel before her and dramatically kissed the top of her hand.
‘I am most grateful,’ she said with a deferential nod as she rose to take her leave. She could not see Dalmata biting down his laughter. She had no way to know the joke they were having at her expense.
The seawall ran all down the side of the Golden Horn, a prodigiously long length of stone but one utterly unimportant with the boom across at Pera and the fleet keeping the Horn clear of Turk boats.
***
Later that afternoon, an arid breeze stirred phantoms of dust beneath the marble domed arches of the Milion. It was queer to find the normally busy district devoid of life – as though the population had fled in the night, leaving Anna and Zenobia to wander the streets and await the enemy alone.
The men who normally swaggered along the Mese would now be scrambling like rats among the debris of the front, patching up the damage wrought by the satanic Turkish war engines.
Since the siege began, women seldom ventured from their homes except to pray for salvation at a favoured church. That was what Zenobia believed they should also be doing but Anna, as always, had other ideas.
‘Despoina, I must once again counsel that this is folly,’ said Zenobia, trailing in her mistress’s wake.
‘I gave you leave to stay home if it really troubles you,’ Anna said with airy indifference.
The handmaiden sighed and quickened her steps to keep up. ‘You know I cannot let you go alone, but I fail to see what profit can be gained from poking around in the sordid business of these deaths. Leave the matter to the proper authorities.’
Anna wheeled about in her tracks. ‘There are no proper authorities anymore, Zen! Do you not see?’ She flung her arms out and gestured about the empty street. ‘We live in chaos, while the imperial crown and its rule of law exists only for the wall. What does anyone care about two deaths here while hundreds die daily over there? Only we care, Zen, you and I. We cared about Baltus. We owe it to his memory to discover the truth. If my father had Baltus slain, I want to know.’
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