Then Yakub and Radu both set off, back from the moth-drawing beacon of the camel pen fire, back from the treacherous siren’s call of the skirmish. Waving their arms, they began to herd as many troops as would listen. Back through the tent lines. Back towards the high canopied pavilion which lay at the centre of the Turkish maze. And as he implored and pulled at the sleeves of men to follow, Yakub’s own memory was moving in the same direction. Back, back, back.
1.
The Republic of Venice, May 1462
When the maid opened the shutters, the blast of warm, moist air stirred Anna Notaras from her dreaming. She lay still for a time, watching the dampness build on the walls while, with the solemn efficiency of daily ritual, the barrel-like bathtub was rolled into the room.
The air flowing in through the window was heavy and charged with salt. She could hear the wind’s strength in its moan. Closing her eyes, she pictured the sea hurling its waves against the distant Lido sands. Crash, crash, crash; the sound in her head mingled with the noise in the room as, jug-by-jug, the bath water rose. She was not Venetian but she had dwelt on the lagoon long enough to read the signs of the city’s regular, unwelcome visitor: Aqua Alta. Normally it did not concern her but this time she could not avoid the over-high tide and wait out the flood from the safety of her home.
The sweet odour of balsam and laurel indicated that the bath was almost fully drawn and the maid had begun to spice the waters. As the curtained canopy was set in place over the tub, Anna rose from her bed, waited for the maid to turn her back and then shed her night linen. She tested the water with a finger and found it satisfactory. ‘I am going out today,’ she said stepping into the water. ‘Would you inform Nikolaos to have the gondola ready after breakfast.’
‘Yes, Basilissa.’
‘And put out the plain black gamurra and the lace-trimmed sleeves,’ Anna added before drawing the canopy curtains and breathing in the calming aromatic vapour.
‘And your overgown, Basilissa? Matching?’
‘Matching.’
Once she had completed the morning luxury of her bath and dressed, Anna joined her elder sister for breakfast in the main living room on the piano nobile. Looking up at Anna as she entered, Helena shot one eyebrow towards the high ceiling. ‘Black again?’
‘I’m going out,’ Anna said by way of explanation. She passed the table and began to inspect the world outside from the window seat. The canal below had felt the incoming tide. Floating stalks of hay twisted uneasily this way and that on the pea-green surface and the waters were lapping at the very brim of the stone fondamenta.
‘You are aware,’ Helena said, ‘that the sumptuary laws have not grown so severe as to ban all colour?’ Her own gamurra that morning was scarlet, for which the garish, gold sleeves were not a good match but Anna held back her opinion.
Instead Anna said, ‘Colour would be inappropriate today. I’m to visit the Dogaressa Dandolo.’
‘You’ve missed her husband’s funeral by two days.’
‘It’s still a time of mourning.’ Anna moved from the window to beside her sister’s chair. ‘The lace sleeves, do you think she will appreciate that touch?’ She turned her arms to show off the intricately patterned cuff.
‘Is that why you’re meeting her?’ said Helena. ‘There’ll be aqua alta you know.’
‘Yes, I saw.’
‘Will you be very long?’
Anna sat down across the table. ‘Probably. We are meeting in Burano.’
‘Burano!’ moaned Helena. ‘Why in heaven’s name would you traipse all the way out there?’
‘I assume she wants to show her lace workshop to me,’ said Anna. ‘I thought you’d be happy. You normally complain I don’t venture out enough.’
‘You don’t,’ said Helena, ‘but I asked Messer Schiavi from the bank to drop by later. I need some funds to pay the seamstress for my Ascension Day dress – which is another matter we need to discuss by the way.’
‘And you need me to sign?’
‘I do. Inconvenient, I agree. Blame father.’ Helena said it lightly enough, as she always did when the subject of money was raised between them. For how could their father have foreseen, when writing his will, that his eldest daughter whom he had long since married off to an illustrious Genoese family, would be widowed and cheated of her rights within two years of his death? As his own end had demonstrated, Loukas Notaras had lacked foresight and so the family fortune had gone entirely to his sole surviving, unmarried child. It was said lightly but it was said too often to be entirely without feeling.
‘What do we need to discuss about Ascension Day?’ Anna said.
‘Well, with a newly chosen Doge, there’s bound to be a huge crowd for this year’s wedding of the sea. I thought we might invite a few people to join our boat among the flotilla on the lagoon.’
‘You’ve rented us a boat?’ said Anna. She could only imagine the expense.
‘Well you were never going to.’
‘And when you suggest inviting guests, naturally you have someone particular in mind.’
‘Naturally I do. Senator Vendramin has a son…’
‘No,’ Anna said firmly.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not trying to interfere in your affairs. I know a lost cause well enough. It was Eudokia’s future I was thinking of. It’s time we found her a husband.’
Pouting, pampered, tart as a white damson, Eudokia was their seventeen-year-old niece. Anna put down her fork. ‘Senator Vendramin’s son isn’t Greek,’ she said.
‘I don’t think we should limit ourselves,’ replied Helena. ‘Since the conquest, Greek and unmarried have become increasingly rare traits among the living. Perhaps it would be easier for Eudokia if she became a Latin.’
‘No!’ Anna stood up with such force that her chair toppled over.
‘It’s a matter of fitting in,’ said Helena.
‘We don’t need to fit in,’ said Anna. ‘We will take back Constantinople…one day.’
‘And until then?’ said Helena. ‘It’s already been nine years and things have only got worse.’
‘Until then we keep Byzantium alive any way we can.’
‘By lying?’ said Helena. ‘By pretending to be something we are not?’
But Anna was already walking briskly from the room. She retreated to her library at the back of the house. Books had always been dear to her. If a book said something you didn’t want to hear you simply closed them. She took up a copy of Xenophon and sat in the good light by the window. She opened the book but had no serious inclination to read, if Helena wanted to apologise, she would know where to find her.
Instead, Anna looked down from the window at the narrow calle. There was already water seeping between the flagstones. The aqua alta would soon turn this dry passageway into a shallow tributary.
As Anna had hoped, the rustle of silk brocade in the doorway soon announced her sister and the look on her face was suitably contrite. Anna closed the unread book.
‘I know I didn’t suffer what you went through in the siege,’ said Helena. She had one palm raised like an icon saint and though Anna doubted her sister had calculated the gesture, the thought of a beatified Helena was too ridiculous not to blunt the edge from her anger. ‘But you don’t have a monopoly on misfortune.’
‘Of course,’ said Anna. ‘It does surprise me that someone who married into a Latin family and was misused by them should be so eager to risk the same fate for her niece.’
Helena sighed and perched across the windowsill from her. ‘Dorian Gattilusio was a scoundrel, but it wasn’t his mangled creed which made him that way. A Latin soldier saved your life, a Greek priest covered your back in scars. You know the moral world is not so easily divided.’
‘I know,’ said Anna softly. ‘But our homeland is gone. We need to stick together, not give up all hope of restitution. We owe it to their sacrifice. There are hundreds of Greek families scattered around this lagoon. Hundreds of refugees still privately maintaining the By
zantine rite and suffering for it. Hundreds forgoing Venetian citizenship because they still believe disaster can be reversed. What signal would it send to them if the niece of their Empress married a Latin?’
Helena moved across and put an arm around Anna’s shoulder. ‘You’re not their Empress, Anna. You might lie to them, but you and I know the truth. I understand why you do it, but don’t limit Eudokia’s life chances in the service of that lie.’
Out on the lagoon the sun cast its flaming echo down on the waves as they came swirling in, driven like mares before the whip. The early morning tide had streamed around the point of Sant’Elena, swept past the empty market stalls on the Riva degli Schiavoni’s long curve and lifted the moored boats as it encountered them. Now the opaline flood, dividing between the Giudecca and the Grand Canal, had reached halfway up the calle beneath their library window.
The two sisters stood watching as the first boat passed down the calle, picking up passengers and transporting them to the upper end of the street where the water was yet to reach. The flood was an excuse for the display of bare legs and half the sestiere’s women seemed to be out already with hems rolled up beyond their knees.
Anna found her spirit lifted as she laughed with Helena at the traffic below: the thrifty housewives begrudging the fee for the boat and wading to market through the jade-coloured flood; the children whooping and splashing with delight; the cat taking refuge in the branches of a tree and scowling down at its watery nemesis. She smiled to see a local dandy looking with equal disgust at the wind when it flung his hat away. Then without warning there was a dazzling flash in the sky and a rattling peal of thunder. The crowd scattered from the calle and every window shutter closed with a bang.
Their young, Cretan-born servant, Nikolaos Vlasto, appeared in the library door. ‘It’s raining, Basilissa.’
‘I can see that, Nikolaos.’
‘Will you still be requiring the gondola?’
‘Certainly. A little rain and high water can’t stop us. Does George have it ready?’
‘Yes, Basilissa.’
‘Then let’s go.’ She slipped from the windowsill and followed Nikolaos down the long central hall of the portego, matching her pace to his slower, limping gait.
The watergate had been opened and Anna could see the long hull of the gondola rocking beyond. The canal was already lapping over the top step. Much more of a rise and it would begin soaking into the winter firewood.
George, her gondolier, saw them picking their way towards the doorway and came to her assistance. The move was too sudden, the gondola tilted and almost toppled him back into the canal. A former tanner from Phanarion, he was not a natural boatman. ‘Stay there, George,’ she called, picking up the hems of gamurra and giornea to keep them dry as she made three long strides to the top of the watergate steps. He offered her his hand but she decided not to risk being pulled into the canal and made her own tentative way aboard.
Nikolaos, despite his bad leg, joined her without difficulty under the felze canopy. Then, careful to keep the boat balanced, he slipped past her to take up his station at the prow.
‘How are Maria and the children, George?’ said Anna as the gondolier pushed off from the wall of Ca Notaras. ‘Michalis turned four last week, didn’t he?’
George’s broad face beamed. ‘Bless you, for remembering, Basilissa. They are all well, thanks to you.’
‘Oh, don’t start that,’ said Anna.
‘It’s such a beautiful boat,’ said George, ‘and when it ferries the Empress of the Romans it is more significant than the doge’s bucentaur. It deserves to be handled with more grace than these hands can manage. I do try, Basilissa. You’ll see I have improved a little.’
‘I’m sure I will,’ said Anna twisting in her seat to smile encouragingly at him through the open felze door. She saw the sky behind his head was lightening. The dark thunderheads of the storm were already moving on towards the faint Euganean hills. ‘I’m sorry that I don’t give you enough practice.’
‘As far as Murano will be practice enough for this morning I think, Basilissa,’ said Nikolaos from the prow. ‘It’s a long row to Burano and with the water how it is today, we could find ourselves in trouble. We shall leave George at Murano and catch a larger boat from there.’
Anna could almost hear George’s heart sink to the bottom of the canal. She thought he could manage it but said, ‘If you think that is for the best.’
‘The Vendramin soap factory on Murano is in trouble,’ said George. Another clumsy pull on the oar sent a patter of spray down the side of the felze canopy. . ‘They have had to let fifteen men go.’
‘It’s the olive oil price that’s the issue, Basilissa,’ said Nikolaos. ‘The supply has collapsed since the Morea fell to the Turks.’
Anna nodded. For years the Vendramin had bought oil for their soaps from the Notaras owned estates in the Morea. It had been that old connection which had allowed her to pressure the Senator into finding space in his workforce for a few extra Byzantine refugees. How many had they taken? She tried to recall. Fifteen. Oh. Her heart joined George’s on the canal bed.
She turned back once more to George and opened her mouth to confirm but he had already read her mind and nodded.
Nikolaos had too. ‘Of course,’ he said bitterly. ‘Venetians look after their own.’
‘It can only be expected,’ she said.
‘Perhaps we could do the same, Basilissa?’ said Nikolaos. ‘Perhaps we could start a soap factory to give the men something to do?’
Anna shook her head. ‘Who would we sell to? Trade is in decline everywhere. It’s a nice idea, Nikolaos, but there is only so much any of us can do.’
‘Of course, Bassilisa,’ said Nikolaos. She saw his head drop. He was so young and over-hopeful sometimes but she was only human - a woman in a man’s world – she did what she could, she tried to set an example, what more could anyone ask?
2.
The Republic of Venice, May 1462
The main square of Burano had a dilapidated church and a column with a winged lion on the summit, its paw firmly placed on its evangel. A row of little houses ran away, cheek by jowl down the canal sides until the water curved to the right in a tiny forgery of the Grand Canal. The whole island appeared almost a miniature duplicate of Venice, as if it were a folly belonging to an eccentric prince.
As they crossed Burano’s busy square towards the rosy brick walls of a fine palazzo, Nikolaos muttered, ‘I don’t know why she insisted on meeting us all the way out here.’ It was the third time he had said it since leaving the Ca Notaras.
Anna shot him a look of reproach. ‘The dogaressa wanted to show me the fruits of her labour,’ she said. ‘One must forgive her a little pride in her accomplishments. The more so in this time of grief.’ It was five days since the unexpected passing of the Venetian Doge.
‘I do not wish to sound callous, Basilissa,’ said Nikolaos, ‘especially as regards the recently widowed, but with her husband gone to the Lord, Madonna Dandolo is no longer Dogaressa.’
‘She will remain the Dogaressa in my eyes for as long as she lives.’
It was said with deep sincerity and Nikolaos knew better than to speak again. For Anna to leave the sanctuary of Ca Notaras at all was rare enough but the trek across the lagoon was one she usually made only once a year and to Torsello, not Burano. She would not have come today for just anyone but the altars of her heart were given over to those women who had made a mark in this world of men and Dogaressa Dandolo was a member of that inner pantheon. Today was a pilgrimage of sorts to meet the woman known as the Queen of Lace.
Stepping through an open archway in the palazzo’s façade, Anna and Nikolaos found themselves in a workshop that seemed almost church-like; long,cavernous and split by a line of supporting columns, the room was filled with rows of wooden chairs placed in one direction like a congregation. About half the chairs contained figures bent forward with heads bowed as if in prayer. Long rounded cushions lay in
their laps as arms hovered and danced from pillow to air in graceful, silent movements. The plain space served as a canvas for the intricacy of the lacework that each woman was meticulously producing.
At the far end of this industrial nave, where the altar wall might otherwise be found, a staircase disappeared up to a small gallery. A woman stood at the top of the stairs, coolly surveying the new arrivals. She was elderly and gripped the banister with both hands as she carefully descended. Her white hair had been scraped back under a tall cap of black velvet making her forehead seem strangely elongated. A heavy brocade cloak hung from her hunched shoulders and the collar and cuffs of her black gown were edged in delicate, patterned lace. Passing between the ranks of sewing women, she glanced a patron’s eye over their work. She moved with the sedate elegance of one unused to hurrying for others. Giovanna Dandolo, recently widowed dogaressa to Pasquale Malipiero, would reach her guests when she reached them and feel no embarrassment however long it took.
As she neared, Anna could almost feel Nikolaos’ impatience. With the dogaressa still some rows away, he limped forward and announced, in the proudest of voices, ‘Your Grace, I present Basilissa Anna Notaras Palaiologina, Empress and autocrat of the Romans.’
Giovanna Dandolo made a show of peering myopically at him - though her eyesight had been keen enough to spot them from the gallery. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘Yes, I remember. Perhaps you think an old woman forgets, but I remember.’ The Dogaressa’s eyes, set either side of a prominent nose, lay in sockets sunk deep into her lined face. They began to scrutinise Anna as if she were a lace trousseau.
‘Your Grace, may I say how much I admire the way you have served Venice these past years as Dogaressa,’ Anna said. ‘My deepest condolences on the passing of your husband. He is a great loss to the Republic.’
The former Dogaressa did not flinch at the mention of her deceased husband. ‘So, you have come to see the magic of Burano.’ She gestured to the rows of women carefully threading their needles. ‘There. Look. Walk about them and see for yourself.’
Porphyry and Blood Page 2