The Captain gave a curt nod of greeting. ‘I’m Spandounes.’
He didn’t look very Greek. Stern eyes and an aquiline nose set above a purposefully clenched, shaven jaw. His cropped white hair sat high on the crown of his head, lending him an aura of an old commander, though the Ambassador had said he was not yet fifty.
Anna glanced at the line of soldiers. ‘There are perhaps twenty of you, Captain, is that the entire company?’
‘It is, Basilissa. Not enough to win back Constantinople, I grant you, but these men will see you safe to Wallachia and back, have no doubt.’
‘Why are you called the Black Sheep?’ asked Helena.
Captain Spandounes gave a grin that was something close to a grimace. ‘Families rarely boast of their sons who become stratioti.’
‘I would like to inspect your troops if I may, Captain,’ said Anna.
‘Oh, so would I!’ added Helena.
‘Please.’ The Captain walked them to the end of the line of soldiers. ‘This is Peregrino Bua, my Protopalikaro - my second-in-command. Beside him is the crocodile.’
The crocodile turned out to be a burly, shaven-headed man, bearded like a Pindus bear and a foot taller than any other body in the line. He nodded his head but kept his eyes lowered on Anna’s feet.
‘Krokodilos?’ said Anna. ‘Does he have a mouth full of monstrous sharp teeth then?’
The eyes lifted from the dirt and the beard split, revealing a pink cavern of largely barren gums. ‘My real name is Korkodeilos,’ he explained in a voice which rang with the harsh, palatal accent of the Mani.
‘And this is Manolis Rallis,’ said the Captain moving to the next man in the line.
‘No colourful nickname?’
Rallis shrugged. ‘I’ve sometimes been called Monk since I spent my youth on the holy mountain of Athos.’ Above the black hemisphere of his beard the face was sun-browned parchment. Unkempt hair fell to his shoulders. He might have been forty or fifty. Most of the other men looked to be half his age or less.
‘I don’t wish to be rude, but the Black Sheep don’t exactly appear of the same standard of mercenary company as Colleoni’s,’ said Anna. ‘You look more like a bandit clan from the Morea. Runaways and rejects. A bunch of klephts.’
The Captain jutted his chin. ‘It’s true we are almost all Greeks and yes, the Black Sheep include many whom fortune has spat upon. We may lack pretty horses and polished steel bonnets like Italian condottieri, but we know our business. To fight in Tuscany, hire Colleoni. To cross the Turk-filled mountains east of here, hire klephts. Now Basilissa, if I may, the next officer is our quartermaster -’
‘I’m afraid this won’t do.’ Anna turned from the line. ‘I’m sorry to have wasted your time, Captain, but the Black Sheep will not be providing me an escort.’
‘Basilissa!’ Ambassador Sagundino wailed.
‘Is there something about my men, beyond our appearance, that you find displeasing?’ the Captain asked.
‘Yes. This man.’ Anna pointed to the stick-thin quartermaster. ‘Whatever false Greek name he might have given you, his real one is Venetian. Paolo Barbo. I knew him some years past. He was wanted in Constantinople on two counts of murder.’
‘That is disappointing to hear,’ said the Captain. ‘He told me it was three.’
‘You think it a triviality?’
‘Basilissa, every one of these men is a killer. Some are worse besides. They are dogs, all of them, but they are my dogs. They obey my commands. Whilst you are among them, you need not fear for your safety. You say you knew a Paolo Barbo, but that man no longer exists. The Black Sheep leave their past lives behind when they join us. This is not the same man you once knew.’
‘That might sound right to your ear, Captain, but it doesn’t to mine.’ She turned to the Ambassador. ‘Messer Sagundino, I’m afraid you will need to continue your search for a suitable escort and delay our departure.’
The Venetian shook his head. Then, gently taking her elbow, guided Anna across the campo beyond the hearing of the others. He kept his voice low. ‘Basilissa, what the Captain says is true. You will find no mercenary company comprised of saints. This one at least is run by a man of honour. The bald truth is that no other suitable company exists. Every other I have found willing to make the journey to Wallachia are unmistakably brigands who would rob and rape you the moment we passed beyond sight of the city.’
She cast a glance back at the motley line of men. ‘And what makes you certain these would not?’
‘Nothing, other than the presence of Captain Spandounes at their head. Let me be blunt. This is not a journey any man should take lightly, the more so a lady. The Black Sheep are your only realistic hope. If you are not prepared to hire them, then the Council of Ten will need to find another emissary and your dream of a commune will be over.’
Anna studied the waters of the canal while the Ambassador spoke, hoping inspiration would drift along. Instead it brought only Sphrantzes and the luggage boat. She glanced again at the row of lances and their grim commander, then up at the white spire crowning a nearby church.
She thought of Cardinal Bessarion. How many compromises had he made over the years for the cause of Constantinople? How many missions and hardships had those old bones undergone? She had been an adolescent orphan when he took her under his wing; half-mad with grief, half-intent on joining her loved ones in the grave. What she owed that grey-bearded old priest went far beyond words. There was really no question of giving up because her dream belonged to him too. She sighed out a long, hard breath, mastered her thoughts and said, ‘Very well.’
They walked back to Spandounes who gave no hint of impatience. ‘Forgive me, Captain,’ said Anna. ‘I am perhaps too sheltered to appreciate how the world beyond the city operates and the Ambassador has made it clear that your company represents the finest of stratioti. I am still dubious as to the wisdom of employing Paolo Barbo, but if you are prepared to vouch for his good conduct then I would be prepared to take on the Black Sheep. I believe Messer Sagundino has already agreed the financial terms.’
‘We would be honoured, Basilissa. We shall acquire the necessary horses and provisions once we have made the crossing to Istria. My men can cover thirty miles a day if you can stand that pace. That should have us reach the voivode’s palace at Targoviste a month from now.’
‘I shall stand whatever pace is required,’ Anna said and stepped up the gangway.
VIII.
Wallachia, June 1462
Stained by the shadows of clouds, the level country was emerging from beneath its shroud of morning mist as a lone figure stalked through the little Danube town of Calafat. His cylindrical cap, tall and stiffened, might almost have been mistaken for the kalpak of a dervish, but he was not a dervish. He was a doctor.
Glossy with sunshine, swallows darted and charged like sipahi cavalry around the roofbeams and rafters above. There was the gentlest breath of wind. It might have been the start of a perfect summer’s day, but Hekim Yakub shivered, nonetheless. The buildings held an eerie silence. An open gate gave on to a neat churchyard, tools hung sharpened and ready at a forge along the main track, and the walls of one house shone with fresh paint. Many signs of life, but no sign of the actual living.
The further from the river he went, the more noticeable the stillness. Noise continued to come from the busy water, but it grew fainter with each stride. He glanced back over his shoulder at the distant line of soldiers, busy hacking a trench out of the road. Those half-naked men toiling with their shovels and hatchets represent the very northern threshold of the Sultan’s domain, Yakub thought, and I have passed beyond it.
One of the trench diggers had given Yakub a nod and the ghost of a shy smile, which the physician pondered as he continued walking. Had he read too much into that glance? Many in that first wave of soldiers to cross from the Ottoman riverbank were from the newest batch of janissary graduates. Adolescents, fresh from the manual labours of their Turk Oğlan, for whom thi
s campaign was no hardship, but a reward. Eager sorts looking to gain scars and earn the esteem of older comrades any way they might.
The rest of the army was landing now. The Danube was a mess of boats ferrying bunches of white caps, tall as lilies, out from the squat fortress of Baba Vida and across the slow, wide bend of the river.
The Wallachian shore had once been the thriving Genoese shipyard of Calafat. Now it was a deserted ghost town. It would take days for the enormous army to complete its crossing and several more before they began to march deeper into the Vlach heartland.
Hekim Yakub had lingered at the trench, which was being dug to slow down any hidden Vlach cavalry who might think to attack the nascent Turkish beachhead. He had chatted with the labouring soldiers for a time, keen to delay the inevitable, but they had only confirmed what he already knew and pointed him towards the treetops beyond the settlement.
He must venture beyond Calafat to find what he was after.
It was hardly a prospect Yakub relished. He should not be here at all. He should be sat on a soft divan, safe within the palace walls, reading up on the efficacy of autumn crocus for the reduction of phlegm in the joints. Instead he was far from Constantinople, venturing beyond the bounds of civilisation, treading alone and defenceless along the quiet lanes of a town which the enemy had seemingly only just abandoned. This was an errand far beyond a physician’s call of duty, but sadly - he had to admit – it was many years since he had been simply a physician.
From the crest of a meadow, with Calafat almost out of sight, Yakub finally spotted his quarry. Down the slope, a diamond dust of dew shone from the petals of yellow flag and cow-parsley fringing the far side of a stream. Among the pebbles and stones of the stream bed, lumps of quartz flashed where fishermen had placed them to sparkle and attract the salmon. The glimmer had caught the attention of a man as he made to ford from one mid-stream rock to another. He was bending down and picking up the largest of the clear stones from the shallow water as Yakub approached the bankside. ‘They say it’s unlucky to remove another man’s crystal.’
Radu looked up, caught in the act, and let the lump tumble from his palm back into the water with a plop. ‘Where do you suppose the owner is?’ He pointed back up the meadow in the direction of Calafat. ‘We found not a living soul in all the town.’
Gathering the hem of his fine woollen cloak to keep it from the lap of the stream, Yakub gingerly took a step to the water’s edge. ‘Did you expect to?’
‘No, Hekim Yakub,’ Radu answered. In one long stride he joined the doctor on the streambank. ‘We were either going to find our landing contested by every man the Vlachs could muster, or this.’ He spread his arms towards the bucolic emptiness of their surroundings.
‘The Vlachs could muster - an interesting way of putting it.’ Yakub’s eyes, set either side of a long hawkish nose, coolly studied Radu as if he were a patient laid out on his operating table.
‘I’m not afraid to voice his name, if that’s what you are implying, Hekim Yakub,’ said Radu. ‘Vlad has ceded the Danube riverbank. It’s worth pondering on that choice and trying to predict what his strategy might be.’
‘Is that what you are doing out here all alone? Pondering his choices in life? Or perhaps pondering your own?’ The first hint of anger flared in Radu’s eyes. Hekim Yakub smiled to try and show he meant no hostility and added, ‘Then again, which among us ever knows the luxury of a truly free choice in life? And if it is all just God’s will playing out, should we not hold our regrets lightly?’
Radu took a stride away, up into the sloping meadow. With both hands held low, he swept their open palms through the long summer grass. ‘These are the first hours I have stood on the soil of my homeland since I was a small child, Hekim Yakub. After so long away, I knew it would feel strange to return, but I admit I hadn’t appreciated the extent it would shake me. I couldn’t afford the men to see me like that. Can you begin to understand?’
The question nettled Yakub. He wondered, what is being doubted here? Does he think, since I’m not a soldier, that I miss the need for an officer to appear calm before his men? Or is he another who holds all Jews rootless and incapable of loving a homeland?
Keeping his own council, Yakub said, ‘I sympathise, Radu Pasha. You understand why doctors bleed people, don’t you? It is to remove an excess of that humor. The same, I believe, should be done with heavy thoughts. If matters trouble you and if you should wish to drain their burden from your chest, I can promise a doctor’s discretion. It would be safer than wandering from the protection of your comrades.’ He gave a nervous glance into the treeline across the stream. ‘If Vlad left scouts or even a lone bowman…’
‘True,’ said Radu. He had continued to stroll up the meadow but now he stopped and turned around. ‘We are a little beyond where is safe. Fine for me: I’m a janissary. This is where I belong. This is not where a palace doctor belongs. You did not happen upon me just now by accident, and I doubt you sought me out just to offer me your ear. So, what do you want, Hekim Yakub?’
Yakub pursed his lips. ‘She is here.’
‘Here?’ Radu looked incredulous.
‘I am to bring you to her. There is a ship at the landing pontoons.’
‘There are many damned ships there!’ said Radu. ‘The whole fleet is mid-river! The whole army deployed! What is she doing here?’
‘She tells me very little,’ said Yakub with a shrug.
Without reply, Radu began to wade back through the grasses and wildflowers. Yakub quickened his pace after him. The stream-nourished meadow must have kept Calafat’s herbalists well stocked: lamb’s tongue for bites, scammony to purge bilious and melancholic humors, bitter tansy for abortions. Yakub plucked one of the yellow-headed flowers. How appropriate to find that growing so proudly at this hour.
The journey back through the empty settlement felt much shorter a second time. Once they had passed the labouring soldiers at the half-dug trench Yakub began to breathe more easily. A little way beyond there, Radu pointed to more soldiers, busy nailing boards across a wellhead. ‘The water has been poisoned,’ he explained. ‘I lost a man injured to a trap in the first house we searched. The whole town is riddled with lethal parting gifts from the Vlachs.’
‘This is not going to be a standard campaign,’ said Yakub.
‘Far from it,’ Radu said. ‘Vlad will most likely keep falling back towards his mountain strongholds and try to bleed us a little as we follow. We may see no battle for weeks but if I lose ten men a day before then, I shall think us fortunate.’
The morning air rang to the hammer of heavy mallets as the work teams laboured to rig up a forest of canopies on the water meadows to the west of the town. Instead of turning in the camp’s direction, the doctor led them down to the muddy shore of the Danube where many abandoned hulks sat propped up on stilts. Upon founding the settlement, a hundred years earlier, the Genoese had named the town after the calafati, the shipyard workers, who caulked the exposed seams of boat hulls. It was still the main trade. The breeze was laced with the whiff of tar and rendered fat from open casks stacked along the shipyard walls and thistledown wisps of animal hair came spinning past in every gust of wind.
There were many ships along Calafat’s riverbank but only one with a pair of bull horns painted in blue on her sail. Shaking his head, Radu followed Yakub up the gangway and straight into the after-castle cabin where, among the satin and samite hangings, dressed in the colours of a phoenix, Valide Mara Hatun perched on a small wooden chair. She flashed Radu a matronly smile as he entered and waved at the nearest seat by way of command. Ignored, Hekim Yakub hovered by the door.
‘When he was a small boy, our Sultan had a cat which prowled the harem with the same crestfallen look you are wearing now,’ said the Valide. ‘There is no need to be glum, Radu Pasha. You shall have the chance to rebuild Calafat soon enough.’
From the doorway, Yakub could observe Radu’s face clearly. No trace of misery showed. As always, Valide Mara
Hatun was testing.
Ignoring her comment, Radu said, ‘I regret, Valide Mara Hatun, that in your eagerness to view the taking of Calafat, you have arrived a full day ahead of the rest of the Sultan’s household. Perhaps it was this haste which caused your ship’s master to accidently fly the colours of House Brankovic from the mast.’
The matronly smile was replaced by a slyer shaping of her famously plump lips. ‘I am both where and how I intend to be. When in Constantinople, I am Valide Mara Hatun. When I am in Smederevo, I am Mara Brankovic.’
That was true, Yakub reflected. You could see it manifest most clearly in her appearance. At the palace none were more a picture of veiled Turkish motherhood than the Valide, but when the summer exodus from the plague-prevalent Bosporus scattered the court to Manisa, Bursa and Edirne, she decamped to her homeland. There, her Ottoman clothing fell away like the shed skin of an insect and Mara Brankovic would emerge from her Turkish chrysalis: a princess of Serbia, a Christian paragon, a picture of Byzantine grace.
Here, a little more than mid-way between the two, the transformation appeared incomplete. The ferace of court had been replaced by an Italian cut gown, but her jet-black hair remained modestly concealed beneath the twisted fabric hoop of a hotoz and its heavy veil of linen.
Radu said, ‘And when you are at Calafat, what are you then?’
It was bold. Among the court, only the Grand Vizier could claim to hold as much influence with the Sultan as this woman. There were some who thought Radu Pasha a mere fop; a pretend janissary who owed his high rank to exertions in the bedchamber not the battlefield. Yakub had seen enough to judge the man differently and now Radu was not prostrating himself before the Sultan’s stepmother, he was challenging her right to be here.
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