Porphyry and Blood

by Peter Sandham

  ‘I will forgive,’ Anna said with a glance about the empty deck. ‘In return for confession. When you set up your ambush it was with the specific aim of taking our party hostage, was it not?’

  ‘It was,’ said Lueger. ‘But rest assured, you would have found me a most gracious host. I ransomed an Istrian merchant’s wife last year and she had no complaints.’

  Anna ignored the brazen smile and slight gesticulation of his hips towards her. ‘And you were informed of our likely route to Gradec by our quartermaster, Paolo Barbo,’ Anna said, voicing a hunch which had begun to form in her mind even as the carrion birds were flapping around them in the clearing. ‘He convinced you it would be a profitable scheme?’

  ‘Yes, but he cheated us both. He told me it was the younger woman who would fetch a great ransom from Venice.’

  ‘And I?’

  ‘A middle-born chaperone of little means.’

  There was no need to press him further on what that would have meant for her fortunes. It was enough to have confirmed her suspicion as to the true reason for the pack-horse’s difficulties which had caused Barbo to delay on the approach to the dell.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Anna. ‘You might make for a poor knight in many ways, but you are at least capable of honesty.’ She moved to leave the rail, then stopped. ‘I once knew a man who I suspect had been in his youth not unlike you are now: blessed with size and strength, heedless of petty morals, impertinent to the world around him. He had grown by the time I met him. He had realised his errors, but his remorse had become a terrible black dog at his heels. Absolution can carry a heavy price if it is left too long. Blessed as you are, you have a choice. You can live with the chaos around us or you can put those gifts towards ending it. I pray you give your life purpose.’ She touched Lueger lightly on the elbow and stepped swiftly back towards the cabin before the moisture in her eyes broke like summer heat.

  Despite the flat calm of the river, Anna’s stomach was in turmoil as her renegade mind insisted upon its recalling: a larger ship’s deck, burdened with a fair-headed body, newly recovered from the craft that had propelled them both across the fire-lit waters of the Golden Horn. She reached the hatchway as the first silent tears streaked watery comet-tails down her cheeks.

  Wrapped up in the shroud of her grief, Anna remained unaware of the figure looking down from the stern-deck. The mealtime excitement over, Eudokia had preferred fresh air to the small stuffy cabin. Lingering up on the higher deck near the helm, she had a clear view down onto the furtive conversation taking place below. The wind was too strong for words to carry, but Anna’s agitation was obvious as she hurried towards the after-castle door. The conclusion which shot into Eudokia’s head was as wide of the mark as the arrow standing proud from the wood at her feet.

  8.

  The Sava River, May 1462

  For two days, the boat pitched along in the river’s flood, with the keen-eyed boatmen scanning the waters ahead for the glare of a shoal or the humpback ghost of a sandbar. The Captain had suggested that for safety the ladies might remain in their cabin but Anna would not hear of it. She wanted to see for herself this swirling, swift waterway which ran like the welt seam of a garment, stitching the smooth Hungarian steppe to the rugged mountain range of the Slavs; this saint-named river which flowed for six hundred twisting miles without ever reaching the sea.

  Time on the boat amid the elements made Anna feel increasingly small as the world uncoiled its enormity around her: the water, as shapeless and deep, as variable and accidental as the unconscious mind; the eternal sky, so much vaster than the earth; and the movements of both, which seemed to have no end or beginning. She found it both fascinating and overpowering but above all it was invigorating. By comparison, the air of Venice now seemed stale and so too her claustrophobic life of narrow canals and shuttered houses. She breathed a deep lungful of river air and felt like a sail sensing the first wisp of a long-absent breeze.

  A good river-pilot was essential. A man who knew the streams and the rapids, the dark whirlpools, fickle currents and blind tributaries. And just as vital, a man who knew the best moorings and hospitable foreshores where a boat might berth as the night came down; where country folk would scramble to meet them with armfuls of flatbread and a cask of last autumn’s wine.

  For the stratioti, the days were languid spells of tedium spent lounging about the deck half-asleep in the sun, but come dusk, when the boat bumped gently against the next quayside, they would flock with the rivermen, whooping and bawling, into the taverns of Sissek, of Brood and finally Sabac. And in each, out would come the landlord’s fiddle and drum and the drinking and dancing, the dicing, arguing and fighting would commence and continue long past the devil’s hour.

  On the first two occasions, Anna declined the chance to disembark, preferring to remain on the boat with Eudokia, guarded by the Captain, ambassador and George Sphrantzes – each of whom felt himself too old or too grand for such country revelry. She lay awake on the cabin bunk, long into the night, listening to the tuneful wail of a duda, the low murmur of merrymaking and, at Brood, the dull grunt of lovers among the nearby foreshore reeds.

  The working boat’s tight confinement placed an increasing strain on the atmosphere between Anna and her niece. The small cabin they shared was crowded with tubs of farro, dried beans for soup and, hung beside the hatchway ladder, the smoked hind quarters of a pig. On the ride from Istria, when they had slept in tents of thin canvas under the high ceiling of the starry heavens, the long silences had seemed less oppressive than they did inside the suffocating enclosure of the cabin. There had also been plentiful camp work to occupy each of them but on the river there were scant tasks which their inexpert hands could perform and the boredom made each of them fractious.

  As evening once more began to darken the water’s glossy pane and the rooftops of Sabac took shape along a sprawling river bend, Anna began to dread another night of fitful sleep and awkward silences and gave in to the temptation of an evening ashore in a private tavern room - perhaps even one with a bathtub. When Anna suggested that they all disembark, Eudokia, who had spent the day out on deck avoiding Anna’s company, looked fit to burst with joy at the prospect.

  So, flanked by an honour guard of the boisterous crew and company, the two ladies picked their way across the pungent muddy foreshore, past warehouses and wharfs to a three-story tavern where the long trestle tables were already busy and the rafters rang with the shouting and bawling of a crapulous crowd of men.

  It did not live up to Anna’s hopes. There was no tub, she was informed bluntly by the landlady, and beer was served with the meal instead of wine - a sure sign of Hungarian influence slowly eroding Byzantine custom in the region.

  It was the last week of May, the most difficult period of the year for Anna, when the ghosts of the siege’s end rattled in their graves all the louder. She picked at her food, silent and distant, while the clamour of the feasting whirled around her like a fog.

  Her niece, clean of the memories that stained Anna’s mood, laughed and chattered, bright-eyed, with the men on either side. That was me, Anna thought as she watched her. That was me a decade past: shining at the saint day feasts, effervescent with hope, ripe with confidence, ignorant of the despair that would shortly chop it all to messes. She tried to bite back her envy.

  She soon made her excuses and withdrew upstairs to her room but found it little different to the boat. She lay awake under the low roofbeams, haunted by the muffled chatter and laughter from below.

  As the hour grew late and sleep refused to come, Anna rose and dressed, determined to go downstairs and seek out a suitable escort for a little night air. She paused on the landing and considered knocking on Eudokia’s door but decided it would be unfair to wake her.

  Armed with a lantern, Anna discovered the tavern common room deserted and only the figure of the Ambassador, wrapped up in his cloak, slumbering like the tavern dog beside the hearth ashes.

  At the sound of her foots
teps on the staircase, he stirred and looked up at her through bleary eyes. He seemed momentarily befuddled, perhaps even afraid for a moment, as if she were an apparition. Then his senses rallied, he climbed to his feet and brushed the dust from his cloak. ‘Basilissa, is something wrong?’

  ‘I cannot sleep,’ Anna said and felt guilty that he had been, in less salubrious circumstances, before her intrusion. ‘Kyr Sagundino, if it is not too much trouble, would you mind walking outside with me briefly. I think the cooler night air might help.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said and offered his arm. Then they stepped out through the tavern doors and into the street. There was a lamp burning along the road towards the river and so they slowly began to stroll in its direction.

  ‘Twelve days since we left Venice,’ the Ambassador said. ‘Tomorrow we shall reach the Danube at Belgrade. We are halfway there I should say. It is not an easy journey but the hardest is behind us.’

  From beyond the lamp’s halo, down by the ceaseless river, the notes of a folk song drifted up to them. The Ambassador nodded towards the sound. ‘That will be the stratioti. The landlady wanted quiet, so they took their carousing to the foreshore. Shall we see? Here, Basilissa, take my cloak.’ He draped his cape about her shoulders and escorted her over the uneven water-meadow towards the sound of music and the unsteady light of a bonfire.

  As they approached, the dark silhouettes of figures dancing in the glow of the flames made for an almost pagan scene. The town whores had spread themselves about the gathering, which appeared to be an even mix of stratioti, crew and strangers.

  Anna could not see the Captain among the circle of shirtless men, but the fire’s illumination revealed a number of the Black Sheep dancing there. A few faces began to look sheepish and embarrassed by her presence and Anna began to regret her intrusion. She was about to ask the Ambassador to walk her back to the tavern when someone cried out and began splashing madly through the water’s edge towards the indistinct shape of the boat.

  The party, sensing a spectacle, snatched up glowing branches from the fire and skipped after the commotion in a cloud of torches. Curiosity bore Anna in their wake and as she reached the black phantom of the boat, she could see that a fight had begun on its deck.

  The crowd spread itself into an audience along the jetty, adding their torches to the moonlight’s illumination of the two combatants. Both flailed with one arm, tentacle-like, trying to wrap it about his opponent’s neck, while their other fist swung wildly at whatever flesh it could find.

  Even in the gloom of midnight, with his head hidden by his opponent’s arm, Anna knew that one of the clashing bodies belonged to her young servant Nikolaos.

  The bigger man remained a mystery until the wrestlers shifted and she caught sight of Lueger’s face as he struggled to catch a breath. Then, knowing the physical disparity, it became clear to Anna that only one of the two men was putting his all into the contest. Nikolaos, to her great surprise, was plainly the aggressor. While Lueger, advantaged in height and strength and martial art, was restricting his own energies; content to let the fire of his opponent burn itself out.

  In the rush through the darkness to the boat, she had lost track of the Ambassador, but now he materialised beside her with a startled look in his eye. In a low, earnest voice he said, ‘Basilissa, it appears Nikolaos arrived in time before honour could be sullied.’

  ‘Honour? I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’ She still thought he was talking about the fight.

  The wrestling clench came abruptly unstuck and Lueger staggered back as Nikolaos crouched low and drove into him once more, sending them crashing dangerously against the far gunwale. Someone else gasped and flinched on the deck below and only then did Anna spot Eudokia in the after-castle doorway.

  ‘It seems Lueger abducted her to the boat with the intention of…’ the Ambassador’s voice trailed off.

  ‘Abducted?’ said Anna. ‘Not from the tavern, surely. Was she at the bonfire then?’

  The Ambassador lowered his eyes. ‘I had no idea, Basilissa.’

  The fight on the deck had lost its intensity as both men tired. Before long the grappling and punching became spasmodic and some of the company clambered onto the deck to drag the men apart. Of the Captain, there was no sign, but it was whispered among the company - between winks and grins - that the landlady of the tavern would go to great lengths to ensure a patron’s comfort.

  The spectacle over, the crowd melted like phantoms into the darkness. Unable to face the prospect of returning to the tavern, Anna elected to see out the night in the ship’s cabin, listening to the muffled sob of her niece.

  When Anna awoke the next morning, she found her niece sat at the end of their bunk with both arms curled around her knees. Hearing her aunt stir, Eudokia glanced back. Her eyes were red raw above pale, tear-streaked cheeks.

  Anna stood up from the mattress and reached for the Ambassador’s cloak. She had not returned it in her haste the prior night. ‘If you think a few tears will fool me, I must disabuse you,’ she said coldly. From the tail of her eye she saw Eudokia stiffen. ‘You knew exactly what Lueger intended. He didn’t drag you from the shore, you went willingly.’

  ‘The beer...’ Eudokia began to say and put a hand dramatically to her forehead.

  ‘Nonsense!’ snapped Anna. ‘The only thing you were drunk on was lust. You let all sense be drowned by it. If not for the grace of God and Nikolaos’s timely intervention you might have ruined yourself in this dingy cabin. Your aunt would die of shame if she knew.’

  ‘My aunt?’ Colour flooded into Eudokia’s cheeks. ‘Dear Helena, who banished me to this wretched journey? Who appointed you as my whoremonger? If it had been Captain Spandounes instead of Erasmus last night, you would have guarded the door and given me garlands this morning.’

  ‘Don’t equate your base passions with our duty to find a good match for our ward. You didn’t go off with Lueger to discuss a trousseau. And even had his intentions been more honourable, he is of entirely the wrong church.’

  ‘That never stopped you,’ Eudokia spat like a cat. ‘Don’t think me ignorant of our family’s dark secrets. Pious hypocrite! You just want him for yourself!’ Anna reeled a step back. She shook her head and began to protest, but Eudokia thundered on. ‘From our first meeting, Erasmus noticed me and not you. He hardly looked your way, even though you threw yourself at him the moment he came on board. I saw it. I saw your despair when he turned you away on the deck. You can’t bear the thought that unlike the Sienese girl in Bosnia, Erasmus prefers lamb to mutton!’

  The final word was barely out of Eudokia’s mouth when Anna’s palm cracked across her cheek.

  VI.

  Giurgiu, February 1462

  For a physician, Hekim Yakub was not very fond of the sight of blood - the more so when it was not where it belonged. It did not belong here, splattered across the walls of a small stone chamber like the work of an over-enthusiastic fresco painter.

  He stepped around the first body, careful to avoid mucking his calf-skin boots. The gore was seeping along the joins of the flagstones like the runnels of an abattoir, forcing him to play a childish game of don’t-step-on-the-cracks as he made his rounds and compiled notes silently in his head.

  ‘Patient one, male. Perhaps twenty years old. Dead. Cause of death, exsanguination from the neck.’

  The long years of studying medicine at La Sapienza were hardly required to draw that conclusion. The fatal blow had come close to a decapitation.

  He leaned over the next body, still sat in its chair. ‘Patient two, male. Older, perhaps thirty. Dead. Cause of death, exsanguination from the neck.’

  A pair of feet scuffed the floor impatiently by the chamber doorway. Yakub looked up and felt compelled to justify his detailed examination to the watching man in plate armour. ‘This one is interesting because of the body position.’

  ‘Never had a chance to move,’ the big knight replied. It was impossible to tell if Vuk Brankovic was interested o
r not.

  Hekim Yakub nodded. Patient two must have been victim one. ‘Significant, don’t you think?’ He stepped around the table to the third and final body, on which the decapitation stroke had succeeded.

  ‘This one was the second man killed,’ said Yakub. ‘The attacker’s blood was up after the first kill, so the stroke had all his power behind it. The third victim ran and by the time he caught him at the door, his arm strength had dropped just a fraction.’

  ‘Be swifter, can’t you? The Turks will be here soon,’ said Vuk Brankovic. Then, roused by the sound of footsteps in the corridor, he turned towards the chamber’s only exit.

  From just beyond the doorway arch a firm female voice said, ‘Leave the Turks to me. They will be no trouble.’ The big knight moved aside to allow Mara Brankovic, Ottoman Valide Hatun and Byzantine-Serb princess, to take in the bloody dregs of the guard room like a solemn, majestic deity. Hera come to check on Troy’s progress. ‘Take as much time for your examination as you need, Hekim Yakub.’

  Yakub nodded and bowed all at the same time. ‘As I was telling your nephew, Valide Mara Hatun, the body in the chair tells us that the attack began over there.’ He pointed back to the slumped corpse at the table. ‘Thus, the three guards not only opened the gate, but welcomed their murderer inside their quarters as they might do a comrade. It was only then that, completely unexpected, the killing took place. The bodies you passed in the corridor must have died later, perhaps as they answered the last victim’s cry.’

  ‘And it was all the work of the same man?’ said Vuk Brankovic. His helmet, horned like Asmodeus, was cradled under one arm.

  Yakub sucked the air through his teeth. ‘I can’t say definitively. It certainly appears to be the same weapon: a kilij sabre. I cannot tell in the case of the headless corpse, but the strokes that killed the others both look to have been backhanded and, unusually, right to left.’