Vuk Brankovic nodded. ‘A left-handed swordsman.’
‘Does he fight left-handed?’ asked the Valide Hatun.
‘He is proficient with both hands,’ said Yakub.
‘Ah, yes. I forget you have seen him in action,’ said the Valide Hatun. ‘And the men in the corridor?’
‘Let me show you,’ said Yakub, tiptoeing carefully across the floor to escort his mistress through the doorway. Outside, a narrow stone passage ran between the gatehouse to the left and the tower staircase to the right. ‘More of a variety here,’ said Yakub as they stepped over the five corpses on the short journey back to daylight. ‘There are some sabre wounds, but this – here - was done by a spear or the spike of a polearm, and you can see the crossbow bolt in that man.’
The Valide Hatun had elevated the hem of her gown to keep it from dragging in the bloody puddles, but otherwise appeared to be making no concessions to the carnage. Yakub had known grown men to empty their stomachs at far less-grizzly sights and smells. Not for the first time he was both awed and slightly frightened by the icy cool of Mara Brankovic.
‘So, the picture of the attack would appear to be clear in your mind,’ she said. ‘The guards took them for fellow Turks and let them through the outer gate. A small party, a quite banal and routine arrival I should think. Their leader talks his way into visiting the guardroom while his comrades loiter outside. Once he eliminated the trio of unfortunates there – and no doubt obtained the keys – they could let in the rest of their force who were hidden nearby and complete the massacre.’
‘Yes, Valide Mara Hatun, that would be my conclusion,’ said Yakub. They had reached the main ward where the rest of Vuk Brankovic’s men were waiting anxiously.
The fire in the upper stories of one tower continued to send out a plume of black smoke, like a lit warning beacon, up from the mid-river island towards the indifferent heavens. Thick-walled Giurgiu, the supposedly impenetrable Turk fortress on the Danube, was aflame and all her garrison dead.
‘Well done, Hekim,’ said the Valide Hatun. ‘And just in time – look - here come the Turks.’ She nodded towards the gatehouse as a column of horsemen thundered under the raised portcullis.
Hekim Yakub was glad just then for Vuk Brankovic’s elaborate tournament helmet, with its ornamental bull horn crest. As soon as they had come back outside, the Valide Hatun’s nephew had re-seated it on his head and so there was little risk of the Turks mistaking them for anything but the Brankovic household. That made them untouchable, since Mara Brankovic was the Sultan’s stepmother. Not that she appeared like it just then. Far from the harem, she had once more shed Ottoman dress for overtly Christian clothing. The head was still veiled, the cut and lines still modest, but the plain ferace had been swapped for a more elaborately embroidered dalmatic.
As the horsemen drew up, Yakub’s keen eye for fashion turned to the silk sleeveless coat the lead rider wore over his mail. Bright with expensive dye, it marked him out almost as clearly as Vuk Brankovic’s horns.
As the riders slipped down from their saddles, the Valide Hatun bustled across the ward and called out, ‘Good day to you, Radu Pasha, have you come to inspect his handiwork too?’
Tall and lean, with chiselled features that had earned him the epithet of ‘the handsome’ at court, the commander of the Greyhound Keepers was a familiar sight to Yakub. He wondered what Radu would make of the Sultan’s chief physician lingering at the Valide Hatun’s shoulder so far from the palace.
‘Valide Mara Hatun.’ Radu gave a curt bow and glanced up at the still burning tower. ‘Are you harmed? The whole southern riverbank is blackened halfway back to Nicopolis.’
‘It’s the same east of here too,’ said the Valide Hatun. ‘Not a living soul for fifty miles I should think.’
The cavalryman’s eyes narrowed. ‘Valide Mara Hatun, did you know this would happen?’
Impertinent as the question was, it had been on Yakub’s mind as well. In answer, a smile rippled across the woman’s lips. ‘Bless my soul! I didn’t take you for one to believe court gossip. No, I didn’t see the future reflected in a witch’s mirror. We were simply sailing to Smederevo. The burned countryside suggested it would be prudent to shelter at the nearest suitable fortress.’
Radu cast an eye towards one of the corpses in the yard. ‘Are they all dead?’
‘To a man,’ said Vuk Brankovic. ‘I dare say they put up a fight and there are also bodies belonging to the raiders hereabouts, but it will take some sorting out – they came under Hamza Bey’s banner.’
Radu’s eyes grew as wide as banquet salvers. ‘Hamza Bey!’
‘The standard has been planted into the chest of the garrison commander on the upper floor of the main tower,’ said the Valide Hatun. ‘Hekim Yakub has carried out a brief examination and believes your brother talked his way past the gate, slaughtered the guards there and let in the rest of his men to complete matters.’
‘Vlad,’ Radu muttered under his breath. ‘So, Hamza Bey failed?’
‘As I warned he would,’ the Valide Hatun replied. ‘I think we can safely say that now it’s no longer a question of whether Hamza and his men are dead, but how well they died; or how badly. Your brother smelled out their ambush and wasted little time before retaliating.’
Radu fell silent for a moment. The colour had drained away from those delicate cheekbones. ‘Hamza Bey,’ Radu said again. ‘Hamza Bey had twenty thousand with him!’
‘And Giurgiu fortress was considered impregnable.’ The Valide Hatun wafted a hand towards the smoking tower. ‘Hubris calls forth nemesis. I may not be a sorceress, Radu Pasha, but enlightened by the past, I am sometimes able to anticipate future consequence. There is only one way the Sultan will react to this, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘He will cancel this summer’s invasion of Italy and instead unleash the army on Wallachia,’ said Radu.
The Valide Hatun nodded. ‘Not only that, but now Vlad has thrown down this challenge, Mehmed will not be content with the Grand Vizier leading that army. He will want to personally give answer to this affront.’ She shook her head. ‘That would be rash. Hubris calling forth once more.’
‘His pride will allow nothing less,’ said Radu. ‘If you think I can talk him out of it…’
The Valide Hatun raised a hand and cut him short. ‘I know my son too well to think anyone could.’
Ever-observant, Hekim Yakub had on previous occasions diagnosed in his mistress a strain of possessive jealousy with regard to the Sultan. She had not birthed him, having wed his father when Mehmed was a child of three, but she had been the closest of the harem women to him throughout his childhood. Yakub had even heard a court rumour that Mara Brankovic was the one who arranged for the death of Mehmed’s elder brother, thus opening his pathway to the throne. You looked at her, prim and pristine whether dressed as Turk or Serb, and thought such callousness impossible; but then if, like Yakub, you knew the steel in her soul, the mind as intricate and calculating as an astrolabe, the will that had seen her survive almost thirty years in the seraglio, then you also knew that, when it came to Mara Brankovic, anything was possible.
‘My husband Murad was the second Sultan of that name,’ she said. ‘Do you know how the first one died?’
Radu shook his head.
‘Kosovo.’ The word tripped off her lips like an incantation.
‘Kosovo?’ Radu repeated.
‘My homeland,’ she said. ‘Where House Brankovic has its roots and where that first Sultan Murad clashed with a Serb army last century. Hubris called forth nemesis that day. The Turks won the battle, but while they celebrated afterwards, a single Serb assassin slew the Sultan in his tent - that’s all it takes, no matter how large an army you march with.’
‘And you fear history might repeat if Mehmed leads the campaign?’ said Radu Pasha. ‘But Valide Mara Hatun, he is Fatih; he is the conqueror. He has led campaigns before.’
‘Not against Vlad,’ she said. ‘David Komnenos, Thomas Palaiologo
s, Stjepan Tomasevic: cowards and fools, the lot. Of all people, you should understand the difference. Our Sultan has grown overconfident through nine years of easy victories. He has forgotten how close to failure he came at Constantinople.’
‘Please, Valide Mara Hatun…’ Radu began to object.
‘It’s true, Radu Pasha. I might not have been at the siege, but I know full well what none dare say: Mehmed was rash to attack the city when he did. He bit off more than he could chew and but for the grace of God he would have choked on it. Because that final attack breached the walls and won him the city, he has forgotten how close to ruin he came. He has grown too confident. He overestimates his strength and underestimates that of others. The proposed invasion of southern Italy is foolish overreach. If Vlad’s thrown-down gauntlet makes Mehmed attack Wallachia instead, we should be thankful. But we should also be on our guard to ensure nemesis is not called forth again.’ She touched Radu lightly on the arm. ‘I’m merely a woman. I will be left behind when the army marches out to avenge Giurgiu, so I must depend on others who love our Sultan - men like yourself - to guard him against hubris.’
It was extraordinary, Hekim Yakub thought as he, a Jew from Italy, watched a Vlach-born, Moslem janissary escort the Christian Serb princess out through the gates. Never could there have been an empire like it. For despite the varying lands of their birth and different creeds, all three of them were Ottoman.
Indeed, that was the only fact about them which really mattered. Yes, the other two were of noble birth, but Yakub was not and yet he was chief physician to the Sultan. Nor was he alone in achieving such a climb: the admiral of the fleet had been born an Albanian peasant, the Sultan’s spiritual advisor was a low-born Kurd, his secretary a Greek of no name. Opportunity in the empire sprang from talent, not bloodline. Where else was that true? Certainly not in Gaeta or any Christian kingdom to the west.
For that reason, they were destined to sweep aside the corrupt, old world. Byzantium had only been the beginning, and Yakub was proud to be a part of it. Proud to serve a Sultan who, from the moment of his accession to the throne, had rejected the nepotism of Turk nobles like Halil Candarli and filled the imperial divan’s membership based solely on talent.
He was equally proud to serve the Valide Hatun, whom he saw as the empire’s moral and intellectual rudder. She ensured the great project remained steadily on course. For it had been Mara Brankovic, as much as anyone, who had groomed Mehmed to rule, and in recent months Yakub had noted the attention the Valide Hatun was paying to the upbringing of young Şehzade Mustafa. It was clear she was already making contingencies to ensure the next Sultan saw the empire the same way that she and the present one did.
Yet as much as Yakub felt a great admiration and affection towards the Valide Hatun, it was tempered by a discomforting feeling that he could never fully understand her. It was a whimsy of his that one day he might perform a series of autopsies upon individuals whose temperament was consistent and well known. Then, draining and measuring their various humors, he might quantify the differing levels of say, black bile in a melancholy man as compared to one of a more choleric disposition. Occasionally he imagined the Valide Hatun laid out on that autopsy table and wondered what he would discover if he drained her. It would come as little shock to find a completely different set of fluids circulated inside.
9.
Belgrade, May 1462
The boat master had pushed off from the jetty with the dawn, leaving the scene of the prior night’s bacchanalia behind green shoulders of forest. The far shore was a palisade of trees winking through the morning haze. Willows drooped their boughs over backwaters crowded with flag-leaves. Hoops of tight-laced waterlilies turned slowly round and round. The only life to be seen on the river were the breakfasting storks, marching in fitful gaits about the shallows or poised cunningly on one leg among the reeds.
Watching them from the deck, Anna continued to fulminate about Eudokia. She found it impossible not to think back to when she had been that age. At seventeen Anna had never journeyed beyond the walls of Constantinople. Her restless mind had been forced to content itself on second-hand tales of exotic places recounted by her tutor Plethon. The wise old man had a magic-sack-memory from which he could pluck fable after fable: his time as a student in Ottoman Edirne; his travels to Cyprus and Jerusalem; the infamous embassy to Florence and Ferrara and a later exile near the ruins of ancient Sparta. His tales made her yearn to escape the confines of her city and criss-cross the sea, inspecting the dusty footprints of antiquity. Plethon inspired in her dreams of philosophical debates at Italian studia; poetry declaimed in Aegean olive groves; music and dancing and laughter among Turkish fountain courts. She had become besotted with a world she could only imagine and strained like a falcon at its jesses, desperate to take wing.
Then abruptly her world changed forever. The walls were broken, the jesses severed by Turk scimitars, and she had flown, bewildered, into a new life. The imaginary world had become all too real and her old one now existed only in memory.
Memory.
Memory was opium. It dulled the pain of loss, but it could grow into an addiction and leave a soul detached from the real world. For nine years she had wallowed in it, half-drowned in it, shut away in her safe Venetian shell.
Could she honestly claim that calling herself the basilissa had stemmed from something less selfish than the healing of a painful, personal memory? She had been prepared for the role almost from birth by her father. It had been promised her and then it had been cruelly snatched away. In Venice, claiming it had felt right, but out here it began to feel petty. She thought of her own words to Erasmus Lueger: ‘You can live with the chaos around us or you can put those gifts towards ending it. I pray you give your life purpose.’ What was her own purpose? A lace school? A small commune which might help a handful of families? Sporadic employment for an abject gondolier? She heard the caustic words Sphrantzes had used in the aftermath of the bear attack. That had stung, and still did, because she could not deny their truth.
Like the disputed imperial title, the next stop on their journey had personal meaning for Anna, although it would be her first sight of Belgrade. Among Plethon’s many tales, she had always enjoyed those of the magical-sounding white fortress; of Stefan Lazarevic the philosopher king who had preceded Vlad Dracula, and all others, to be the first member of the Order of the Dragon; of Durad Brankovic who had married a Byzantine princess and become the Serb ruler when Stefan and his own Genoese wife died childless.
Above all, Anna had been captivated by the stories of Durad Brankovic’s eldest daughter, Mara. Clever, cunning and beautiful, Mara was everything a young Anna had aspired to be. Mara had not been content to accept her lot as a daughter, nor as a Sultan’s lesser wife. She had employed her wit and guile and charm to make men of all manner of rank and religion dance to her tune. In recent years Anna had not given much thought to Mara Brankovic, but a decade before, while chaffing against the plans being made for her own unwanted marriage, Mara had been Anna’s paragon.
The opiate memories prickled like gooseflesh as the towers of Belgrade sat lambent in the light before Anna. She was here, at the city of her pseudo-patron saint, and strangely enough she was accompanied by Paolo Barbo; the wretch her father had sought to marry her to. The cause of all that girlish angst, before the Turks came and showed her what suffering was really all about.
Anna watched the increasing traffic on the water, scanned the forested banks, and imagined how they looked when the Turks had come here too. Come in their tens of thousands, dragging hundreds of cannons in their wake and filling the Danube with their fleet. She looked longingly at the shining white stone of the approaching upper citadel, the only walls in the world which had ever managed to defy Sultan Mehmed and his army. For ten days the governor of Belgrade, Michael Szilágyi, had held them off. Long enough for the relieving fleet of Hungary’s white knight, Janos Hunyadi, to arrive and break the naval blockade.
There had also
been aid from the Vatican. An armed peasant multitude scurrying like rats behind their piper: the famous Jew-burning, crusade-preaching warrior friar, Giovanni da Capistrano. He had barked his old lungs horse through Bavaria, Austria and Hungary to herd them here. ‘Ten days,’ Anna muttered to the river. ‘We lasted five times as long and still no fleet or friar came to our aid.’
The quays of the great river port bustled with activity as the boat glided into its allotted berth. The gangway clattered down, but it was not the expected harbourmaster seeking his dues who surged up it. Instead, the white puffballs of turbans sprouted across the deck, led by a hulking knight in black armour. His face was hidden beneath a great helm from which two oxen horns twisted skyward like Baphomet.
The Captain’s men came flooding from the bow with swords drawn, but the black knight met them with an open palm and said calmly, ‘No need for those my friends. Someone would like a word, that’s all.’
His other hand pointed to the river, where a high-flanked carrack came drawing alongside with a buffet. Staggering, the Black Sheep all looked up and saw the rail of the boat pinning their own to the quay was thick with more oiled moustaches and turbaned hats. Their posture left little doubt that, at a word, they could slaughter every man and woman aboard.
‘You are alarmed, I realise, by the sight of these Turks,’ the knight said. ‘You needn’t be. They are tame. They do as I command and if you follow their example, you shall have nothing to fear. Now, kindly put down your weapons and gather on the foredeck. My men will handle the boat and take us for a short voyage.’
The Captain held his ground in front of the ladies.
‘Put down your swords, Captain,’ Anna said gently.
‘It’s our duty, Basilissa,’ he said. ‘We were hired to defend you with our lives.’
Porphyry and Blood Page 14