Porphyry and Blood

by Peter Sandham

  Mara’s laugh was full of carefree amusement, as if they were old friends sharing stories after a long absence. ‘This is how Venice works! They will keep their hooks in you, one way or another, and in a year or two - once you have born Vlad a son - there will be an accident. During a hunt most probably, or poison. Either death is common enough among voivodes. Naturally you will be regent while the infant grows, but your reliance on Venetians to keep order will leave them in full control.’

  ‘I’m a Trojan horse,’ said Anna. She unconsciously placed a hand onto her empty womb.

  ‘And more. You are a distraction, Basilissa. Venice knows full-well that Cardinal Bessarion would prefer to have you declared Constantine’s rightful heir ahead of his brother Thomas. They will go further. They will publicly proclaim it and rid themselves of all the lagoon’s troublesome Greek refugees by sending them after you. How do you suppose Mehmed would react to such an influx on his northern border? War. Internecine bloody war tying Turk armies up on the Danube for a generation, far from where the battles might trouble Venice’s maritime interests.’ Mara leaned forward. ‘I want to prevent that. I want you to help me prevent that.’

  Anna nodded. ‘By not going on to Wallachia.’

  ‘Actually, no,’ said Mara. ‘I want you to go there. I even want you to consider marrying Vlad just as Venice intends, but then you and I will work together to ensure peace instead of war. Salvage over sacrifice.’

  With a groan of frustration, Anna collapsed prone on the bench. She said, ‘You are all far too labyrinthine for me.’ Overcome with it all, she sank into the pillows and closed her eyes.

  She heard Mara rise from the opposite bench and say in that soft, honeyed voice, ‘I’ve been a poor host, to bombard you like this after such a long journey. We deserve a little comfort, don’t you think? I have just the remedy.’

  When Anna’s eyes flicked open, she saw Mara held a key on a thin silver chain and was unlocking the door at the rear of the room. Beyond it, stairs circled downward. Anna followed and the growing dampness and warmth of the air allowed her to guess what lay below long before her foot came to rest on the mosaic tiled floor of the subterranean bathhouse.

  A service staircase ran away on the opposite side of the chamber, from where servants must have earlier come and gone to prepare the steaming warm pool of water and light the unwinking stars of the candles standing, tall as lances, in the alcoves around its edge.

  After three sleepless nights on the boat and the disappointing lack of a bathtub at the tavern, there was nothing Anna could have wished more to see.

  ‘This is my private sanctuary,’ said Mara. ‘There is nowhere better to relax and open one’s mind to possibilities.’ With a shrug of her shoulders she shed her gown and stepped naked into the pool.

  The boldness of the other woman took Anna by surprise. It made her realise she had lost the habit of public bathing during her years in Italy. She wondered which other home customs had been dulled by her exile.

  Mara turned on the top step of the pool, a harmony of curving lines from the full swell of her hips up to an enviable, rounded bosom. The candlelight gleamed on skin as smooth and pristine as if she were one of the ancient sculptures occasionally unearthed around Rome: a bathing Artemis surprised by Actaeon. But this Serbian Diana did not loose hounds upon her onlooker, she beckoned Anna to join her. ‘You’ve been riding hard and sleeping rough for how many days now? Come.’

  Anna hesitated a moment longer, but the wine in her blood and the temptation of the water were enough to numb any residual shyness.

  The round pool was large enough for her to sit with legs outstretched and just touch a toenail against the far side. The scent of frankincense hung over the water. Anna had smelt it on the other woman when she followed her down the staircase. Resting her head on the edge of the pool, Anna felt the water lapping soothingly at the base of her throat. ‘Oh, this feels wonderful,’ she said. ‘You will never get me out of here and on a horse again!’ She gazed at the fresco mural which covered the circular chamber wall, depicting a group of pleading women separating combatants in ancient armour. ‘You mentioned earlier a shared history between us.’

  ‘I did,’ said Mara topping up their winecups. ‘It must have been, goodness, eleven years already. Emperor Constantine needed a new bride and we were both considered among the candidates. More than considered. They outright proposed it to me with my Sultan fresh in his tomb. When I rejected their offer, I believe they turned to you. Saint Sava! How old can you have been?’

  ‘Fifteen,’ said Anna. ‘I thought all my prayers answered. Funny, I never knew I was second choice until now, much less to you of all people.’

  ‘A lucky escape for both of us, given what transpired.’

  ‘We can say that now,’ said Anna, ‘but after Constantine broke off my betrothal, I hated him so much.’

  A ripple of water smudged Anna’s cheek as Mara reached both cups from the flagstones. She passed one across. ‘Well let’s drink to life’s path: one so convoluted it can only be understood in reverse. I’m glad ours have crossed here.’

  The words flushed Anna with emotion. ‘So am I,’ she said almost weeping. The intensity of the moment - the water, the wine, the candle flames and perfume, the feeling of relief after all had seemed lost, and now the elation at her paragon’s approval – conspired to hallow the evening with a spell of great power.

  Mara took a jar from the poolside and moved through the water to Anna’s side. ‘Turn around.’ With a touch on each shoulder, she gently moved Anna to kneel in the water and fold her arms to cushion her head on the poolside. Then Mara poured a little oil from the jar into her hands. ‘Relax, close your eyes. Your whole body is stiff from the journey and there are many miles to go.’

  The oil smelled of lavender and when Mara kneaded and rubbed it into Anna’s neck muscle it was warm and soothing.

  ‘I see much of myself in you,’ Mara said. ‘Perhaps even a reflection of what might have been. You have been fortunate three times over. You could have married Constantine. You could have married that Venetian, as your father planned. Or, had you not escaped the cataclysm, you might have been added to Mehmed’s harem and we could be having this talk as Valide and concubine.’

  Anna shivered at that thought. ‘I would die before I let him touch me.’

  Mara’s hands had moved to the shoulder blades, where her fingers traced the outline of the scars which crossed Anna’s skin in raised pink tracks. She gave a tut. ‘Gennadios’s handiwork. It has healed well.’

  ‘It is their anniversary too,’ said Anna. ‘Although I doubt Patriarch Gennadios is letting off fireworks in memory.’

  ‘Another lucky escape,’ said Mara. ‘You see, God has a plan for you. It cannot have been his intention to preserve you from all those horrors merely for you to help refugee women learn how to sew lace.’

  Anna chuckled. ‘Do you know everything about me?’

  ‘I know you hide yourself away in that Venetian house. I know you call yourself Basilissa and put about the fiction of being Constantine’s widow. Why? There’s no profit in it. You’ve not used the title to squeeze a pension from the pope as Thomas Palaiologos did. Quite the reverse. I think you do it because you think it keeps Byzantium alive somehow. But don’t fool yourself. A lace school, a little commune and a church on a Veneto hill? Is that enough? Hardly. Set your sights higher.’

  ‘Wallachia,’ Anna said without enthusiasm.

  ‘Why not? We have people, we have skills. All that is needed is land. Wallachia has that.’

  ‘We?’ Anna turned her head and looked Mara dead in the eye. ‘You’re the Ottoman Valide Hatun.’ It was hard to reconcile the voice, the look, the behaviour, with the fact it came from the core of the Turkish court.

  Mara’s touch left her skin, but the large eyes did not flinch from Anna’s gaze. ‘I am the Valide Hatun. Yes, that is true. It is the cross to which I was nailed, and I bear it. But I make it what it is. It is not who I am. I
am Mara Brankovic, just as I always was. My mother was a Kantakouzene, my heritage is Byzantium, just as it is yours.’

  ‘And, as one of us, you think the answer is a new start in an alien land?’ Anna turned to the fresco mural towering above them. ‘Through so many hard straits, so many twists and turns, our course holding firm for Latium. Does fate hold out there a homeland, calm, at peace, where the gods decree the kingdom of Troy will rise again? Am I to play Aeneas? I’m afraid that I have no Dido to abandon in Venice.

  ’So I was told,’ Mara said. ‘Not one lover in all the time since coming to Venice. My informant’s conclusion was that you were ignorant of all sensuality.’ Anna felt her skin grow suddenly warm. Her eyes flicked across the fresco to the body of a warrior lying in the melee. Mara added, ‘It’s my firm belief that, outside a nunnery, such women are as rare as unicorns. So, I made further enquiries.’ A ladleful of water sluiced down Anna’s hair, making her shiver in shock. ‘John. That was his name wasn’t it? He died in the final assault, nine years ago, almost to this very hour.’

  Kneeling in the water, Anna turned from the fresco and gazed up at the other woman through the tears which were now blossoming, now streaming with such force. ‘Not the assault,’ she said and heard her voice crack. ‘He got me to the boat before he died.’ She bit the word off as she felt the grief surge up her throat like bile.

  Mara bent down and wrapped a comforting arm about her. The tears had become sobs, as uncontrolled as horses broken loose from their stable.

  Minutes later, when she had mastered herself once more, Anna managed to speak. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I could bring myself to marry this voivode.’

  Mara smiled with a warming reassurance. ‘He’s not unattractive.’

  ‘That hardly matters.’

  ‘It certainly helps. Anna, if I may, I suspect you have steadily avoided all risk of love or matrimony because you think it would diminish what you feel for that dead hero. You’ve become a prisoner to your grief, but I’m afraid such self-indulgence is a luxury that leaders cannot afford.’

  ‘I’m not a leader.’

  ‘Yes, you are. You even proclaimed yourself the basilissa. Good, I say. Far better that Byzantium’s legacy rests with you than Thomas Palaiologos. But the role entails responsibilities. When Constantine’s beloved died, he was granted the luxury of grief only until he became basileus. Then it became his duty as Emperor to remarry - hence our shared history. He may not have relished the prospect, but I dare say if either one of us had been brought to the altar then the man, by Jove’s command would have held fast his eyes and fought down the motion in his heart. You see, I can spout Virgil too.’

  Anna smiled. She couldn’t help but like Mara’s blend of intelligence and charm. ‘And you really believe Wallachia is a land of milk and honey?’

  ‘It’s a savage place and the voivode is the wildest of all Vlachs,’ Mara said, refilling their cups. ‘You are testing my honesty, as any good leader might. What have they told you about Vlad Dracula? Whatever it is, the truth is even more feral.’ Mara stretched an arm towards the fresco. ‘Just as Romulus was a wolfman. Do you recognise the scene?’

  ‘The intervention of the Sabine women,’ said Anna.

  ‘Yes. That’s the true moment of Rome’s birth – not that any man would admit to it. Civilisation always takes root in savage societies from within, and it is women -outsider, captive women usually – who seed it. Only the sacrifice of those Sabine women allowed a great civilisation to blossom from Romulus’s wolfpack on the Tiber. The same can happen to the Vlachs and the Turks, but only by the hand of Byzantine women like you and I working together. We bear the gift of a great civilisation. If you were to marry the voivode, then I would temper the Sultan. I can even have him acknowledge you as basilissa of all the Greeks and avoid the larger war Venice is seeking to spark.’

  Anna looked up at the fresco once again. ‘Perhaps you’re right and a real Empress would sacrifice herself to a loveless union for the good of her people. Certainly, there was a time I would have married anyone to earn the imperial title, regardless of feeling, but I’m not sure I could anymore.’

  ‘Well now, don’t write Vlad off without meeting him,’ said Mara in a tone that unexpectedly reminded Anna of her sister Helena. ‘He is a man about whom it is impossible not to have feelings. They may be good or bad, but they are always strong. He is untamed, as I say, but he is not without merits. You might even come to love him one day. Think back with John. It wasn’t love at first there either I’ll wager. At first it was lust, wasn’t it? Don’t be ashamed to admit it. They are always telling us to be ashamed of how we feel. That lust is a sin. Well perhaps it is, but sins can be shackled and put to good use.’

  Anna stretched her legs out and exhaled. She said, ‘I argued with Eudokia this morning. She had her head turned by one of our escort. Sinful lust, as you say. He had sold her a few poetic lies, but I could see clearly enough all he was after. It did make me wonder though. I was her age when I met John. Was it really any different? John said he loved me - and I believed him - but did he really? How can I ever be sure now?’

  ‘He died to save you, what higher love can there be?’ said Mara. She turned around and folded her arms over the edge of the pool. ‘Here, grab that oil. It would be poor manners not to return the favour.’

  ‘Oh, you’re quite right, I am sorry,’ said Anna. ‘You will have to forgive my clumsiness. I’m not experienced at applying it.’

  ‘And I am?’ Mara laughed. ‘Do you suppose I have a shift at the Blachernae bathhouse?’

  Once she had stopped giggling Anna took another swig of wine and began to knead at Mara’s neck. ‘I begin to question whether I actually loved John. Perhaps I was just a sheltered innocent swept up in a romantic dream. Perhaps I merely loved the idea of being in love and snatched up what I thought was my last chance for it. And if that’s the case, what a hollow thing to have spent nine years mourning!’

  She stroked an oily hand over Mara’s shoulder blades. They were smooth and unmarked by scars, she noted with envy. Mara’s breathing lengthened and slowed, which Anna took to be a positive indication for her ministrations. The scent of frankincense and lavender rose from the warmed flesh beneath her pressing fingers. She fell into a rhythm and moved down the spine, all the while continuing to chatter. As she talked, Anna was thinking it must all be a dream. It was so surreal, to be grooming Mara Brankovic and unburdening all her deepest thoughts as she did so. The giddiness she had felt earlier had now been replaced by something stronger, something closer to euphoria.

  Unconsciously her hands, slick with oil, moved further around than intended until her fingers brushed over soft swelling flesh. ‘I wish my breasts were like this. Mine are hardly there at all.’ The words seemed to spill out before Anna knew what she was saying. Hot with embarrassment, she moved her hands quickly back around towards Mara’s spine and prayed she had not actually spoken aloud. As she did so, Mara turned over with a slow, deliberate motion that brought Anna’s oil-slick palms sliding firmly back over her chest. Her own reached up and tenderly cupped the smaller breasts. ‘They’re perfect,’ Mara said softly. Her eyes swam with the light of the lamp hanging over the pool.

  Anna’s hands sprang away. She gave a slightly awkward giggle. ‘I think we’ve both perhaps had a little too much of that wine.’ She withdrew herself from the delicate touch of the long, elegant fingers which, for a skipped heartbeat, remained stretched almost imploringly towards her.

  ‘The wine.’ Mara and emptied her lungs with a sigh. ‘I have a confession to make about the wine. I mixed ground mandragora root into it.’

  ‘Mandrake!’ Anna’s voice, rising in shock, echoed around the roof-space. She reached the far side of the pool and, feeling a sudden rush of shame, sank down until the water lapped up to her neck.

  ‘It can be useful for unshackling the mind’s rigidness,’ said Mara.

  ‘That’s not why the brothels of Constantinople swore by it!’


  ‘Well it was in a way. New possibilities, unacknowledged desires? You need to consider them, now that you know Venice’s true plans in Wallachia. Forgive my bluntness, Anna, but John is dead. You should not go on acting as though you are too.’

  ‘And instead marry a wild stranger?’

  ‘Instead, embrace your desires. Rekindle your ambition. Become fully the Empress you always wanted to be.’

  ‘There was still an empire back then,’ said Anna.

  ‘There can be again. Why not? If Rome can be relocated to Constantinople, why can’t it relocate once more? A third Rome. What does geography matter, so long as the people, the religion, the culture endures? Thomas Palaiologos will never do it. Bessarion can see that. He has put his faith in you. So have I.’

  The drug was amplifying all her emotions, Anna realised. Old feelings came bubbling to the surface from forgotten depths. Things she had thought long gone were revealed by the mandrake as still a part of her.

  ‘God forgive me,’ said Anna. ‘I do still want it, but not for personal glory. Not for gain.’

  ‘Salvage, not sacrifice. Just as your father endeavoured.’ Mara came across the pool and sat beside her. ‘But if you play this game of politics as a woman who will not use her femininity as a weapon, then you will be fighting like a man whose sword arm is bound.’

  ‘I don’t...’ Anna began to say, but Mara placed a finger softly onto her lips.

  ‘You can bring great solace to your unhappy, displaced people. You may make of your life a chaste vigil for one Scottish ghost. But it is time to realise, Anna, that you cannot do both.’

  Then, without pause for reply, Mara rose like a sea goddess from the water and disappeared up the staircase, leaving behind a trail of wet footprints and a feeling in Anna that was closer to utter turmoil than the comfort she had been promised.

  When she awoke the next day, Anna’s head rang as though the tocsin bell of Chora was sounding inside her skull. She had remained in the pool, alone with her unshackled thoughts, until long after the water had grown cold. Then, towelled and re-dressed, she had returned up the staircase to the audience room and found it empty. Lead-footed with exhaustion, no longer sustained by the mandrake wine and vivid company, Anna had collapsed into the soft embrace of the bench cushions and sunk into the abyss of a deep and dreamless sleep.