Now, as the bright band of daylight leaked under the hallway door and she heard the scuffle of footsteps moving busily beyond it, the clouded memory of the previous night coalesced into moments of arresting clarity. She sat upright and immediately regretted the sudden movement.
Gingerly getting to her feet, Anna moved to the back of the room and the door beyond which she had descended with Mara; beyond which so much had been stripped back, examined and revealed as unsettling, unexpected truth. She considered testing the door to see if there really were steps and a bathhouse behind it.
She was about to try when the other door opened. ‘Ah, you are awake at last,’ said Eudokia. ‘The Captain was beginning to wonder if we would lose an entire day.’
‘What hour is it?’ Anna said and heard her voice come in a dry croak.
‘Past noon. I’m still not certain what is going on, but it appears they are letting us go. They said you would have all the answers.’
‘Only God and Mara Brankovic have all the answers,’ Anna replied.
In the hallway, she paused before the large wooden crucifix with its tortured figure of Christ. Sacrifice. They had spoken of salvage, but Byzantium would not have existed without sacrifice. It seemed it could not be reborn without it either. She wondered if she had it in her to bear that particular burden.
There was still no sign of Mara as they left the manor and moved out across the moat bridge to the outer ward of the fortress but looking down from the gate to the river quay, the figure dressed in apricot was unmissable beside the hulking knight.
Her black hair streaming in the stiff breeze off the water, the Valide Hatun waited amid a ring of whiskered Turks. Still moored in place beyond them lay the boat which had carried the party from Gradec. Beside it was a barge aboard which several horses were being carefully led.
As Anna and Eudokia reached the quayside, the Captain came across to meet them. ‘Basilissa, they are giving us horses and putting us across to the northern riverbank. I don’t like this.’
‘The Turks hold the whole river south of here,’ said Anna. ‘Vlad Dracula has retreated into the mountains. If we are to reach him, we shall need to change our route.’
‘Can we believe them?’ Sphrantzes said, keeping his voice low.
‘We’ve little choice as far as I can tell,’ said Anna. ‘What did they say is to happen to our boat?’
‘It is to remain here with the crew,’ said the Captain.
Mara and her entourage approached them. ‘The horses are loaded. We should not keep them confined like that for long.’
‘Thank you, Kyria Brankovic,’ Anna said stiffly as the rest of her party moved to board the barge. ‘You have been a most gracious host.’
The Valide Hatun flung a rebounding glance against the back of the Venetian ambassador and said, ‘I trust you found the bath last night reinvigorating, and perhaps the road ahead is now clearer, even if it is different from the one you had in mind.’
‘You have given me a lot to ponder,’ said Anna. She placed a foot onto the gangway and felt the gentle tug of Mara’s hand on her elbow.
Looking down, she saw a small silver casket in the Valide Hatun’s other hand. ‘If you feel your mind in need of help in that pondering. A single spoonful, mixed with wine.’ She pressed the casket into Anna’s palm and closed her fingers around it.
As the barge moved slowly across the river, Anna stood at the stern rail, looking back at the dark outline of the fortress and the apricot figure who remained equally still, as if returning her gaze and thinking twin thoughts.
V.
Constantinople, December 1461
In the time since Byzantium’s fall many things had changed in Constantinople, but one constant was the neighbourhood of neat houses on the slopes below Blachernae palace. They had been predominantly Jewish in the days of Emperors and were still Jewish in these days of the Sultan. Hakim Yakub had not known it in the time before the fall, but Moses Capsali, his rabbi, had and there was no doubt in that eminent mind: life in the district had never been better.
During the first months after the conquest, when Sultan Mehmed had set about organising the disparate population of his newly claimed empire, he had created the office of the Hakham Bashi, to oversee the Jews in the same manner the Patriarch oversaw the Greeks. The choice of Moses Capsali for that office had been an easy one. Intelligent and respected by both Jews and gentiles, the Sultan had soon seen merit in adding his counsel to the diwan. Capsali’s seat there was beside the mufti, which did him more honour than that given the Greek Patriarch. With Hekim Yakub also a member of the diwan, there were two Jews sitting on the empire’s highest council: a feat, he was sure, never known in all the thousand years these streets had been Roman.
‘And thank you once again, Hekim Yakub,’ Capsali said as he laid another log carefully into the glowing fireplace. ‘Your generosity was instrumental in making the new synagogue a reality.’
‘I have been fortunate,’ said Yakub. ‘It is only right to share that fortune with my brethren.’ They had just breakfasted together, as they often did before the diwan met. Capsali did not otherwise venture to the palace very often and Yakub spent almost all his time there, so such preparatory meetings were useful to ensure they presented a united front.
Capsali stood up and wiped his hands on the hem of his somber black robe. ‘And we all thank you for it. You’ve given a lot to us these past years. Perhaps I might do something for you in return.’
‘Yes?’
‘I realise, Hekim Yakub, that your court duties make it hard to spend much time in the district, and you have no family here to work on your behalf.’
‘Work on my behalf? Work on what?’
‘Finding a suitable wife of course,’ said Capsali.
‘Ah.’
‘You are past thirty, Yakub. It’s time you married and added sons to our tribe.’
‘Well now, Moses, I’m really not sure…’
‘Yakub, listen. You may not be aware of it, but you are a source of great pride in this part of the city. People see me in my fine robes attending the diwan and think nothing of it – after all, some Jew’s got to be Hakham Bashi. But they know you’re there purely on merit. The man who the Sultan depends upon for his life! Our people look up to you for that.’
‘It’s humbling to hear.’
‘And it comes with responsibilities.’
‘I know.’
‘Well, do you now? Listen, Yakub, I’ve nothing against the frequenting of a hammam per se, but there are certain activities, certain gentile proclivities, associated with those bathhouses which are -to put it bluntly – a to’evah. If you understand what I am trying to say.’
‘No, I really don’t follow you.’
Capsali wrung his small hands and tried again. ‘Yakub, ah, now, well, how to put this. There are some Moslems who will tell you that Lot’s people were destroyed because they didn’t show hospitality to strangers and not for their…’ He struggled for a moment to find another way of saying it, failed, and almost spat the words out, ‘fornication. I understand the bathhouse is a place some of these men go to… I’m not saying you’ve done anything wrong, you understand, it’s simply a question of how things might appear.’
If there was one art Yakub had learned over the years from the Valide Hatun, it was the ability to maintain a face of total composure and play the innocent. ‘How might things appear, Moses? I enjoy being clean.’
‘Yes. Worthy, most worthy,’ Capsali stammered. ‘And if you were married, there would be no grounds for concern, but the longer you remain without a good Jewish wife, the more chance exists for jealous tongues to begin wagging.’
Yakub rose from his chair. ‘It’s getting towards the time we should be heading to the diwan.’
‘I’m sorry if I have upset you,’ said Capsali. ‘I’m just trying to carry out my rabbinical duty.’
‘You are Maimonides reborn,’ said Yakub with a cold smile.
‘Forgive
me. I went too far bringing up the hammam. It was clumsy of me. I meant no ill. Look, let me show you something wonderful to compensate. These letters, here, they are from a friend of mine in Spain. A great scholar upon whose lips no untruth is ever found. He has been studying the stars for a clue that might, as he puts it, "reveal the day of redemption to the eyes of the sons of Judah." He has quite a style, don’t you think?’
Yakub ran his gaze over the letter, skimming the personal and alighting on a passage which spoke of something called the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. ‘Since the effect of the great conjunction is to transfer the nation or subject that receives its influence from one extreme to the other, so that a nation that is at the extreme of degradation, abasement and enslaved in a foreign land will be carried by the conjunction to the opposite extreme of high stature.’
Yakub looked up. ‘I’m not sure I understand. Astrology was never my strong point.’
‘Well, it is easier with the benefit of the preceding letters,’ Capsali admitted. ‘The conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces was the astral configuration upon the birth of Moses our Teacher. It inaugurated the redemption of our ancestors from Egypt. The same conjunction will take place again in two years’ time. My friend declares it to be the messianic sign we have waited for. By the end of the century we will see the arrival of the Messiah and our people’s deliverance.’
‘B’ezrat hashem,’ said Yakub. ‘Now we had best leave for the palace, or we shall miss the diwan entirely.’
If the later reverse at Belgrade had sullied the prestige gained from conquering Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed had restored it fully that prior summer by ending another empire of Greeks. Without so much as a fight, the Pontic jewel of Trebizond was tumbled into his pocket, and effulgent with gratitude towards Mahmud Angelovic - his Grand Vizier who had conspired the larceny - the Sultan departed the capital to winter at Edirne.
The target for next year’s campaign had already been chosen. With the petty states of Italy at each other’s throats for the crown of Naples, the ensuing chaos left a land ripe for the taking. Already all the empire’s beys and pashas had been put on notice that the force they were expected to assemble come spring must be larger than any seen since the great assault on Byzantium. They would land at the heel of the boot and devour Italy, city state by city state, until Mehmed had made good on his promise to convert St Peter’s into a stable yard. His departing instructions to the Grand Vizier on how the intervening winter should be spent had been four curt and clear words: ‘Deal with the Vlach.’
There were a few flakes of sleet in the wind as Hekim Yakub and Moses Capsali came through the outer courtyard of the palace and met two others on their way to the diwan chamber. The first of these was Radu Pasha, commander of the Greyhound Keepers, who had done his military reputation no harm during the prior campaign for Trebizond. The man walking beside him was Greek born, but like many in the administration, Thomas Katabolenos had converted to Islam and seen his career prosper for it. The Sultan’s imperial secretary, he held the rank of bey and went by the name of Yunus. ‘Elephants?’ he was saying to Radu as Yakub came into earshot. ‘No, I’ve seen no order for the procurement of war elephants. Why would the janissary have need of those?’
‘Hannibal had them,’ Radu said with a shrug. ‘When he invaded Italy, Hannibal took war elephants over the Alps.’
‘So?’
Radu grinned. ‘The whole corps is wondering where next summer’s campaign will focus. If it really is to be in Italy, well, I can imagine our Sultan would prefer nothing more than to outdo Hannibal.’
That was an aspect of Mehmed which few outside his inner circle appreciated: his personal contest was not only with the current rulers of the world, but the past ones too. It was an insight Yakub had received from the Valide Hatun. Ever since childhood, Mehmed had read all he could on leaders like Darius, Saladin and Cesar. He would not be content until he had matched and surpassed them all.
‘No elephants,’ said Yunus as they arrived at Mahmud Angelovic’s door. ‘And perhaps no Italy. That invasion plan has had a set-back. An Italian renegade was to send us a map of the coast, but the artist bringing it was intercepted by the Venetians at Crete.’
Inside the chamber, the Grand Vizier, spry, groomed, balding with age and intrigue, wafted a hand at the carpets to indicate where the ministers should sit and join familiar faces already assembled before him: the junior viziers, the two kadiaskers of the judiciary, the court calligrapher.
Less expected at this meeting of the imperial diwan was George Amiroutzes, who had been chief minister of Trebizond’s recently deposed Emperor. Amiroutzes had been instrumental in convincing Emperor David to surrender that summer. Only later did anyone in the Ottoman court learn of his cousinly blood ties to the Grand Vizier.
Least expected was the only woman in the room. There was no protocol for the Valide Hatun to attend the inner council of the empire, but Mara Brankovic cared very little for protocol and with the Sultan absent, no one, not even Mahmud Angelovic, was prepared to try and oust her. Sheathed in black, she took the place reserved for the Greek Patriarch, whom it appeared was too frail to attend.
‘Your brother has become a problem, Radu Pasha,’ said the Grand Vizier. ‘A problem we can no longer ignore.’
‘He’s not paid the jizya tax these past few years.’
‘It has gone beyond that now,’ said Mahmud Angelovic. ‘Last year he sent the tax collectors away with an earful of lies about an empty treasury. This year when they came before him, he asked why they had not removed their hats. They said it was not their custom. So, telling them he wished to strengthen them in this custom, he had them seized and three strong nails driven through the turbans into their skulls. He spared their servants and sent them home so we would learn of this. The Sultan has made it clear that this insult must not be permitted to go unanswered.’
‘Perhaps I should visit Targoviste and speak with him,’ said Radu.
‘No. The matter is in hand. Out of courtesy I thought we should share it with you beforehand.’ He nodded towards the imperial secretary. ‘It has been arranged that Yunus Bey will travel to Wallachia for talks. Your brother has agreed to meet him at the Danube crossing of Giurgiu and escort him back to his capital.’
‘With respect, I know him better than anyone. If there is to be an embassy...’
The crisp female voice from the Patriarch’s seat cut Radu off. ‘It’s not an embassy, Radu, it’s an ambush. And it is a very bad idea indeed.’
Radu’s was not the only head that whipped around towards the Valide Hatun. Her eyes, candid and lustrous, held his own for a moment before they lifted inquiringly over his head to the bench where, behind an inscrutable blank stare, the Grand Vizier sat quietly seething.
Radu turned back towards Mahmud Angelovic, but it was the Grand Vizier’s cousin, Amiroutzes, who spoke next. ‘It is my plan, Valide Mara Hatun. So please forgive my wounded self-esteem for asking why you feel it deficient.’
She lifted a finger. ‘The plan, if I have this correct, kyr Amiroutzes, is for Hamza Bey to cross the Danube with an armed contingent the night before and lie in wait for Vlad Dracula. Then, as he meets Katabolenos, they will appear and demand the voivode submit to journeying here to face justice or else die there in the river mud.’
Radu visibly stiffened with horror.
‘You are correct, Valide Mara Hatun,’ said Amiroutzes. ‘Now, again, I ask why you feel it deficient.’
‘Three reasons. Firstly, unlike your Emperor of Trebizond, Vlad Dracula is not a fool or a coward. If you corner him, he will fight.’
‘Hamza Bey will have the men to deal with that eventuality,’ said Amiroutzes.
‘Secondly, you wish to try and ambush him on his own terrain. He will see the trap long before it is sprung. Thirdly - and Radu Pasha can confirm this point - he will not fall for this ruse because it is the exact trick with which we once arrested his father. The trap which began his - and Radu�
��s – childhood captivity among us.’
The chamber fell into a dreadful silence. Finally, desperate to break the quiet, Radu said, ‘The Valide Hatun is correct. It sounds very similar to my father’s arrest.’
‘We did not invite you to debate the matter,’ the Grand Vizier growled. His eyes in their deep sockets were fixed upon Radu, but the message seemed directed at another. Amiroutzes muttered, ‘We did not invite her at all.’
‘I do not wish to speak out of turn,’ said Radu, ‘but I feel the Valide Hatun is correct in her concerns. My brother is suspicious by nature. Why not send me in place of Yunus? Vlad is more likely to heed reason from my lips.’
‘They don’t trust you, Radu,’ said the Valide Hatun. ‘They don’t trust that drunk pirate Hamza Bey either - for which I can’t blame them. They must have one of their own in charge of it. So Katabolenos shall go.’ Once again, she used Yunus Bey’s discarded, Christian, name to nettle him for his conversion.
Red to the hairline, Amiroutzes turned to his cousin. ‘I think we’ve heard enough from this woman.’
‘Then close your ears to my advice,’ said the Valide Hatun. She rose and crossed to the diwan chamber door. ‘I have no wish to compel sense upon anyone.’
Risking the Grand Vizier’s wrath, Radu asked, ‘What alternative would you suggest, Valide Mara Hatun?’
She paused in the doorway and pretended to give the matter thought. ‘Something indirect. Something he could not comprehend as originating here. And I would use a woman. It is his weakness.’
She was gone without further elaboration.
Porphyry and Blood Page 17