Porphyry and Blood

by Peter Sandham

The more she stewed on it, the more certain she became that Ambassador Sagundino had been Mara Brankovic’s eyes in Venice all along.

  As Anna looked down at the oblong stone coffin, a morbid curiosity sprang within her to push open the lid and see herself in death. Placing both palms against the rim she shoved at one corner and, almost to her surprise, found the lid pivot very slightly, opening a small gap with a puff of dust.

  She plucked one of the candles from the lid and peered inside, but the face caught in the glow was not her own. Not any longer. It had been two years since this woman had thrown herself from the castle wall. An empty-socketed skull stared back up at Anna. The only hint of a likeness belonged to the hanks of long hair pillowing the head in the base of the coffin.

  The candle’s light twinkled on something lying among the auburn strands. The long needle point of a hairpin capped by an elaborate jewelled butterfly. A favourite trinket perhaps, or the token of a loving husband, redolent of memories, left to accompany his lady in her endless rest.

  The noise of the door hinges at her back made Anna jump. Mircea, she thought, or perhaps even the voivode! What would they think of her!

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Anna said as she turned. ‘I was just...’

  The figure remained on the steps and quietly closed the door. It was not Mircea. It was not Dracula. It was not anyone with just cause to be there.

  ‘Alone at last,’ said Paolo Barbo.

  The hovering candlelight washed a chiaroscuro of crescents and flickering lines along jaw and brow and threw the rest of him into darkness. The look in his eye, as he came with slow deliberation down the steps, was the same murderous glare she had seen across the campfire.

  There was no other exit from the crypt. She was cornered, and they both knew that in this sunken stone chamber of an empty castle, no one would hear her scream.

  III.

  Constantinople, December 1456

  It had been a long cold wait for Hekim Yakub in the gathering December gloom outside the church of Pammakaristos. He had listened, along with the rest of the Valide Hatun’s patient cavalcade, to the plaintive voice of the congregation inside paying honour to Saint Nicholas on this his feast day. The light almost all gone, a ghostly cannon boomed unseen across the heavens, announcing the long-anticipated arrival of maghrib and an end to the long day’s fast. The lamps were being hoisted in great glowing ribbons between the city’s minarets and in the open space which had once been a hippodrome, people would be gathering to share an iftar feast.

  After the fierce gun clap, the delicate call of the muezzin began, mingling harmoniously with the Christian singers in Pammakaristos, just as Ramadan and Advent were that year conjoined. There was no jarring confusion to Yakub’s ear, only the seamless merger of faith. The doctor smiled to himself. What an empire we are building here!

  At last the congregation began to disgorge into the night and Yakub spotted a familiar figure among the Christians. Three years prior, as the broken walls of Constantinople still smoked from their bombardment, Venice had dispatched an embassy here to negotiate a first treaty with the new ruler of the Bosporus. The Venetian signatory, Bartolomeo Marcello, had returned west with the ink still wet on the parchment but his deputy, Niccolo Sagundino, had remained on-and-off in Constantinople ever since.

  Famously, Sagundino was writing a history of the Turks under the commission of a virulently anti-Turk faction back in Rome. With that audience in mind, no invented tale of barbarity was too lurid, no fictitious folk rite too bizarre for the Ambassador’s pen. They would laugh together as they imagined the horror of the Vatican cardinals reading the next draft. They would spend long, generous dinners at the imperial court, inventing new scandals for him to include.

  Yakub stepped away from the phalanx of waiting turbans and touched the Venetian lightly on the arm as he came hurrying past. ‘Messer Sagundino!’

  There was a startled look in the Ambassador’s eye. ‘Oh! Hekim Jacopo. You gave me a shock.’

  ‘I do apologise, Messer.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve no need to. My wits were already on edge.’ Sagundino mopped his brow. He gave a nervous laugh and added, ‘Tell me, what store do you place in the existence of eidola?’

  ‘No store at all, since I have no idea what such a thing might be.’ Yakub kept half an eye on the continuing flow of traffic from the church. He was there to meet the Valide Hatun and although he was confident that after a prolonged absence from the capital, her lecturing of the Patriarch would keep her there until after the last worshiper had filed out, it would not do to be inattentive.

  ‘The ancients believed two living souls might sometimes have matching appearances - one an eidolon, a copy, of the other,’ the Ambassador explained.

  ‘I still don’t follow.’

  ‘Spirit doubles,’ said Ambassador Sagundino with mounting exasperation. ‘Identical twins from entirely different parents.’

  ‘I see. Well then, as a medical man, I would put no store in the idea at all,’ said Yakub.

  ‘Neither did I until just now, but then I saw a woman I knew at the service. She was born here in Constantinople but since the conquest she has been in exile. I thought she must have returned, so I went to greet her only to discover that she was not my acquaintance at all but a complete stranger.’

  Yakub shrugged. ‘The mind and eye play tricks. You are tired perhaps?’

  ‘No, this was more than a passing resemblance. It was my Venetian friend. Even up close I would have sworn to the fact. Yet when I spoke to her, she did not know me. An eidolon! Look, there she is now.’ Sagundino pointed to a woman coming out from the church doorway. She was on a male arm that Yakub knew well enough.

  ‘Now I see how your eye was so easily drawn. A beauty; but that is certainly not your friend from Venice,’ he said. ‘She is that man’s wife. Do you know him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He is the new ruler of Wallachia, Vlad of the House Draculesti,’ said Yakub.

  ‘Ah yes, the man has a reputation.’ The Ambassador’s voice fell into a low mutter. ‘But it’s so strange, she is the exact double of Anna.’

  The Venetian staggered off into the night and before long the Valide Hatun appeared through the church doors, escorted by the new Patriarch. Yakub kept only a loose interest in the politics of the Greek millet but this man, Isidore, appeared a bland non-entity. Quite a contrast to his wild-eyed predecessor, Gennadios.

  With Hagia Sophia a mosque and Holy Apostles a haunted ruin, it had been one of the last acts by Gennadios as Patriarch to move the faith’s symbolic throne to Pammakaristos. The official cause had been friction between Greek worshipers and Turks living in the district around Holy Apostles, but rumour held that Gennadios had other reasons to avoid Holy Apostles. Bad memories, it was said, just as it was an open secret that the Valide Hatun’s disapproval had played a large part in Gennadios’s resignation.

  The cloud of serving boys enveloped Mara Brankovic as she bade farewell to her new pet-Patriarch. She waved away the groom who offered her a horse.

  ‘Valide Mara Hatun, welcome home,’ Yakub said. ‘Constantinople has missed you these past months.’

  ‘Not as much as I missed it, I assure you. Have you ever been to Eğrigöz, Hekim Yakub? Such desolation! You would need crooked eyes to see any beauty in that place.’

  ‘But did you find what you were after?’

  He read the answer in the wide satisfied smile before it parted and spoke, ‘Oh yes.’

  It was a walk of only a few minutes from the church to the fields where the evening’s festivities were being held. Along the way Yakub told the story of Sagundino’s eidolon. ‘He has read Euripides,’ Valide Mara Hatun said approvingly. ‘I wonder if the original Helen is the one in Venice or Wallachia.’

  All the rest of the year, the Dry Garden lay in its hollow overlooking the Horn and basked in the colours of its flourishing crops. Now, frosted by winter, the old open-air cistern glimmered beneath the starlight and the tall glowing
cressets, which marked a rough playing field across its hardened turf. A grandstand had sprung up that day on the elevated slope above the empty reservoir and a small market of tents rimmed its edge, winking with candlelight and cooking fires. The crisp evening air carried the smell of pilaf and saffron to the hungry bellies of the Valide Hatun’s entourage as they neared.

  ‘It should be a good contest,’ Valide Mara Hatun said to Yakub. She halted at the entrance to the imperial enclosure. ‘I trust arrangements are in place as I instructed.’

  ‘Yes, Valide Mara Hatun. The teams are set. Radu has the honour of the first throw, right after the Sultan has completed his ceremonial duties. He will certainly be noticed.’

  ‘You are on good terms with the Vlach?’

  ‘The very closest of friends.’

  ‘And his ambition? It has failed in the past.’

  ‘It is now suitably honed. He will perform well tonight.’

  ‘Good. When your path crosses the other Vlach, inform him that I wish to see him in my audience chamber. Tonight. You can bring him there once the festivities are completed.’

  ‘Tonight?’ said Hekim Yakub. ‘His audience with the Grand Vizier is tomorrow.’

  ‘Which is precisely why his audience with me must be tonight,’ she said.

  Mahmud Angelovic had been Grand Vizier for less than six months. Elevated after the unsuccessful siege of Belgrade for good service on his own part and poor service by his predecessor. In that short time, he had already clashed twice with the Valide Hatun. Hekim Yakub could guess why the prospect of the Grand Vizier speaking in private with Vlad Dracula might concern her.

  She snapped her fingers at the groom holding the reins of her mount. ‘You are not going inside?’ Yakub glanced in the direction of the inviting smells.

  ‘And catch my death of pleurisy? Oh no. I shall await the voivode beside a warm fire.’

  The Valide Hatun’s cool stare did not betray it, but Hekim Yakub knew too much of his mistress to be fooled. Away in Serbia, her father, the old despot Durad Brankovic, lay on his deathbed. When Sultan Murad, her husband, died, Mara had not shed a tear, but Yakub suspected a dammed river would burst for her father.

  Unseen.

  As with so much of her business it would be a secret, secluded event. The Valide Hatun’s cheeks would be dry by the time he brought the voivode to her rooms.

  Of course, there was never a doubt Vlad would not be watching the jereed contest that evening. Not with his younger brother leading one team. Hekim Yakub soon spotted the crimson hat among the rows of interested onlookers under the silk canopy of the grandstand. There was no longer a woman beside him.

  No rush, thought Yakub, as he took his place in the crowd a few tiers back. The Sultan was out on the field making a ceremonial presentation of baklava to the drawn-up ranks of janissary. In the half-shadow at the far side of the sports ground the two teams of jereed riders had gathered. Then, as the drums and stamp of feet cleared the playing field and the Sultan took to his pitch-side marquee, the horses trotted out in neat lines of a dozen, and the crowd found its festival voice.

  With a deferential bow towards the Sultan’s position, the handsome young Radu led his team in a brisk show of trick-riding past the crowd. Then the ponies strung themselves into a line, facing their opponents across the frost-glazed field. Each rider clutched a long wooden javelin and more than one was raised in salute to friends and watching favourites, as they passed the crowded women’s enclosure.

  Jereed was a game seemingly designed for the delight of court ladies, pitting palace males against one another so the women might remark at this man’s courage or that man’s skill. As a show of strength, the riders all went bare-chested in tight leather breeches, offering little protection against either the blunt javelin blows or the admiring stares.

  It was Radu’s honour to open the match. The cresset fires glimmered veins of silver through his long hair as he rode out from his team towards the line of opponents at the far end of the field. One dried oak javelin was lifted high above his head in a ceremonial challenge, the rest lay bunched in his other hand.

  Radu called out the name of one opponent, spiced, as was tradition, with colourful insults. Then his javelin was painting a high arc through the heavens towards his chosen victim. The man remained stone-like in his saddle until the shaft had clattered to earth wide of its mark.

  Almost as soon as the javelin left his hand, Radu wheeled his mount and spurred back towards the safety of his own line and the young sipahi, who the javelin had missed, gave chase.

  The crowd roared their approval as the two horses sped across the field. Radu, too swift, widened the gap. As he neared the far rank, the sipahi was forced to launch an aimless throw before wheeling away and fleeing the pursuit of the next man from Radu’s team.

  For five rotations this back-and-forth relay chase unfurled across the Dry Garden. When a man finally succeeded in striking a fleeing opponent, a steward standing out in the field signalled the hit with a raised flag and the crowd squealed. But the loudest cheer – and double points - belonged to any man able to pluck bare-handed, an incoming javelin from mid-air.

  The break came and two new teams prepared to take the field and compete. Hekim Yakub saw the Sultan’s enclosure had been vacated. Mehmed had seen enough. Yakub also saw the velvet cap of crimson with its band of pearls and ostrich feather rise from the benches and make its way towards the gaggle of tents serving hot soup. He followed and, swift as a trout through reeds, caught up with the voivode.

  ‘A fasting Christian would find the fish stew best in the end tent,’ said Yakub as he reached the other man’s shoulder. ‘Where are your bodyguards, Prince Vlad? Still no fear of Hungarian assassins?’

  Two eyes, as deep and liquid as the old cistern beneath their feet had once been, soaked Yakub with their scrutinising regard. The lips did not move, but the doctor had noticed Vlad’s hand twitch down to the blade at his hip. ‘Mara Brankovic’s demon-familiar,’ said Vlad, at last placing Yakub in his mind.

  ‘I prefer to go by Hekim Yakub,’ the doctor said with a bow of his head. ‘She would speak with you in person when the game is complete.’

  ‘Is the game ever complete?’ Vlad broke into a deep laugh. ‘I’ll take a bowl of fish stew with you now.’

  The noise from the crowd beyond the canvas told them the match had begun once more, but Vlad appeared in no rush to return to the stand as they sat cross-legged among the cushions with steaming bowls of broth cradled between cold hands. ‘So, Mara Brankovic is here,’ said Vlad. ‘I had heard she was absent from the capital. I expected she would be wintering in Smederevo. Or Belgrade.’

  Yakub waged a finger. ‘Since the summer it has not been wise to even breathe that town’s name in these parts. They say the Sultan has men beaten for speaking of it.’

  ‘Belgrade?’ said Vlad, raising his voice with a broad smile. ‘Is he still such a petulant child? I thought defeat there might have chastened a little wisdom into his skull.’

  ‘We Turks prefer not to think of it as a defeat, merely a costly victory,’ said Yakub. ‘After all, it claimed the life of our great foe, Janos Hunyadi. Let the Hungarians keep the white fortress. They can use it for the white knight’s mausoleum.’

  Vlad took a long, contemplative sip of his stew. ‘You are no Turk, Hekim Yakub, and nor, deep down, is the Valide Hatun.’

  ‘The Sultan’s is a broad empire,’ said Hekim Yakub. ‘Greeks, Jews, Bulgars, Laz, Turks. Are the Vlachs to join us? Have you come to swear fealty to Mehmed?’

  Vlad’s lips twitched into a smile. ‘If that is what the Valide Hatun wishes to know, then she had best put the question herself. Come, I’ve little time for jereed played so poorly, let’s surprise your mistress early.’

  Arriving at the audience room, they found the Valide Hatun not a bit surprised. Attended by two eunuchs beside a roaring fire, she had changed from the heavy black Italian gown and veil of the service into a loose silk entari, the neckline
of which was entirely unsuitable for discussions of scripture with Patriarchs. A kaftan of fur hung from her shoulders and a pair of baggy şalvar trousers flashed crimson beneath the entari’s hem as she rose and offered her hand to her guest. ‘You look almost respectable,’ she said as he planted a kiss upon her wrist.

  ‘The Valide Hatun appears not to have aged a day since we last met. But of course, you were not yet the Valide then.’

  ‘And Mehmed not yet Sultan and Constantinople not yet Turk. Yes, a lot has happened over seven years,’ she said. ‘A lot, even, in the past seven months.’

  ‘Hekim Yakub and I were just discussing that,’ replied Vlad. ‘Belgrade has shuffled all the political tavli tiles, has it not? Black becomes white and white turns to black. A new power in Hungary, a new Grand Vizier here and very soon, a new despot in Serbia.’

  Hekim Yakub bristled with indignation on his mistress’s behalf. The Vlach bumpkin lacked all tact. But if the reference to her dying father was meant to rile Mara Brankovic, the Valide Hatun betrayed no outward sign.

  ‘And a new voivode in Wallachia,’ she said, pointing a hand like a dagger at Vlad. ‘I commend you for your opportunism. Janos Hunyadi mortally sick with plague; Mehmed on a chastened retreat from Belgrade; no one was paying attention to Wallachia in August. But that has changed with the leaves, hasn’t it?’

  There was a pause before Vlad nodded. ‘What do you know of the white knight’s son, Laszlo Hunyadi?’

  The Valide Hatun’s brow knitted into a frown. ‘I know that last month he and Michael Szilágyi murdered my sister’s husband,’ she said. ‘They will answer for that.’

  ‘Your good-brother was the young king’s protector,’ said Vlad. ‘Killing Ulrich made the crown their hostage. So now Hungary is firmly back in Hunyadi hands. When it comes to Wallachia, they have already chosen a puppet to replace me. He will soon make his move from Brasov.’

  ‘Which brings you to Constantinople to buy allies,’ said the Valide Hatun, ‘but what have you got to sell in return?’