by Brian Aldiss
There was some argument, in which some of the other nobles joined, but eventually the king had his way and rode off alone through the dirty streets of the golden city. Under Marko’s direction, and with much shouting, the party prepared to leave. The confusion was made worse by the idlers among the local population, who filled the streets to watch the excitement and poke their rascally fingers, if possible, into the baggage.
Vukasan ran through the emptying palace in a great excitement, throwing open doors everywhere to see that nobody remained behind. In one room, he came upon old Arake with arms round his sister Branka, and both of them crying to each other. For a moment his heart was softened, but he called boldly to his sister that they were about to go without her.
She was small and dark, eighteen months younger than her brother; when they fled to sanctuary in Constantinople, she had been but a babe-in-arms. Looking up at her brother with a tear-blotched face, she said, ‘Shall we stop at Vranje on the way to Prilep, Vukasan?’
‘Certainly we shall – you know that father has a solemn trust there!’
‘That’s where dear Arake used to live!’
‘I know it, sister, and she might go back there with us if she so willed.’
‘Never!’ Arake exclaimed. ‘It has been a battleground five times over. No, you poor chicks must manage for yourselves without your poor old Arake.’
‘The choice is yours.’ Although Vukasan spoke coolly, in the manner of Marko, he felt tears within him, and wished that at least the old woman might go with them as far as Vranje, which was on the borders of the Kingdom of Serbia.
Although he could not remember Vranje directly, he had so often listened to the terrifying story of what had happened there that a clear picture of it existed in his mind.
The old woman had turned to Branka and said, ‘You understand what your big brother means by saying your father the king has a sacred trust in Vranje, don’t you?’
The girl shook her head dumbly.
‘Well, your father the king has sworn many and many a time that he will repay Petr and Milos when he gets there, so you must see he does so, because Petr is a distant kinsman of mine, and a fine man. So you remember that, won’t you, and when you see Petr you’ll give him old Arake’s love, won’t you?’
Branka nodded.
‘Promise?’
‘I promise. Is Petr as old as you, Arake?’
‘He’s a strong young fellow still, though gone a bit to stoutness, and he’ll be proud to see you, my little princess.’ At these words, the old nurse burst into tears again, and Vukasan dragged his sister away and ran with her down the echoing wooden stairs.
Despite her protests, he handed her over to Marko’s wife, Ivana, to ride in one of the wagons. As he lifted her up, he whispered in her ear, ‘Don’t weep, little Branka! Soon you’ll be playing in the palace at Prilep!’ But the words did not console his sister.
With innumerable delays, the company formed up, and at last some of them began to move down the windy streets. Vukasan rode in the front near Marko, his thoughts far from the onlookers who lined their way. He paid little heed to the fact that they were leaving this melancholy and ruinous city.
He brooded on the thought of his father, and of what his father had to do at Vranje. For Vranje was more than the place where he would reward the two men who had been of such great service to him; Vranje was just within the frontiers of the Serbian Kingdom, so that there Jurosh would once again take up kingship within his own nation, and must begin by a kingly act. Although nobody had ever explained the matter to Vukasan, he knew his father was both weak and noble. Therefore he feared for his father, and hoped that his kingly act would be sufficiently bold for it to carry all round the kingdom and rally men to his cause, turning them against the wicked Nikolas.
In his eager boy’s mind, he saw himself in his father’s place, striding before Petr and Milos, two old men who had been brought from the ramparts of the castle to stand before him.
‘Many years ago,’ said Vukasan to them in his mind, ‘You two men did not blind me when my dastardly brother ordered you, before I was cast into exile with my children. What you did to me hurt a little, but of course it had to because my brother was looking on. I forgive you for that, and I now reward you for not blinding me by making you, Milos, a present of this bag of gold, and you, Petr, because you are a kinsman of the old Greek woman who cared for my children, I make you a member of my household for life, with a new suit of clothes every St Sava’s day to go with it.’
And in his mind there were plaudits from the crowds, and a great rush of people going before them as they marched, and armed men hurrying to their cause and deserting Nikolas, and at last, still in the person of his father, Vukasan met his hated brother on the plain before Prilep, and they drew their swords and fell on each other so fiercely that their supporters could but stand back and watch pale-faced as the fight went on throughout the day. And at last, as the bats came wheeling out of their holes in the great mountain above Prilep, the better man won, and Nikolas fell down face forward in his own blood – a villain, but dying nobly like a true Nemanija, as his brother entered into his rightful kingdom, his son by his side.
The boy was recalled from his reverie by the chaos outside the Charisian Gate. Here the Serbs had to assemble in open ground, but a cold and unpleasant rainstorm overtook them, so that many of the men turned back and sought shelter under the walls.
Finally, with much shouting, all were assembled in some sort of organisation, as befitted a military expedition. But the king had not arrived, so that they had to wait on him.
To cover his embarrassment, Vukasan addressed the nobles. ‘My lords, you have been faithful to my father and you will be rewarded. Look you that you behave yourselves in the fitting Serbian way when we are home!’ They smiled, knowing that he could not recall the land he called home, so that he said sharply to Marko, ‘Marko, remind us all of the high code of behaviour we should follow.’
But Marko shook his shaggy head and said calmly, ‘They have it already by heart, Prince; and we must not add boredom to their present troubles.’
‘It should bore no man to be reminded of the correct way to treat those beneath him – and all the other matters in which you have instructed me.’
‘I had the duty entrusted in me to instruct you alone, my prince; these arrogant fellows will laugh at me if I attempt to instruct them.’
Feeling the blood move to his cheeks, Vukasan reined his pony closer to Marko’s great brown mount and said, ‘About the two men at Vranje, Marko – you know, Petr and Milos – since they will be the first men my father will see when he re-enters his kingdom, I expect he will treat them in a grand manner according to their deserts, don’t you? They could have blinded him properly, you know, and then he could never have reigned more, could he?’
‘Or you after him. He will take care of them, prince, for he spoke to me of them by name this very day.’
They fell silent. An hour passed, and the women of the cortège climbed down and did some idle business with the pedlars who had followed them through the gates of the city. At last, Vukasan could bear the wait no longer. With a sign to Marko, he wheeled his pony and galloped through the throng, back through the Gate of Charisius, and along the Middle Street. He was determined to go to the palace of the Palaeologus if necessary, but when he arrived at the old Serbian palace, he turned into the yard and dismounted.
Already, members of the citizenry were busy carrying away for loot the articles that Jurosh’s court had perforce to leave behind: cupboards and golden mirrors and carpets and a Roman statue that had stood in the throne room. Ignoring them, Vukasan went to the stable that had been converted into a church.
His father was there again, as he half-expected. This time, no lights burned, for the Orthodox priest was with the main party, the round chandelier in his possession. Jurosh knelt in near-darkness, his ruined face upturned to the iconostasis, as marked and cracked as it. Vukasan went straight o
ver and knelt by him.
‘That devil Andronicus! He has loaned the soldiers who were to protect us to the Genoese! I cannot face Marko and the others after this disgrace!’
Then said Vukasan softly, ‘Father, you are a great warrior of the Nemanijas, and soon you will be king of your green native country again. What care you for the word or actions of a pack of lying Greeks or Genoese? Come, let us leave these accursed walls, for the good awaits us elsewhere.’
Peering down from his scarred eyes, Jurosh seemed for the first time to take in the character of his son.
‘To think, my son, that I almost left you behind as too puny a thing to enter exile with me! Already you speak with more courage than I have.’
‘You have vast troves of courage like treasure, father, that I perceive in your face.’
‘This poor ruined countenance! My son, I perceive by your words that you have looked deeply into me and seen me for the weak and melancholy man I really am.’
And at this remark, which was the first intimate one the exiled king had ever addressed to his son, a great fear like a sudden flaw in crystal glass ran through Vukasan. He did not wish to think of his father as either weak or melancholy, and he jumped up shouting. ‘The king! The king! The king who was blinded but by the grace of God has back his sight, comes to rule again in his green kingdom! Hurrah for King Jurosh!’ And he broke into angry tears.
But the tears were those of his kind, easily drawn forth, easily quelled, and when he saw that his father rose and moved towards the door, he followed in better spirits. When his father mounted his great black horse Herkles, he also mounted, and they rode forth together, the old man in front.
‘Let us leave this ruinous city, once the legend of all Christendom, and create cities of our own!’ cried Jurosh, his spirits returning as he spurred his way through the Charisian Gate.
Upon their rejoining the Serbian party, Jurosh related soberly how he had gone to Andronicus and found that hard-pressed Emperor being blackmailed by the Genoese from the colony of Pera across the Golden Horn. They, it seemed, had been alarmed by rumours of a new Bulgarian uprising, and were threatening to block the passage of goods to Byzantium unless Andronicus provided protection for their caravan to Adrianople and Sofia. Andronicus had been forced to yield, and had pledged them the men he had promised to Jurosh, swearing they should rejoin Jurosh’s force after Sofia. Jurosh had found the Emperor reclining miserably on a gilt couch in his wife’s quarters, crying that the world was a travesty of the real world, that honesty had long ago fled the earth, and that the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire would be proclaimed any day.
‘Then it shall fall to us, and we shall preserve its glories, rather than to the Turks, who will devour it!’ cried Marko. ‘Long live King Jurosh of Serbia, who shall return this way again before five years are past to add these lands to his, to make himself Emperor of the Serbs, Greeks, and Bulgars, to drive the armies of the Ottoman back bleeding into the sandy mountains of distant Anatolia!’
He spoke well, and drew a ragged cheer from the company, so that Jurosh put on a bold face and spurred his horse to the head of the procession. Indeed, in his heavy garb, and with his long moustaches, and his face bearing the permanent marks of this world’s suffering, he looked a man who could lead. So they set off into Thrace, a party of some sixty people, one half of whom were women or old men.
Vukasan had another instance of his father’s changeableness of heart before night. Because they had set out so late, darkness began to fall when they were scarcely on the road to Adrianople. At first, Jurosh would have that they should keep on all the night, and his followers had to unite to deflect his purpose. They camped in a sheltering copse and, after the meal, sentries were posted. Vukasan, to his disgust, was sent to sleep in the wagon with his sister.
There was some uneasy discussion about the rumour that had frightened the Genoese, to wit, the activities of the Bulgars; but in the event, the fears came to nothing and they moved on again shortly after sunrise. Equally to be feared were the Turkish forces, some of which had recently captured Phillipopolis, but they resolved to skirt that city, to avoid trouble.
After that day’s travel, it took three more before they came to Adrianople. The Black Death having recently visited that city as a partner to the sudden spring heat, they found it easy to buy extra horses, and with these were able to make better time on the road through Eastern Roumelia, so that although the way lay upward, they reached the walls of Sofia within another week. While the tents were being pitched for the night, Jurosh sent in a messenger with gifts to the Bulgarian Czar, Jovan Alexandr, a good man who was distant kin of his.
The message that returned was welcoming. Taking only their personal guard with them, Jurosh and Marko entered the city, with Vukasan, extremely excited, accompanying them.
The old walls of Sofia were badly battered from the last Turkish attack and, within, much ruin was to be seen. But there were fine new buildings too, including a temple decorated on the outside with frescoes, after the Wallachian fashion.
All this did Vukasan gape at. He had to suppress his yawns as over a long and heavy meal Czar Jovan Alexandr expounded upon the difficulties confronting his empire – as he still called his small dismembered state. Although his country was being attacked by the Ottoman forces from the south, he was raising a band of Turkish mercenaries to march against Constantinople, of which he still hoped to proclaim himself Emperor. It must have been a rumour of this intention that had reached the Genoese in Pera. The Czar was also suffering from the depredations of a cousin of his who controlled Dobrudza to the north, by Bessarabia.
Over his ambitions, his strategy, his tactics, the Czar lingered long, and his guests had perforce to listen, though much of what he told them was familiar to them through the gossip of the Byzantine court. When Jovan Alexandr began to talk about Serbia, their patience was rewarded, for he had to report new developments of which they did not know.
Jovan Alexandr had always supported Jurosh’s claim to the Serbian throne, although his position of weakness had forced him to tolerate Nikolas. But now Nikolas was under attack. Not only were the sporadic Turkish raids persisting in the south, despite all that Nikolas could do against them; he was being attacked from the north by a combined army of Magyars and Croats.
‘It is the perfect time for you to reclaim your throne,’ the Czar said.
He talked much more, and Jurosh and Marko found a turn to speak; but fascinating although the talk was, the great candles burned too bright, consuming the eyes, devouring eyesight, and Vukasan fell asleep.
The next day was full of much moving about and talking and arguing. Almost every hour brought its excitements. At one time, a Serb working at the Bulgar court came privily to Marko and told him that the Czar’s plan was to set both Nikolas and Jurosh against the Hungarian Empire, since Magyar forces were harassing also the northern frontiers of Bulgaria, along the line of the Danube. At another time, an offer arrived from the Czar to lend Jurosh a strong body of Tartar mercenaries; but since these men appeared to be survivors of the Tartar force that Orusan, only seven years earlier, had bloodily destroyed, Jurosh and Marko deemed it wiser to refuse. They had the hire instead of some of the Turkish mercenaries that had been gathered for the march against Constantinople; for the Czar did not care which batch of his chicks hatched first. The leader of the Turkish force, Mohammed Saveji, seemed a reliable man, and his troop well-disciplined and armed. Later came an armourer from the Czar and sold Jurosh many weapons, among them Serbian swords struck at Prizren and captured in some forgotten battle. Thus an army gathered about the exiled king.
During this while, nobody watched Jurosh more anxiously than his son Vukasan. He observed with approval that the king seemed to become increasingly a warlike figure, gathering more authority and stiffer raiment to himself. He approved also that the king, with his terrible face and gaunt body, appeared much more a soldier than the round-figured and loquacious Czar. But the king and the Czar
got along famously and sat idly amid serving women plotting future campaigns that they would conduct together. And there was the worrying fact that the king delayed leaving the capital a whole day because he wished to talk with the architects of the Czar’s latest church, consulting them about costs and materials, and whether they would consent to visit Prilep in the autumn.
The extra day brought them one advantage. The Genoese merchants arrived from Constantinople, escorted by twenty-five Saxon mercenaries in chain mail, well-mounted and well-armed. Andronicus had paid this guard with a secret reserve of plate – possibly, said the Saxon leader, part of the dowry of his Jewish wife – and they were well-content to join Jurosh’s party as arranged; although directly they had done so, they became alarmingly drunk to a man with the extra proceeds they had frightened out of the Italians, and nearly set all Sofia alight that night.
At last the little army was on its way again, moving with the Czar’s blessing. They now had some eighty miles to go to Vranje and Serbian soil, through dangerous mountain country which, since the successive collapses of the Byzantins, Bulgarian and Serbian states, was effectively ruled by nobody. Gaudy hajduks held their brigand strongholds here, some of them boasting armies bigger than Jurosh’s; but as the Serbian column proceeded on its way, it heard how one after the other these hajduks were being overwhelmed and falling into Turkish vassalage.
When they were deep in the mountains, an incident occurred that may here be swiftly told, although later it was to have its bearing upon the Nemanjid fortunes. One of Marko’s patrols, moving ahead of the main body, established contact with a scout belonging to a noted brigand named Telec Krumovic. Although mainly Bulgarian by birth, Krumovic in his youth had been a faithful liege to the great Emperor Orusan; when Orusan died so unwontedly, Krumovic, like many another Serbian baron, refused to knuckle down or surrender his gains to a successor; and he had lived his doubtful life of bravery and brutality in the wilderness ever since. Now he was surrounded by a strong force of Ottoman soldiery, to whom he had given every provocation, and was about to be slaughtered by them in his mountain retreat.