by Neil Oliver
She thought too about Jacques d’Arc – wondered, not for the first time, if he was alive or dead. After Orleans, the whole family had been raised by the king to nobility, but while her mother Isabelle had enjoyed their improved circumstances, her father had cared little for the grandeur. He had known his daughter for what she was and had only bent his will to seeing her fulfil her potential. He had listened while she described the visions and the voices, and had believed her with all of his heart. He had understood she was born and made to fight for the glory of the crown, and God – and he had done all in his power to make it come to pass – but more than anything else he had loved her like a father should. It had broken his heart when she went off to war, and she had scarcely dared allow herself to wonder what awful harm had been done him by news of her tortured death.
‘Forgive me, Father,’ she said.
The sense of having been this way before was like a warm wind from a far-off place that seemed briefly to caress her face before parting and passing either side. Figures from her past were there too, woven through the fog like wraiths. She thought of her mother and feared her grief. She thought of her brothers, Jean, Pierre and Jacquemin, and wondered if they too had survived the fighting, if they lived still, perhaps with families of their own. She thought of her sister Catherine, dead in childbirth long ago. She thought of Patrick Grant.
Had there been any there to witness her advance towards the Turks, it would have seemed to them like the progress of a penitent bound for a place of pilgrimage. She would have appeared distracted, preoccupied with her own thoughts while the ropes and tendrils of fog coiled around her like living things, or their spirits.
It was as the first of the Turkish pickets saw her and lunged towards her out of the gloom that she heard her father’s voice.
‘To MacDonald of the stately eyes is the gift of what I am giving,’ he said. ‘Greater than the cup – though a gift of gold – in honour of what to me is given.’
She had already raised her sword, sweeping it upwards from within the folds of her cloak to parry her enemy’s clumsy blow, when she glimpsed Jacques by her side. He was unarmed, but clad in his soldier’s garb as of old. She disarmed the hapless sentry – spun him past her and knocked him unconscious with a blow from the pommel of her sword, and watched him sprawl heavily on to the soft ground – then turned to look properly upon her father’s face.
He was beautiful. He was clean and bright-eyed and younger than she ever remembered seeing him in life, and she knew at once that he had come to her from among the peaceful dead.
‘Forgive me, Father,’ she said again, tears in her eyes and a tremble in her voice as she turned from him to deal with a second attacker.
The expression on the Turk’s face was one of plain astonishment; instead of crying out at the sight of her, and thereby summoning more of his kind to his aid, he came at her in silence, dumbstruck in fact, but with curved sword raised.
For Lẽna the sensations of a dream were all but overwhelming, and it was only the smell of the man’s sweat and fear that reminded her he was real, that this was real. She stepped wide of his downward blow and turned and brought the pommel of her sword down for a second time and upon a second head. She had hit him harder than she intended, felt the crack of bone and only hoped he would wake up.
‘Though I got this cup free, as it were, from the wolf of the Gaels,’ said Jacques d’Arc, ‘it does not seem that way to me: he received my love as payment.’
Her father’s voice was a wonder to her, even more so than the sight of him. As she watched his form shimmering and shifting within the folds of mist and fog, he mirrored her movements in the combat and smiled approvingly at her as he did so.
For any vouchsafed a vision of the fighting – the dark-haired woman and a succession of attackers – it might have seemed like the steps of a carefully choreographed dance. The fog made of every encounter a self-contained vignette; the sight of each concealed from every other and all of the sounds muffled so that no general alarm was raised, and she moved among them one by one like a nameless fear.
She dispatched a third man and a fourth, and in the moment of calm that followed, her father smiled at her, stepped close and reached out with one rough hand and caressed her face. He leaned forward until his smooth cheek brushed her own.
‘My love,’ he said, and was gone.
She looked around, her face wet with tears. She had gone alone among them in hope of finding the death she deserved. She had offered herself in combat – been ready to face them en masse and to fall beneath a forest of swords and awaken in the peace of heaven.
But it was not to be. Another angel, her own father, had come to her and to her alone, and she had learned from him, and for the second time, that the good Lord would receive her when he was ready, and not before.
46
Yaminah felt a familiar hard knot of tension in her stomach as she made her way through the corridors leading to the throne room of Blachernae Palace. She was following the lady-in-waiting who had brought the summons, and to steady her nerves she concentrated on the soft sound of the woman’s robes sweeping rhythmically across the ancient flagstones. They had not exchanged a word and the woman ahead seemed keen to have her duty over with.
Yaminah had been with her prince, busy with the daily task of massaging scented oil into the wasted muscles of his legs, when her efforts were interrupted by a light knock upon the outer door of Costa’s rooms. For all that the rest of the city was now utterly absorbed by the threat looming over them, the girl and her broken boy had wrapped the folds of their private world ever more tightly around them. Their shared rituals mattered more than ever, more than everything.
Yaminah had told him every detail she remembered of her encounter with Helena, and about the overheard conversation that had preceded it. Inwardly he shared her concern about the consort’s tone and choice of language, but he consoled himself with the thought that it had been in the context of plans for their wedding. If such a ceremony was still going ahead at such a time, then that was enough to be going on with. They could hardly ask for a greater demonstration of commitment. That Helena had been heard, in a private conversation, bemoaning his disability in a time of war was hardly surprising. He had sought to calm his betrothed and to allay her fears, and he felt he had succeeded, at least in part. Regardless of his outward show, however, he harboured doubts of his own.
The knock at the door came again, louder than before.
‘Join us,’ Costa had said.
There had been a moment or two of hesitation while whoever it was, beyond the threshold, had assessed the unfamiliar choice of words, and then the door had been pushed open and a young woman Yaminah recognised from the court had entered hesitantly.
‘I have a message,’ she said. ‘My lady wishes to speak with Yaminah, and at once.’
Yaminah had looked up into her prince’s face, and then, aware that such a summons could hardly be delayed, far less ignored, she had picked up a cloth and wiped the oil from her hands. She had left him without a word, but with a sense of foreboding.
The emperor had been solicitous of her time of late, almost disturbingly so. He had demanded her presence at his side for the arrival of the Genoan ships; indeed, he had chosen her over his consort. Yaminah was aware of what men thought and felt when they saw her, and she understood, with some undeniable satisfaction, that he had wanted to be seen in the company of one who would be envied and desired. The emperor might be God’s representative on earth, but he was also a man.
The summons had come from Helena, but the venue for the audience – in the palace throne room – made Yaminah certain the consort would not be alone. She expected the emperor to be waiting as well, and in spite of herself, the thought was exciting as well as troubling. A shadow of danger hung over her prince, but it was shapeless.
To learn more, properly to understand the threat, she needed to spend time with those who might threaten him. She pulled herself up straight an
d arched her back. She slowed her walk too, just a shade, and paid more attention to the movement of her hips.
The lady-in-waiting approached a narrow wooden door that Yaminah recognised as one leading to the rear of the vast room beyond, behind the dais upon which stood the throne itself. She opened it and stepped aside so that Yaminah might proceed alone.
She listened to the echoes of her footsteps rising like a flock of startled birds towards the domed ceiling. There was the throne – an absurd-looking confection, she had always thought. Around the luxuriously upholstered seat and back were four elaborately carved stone pillars. Atop these, and supporting a dome of burnished bronze that both sheltered the seat and underlined the imperial character of whomsoever sat upon it, were four doves carved from white marble. Of all the ostentatious decorations that still adorned the palace – those that had survived the depredations of the crusade two and a half centuries before – the throne had always struck Yaminah as the most preposterous of all.
Today, however, it was empty, and she looked around in search of life. Finding none, she walked beyond the throne and then out from the walls until she was in the centre of the huge room.
It was all too strange. Game-playing was not in Helena’s repertoire, and the emperor would hardly set aside his preoccupation with the city’s defence to make mischief such as this. She had almost persuaded herself it was some work of the lady-in-waiting when she heard the heavy note of the closing of the door through which she had entered the throne room minutes before.
Startled by the sound, and with its reverberations still rolling around the cavernous space, she turned towards its source.
Standing before the throne, diminished by the scale of the room but unmistakable even at such a distance, resplendent in robes of white and gold and with a gleaming bejewelled coronet resting on his head, was Costa.
47
The cloying stink of blood was heavy on the air. Unusually, Mehmet had overseen the executions himself. The job was done now, though, and he was seated with his back to the carnage, still nursing his wrath.
What was to be done?
Not one of the men standing in front of the sultan would dare to open their mouths before he himself had spoken, and so they waited, avoiding his eyes. How much difference had been made by the events of a single day and a single night.
Just twenty-four hours ago, the atmosphere around Mehmet had been filled with excitement and possibility. After more than a week, the relentless bombardment had taken its toll so that the walls, indeed the entire city, seemed to vibrate, giving off a deep note like that won from a struck bell. The Turkish gunners had mastered their routines to such an extent that they had been able to bring a concentrated fire to bear upon that part of the outer wall directly in front of Mehmet’s own tents. He had stood by the largest of the guns, the fattest of Orban’s children, as it delivered its deadly cargo.
After the third firing of the day, however, Orban had run forward and chased off the men pouring olive oil on to the barrel, as they had been instructed, to cool it. He had peered closely at the metal, too hot to touch, and brought his hands as close to its steaming surface as he dared. In an agony of anxiety he had rushed to the sultan’s side.
‘We must let him cool,’ he said, speaking about the bombard like a father fearful for the welfare of his favourite son. ‘We will concentrate on the others – until tomorrow?’ Mindful that he was suddenly giving rather than receiving instructions, he had turned his last words into a question just in time.
Without even looking at his gunsmith, Mehmet had shaken his head.
‘The walls of Jericho, you said. You promised me this contrivance of yours would have dropped the walls of Jericho. Then find me a way through the Wall of Theodosius.’
Chastened by the exchange, the Hungarian hastened to his masterpiece and oversaw the loading of another ball, this one of grey stone and as big as a crouching bear. When all was ready, he called to the sultan, begging him at least to retire to a safer distance, but Mehmet stood firm as though he had not heard the warning.
The order to fire was given and a young gunner, stripped to the waist and sweating, placed a long lighted taper against the touch hole. With an ear-splitting roar the barrel bucked and split into a dozen pieces that scythed through the air in every direction. Anyone not felled by chunks of cherry-red metal was knocked to the ground by the accompanying shock wave. A few seconds of stunned and deafened silence followed, before those still living got to their feet, ears ringing and hearts pounding.
Mehmet was among those able to stand, and men rushed to him from all sides, astonished to find that he was unhurt. Brushing his courtiers aside, he rushed towards the remains of the gun. Every man of the crew – all two dozen souls – had been sliced and blasted into bloody lumps of flesh and hair and ragged clothing. Orban the gunsmith was cloven neatly in two at the waist. Mehmet looked down into the lifeless eyes that stared back at him from a face strangely peaceful and unmarked, and experienced no emotion beyond frustration.
A great shout went up and the sultan turned from the lifeless Orban to investigate the cause of the outburst. All eyes were focused not on the dead gunners and the remains of their erstwhile charge but upon the wall. There beside the Gate of St Romanus – the central point in the ancient land defences – a yawning gap had opened, product of the great gun’s dying breath. Already the figures of men and women could be seen rushing towards the rupture, desperate to set about the business of repair.
Swiftly regaining his composure, Mehmet shouted orders to those of his lieutenants who still had eardrums intact. The fire of the three nearest guns was to be brought to bear upon the gap more heavily than before, so as to deter those defenders who were even now beginning to heap soil and other materials upon the piles of rubble. He himself would lead a mass charge to the fosse. Wagons were to be loaded immediately with anything and everything that might be used to infill a section of the huge brick-lined ditch.
Within minutes there was amassed around the young sultan a great horde of his azaps – Muslim levies swept into the ranks of his attacking force from every corner of his demesne. The resolve of those game but untrained volunteers was stiffened by the presence of a company of janissaries, and with Mehmet to the fore and to the accompaniment of a great cacophony of horns, pipes, cymbals and drums, the whole mass of them advanced downhill towards the wall. The sun had set, and by the time they reached level ground beside the river, a half-moon was rising above the city.
Mehmet and his professional soldiers were mounted upon warhorses, but they held themselves to a pace that could be matched by the trotting infantrymen. Down the slopes they poured, and when they came within range of the gap, the defenders rained hell upon them from their own guns, and from their crossbows and longbows besides.
The janissaries clustered around their sultan, shields upraised. Understanding all too well the likely consequences of allowing any harm to befall him, they seemed far more concerned for his safety than their own.
The dying of the azaps, unmistakable in their bright red caps, was a horror and a wonder to behold. The Christians, realising that the Turkmen were too close for the useful firing of stone balls, loaded the barrels of their own smaller bombards with lead shot and iron nails instead, and blasted the lethal hail into the faces of the foe. In this way, even heavily armoured janissaries were cut down, while the azaps, simply clad and protected only by shields (which many had thrown aside anyway in their haste to get in among the Christians), were butchered ten and twenty at a time by every discharge, missiles passing through man after man without losing velocity.
Despite the carnage, still they came on. Reaching the fosse, they heaped all manner of material into the void, even their own tents and many of their dead, until a vile slurry of timber and stone, fabric and flesh began to fill a section of the ditch wide enough and deep enough for men to cross.
The continued fire of the Turkish guns brought down blow after blow upon the walls, and upon
defenders and attackers alike. Emperor Constantine had watched the Turks advance from the inner wall and had sent out orders to sound a general alarm. In the city behind him, all the church bells tolled and into the darkening streets poured thousands of terrified citizens, crying and tearing at their clothes and clawing at their faces in their maddened panic.
The Turks crossed the fosse by the score, and, armed with long wooden poles topped with hooks, set about dragging down the barrels of rubble and soil, the better to expose the defenders on top to the violence of the guns and to their own blades and crossbows.
The last of the light bled out of the sky until the only illumination was that of the moon and the lightning flashes from the guns. Sensing victory, the azaps surged on to the earthen rampart, each man pushing at the rear of the one in front so that they began to reach the summit in great numbers. The janissaries, dismounted now and fighting shoulder to shoulder with the rest, pushed hardest of all, and for many dreadful minutes a great press of Christians and Muslims came face to face under the watchful moon.
Mehmet, stalled at the base of the rampart, stood baying at the sight of it, at the moon and at the tumult of the fighting – urging and cursing as men of every creed slashed and gouged at one another in the claustrophobic confines of the fissure. But for all the sultan’s earnest vows and dire imprecations, the momentum of his forces began to wane, breaking like a spent wave, until in a sudden flurry of retreat they fell back down and away towards their own lines.
And now it was the early morning of the day that followed the night, and Mehmet sat and brooded. He was in the open space in front of his own conical tent of red and gold, protected from prying eyes by a circular timber palisade that surrounded and formed his private enclosure. The most senior of his attendants, his chief vizier, Halil Pasha, felt the heat more than most. Spring was properly on its way at last, but it was hardly the warmth of the day that made him feel faint. Neither was it hunger, for although a Muslim army on campaign ate but once a day, at sunset, his stomach felt like a mere pebble.