Master of Shadows

by Neil Oliver

  ‘How can this be?’ she asked.

  Almost before the words were fully out of her mouth she began moving forward once more, her pace somewhere between a walk and a run. She was still wringing her hands together and Lẽna was sure she had begun to cry.

  ‘Stop, Yaminah,’ the woman said. The girl slowed and hesitated for a heartbeat of time, but her desire to get closer was evidently overwhelming, and despite the woman’s repeated commands, she kept closing the distance. The woman was closer to the young man, and simply by walking smartly she was at his side by the time the girl arrived, stopping several paces in front of them.

  The similarity to Costa was undeniable. When she had first seen him, from the distance made by the greatness of the throne room, she had believed her prince was standing before her, healed of all the hurt. Surely it was he? He was the same height, of the same slight build.

  Never before had she seen him stand, and the sight was utterly disorientating, like viewing a familiar map upside down. Only as she had drawn closer had she noticed that while his face was thin, and beautiful, it was not Costa’s.

  His smile was good, best of all in fact, so that its similarity to the smile she loved above all others tugged at her heart. As she had come closer, though, she had seen that his eyes too were wrong – the same shape and the same colour but a shade darker so that they lacked the light that gleamed in Costa’s gaze and warmed her soul. His voice too, still echoing inside her head if no longer in the ceiling above, was deeper than that of her prince.

  This approximation might fool many, perhaps all if they did not examine him too carefully. But from closer than fifty strides it could not, and never would again, fool Yaminah.

  ‘You are not Prince Constantine,’ she said. She raised her hands to her face and closed her eyes.

  ‘What trick is this?’ she asked, her voice breaking. ‘Why?’

  Another voice spoke; a man’s voice.

  ‘This is the man you shall marry in front of all the thousands of your guests. He shall be your Prince Constantine and you shall be his Princess Yaminah, and the congregation shall cheer, and the miracle of it all shall delight them and give them new strength to endure – and to take up arms and to triumph.’

  Yaminah had opened her eyes and was staring through a mist of her own tears into the emperor’s handsome face. In her confusion and sadness, all thoughts of etiquette were driven from her mind and she made no sign of deference. Her mouth had dropped open behind her hands but she had no words. It had all taken on the texture of a dream, and somewhere in the background of her consciousness she wondered why the sound of the cannonball’s strike had not been enough to awaken her.

  ‘There in the Church of St Sophia, close by the spot where you fell six years ago into your prince’s arms, you shall be wed,’ he said, raising his arms like the spreading branches of a tree as he warmed to his theme.

  ‘Your fall was such, of course, that the breaking of it broke my only son’s back. God and heaven had thrown you together with such force it left him a cripple, unable to take on the duties of a prince, far less a husband.

  ‘But now, in this hour of our greatest need, Our Lady will be seen to have blessed us all. Just as she reached out her hands to spare you, so she will seem to have touched my son and healed him. The people shall see you walk together through the doors of that great Church of the Divine Wisdom, into a future made newly bright by hope, and they shall understand, every last one of them, that if a broken boy can be raised up once more by the love of God, then a shattered city can be made whole again as well, and the infidel Turk shrugged off like sour foam from the surface of the ocean.’

  ‘I won’t do it,’ said Yaminah.

  Her arms were by her sides now and she had thrust out her chin. She thought of her Costa, lying all unknowing in his bed, and felt anger deep in her gut. She thought of all that he had lost – that she had knocked out of him with her clumsy fall. She imagined it was he standing before her now, clad in shining robes and coronet, and her heart fairly burned in the fires of her guilt. For all that he should have been and all that he should have had, she mourned. His had been a kingdom, and now he lay uncomplaining in his silk-lined prison cell and contented himself with shadows and stories while others – those who should love him – made plans to pretend he no longer existed.

  ‘Who is this anyway?’ she asked, gesturing with her chin.

  At her words, the terse dismissiveness of them, the young man bridled as if he had been slapped.

  ‘I am man enough for you,’ he said.

  He was about to say more, but she cut him off.

  ‘Prince Constantine is ten of you – ten of any man,’ she said. As she spat the last of it, she turned deliberately to the emperor. ‘I would live with my prince – and die with him – broken as he is, before I would stoop to accept the hand of any … any impostor.’

  She turned back to the facsimile of her love. ‘Who are you?’ she asked. ‘Who are you that would give up himself, give up his own identity, in hopes of donning the robes of his better?’

  He stepped forward and was about to speak when the emperor held up his hand, demanding his silence.

  ‘He is the fruit of a long and careful search,’ he said. ‘An empire cannot have a cripple for its heir. While you spent your days ministering to the prince’s needs – and we thank you for your care – our agents were abroad in the land. Each carried a memory and a likeness of our prince, and sought to find one who resembled him in every way.’

  ‘Well they have failed,’ said Yaminah. ‘My prince finds better likenesses with his shadows than your lackeys found in all their searches. He fools none but another fool.’

  ‘You are quite wrong, Yaminah,’ said Helena, stepping closer and taking the false prince’s hand in her own. ‘They have done well.’

  She leaned back to take a long, appraising look at the young man.

  ‘Among our Varangian Guard they use a word of their own Norse tongue to describe one who is mistaken for another. It is vardoger, and means a spirit double – a phantom that goes in place of the real person and convinces all who encounter it.’

  ‘Spare me,’ said Yaminah.

  She felt alone and desolate among them and therefore free to speak her mind. The need to be with Costa, to hold his hand, look into his eyes and listen to his voice, was overwhelming. She wanted nothing more than to be curled by his side on his bed, in the darkness of his chamber, while he told her again about the world of before.

  ‘I tell you now I will not play your game, far less accept the hand of your … your phantom.’

  ‘You will do these things, Yaminah,’ said Helena.

  Yaminah looked away from Helena while she spoke and glanced at the emperor, but his gaze was above her and beyond her. He seemed to be looking through the windows of the throne room as though he had said all he wanted and had moved on to other matters in his head.

  ‘You will marry this man and you will smile as you do so, and wave to your witnesses as they greet the happy couple,’ said Helena. ‘You will do all of this or you will never see Prince Constantine again.’

  Yaminah stared at her, expressionless but with some soft parts of her insides feeling as though they were being ground under the heel of the emperor’s consort.

  ‘As it is, you will not see Costa now until after your wedding, at the earliest,’ Helena continued. ‘If you do as you have been instructed, then the two of you shall meet and you may be reassured that all is well with him.’

  ‘And then?’ asked Yaminah. She felt fingers of panic grasping at her soul. ‘After that, what then?’

  ‘After that you will leave the city,’ said Helena. ‘Together with your new husband you will take ship for Venice, there to establish our imperial court in exile. If needs be – if the city must be lost – the emperor will join you there to make plans for whatever must be done to take the empire back from the Turk.

  ‘At the very least, the citizens shall see that the line of t
he House of Palaiologos is safe – that there is hope beyond hope, and beyond despair. All of this you will do, or your prince shall perish.’

  Yaminah lunged towards Helena, her hands clenched into fists, but the doppelgänger was faster and came between them and caught her by the wrists. Furious, she spat into his face, even if it be the shadow of Costa’s face, and rammed her right knee into his groin. He made no sound, merely opened his mouth wide as he fell.

  ‘Take her!’

  It was the emperor’s voice, and Yaminah looked round in time to see a company of armed guards advancing towards her at a run. A door was open behind them, and before the first of them reached her, she glimpsed an unmistakable figure framed there. He had clearly intended to remain unseen, but for a split second before he ducked out of sight she saw the portly figure of Doukas, teacher and erstwhile friend to Prince Constantine.

  50

  ‘Who will tell Mehmet this time, do you think?’

  ‘I would rather dig these tunnels – and hide forever in their darkness – than go before him with news of another failure.’

  ‘How many has it been now?’

  ‘Ten, I think, maybe a dozen. It is not my job to count them, nor is it yours. All we have to do is shovel out the spoil. If I ever leave this damned place, with my skin intact, I will count myself lucky.’

  ‘How can it be that they know – that they always know where we are? How can it be that whatever line the Saxons take with their workings, however deep we burrow with our picks and shovels, they find us?’

  ‘You know as well as I do it is not they who find us … it is him. Every time it is the same one who is first to break through the roof above … the same one who orders our tunnels flooded with the fire that sticks to men’s clothes and skin and burns them alive … the same one who leaps among us with his knives.’

  ‘I saw him slice off a man’s face with a shovel – one sharpened so the edge gleamed like silver in the light of the dying flames of the inferno he had unleashed.’

  ‘Did you see it yourself, Tekin? Or did you only hear about it from one who did?’

  ‘I saw it, Hebib, with these same eyes that are looking at you now. He leapt among us from above and he brought the shovel up from below so that it found the man’s chin first and then sliced onwards and upwards to his forehead. The poor bastard was still alive when he fell, I tell you, his face no more than a side of meat.’

  ‘I did not know you had seen the devil for yourself.’

  ‘Well I have, Hebib. And I hope never to see him again. May Allah see to it that I am always to the rear of the miners from now on – and never again among them while they work.’

  ‘So what does he look like? Is he a giant, like they say? Is he strong like a carthorse? Is he crazy like a cut snake?’

  ‘I am sorry to disappoint you, but he is slight, slender as a reed. I swear I could snap his arms in two if I ever got close enough – may Allah see to it I am never that close.’

  ‘Do his eyes blaze like the fire he rains upon us?’

  ‘It is you that is crazy like a cut snake if you think I have been close enough to see his eyes.’

  ‘Have you heard him speak a word of his hatred?’

  ‘Hatred?’

  ‘Well surely he must hate us? I believe he must wish that the whole world had one neck – and that he had his hands around it.’

  ‘He is silent always. I have heard the Saxons say he makes no sound at all when he attacks – that his feet seem hardly to rest upon the earth, so that he floats among them like a ghost. I have heard what they call him, though – the word his men cry when they want him back.’

  ‘And what is his name, Tekin?’

  ‘The miners say it is foreign even to them. But when the heathens need their devil’s attention, they shout “Jon-grant”.’

  ‘Perhaps this Jon-grant is the devil, says I. Trust the infidels to have the devil himself on their side.’

  51

  ‘What say you, John Grant?’ asked Minotto, the bailey of Venice, standing sword in hand. The armour that had gleamed like a newly minted coin when John Grant had first laid eyes upon it was grimed now and dull, and bearing fresh dents from recent fighting. ‘A good night’s work?’ Minotto bent and slapped him hard on the shoulder. ‘A good night’s work indeed,’ he repeated, before striding off.

  John Grant only nodded in reply, and smiled grimly at the Venetian’s departing back. He was slumped against the wall of a sentry post beside the Caligaria Gate, a cup of water in his hand. He was filthy, and he tasted only blood and dirt. And he was tired – in fact as exhausted as he had ever been. For ten days they had fought either on the outer wall or beyond it – sallying forth from the postern close by the Caligaria Gate to howl and hack and slash at the azaps struggling to fill the fosse, or even to cross it on those occasions when they managed to work through the night, shielded by the dark, and bridge the abyss with debris. Then the janissaries would follow, sometimes on horseback – but always they had been driven back by the slowly dwindling army of defenders. The toll was scarcely bearable and a force spread thin as fat on a poor man’s bread could not last much longer.

  The emperor and the rest of the great men still promised help from the West – still rallied their wearied comrades with talk of a crusade, white knights with red crosses on their breasts, leaping from ships and riding out to drive off the filthy Turk.

  John Grant listened with the rest – even felt his hackles rise at the prospect of relief from out of the setting sun. But it was not crusaders that he saw every day and every night; rather it was Turkish levies, and while he cut down every one he could reach with sword or knife, or with the karambit that appeared in his fist whenever it was needed, still he had learned to admire them for their courage and their obedience.

  They were to be pitied, though, he thought, those azaps. Brave they surely were, driven by their masters or their faith or by a lethal combination of both. But they were poor souls just the same, perhaps the poorest – straight from the fields where they had gleaned their livings, and thrust face first against the greatest obstacle in the wide world.

  When he came close enough to see their faces, John Grant saw their eyes gleaming sometimes with hatred, but most often with hope. When he struck down at them from his warhorse, felt his sword passing through them, or when he took them in his deadly embrace and opened their stomachs and throats, he watched their eyes grow dim and felt only sorrow.

  But most exhausting of all was the work in the tunnels. First his mental strength was sapped by the enervating effort of finding them – studying the ripples in the bowls and calling upon his senses to locate the miners themselves. Then it was the physical graft of dropping vertical shafts, two and three at a time through the brick-hard topsoil and into the softer material beneath that could be carved like chalk, in search of their burrowings.

  He either patrolled the digging sites, tirelessly and obsessively, to encourage the workers as they bent their backs to the endless labour, or gave in to his frustration and leapt in among them to wield pick or shovel with his own hands.

  Tonight’s events had been the worst so far. He had been sitting in just this same place, by the gate, but with a bowl of red wine cupped in his two hands. He was watching the tiny crimson bubbles lining the rim, relishing the prickling dryness in his throat in the moments before the first gulp, when the opaque surface had suddenly risen in the slightest of perfect circles. And he had known they were back again, and a sudden tingle in his feet and on the side of his face told him just where they were.

  Quickly he had pinpointed the workings, but the tunnel itself had been the deepest yet and he had begun to doubt himself as his men dug further and further downwards without finding any sign. Desperate with the need to reach the foe and drive them off, he had climbed down the wooden ladders – two lengths of them – and thrown his own muscle power behind the effort.

  Suddenly the ground beneath their feet had given way unexpectedly and they
had plunged – John Grant and four others – into the tunnel. The soil and rubble they brought down with them had extinguished the enemy miners’ torches and buried the first of them alive, and it was in a hot, inky blackness that they struggled to right themselves and find their bearings.

  The collapse had briefly silenced the foe, but all at once there were cries and angry shouts as they too began to orientate themselves in the blanketing dark. John Grant was quickest as always. He had no memory of going for his weapons, but there in his left hand was his long-bladed knife, in his right the karambit, curved like a little crescent moon.

  He was slicked with sweat, beads of it stinging his eyes as he blinked uselessly in the dark. He heard his own men behind him, but they were diggers rather than fighters and he was, anyway, blocking them from the foe. In a heartbeat he reached out and assessed the dimensions of the tunnel, and found to his dismay that there was barely room enough to crouch, far less to stand. He was on his knees and the air was thick with panicked calls and the stink of men’s sweat and fear.

  On a reflex he thrust forward with his right hand and felt his blade part flesh and strike bone. When his hand, wrapped around the hilt, struck home behind it, he recognised the feel of that place immediately above the topmost curve of a man’s hipbone, on the left-hand side. He heard the groan and felt the body fold towards him. A bearded face brushed his own and he slashed upwards with the karambit in his left hand – felt the cutting edge slice across a throat and the flow of hot blood on his fingers.

  He was pushing the dying man to the floor when he was struck from behind – by one of his own seeking only to find and perhaps help him but instead causing him problems he did not need.

  Another hand came out of the dark in front and above him, fumbling and feeling for him. He felt fingers in his hair, grappling for a hold, and in desperation he rolled over on to his side and lunged upwards with both blades. He felt the knife enter the second man’s body, just below the ribcage, and before it went slack with hurt he twisted and pushed the weight clear until he could gain an upright position once more, still on his knees and with the top of his head brushing the roof of the tunnel.