Emperor's Winding Sheet (10 page)

“I am a gunsmith, sir. I have come because I hear you have a war on your hands. Seeking employment.”

“What can you do, gunsmith, that others cannot?” asked John Dalmata.

“I am a maker of great cannon, sir. I can cast guns to throw balls weighing a thousand pounds or more, and throw them a quarter mile. Naturally, I can also make smaller artillery. I can supply every need.”

The councilors talked together. They could scarcely credit such claims.

“I am not afraid to be put to the proof, sirs,” said Urban, seeing their disbelief. “And I am a man of my word. What I promise I can perform. It was not a gun of my making,” he added, touching his hideous pitted cheek, “that exploded and gave me this. No gun of mine has failed me to this day.”

“Do we need heavy artillery?” the Emperor asked John Dalmata. “It is walls we have to defend.”

“Guns could be mounted on your walls, sir,” offered the gunsmith. “I have seen a cannonball mow down a hundred men.”

“Ask him what he wants to work for us,” said the Emperor.

“A thousand ducats a year, paid in Venetian gold. In addition I shall need twenty workmen, and a hundred and fifty tons of bronze for casting.”

“It is too much,” said Phrantzes. “We cannot pay him.”

“Will you take less?” asked John Dalmata.

“Not I. I know my worth. You will not employ me then?”

“We cannot, at that price.”

Urban shrugged his shoulders. “Ah well,” he said. “I came to the Christian party first. But there are two sides to every quarrel. I can take my skill elsewhere. You may live to regret this, gentlemen.”

“We are not afraid of artillery, behind such walls as ours,” said Theophilus.

“As God's my witness, gentlemen,” said the gunsmith grimly, “though your walls were mighty as the walls of Babylon, I can make a gun to bring them down in ruins!” He waited a moment; but nobody made a sign of being ready to change his mind. “I bid you good day,” he said, and strutted out.

A day or so later, Vrethiki told all this over to his friends in the guard room, and found himself the center of eager attention. Every word he said was rapidly translated for the benefit of those Varangians who spoke no English.

“Come, boy,” said John eagerly. “What did he say his gun would do?”

“Bring down the walls of Babylon.”

“No, no, I mean what weight of shot? And how far?”

“I can't remember …”

“Try, boy!”

“A thousand pounds, I think … and yes … a quarter mile.”

Someone whistled. “Blood of the saints!” cried Varangian John. “And the Emperor let this man depart in peace?”

“What else could he do? The man wanted more than he could pay him.”

“Why, dammit,” cried John in fury, “if he couldn't be kept by fair means, he should have been kept by foul … he should have been thrown into a dungeon, or even waylaid on his way out of the City by someone with a long-blade knife; anything to stop him reaching the Sultan!” The soldiers all looked grave. They murmured grimly to each other, assessing the impact of that gun. John said bitterly, “When I said we could do with a little incompetence, I meant it on their side, rather than on ours.”

But Vrethiki, for all that he was ready enough to think ill of the Emperor, and his heart took a familiar downturn at any bad news for the City, could still see that John was wishing his master had stooped to murder. He sighed. Even the Englishmen in this strange place seemed hard to understand. Though doubtless the ugly little gunsmith was a less tender victim than Joan the Maid.

W
hat use is it to keep arguing over hearsay?” cried the Emperor, sweeping a pile of rough maps, none agreeing with another, off the table in front of him. “We must go and see it for ourselves.”

“But it's not safe, Sire. Not for you. We could send someone.” That was Phrantzes.

“I need to see for myself,” said the Emperor.

Very early in the morning, therefore, in the gray light before dawn, they embarked on a little galley that lay waiting for them in the Golden Horn. John Dalmata came, and another captain called Cantacuzenos, and Theophilus Palaeologos, and the Emperor with Vrethiki. The galley was rowed by forty oarsmen and had no need to wait upon the wind. She plashed gently through the smooth waters of that great harbor, moving along the north shore of the City, while the City itself lay as a long purple shadow against the rising sun. At first the water was fiery with the blaze of dawn; as the sun rose, and the galley rounded the point under the walls of Genoese Galata, and slipped out of the Horn, the sheen on the water thinned to silver in the brightening day, and the City lay far behind, fading to rose and lilac. They moved steadily up the winding waters of the Bosporus, with look-outs
fore and aft. They were flying no flag, and the Emperor wore a huge black shabby cloak over his purple garments.

They had been moving up the Bosporus some half hour when they saw it. They came to a place where a high ridge juts into the narrows, and the Bosporus takes a zigzag round it. On the receding shore, at the mouth of a little stream, the Turks had long ago built a castle; now as the tall ridge on the Roman shore came into view, they could see it topped with towers. One huge tower crowned the slope, another stood far below on the waterline. They were linked with a massive battlemented wall, climbing down the line of the ridge between them.

“There, Sire,” said the galley captain.

“Draw nearer,” said the Emperor, staring ahead. The rowers dipped their oars, and the galley nosed cautiously forward. As it did so, more massive towers came into view. Along the waterline stood a line of four towers, the outer two massive beyond belief, and a curtain wall, nearly completed, was rising between them. Behind the shore, the castle straggled and sprawled irregularly up the rugged land, widening out to encircle enough steeply sloping space for a small town. At every turn of the walls a tower was rising. The watchers from the boat could see the encampment of the builders—a patchwork of tents and shacks within the castle. Silently they took it in. Nobody builds such a vast structure as that to serve a small purpose, nor does a man build so vastly at such incredible speed—for these walls were nearly at their tops, these towers were all but finished already—unless he is in haste. Vrethiki shivered.

That creamy new masonry, standing among the steep woods of the shore in the wispy mists of the morning, had been made to last for a thousand years—as though the land it stood on were already the Sultan's land, and would remain so for ages to come.

And remembering the talk among the soldiers about the shot range of guns, Vrethiki eyed the water between one shore and another, on which, oars idle, they were so peacefully now afloat. This was the narrowest point of the strange channel that divided continents; with a castle on either shore, there was no doubt the Sultan could reach any ship, could stop anything passing if he wanted to.

“Yes,” said the Emperor. “I see.”

Turning the galley, glad to escape seemingly unnoticed from the shore, they rowed away down the channel again, back to the City. The water was choppy now, swaying and sparkling with wind and current, and deepening to ultramarine under a blue morning sky.

Riding back through the City they crossed the path of a procession of people who were clambering a steep-stepped path up a rocky hill, toward a cluster of rust-pink domes just visible on the crest against the sky.

“Where's that?” asked Vrethiki, pointing.

“The Monastery of Christ Pantocrator,” one of the soldiers told him.

“I lock Scholarios away, and the people beat a path to his door,” said the Emperor grimly.

When they reached the palace, he strode through the gardens and ran up the steps to his door. He cast off the black cloak that had covered him from Turkish eyes, and threw it on the marble floor before a servant could advance to take it from him. He sat upon his throne, and beat his fists on the lectern in front of him, shouting for his councilors. His dark eyes flashed, and his voice shook. Whatever it was he was ordering, thought Vrethiki, wide-eyed, his advisers liked it very little. They argued, pleaded, talked, looked sideways their dismay at one another. Phrantzes began to write, to the
Emperor's dictation, but every so often he raised his head, and disputed over some phrase. The Emperor insisted. The letter was written. The councilors departed.

“What has he done?” whispered Vrethiki to Stephanos. They were standing side by side at one end of the throne room; the Emperor paced up and down below the windows, still agitated and angry.

“He has sent to the Sultan”—Stephanos broke off as the Emperor approached them, and resumed as he turned his back and paced away again—“to ask for his guarantee that he will not use the new castle to attack the City.”

“What good will that do?” asked Vrethiki.

“None,” said Stephanos, choosing his moment to reply. “None. Tomorrow he will see that. Today he is angry at the insolent outrage committed on his lands. Who can blame him?”

But when the Sultan replied the Emperor blamed him self.

 

THAT WAS THE DAY THAT DON FRANCISCO DE TOLEDO ARRIVED.
he had brought with him a small party of Spaniards willing to fight the Turk. He came to see the Emperor. When the Emperor received him he did not bow low, but strutting forward seized the Emperor by the shoulders, and kissed him on one cheek and then the other, and then, standing, began upon a long farrago of names, all to prove that he was the Emperor's distant relative—some sort of cousin. An outraged murmur rose from the assembled company at this unheard-of familiarity. Lukas Notaras cried out to the upstart to bow down, to know his place. The Emperor was clearly very surprised at his guest's behavior. He stared fixedly at the Spaniard. He was a little man, all hung about with festoons
of lace, and jewels, and silken fringes, and carrying a hat with a huge curled feather in it. His beard and mustache were tricked into an elaborate array of points. He seemed not at all abashed by the uproar he was causing but stood pertly before the throne of the Emperor as though he really were simply calling upon a cousin of his in some far barbarian country.

In the long pause the Emperor's astonishment made, he said in Greek, with a stumbling lilting accent, “I have come to offer my sword, Cousin Emperor.”

The Emperor said, “A man who is cousin enough to come and fight for me is surely my cousin indeed.” And moving forward, he returned Don Francisco's embrace. And then, suddenly, Don Francisco was on his knees at the Emperor's feet, kissing the Emperor's hand.

“He's good at that,” thought Vrethiki, watching sullenly from his corner. “He knows how to win people. That cocky absurd little man will fight to the death for him now—and a lot of help that will be! But I won't be won. I'm not so soft. I shan't forget he keeps me here against my will, in danger, in a quarrel that is none of mine, for the sake of a sideshow Empire, all paint and paste and ruin. I hate him.”

A common soldier entered, bowing, and said he was on duty at the Charisian Gate, and a party of Turks had brought something to him, and told him to take it to the Emperor. There were two more soldiers with him, carrying a leather sack.

“Open it,” said the Emperor. Out tumbled two severed heads upon the floor. One lay on its left ear, fixing the Emperor with open staring eyes; the other rolled a little distance on the floor, spilling a spotted trail of gouts of blood. A gasp, then a wail of dismay arose. Don Francisco, at whose feet the rolling head had come to rest, staggered backward,
retching into a handkerchief. A whiff of the butcher smell of them reached Vrethiki, and he felt his gorge rising. The Emperor stood stock still, gazing into the glazed eyes of the man whom yesterday he had sent unwilling to the Sultan, with letters asking for peace.

 

THE EMPEROR HAD ASKED THE POPE FOR HELP. THE POPE SENT
Cardinal Isadore, and two hundred bowmen. They were only two hundred, but they made a goodly show, marching from the Golden Gate down the street called the Mese to the Hippodrome, and from there to their quarters on the wall by Blachernae. They were bravely clad in Papal colors, yellow and white, and armed with breastplates and helms of steel, each carrying a crossbow, and a quiver full of arrows on his back. The sight of them cheered the citizens immensely, and brought the crowd in the street round to the Emperor's way of thinking, at least for a day or two, though there was still a small group faithful enough to climb the hill of the Pantocrator, and read the note that Scholarios had pinned to the door of his cell there: Woe to those who put their trust in the West, rather than in God!

The Cardinal was a courteous and reasonable man, though he had come to insist on an immediate end to argument and the proclaiming of the Union of the Churches, and he made himself plain enough, but he had brought with him a fierce little man from Chios, the Arch-bishop Leonard, who made so many and such extreme demands that Lukas Notaras, the Megadux, told him, “Half of this would have the people rioting in the streets.”

“Less than this,” the Archbishop replied, “and the streets will be in the hands of the Turks!”

“Peace, gentlemen,” said the Emperor. “Cardinal, I
thought the Council of Florence allowed us our own form of worship.”

“Both Liturgies are equal, my Lord,” said the Cardinal. “So both must be used. You must say a Latin Mass in the Great Church, and proclaim the Union there. The Pope asks only that.”

So it was decided.

 

VRETHIKI COULD SEE THAT HE WOULD HAVE TO WEAR HIS
best robe again, so he went and fetched it himself from the wardrobe master the day before. He turned it inside out, laid it across his knees, and spent hours feeling for the sharp ends of wire thread and bending them back with his fingernails, so they lay flat, or jabbed back into the thickness of the purple silk, away from his skin. Then in the morning, when Stephanos woke him, he put it on without a single prick, unflinching, and smoothed it down.