Emperor's Winding Sheet (6 page)

Turning his back on Vrethiki, he strode away along the parapet and plunged out of sight down the stairway of the nearest tower. A trumpet was calling the Emperor's escort together again, and, reeling from this storm of words and
carefully keeping a distance behind, Vrethiki had to follow.

“But I thought he liked me,” he lamented within himself. “Didn't he like me? Always kind, patiently answering … but perhaps it was only from duty … his face shows so little, it moves so little, like a shut window, like a still pool … Oh, it's hateful here; I will run away, I will!”

Below, the soldiers had made their choice. The Emperor rode down the terraced city to his home. As they went, they left the sun behind them and descended into the heavy shadow cast by the height itself onto the lower slopes, onto the town below. A sharp chill lurked in the shadow. Fear lurked in the chill, and weighed upon the boy's aching heart. He was to be dragged away farther yet from home, to that hateful City, surrounded and doomed, to which all these people hastened and would not save themselves, like moths drawn to the flame. On the hilltop behind them stood the bright castle, still golden in the evening light; but marching down into the shadows, toward the danger, came most of the Emperor's soldiers, by their own choice.

A
bad time followed. in the bustle of the preparations for the Emperor's departure, Vrethiki kept casting about for a chance to slip away quietly, lose himself up a side turning, and get out of the town. But there was work for him now, errands in plenty, and Stephanos seemed to be always watching him. After the descent from the castle Stephanos had said not another unkind word to the boy, and seemed as placid, as gentle and as kind as before; but the boy no longer saw his manner as meaning liking, and took no comfort from it. Besides, those impassive brown eyes seemed always to be coldly watching him, as he sought for his moment to run.

A great cavalcade of men and donkeys, packhorses and carts, was assembled to go to Monemvasia on the coast, there to take ship for the City. Ships had been arranged with the Catalan Company, a fact which mightily disgusted Vrethiki, who remarked that even his Uncle Norton had a ship of his own, and a part share in another. Manuel replied that the Emperor did have some ships, but they were at the City. So the last days at Mistra went by, and the boy had not made good his escape. There was no doubt at all that Stephanos was keeping a watch on him, night and day.

The boy grew desperate. And so on the last evening at
Mistra, when the Emperor had taken leave of the people in the square outside his palace and came to his rooms to pray before sleeping, the boy chanced his last throw, and, flinging himself at the Emperor's feet, appealed to him directly.

“Don't take me; I beg you, set me free!” he said. “Oh, Lord Emperor, don't take me into danger in a quarrel that is none of mine.”

The Emperor looked down thoughtfully at the boy's fair head, at the anxious blue eyes staring up at him. He called for Stephanos to translate the boy's words for him. The boy waited, still kneeling. He half expected the Emperor to be angry; he only seemed sad.

Stephanos said, “He would have me tell you that he cannot do what you ask. Necessity compels him to act as he would rather not. He says that surely in the necessities of life we should see the inscrutable will of God.”

Vrethiki cried out despairingly, “I will see nobody's will in it but his! Is it God's will that princes should enslave helpless strangers?”

“I won't translate that!” cried Stephanos, his voice thick with anger. “How can you lay this burden upon him, when he has already so much to carry?”

The boy said nothing for a moment, wholly astonished by the idea that the Emperor needed defending—against him. In the silence, the Emperor gently touched a lock of the boy's hair, turned away, and went to his prayers.

“Vrethiki,” said Stephanos, urgently. “Listen to me. Try to understand. What you cannot avoid in life, you must accept with dignity. Men are not judged by the fate God appoints for them, they are judged by the manner in which they meet that fate. What has happened to you has happened; you will only bruise yourself by fighting against it.”

The boy did not reply. His face did not relent from its wild and sullen expression. He was still kneeling before the spot where the Emperor had stood.

“Listen, accept this danger with a quiet soul. God will see the sacrifice, will see the burden you bear quietly. He will judge. He will reward. But if you struggle, if you go unwillingly, you will lose the merit of it, and yet you must go, just the same. Find the courage to submit.”

“Courage to submit?” exclaimed the boy. “I'd call that cowardice. I'd call that unmanliness. What I need is courage to fight to the last gasp of breath in my body. If life is going to batter me, the least I can do is go down fighting; I'll bite and kick to the end!”

“A fit end, then, for a barbarian! Rage as you like, I cannot help you. But if you dare to utter one word of appeal or complaint to my master again, I'll take a belt to your backside myself; understand?”

“Ah,” said the boy, getting up. “Now the truth is out. That's your true colors.” And he marched out. Behind him, Stephanos stood frozen with a dismayed expression on his face.

 

THE BRIDLE OF VRETHIKI'S HORSE WAS LOOPED OVER
Stephanos' wrist all the way on the ride to Monemvasia. He said nothing. For all his angry words, he was overwhelmed by a glum crushed hopelessness. And once on shipboard, he was flooded with grief and homesickness. The last time he had joined a trim vessel, it had been riding at anchor in Bristow, loading tin and cloth, and full of English voices, and high hopes whose owners now were dead. The Catalan ship which carried the Emperor was a babel of half the tongues known to humanity. She was of a strange elaborate build above the water line, and carried her sail somewhat oddly rigged; but
she creaked like the
Cog Anne
, she smelled of tar and salt like the
Cog Anne
, groaned like her as she swung into the wind. As Monemvasia fell away astern he remembered the smart wind that had borne them down the Bristow Channel, and his mother, dwindling to doll-size, waving and weeping on the receding quay. The Catalan sailors knew their business well, and he took pleasure in watching them handle sail and sheets, though before long he was needed below decks and could watch no more.

They were hardly afloat before the Emperor became seasick. Stephanos and Manuel were both pale, with that green-tinted pallor that seasickness brings. Vrethiki, rock-steady on his stout trading legs, with the Bristow Channel and the Biscay Bay behind him, scarcely felt the movement of the ship; and, grimly pleased at the sight of Stephanos' misery and the thought of for once getting the better of him, he went to take warm water and towels to the Emperor's bedside, and empty slop basins himself.

He had hardly got the Lord Constantine lying between clean sheets, and swabbed down the wooden boards beside his bed, and set a clean bowl ready for the next disaster, when Stephanos needed similar attention himself. The boy sniffed disgustedly at the acrid smell of the cabins, and recklessly poured wine into the water with which he mopped up the mess. The ship continued to pitch and roll easily on the swell; really it seemed to Vrethiki more like the rocking of a cradle than like the open sea; but it was hard work being the only member of the Imperial party on his feet. It was night before he finished tending everyone. The Emperor had refused to eat anything at all, but Stephanos had taken a few spoonfuls of soup that Vrethiki offered him on a spoon, and coaxed and wheedled him to swallow.

When all was done he went above decks. The clean salt air filled his lungs and lifted his spirits. He listened to rope and timber grumbling at each stress and strain, at the water frothing and slopping along the ship's side below him. He looked at the neatness with which every rope lay curled, and the tidy trim of the sails, and mentally saluted the captain. He looked up at the fantastically abundant stars—mil lions more of them than ever graced an English sky, clustered as thick as buttercups in a Bristow water meadow. He stood leaning on the gunwale for a long time before he found the strength to steel himself for the closed fetid air of the cabin beneath.

Things continued so for three days. On the second, grumbling and hectoring him in English, and telling him he would need his strength for the days to come, Vrethiki managed to feed the Emperor a bowlful of broth, a spoonful at a time. To Stephanos he said sharply in Latin, “Oh, come, sit up and eat, sir. Where's your manhood?” And Stephanos flinched, and struggled upright, and ate like a scolded child.

That evening when Vrethiki climbed up to take the air, the ship was moving through a narrow channel with a sloping wooded coast on either side. It looked like the Bristow Channel, only narrower. The green shores pricked his memory. “This is the Hellespont,” a sailor told him. “Keep a sharp eye out for the shore—it's Turkish land.”

“Which shore?” asked Vrethiki.

“Both,” said the sailor. But nobody offered any resistance to the four ships, as they slipped up the middle of the channel in the gathering dark.

 

BEYOND THE NARROW CHANNEL LAY A TRANQUIL LANDLOCKED
sea, on which the ship moved so swanlike that even the Emperor and his Eunuch recovered somewhat. Vrethiki
carried food for them from the galleys, and acted as page again rather than nursemaid. The Emperor gave him a heavy silver coin, and a slow half-smile as a grave thank-you for caring for him. Vrethiki put the money in the little knot of rag with the coronation bounty, reflecting that though it would take more than gold to save his skin, and escape was beyond hoping for, there would surely be a use for it some time. On the evening of this smoother day he went up as usual to take the air, and found the ship almost motionless, sail flapping gently, deliberately letting slip the wind.

“Nearly there,” said the coxswain, whose Italian was just comprehensible, when the boy asked, with gestures, why this was so. “And not wanting to land till morning.”

Nothing broke the surface of the tranquil sea. Gently it rippled, glassy and smooth, and shining with opalescent radiance in the low-sloping light of a golden evening. Leaning on the rail, idly looking, dreaming, the boy nursed his anger in his heart like secret treasure. It gave him strength. But for all that, it was a fair fine evening. It seemed as though a translucent infinitely pale shawl of gray-blue silk had been cast over the surface of the sea, with a silver sequin or two scattered over it when he looked toward the light. And the sky too was radiant, clad in veil upon shimmering veil of golden and ivory silk. Along the skyline lay a band of brightest, purest sheen, a river of pale liquid gold, dividing sea and sky; and in one direction, in the distance, hovering above the molten horizon lay a cloudy shadow, a mirage of land, with a great round mass, a tall wide dome, rising at one end of it.

“La Città!” said the coxswain. “Ècco la Città; Santa Sofia! Ècco!”

It was the City, at last.

T
he emperor slept peacefully enough that night, and his servants were undisturbed. The ship might have been tied up in some haven, so little did the cradling waters rock her. But very early in the morning Vrethiki woke to hear pulleys groan again at ropes rattling through them, and the loud canvas snap and bang as the wind stiffened it and the water began to chuckle and suck against the ship's side.

They were under way again. Quietly Vrethiki rose, and went above.

Lilac against a rose-pink sky lay the long promontory of the City, hovering dreamlike above the silver sea. It was much nearer now: a lovely complex shape, topped with slender columns, laden with swelling domes. As they drew nearer, and day brightened, Vrethiki half expected the vision to fade and vanish, so unearthly and insubstantial did it seem, but it solidified, and took on shape and detail in the gentle morning light. All round, it was ringed by towers, towers and battlemented walls, with the sea dancing and sparkling at the foot of them; above, rose arch upon arch, terraces, towers, columns and clustering domes. Pink and purple and honey-colored stones—gray domes, green domes, overtopped with shining crosses of gold-white marble clashing brilliant against
the deepening blue sky! Vrethiki was mildly surprised to remember that he had thought Mistra a fine place, for he saw now at once that there was, there could be, no place in all the earth like this.

The sailors were putting in to a little harbor at the southern, western end of the City. Even so, looking back as they sailed smoothly along the southern shore, he could see that the City lay at the mouth of a channel no wider than the Hellespont. The jutting promontory on which it stood came within half a mile of the facing shore, and had he not a few minutes before looked up the open water of the channel beyond the tip of the City, he would hardly have known, looking back, there was a break in the land there at all.

“Over there,” said his friend the coxswain, pointing to this other shore, “Turks.” And he drew the side of his hand across his neck, in a cut-throat gesture.

 

A WIDE TENT OF SCARLET CLOTH WAS READY FOR THEM ON
the shore. The Emperor was carried from the ship to this tent, and there put on his ceremonial robes, and his crown. Vrethiki, seeing what was coming, seized his penitential robe himself, and put it on on top of his scruffy everyday tunic, thus saving himself the pain of it next to his skin. The Emperor's horse was led into the tent, and he mounted it, and looked around for Vrethiki. A little brown pony was brought for Vrethiki, and he was told to ride three or four paces behind the Emperor. Then they drew back the curtains of the tent door, and the Emperor rode forth to the welcome of his people.

Beyond the tent a crowd were gathered, shouting and waving. A procession was drawn up ready, ranks of priests, and ranks of soldiers, to escort him. Fluttering pennants flickered
at the points of the soldiers' spears. The sun flashed off their helmets and greaves. The route was lined with people all the way, standing in the rows of young green corn, beside the roadway, yelling and weeping, and holding out hands to the Emperor. The land sloped gently upward as they rode, and a low rolling crest cut off the view ahead, like the rise and fall of an English plain, never quite as flat as it seems from a hilltop viewpoint. Then as they moved onward, mounting this low incline, a line of walls and towers rose out of the ground ahead. On the facing slope, beyond a little valley, stood the walls of the City.