Emperor's Winding Sheet (7 page)

When he came on them so suddenly like that, it was their size which struck Vrethiki first. They were huge, the towers like a battle line of looming giants. Right and left they stretched, down to the shine and ultramarine of the sea on their right, and up the hill on their left, disappearing over the crest, all at regular intervals, like well-drilled battalions. The defenses were deep as well as high. First there was a moat, very deep, and walled and faced with buttressed masonry; then a wall, with battlements and towers, and, behind that and beyond, towering over it, another wall, a massive wall like a cliff, with gigantic towers standing one in each space between the towers of the outer wall. And all was made of well-squared, fine gray masonry, braced and trimmed with bands of dark-red brick.

“But the Turks will never get in!” thought Vrethiki, with a sudden lift of the heart.

The road they were riding on wound toward a point in the wall where the regular march of the towers was broken by a huge white bastion, a vast stark white slab of marble, rising even higher than the inner towers. In front of it was a flourish of arch, columns, stairways rising on either side, and every cranny and foothold of the walls here, every inch of battlement
and step of stairs was swarming with citizens, shouting and waving. In the terraces between the walls there was also a band of small boys, who burst out singing as the Emperor rode over the causeway across the moat. Across the moat they went, up the sloping stairs, through the outer arch, and then Vrethiki saw that the mountainous white marble bastion had a vast brazen door in the middle of it.

“The Golden Gate,” said Stephanos at his side, as they rode through. “This was here even before these walls were made, they say.” He tendered the remark like a peace offering.

“How long ago was that?” asked Vrethiki, interested in spite of himself.

“The walls? They were made for the Emperor Theo dosius, a thousand years ago. The triumphal arch? I don't know, but long before that …”

Beyond the great gate lay a little enclosure with smaller walls round it. It was full of soldiers, yelling and stamping, and waving pennants on their lances, and blowing out bursts on their bugles. The Emperor reined in his horse, and raised his arms to them in greeting before riding on.

On through the streets of the City, through the thronging crowd. Vrethiki had never seen such a street. It was lined with marble all the way, with marble and with porphyry. Great houses faced the street, not with windows, but with high blank walls, pierced by columned gateways, and overtopped by columns, by columns and roof gardens, and little gabled roofs and upper chambers, and casements and balconies. And from every upper window of every house along the way, from every door, over every wall and pillar, hung swaths of colored cloth. The people had draped their houses with robes and coverlets, with arras hangings, with carpets and with sheets, red, purple and gold, linen and wool and
shining whispering silk, for the boisterous wind off the sea to sport with and wave like flags. The great road passed through squares, through forums. Huge columns stood there, shooting sky ward, standing memorials to something Vrethiki had never heard of, no doubt … and pedestals laden with statuary, bronze horsemen, marble statesmen, gilded saints. They came at last to the Hippodrome, a huge stadium, with an oval elongated cursus, down which the Emperor rode past tiers and tiers of joyful shouting people. At one end of it, to the right, rose the huge mass, the great buttressed bulk of that first dome Vrethiki had seen—the one so massive that it loomed in sight even from far out to sea.

The Catalan coxswain had called it Santa Sophia, but Stephanos now murmured, “The Church of the Holy Wis dom.”

But although they rode toward it, to Vrethiki's surprise and faint disappointment they did not enter there. At the doors stood an old man who must be the Patriarch, robed in white, with black crosses on his pallium. The Emperor dismounted, and went to meet him, and knelt before him on the steps, but when the Patriarch had blessed him, the Emperor mounted again, and the procession moved on. And while the Emperor knelt thus, it was as if a cloud had slid across the sun; the crowd fell silent, and cheering ceased. You could hear the people's feet, shuffling on the paving. They muttered to one another. When the Patriarch stepped forward, someone hissed. And a cracked voice called crazily from far back in the crowd, “Woe to the City for Constantine!”

Stephanos clenched his teeth, and scowled toward the voice; but now the blessing was over, and the Emperor was riding away, and as though the cloud had passed the crowd was pleased again, and cheering. Children ran along beside the Emperor's horse, jumping, and calling with their high
birds' voices. They pointed to Vrethiki, and gabbled at each other. The people threw branches of myrtle, branches of olive before the hoofs of his horse, and from windows sprinkled him with rose water as he passed. The street they were riding down now was taking them back in the general direction of the land walls, and after some long time, when it seemed to Vrethiki they had been riding for hours, when the sun was overhead, and the shadows deepening to velvet black, he saw the walls again ahead of them. The road ran down a little, and the land walls descended to meet the walls of a palace, which stood in the corner of the City at the angle between land walls and sea walls. Over the roofs of this palace lay a prospect of tranquil water and green hills.

They descended the slope, while the walls of the palace rose above them, and rode through the great bronze gates that stood wide to greet them, and into a garden, full of trees, and little marble basins planted with herbs. A fountain gushed from a conch in the hands of a bronze Neptune and brimmed a wide white basin full of clear water. Paths of flagstone led across beneath the trees. A bell struck three clear notes, and the great gates of the palace swung shut. The clamor of the crowd was shut out, and in the sudden hush Vrethiki heard the fountain trickling, and a small bird singing on a bush. Wearily the riders dismounted. From a doorway in one of the buildings that crowded haphazardly round the garden an old woman came forward, wearing a black damask robe of great richness, and walking with the help of a silver cane. Stepping forward swiftly to meet her, with hands held out toward her, the Emperor called her, “Mother.”

 

VRETHIKI NOTICED ALMOST AT ONCE THAT STEPHANOS WAS
an important person here. From the moment they entered
the gates of the Palace of Blachernae, he was surrounded by slaves and servants, calling him sir, asking for instructions, running to carry them out. He went at once, trailing Vrethiki three paces behind him, to inspect the Emperor's apartments. Servants who had made them ready went with him, eager to show him what had been done. Stephanos approved the rooms, all three of them: a chamber hung with damasked silks, with a wide hearth and a good fire burning, and gilded couches, and a writing desk, a bed chamber, and a large anteroom, with the walls all painted, and the floor of colored marble, and a great wide throne at one end. All these rooms had large arched windows with glass in them, and so were both warm and light.

When Stephanos had seen over the Emperor's lodgings he saw to their own: a little chamber off the Imperial anteroom for him and Manuel. He had an extra bed brought in for Vrethiki before marching on to look at rooms for priests, wardrobe keepers, stewards, chaplains, captains, for everyone who had come with them from Mistra. Every three minutes it seemed messages were carried to him from the kitchens and cellars about arrangements for a banquet that night. He had no time at all for Vrethiki, who soon stopped following, and returned to the little room. Here he untied his bundle and put his few things in a small wooden chest that seemed to be for him, since it was beside his bed. Then he pressed his nose to the window, to look through the little thick squares of glass.

He could see the upper reach of the Golden Horn, lying shining between the arms of the sloping hills beyond the City, but all distorted and twisting in the glass, like a view through the heat of a bonfire, so he stood on the low wooden bed, and opened a little hinged casement, the better to see
out. Below was a courtyard, in which soldiers came and went from the ground floor beneath him where they seemed to be billeted. He could hear the buzz of voices, and some laughter. A group of them were sitting around in a sunny corner, cleaning weapons and harness, and right below his window a man was rubbing down his horse and whistling at his work.

“Our king went forth to Normandy,” said Vrethiki's mind to him, “With grace and might of chivalry, God for him wrought marvelously … That's an English tune!

No, it can't be; it must have Greek words too. Or Italian, or Serb, or something,” he added, for a babel of tongues surrounded him.

Just then Manuel arrived, and began to unbuckle his ceremonial wear. He put the encrusted belt and the Emperor's drinking cup on its chain down on the bed.

“So, how like you the City now?” he asked, slyly. “Still pining for Mistra?”

“Oh, Manuel!” cried Vrethiki, his head reeling to think of the walls, of the size, of the great domes, of the wild crowds, of the splendor. “Oh, what a City!”

“Oh, City, City, eye of Cities,” declaimed Manuel, flinging his arms wide, and flapping the wings of the damasked eagle on his gown, “Oh, City, City, head of all Cities! Oh, City, City, center of the four corners of the world! Oh, City, City, pride of the Christians, and ruin of the bar barians! Oh, City, City, second paradise, planted in the west—”

“Yes!” said Vrethiki. “Yes!”

 

“
THIS PLACE!” HE TOLD HIMSELF, STANDING BEHIND THE
Emperor's throne at the great banquet that night. “The crown and jewel of all the world; a man hasn't lived till he's seen it!”

He was in a semicircular row of the Emperor's servants,
ranged behind the throne. Behind them again, in a larger half circle, stood a contingent of soldiers, all in white and shining bronze: the Imperial guard, the Varangians. The Emperor sat on a wide throne like a couch, gilded and carved and inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and laden with cushions. Beside him, on his right, lay a copy of the Gospels written in gold on lilac vellum and propped open with an ivory pointer set with emeralds and pearls. The Emperor's crown blazed on his head; from the lower rim of it dangling strings of rubies and huge misty pearls hung down among his long dark curls. Before him stood a great table spread with white damasked linen, scattered with sprigs of sweet herbs and flower petals, and loaded heavily with fish and fowl on dishes all of gold. Vrethiki had never seen such food—there were roast sucking pigs, and swans, and peacock, and wild duck, and innumerable huge fishes with gray and silver scales, set upright as though swimming upon the platters in shoals. And there was fruit too, in golden baskets—apples and melons, figs, dates and raisins, and dishes of little bright green nuts, and there was cheese, and artichokes, and hard-boiled eggs painted purple and standing in little eggcups of bright blue enamel. So beautiful was all this food that it did not look real enough to stir Vrethiki's hunger.

Nobody sat down at that table; instead, the Emperor's guests thronged the hall, standing, and Stephanos called their names out, one by one, and then they came forward, the servants loaded plates for them, and they went back to their places and ate, standing, while others were called upon. And each man, as his name was called, shouted a greeting to the Emperor in his own tongue. Such a list of grand names, and lordly offices! “Peré Julia—Consul of the Catalans in the City! Girolamo Minotto—Bailey of the Venetians in the
City! Giovanni Lomellino—Podestà of Pera—the colony of the Genoese across the Golden Horn!” Vrethiki saw, with a twitch of curiosity, how these last two gentlemen looked daggers at each other. There were Greek names too. “Lukas Notaras—Megadux! The ophilus Palaeologos, cousin to the Emperor! John Dalmata, Commander in the Imperial army! Orhan, Prince of the Turks, rightful heir of the Ottoman throne!”

Startled the boy looked up to see a Turk, fully armed and wearing barbarian robes complete with turban, suddenly appearing at the table. But he joined his hands, and touched them to his forehead respectfully, and greeted the Emperor in elegant Greek.

As more and more guests came forward to receive meat and drink, more and more servants were busied carrying platters to and fro, refilling goblets, removing empty dishes, and Manuel, standing by the table pouring out the ruby wine, called Vrethiki to come and help him. Vrethiki moved through the throng, carrying golden goblets, full to a guest, or empty back for more. He moved in a daze, moonstruck by the splendor around him. Those shining walls of polished porphyry, in which the lamps, reflected, floated in wine-dark gleaming pools! Oh, the height and brilliance of the ceiling, which seemed to be made of a great glittering sheet of starry gold; gold everywhere, blazing on the Emperor's shining crown, darkly rich on the Emperor's table, heavy and precious in the goblets cupped in Vrethiki's trembling hands!

Stephanos called out another name—“John Inglis, Captain of the Varangian guard!” and John Inglis cried suddenly, in English, “Hail to thee, Emperor, long life, good health, and victory!” and hearing his own tongue spoken, Vrethiki
stopped short, thunderstruck, and dropped the cup he was carrying.

He expected it to ring upon the floor, to sound like a bell as it rolled away. Instead it made a tinkling crash—it shattered on the marble at his feet, and he stood looking stupidly, mouth open, at the scatter of shivered fragments on the floor. The thickness of the pieces showed trans lucent, gray-green. The gold was paper-thin, cracked and flaking. The golden goblet had been made of painted glass.

As Vrethiki took this in, staring where he stood, a little curved fragment lay rocking on the floor, cradling a drop of the dark dregs of the wine. Then servants came running up, and the telltale splinters were hastily swept away.