The Towers of Samarcand (44 page)

Luke shook his head, trying to clear it. He closed his eyes.

Shulen. Here
.

He heard a voice far away that he knew. Shulen’s. She said: ‘You will dream of blood and you will be cured.’

He forced his eyes open and looked at the place from where the voice had come, trying to focus. She was with someone else now, holding their hand. It was Mohammed Sultan. He fell back against his bedding and closed his eyes and sleep broke over him like a warm surf and he dreamt.

He was in a pit with bars above. He saw a bull pulled by men with a rope and its throat cut. He felt the rich blood cascade
over him, filling the space around, rising, rising, until just his nose and mouth could breathe above it. He was drowning because he couldn’t move to keep above the blood. Then he was rising out of it and was standing on a rock in the middle of a river with fish in it and he was spearing them. One flashed past, then another: fat silver-grey trout darting among the rocks and tumbling down the eddies between. He raised his spear slowly while fixing his eye on the little defile through which they’d come. Then he struck and felt the joy of skin pierced. The water turned red.

He awoke to the smell of cooking fish. It was daylight and Mohammed Sultan and Shulen were side by side by the fire, turning fish on a spit and watching bubbling fat break through their curling scales. The fish hissed and spat and Luke felt his mouth fill with the juice of hunger. Mohammed Sultan lifted a fish off its spit by both ends, blowing on its surface and resting it on a stone to cool. He turned.

‘You’ve slept for two days. How do you feel?’

Luke felt unlike he’d ever felt before. He felt lighter than goose-down and his body tingled with sensation. He felt joy and hunger in equal measure. He felt alive. He propped himself up on his arm. ‘I feel different.’ He turned to Shulen. ‘You came.’

‘As I said I would.’ She laughed. ‘You’ve done more talking in the past two days than you have for a month. It was a torrent.’

‘What did I talk about?’

Shulen and Mohammed Sultan exchanged glances. The Prince lifted the stone and brought it over to Luke. He sat down beside him. ‘Eat.’

Luke took the fish and ate. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘What did I talk about?’

‘Anna, Luke. You talked about Anna.’

Shulen came over to them with more fish and sat as well. ‘You’re cured, I think, Luke. No more blood. It’s time to return.’

‘To Tamerlane?’

‘To Tamerlane. We’ll be leaving soon.’

‘How soon?’

Shulen shrugged. She gave one of the fish to Mohammed Sultan and her hand stayed on the Prince’s arm. ‘When they come.’

It was early evening in the valleys of the Qarabagh and the army was still waiting to move.

Inside Tamerlane’s tent, the eagle no longer watched the leopard and the leopard had forgotten its bone. Both of them stared at the man on the bed, the man whose body, yellow in the candlelight, was a mass of suppurating sores and leech-bruises and whose shallow breathing had the rattle of death about it.

Tamerlane was propped up on piled cushions and his eyes were open. He was looking at his grandson, Pir Mohammed, and his heavy lids were blinking from the sting of sweat in his eyes. It was early evening and the tent was suffocatingly hot. On the ground next to the bed were the feathers of different birds and Pir Mohammed was studying them.

‘Grandfather, the shaman has been,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Shulen told us not to put our trust in him. She said …’

Tamerlane slowly raised his hand. ‘I know what she said.’ He closed his eyes. ‘What harm can it do now, Grandson? I am nearly dead.’

Miran Shah had come to the tent earlier in the day, pushing
his way through the guards to stare in horror at what the Lord of the Celestial Conjunction had become. The shaman had entered the tent behind him, a withered, filthy Mongol in a coat of feathers, and Miran Shah had turned to him. ‘Bleed him,’ he’d whispered. ‘Bleed him a lot.’

Now bled, Tamerlane looked weaker than his grandson had yet seen him and could not be far from the end.

‘It is for my sins,’ he breathed, his eyes screwed shut against the memory of them. ‘It is for my sins that they have taken her.’

Pir Mohammed knew whom he meant. ‘She will return,’ he said quietly.

But Tamerlane was shaking his head slowly, the hollows of his cheeks dark pools below ridges shining with fever. ‘It is for my sins.’

The entrance to the ger creaked open and Pir Mohammed turned. His mother was closing the door behind her. She came over to the bed and stood beside her son. Tamerlane’s eyes had closed again and he seemed to be sleeping. Pir Mohammed turned to his mother. ‘Still no word from the Varangians. We don’t even know if they found her.’

Neither of them saw that his eyes had opened again. The old man’s brow was furrowed and, with a supreme effort, he raised his head. ‘So she doesn’t come, after all,’ he whispered. ‘I am truly cursed.’

Tamerlane closed his eyes and whatever fight had kept him alive thus far seemed to leave him like the blood that had been leeched from his veins. With a deep, cracked sigh, his head sank back into the cushions.

There was conversation outside the ger and an order barked. Pir Mohammed looked up. ‘It’s Miran Shah. I will go to him.’ He rose.

But as the door of the ger opened and the fire in the braziers flared in the draught, it was not his uncle that filled the entrance. It was Luke and beside him was Shulen and she carried the skull of a horse.

‘Who let in the shaman?’ she asked, throwing the skull to the ground and then her cloak on to the end of the bed. ‘And who made this tent so hot?’

Pir Mohammed came forward. ‘Temur Gurgan is dying.’

‘And you thought a shaman might save him?’ Shulen walked over to the bedside. Tamerlane’s eyes were still closed and she placed a hand on his forehead. She knelt and put her ear to his chest and a hand to his wrist. She examined the pustulating boils on his chest and arms, each in turn, oblivious to their stench.

Eventually she straightened. ‘I don’t know if I can save him,’ she said. ‘The illness is far advanced. I’ll do what I can.’

A hand from the bed suddenly grasped her wrist. Tamerlane’s eyes were open and they were pleading. ‘Save me, Shulen,’ he whispered.

Very slowly, one by one, Shulen prised the fingers from her skin. There were red marks where they had sunk into her flesh. She placed his arm gently by his side.

Luke came to the bedside. He knelt beside her and leant close to Tamerlane’s ear. ‘We have done you some favour, lord,’ he said. ‘All this time, we have done you favour. Now it is time for you to do us favour.’

Tamerlane closed his eyes again. His breathing was laboured, quickening. ‘What do you want?’ he rasped.

Luke glanced at Shulen. His hands were shaking below the bed and he clenched them into stillness. ‘I want this: if she cures you, we march to Bayezid and when we’ve destroyed him, you free us Varangians from our oath and let us go home. And
Shulen wants this: to marry Mohammed Sultan, your heir.’ Luke heard Khan-zada gasp behind him. He fixed his eyes on the dying man. Temur’s breathing was the ebb and flow of tide on shingle. His eyes were dulling. ‘All you have to do is nod your head to say that you agree.’

Tamerlane did nothing for a long time, his pale lips pressed together with concentration. Then he let out a long sigh and, almost imperceptibly, nodded.

Shulen stood up. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Then let’s begin.’

*

Much later, when Tamerlane had swallowed a draught and was sleeping without fever and his breathing had the rhythm of a man who might live again, Khan-zada spoke to Shulen. They were alone in the tent with him. ‘You poisoned him.’

It was night and the tent was cooler, only the flames from the braziers lighting the faces of the two women. Shulen was grinding something in a mortar and paused for no more than an instant before continuing. She didn’t answer.

Khan-zada took the girl’s wrist in her hand, forcing her to turn. ‘You poisoned him and then left the camp, knowing when you had to return to give him the antidote. You told the Varangians where to find you.’ Khan-zada gripped her wrist tighter. ‘Why do you want to marry my son? You don’t love him, you love another.’

Then Shulen turned away. ‘It is my destiny,’ she said softly.

‘It is
not
your destiny,’ hissed the Princess, squeezing the wrist again. ‘Your destiny was to bring Temur to fight Bayezid. This you have done. With poison. You could have killed him!’

The eagle moved on its perch, its claws raking the wood as it lifted its wings, the feathers sighing as they settled. It was staring at them, two unblinking beads of quivering light.

Shulen looked back at the woman. ‘Why am I not allowed to find happiness as you did, Khan-zada?’ she asked quietly. ‘You came down from your father Husayn in Urganch, riding a white camel, so they say. Flowers and carpets were laid down before you on your way to meet Jahangir. You didn’t know of love then and you couldn’t have known that you would love him. But you learnt to.’ She paused. ‘Why am I so different?’

‘Because you love another.’

‘No, I
loved
another, which is why I know what it is to love.’ She glanced over at the sleeping mass that was Tamerlane. She lowered her voice. ‘Now I love your son.’

Khan-zada began to say something but stopped herself. She shook her head and sighed.

Shulen turned to her. ‘I
will
marry him,’ she said softly.

Then Khan-zada seemed to crumble. Her shoulders sank and she put her palms to her cheeks and closed her eyes. Her hands were trembling. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘You can’t.’

‘But Temur has agreed to it,’ said Shulen calmly, frowning. ‘Why can’t I?’

The two women stared at each other. Then, little by little, the alchemy of souls that had begun in a tower high up in the castle of Alamut finally worked its indefinable magic. A knowledge passed from woman to woman, from mother to daughter. Khan-zada released her arm and looked away.

‘So we’re the same,’ Shulen whispered, already feeling the tears in her eyes. ‘We both loved another before.’ She paused and looked down at the pestle in her hand. ‘You are my mother and Mohammed Sultan is my brother.’

The Princess nodded.

Shulen closed her eyes, letting the meaning seep in. ‘Which is why I am here,’ she said softly. ‘Of course.’

There was silence again between them.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because you might have told Mohammed Sultan.’ Khan-zada took her daughter’s wrist again. ‘And you cannot ever tell him,’ she whispered. ‘Swear to me that you never will. It would kill him.’

Shulen had turned and walked back to a low divan where she sat. ‘My brother …’ she whispered. Then she looked up. ‘But how can I tell him that we cannot marry?’

Khan-zada came to sit beside her. ‘You won’t have to. Temur will send him ahead to prepare for the attack on Bayezid. He will be away for months. By the time he returns, we will have found a reason for breaking the arrangement.’

Tears now flooded Shulen’s cheeks. She leant forward and they fell into her hands. Then she stopped and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. She rose. ‘You must make Temur send him away immediately. I cannot lie to him.’

In the great library in the Blachernae Palace in Constantinople, Plethon was rubbing his eyes. He was seated at a long table on which were the bibles, testaments, uncials and codices that he’d been reading and rereading through the night, checking yet again that the casket held what he thought it held. In front of him was a flattened scroll and in his hand a goose-quill. He was stroking his beard and thinking.

It was, he supposed, nearing dawn and still the drum beat out its dismal tempo as it had since nightfall. He wondered why the Turks hadn’t yet attacked. For weeks, they’d been massing their army for the final assault. Listening to the drum, Plethon supposed that this was the night they’d chosen to do it.

Earlier that evening, he’d looked out from the walls across the Lycus Valley, his white toga patched with sweat. Stretched out before him was the Ottoman army, bigger than it had ever been. To his right, it rolled past the Gate of Charisius, past the Blachernae Palace to the banks of the Golden Horn. To his left, it wound its way down to the Sea of Marmara, in whose waters Bayezid’s larger bath toys sat at anchor. Great fires were being lit the length of the Turkish lines and battering rams,
ballistas, mangonels and scaling platforms hauled forward, their sodden hides slimy as snakeskin. Giant drums beat out a rhythm that went deep into the earth and travelled through the empty mines to rise up the spine of every man who stood on the city walls.

Plethon’s eyes had travelled to the top of the Maltepe Hill where he could just see the Sultan’s vast tent, a regiment of janissaries standing guard around it.

A voice said: ‘That’s where he’ll watch from.’

A soldier had come to stand beside him. He was a man well into his fifties who, in normal times, would be beyond military service. ‘Bloodthirsty bugger.’

‘You’ve seen this before?’ asked Plethon, turning to him.

The man nodded. ‘Adrianopolis, thirty years ago. His father Murad took the city. As mad a bugger as this one.’

Adrianopolis, now called Edirne. Plethon had been ten when the city had fallen. His father had hidden him in a cellar. ‘So what will they do?’

The man grinned, a single tooth pressed against his bottom lip. He’d removed his helmet and streaks of sweat coursed down the deep lines of his face. ‘First will come the bashibozouks,’ he said. ‘They’re mad, howling buggers too.’ He paused and slapped a fly on his neck. ‘Then, when their bodies are piled up against the walls, the janissaries will climb up them to get over the walls and finish us off.’ His hand slid horizontally across his neck. ‘They’ll cut our heads off, that’s what they’ll do.’ He turned and walked on along the ramparts, chuckling to himself.