The Walls of Byzantium (31 page)

‘Say nothing!’ hissed Luke. ‘There are men here who would kill you for the sport. Say nothing and lie still. We need to talk.’

The man lay rigid; he didn’t struggle and didn’t open his mouth. Around them were the sounds of search and the crackle of fading flame. Luke lowered his sword slowly, keeping his eyes fixed on the man.

‘Come with me,’ he said, and got to his feet, holding the man by the scruff of his neck. He crouched into a run, pushing him ahead, keeping a hand on his head to keep him low. He looked behind and was relieved to see no one. The two of them stumbled forward, knees hitting their chests, until they reached a narrow hut with wooden slats that were warm and flaked by the fire. They stopped, put their backs to its wall and looked at each other with suspicion.

‘Why?’ asked Luke. His sword was still in his hand but slack by his side. He rubbed soot from his cheek and swept his hair back from his eyes.

The man didn’t answer.

Luke laid his sword on the ground. ‘Why?’ he asked again.

The man looked around, back at Luke and then beyond him, out into the night. His shoulders slumped and he slid his back down the wall, the slats rucking his shirt up and his arms coming to rest in his lap. He put a hand to his temples and closed his eyes. He rubbed his eyelids and shook his head slowly from side to side.

Luke brought himself down to the man’s level and Dimitri turned his head.

‘And why you?’ he asked quietly. ‘You are Greek yet you dine with the Genoese. We have seen you riding with the Byzantine princess, dressed as they are and planning your enrichment at our expense. Have you no pride?’

Pride. Did he have pride? Luke had thought of everything in these past months except perhaps that.

He said, ‘You could have killed people.’

Dimitri shook his head. ‘No wind. It was intended to frighten, not kill.’

‘So why?’

Dimitri let his head fall back against the wood. ‘We want protection. Protection from the pirates and, if we can’t get that, then the means to defend ourselves.’

At that moment, there was movement in some bushes to their left and they both looked towards it. There was a glint of metal. Luke picked up his sword and thought about using Dimitri as a shield, then discarded the idea. Instead the man beside him spoke.

‘Don’t shoot, Marko,’ he said tiredly, his hand stretching to lower Luke’s sword. ‘We won’t win by killing Greeks. Come out here. He wants to talk.’

A man rose slowly from the bushes. He was wearing a loose leather jerkin with a belt at its waist and a knife in the belt. He was holding a crossbow. He walked over to them, checking to left and right.

Luke was staring at the crossbow. He got to his feet. ‘Where did you get that?’ he asked.

Marko didn’t reply. He was holding the weapon in a way that suggested he was unpractised in its use.

‘I want to help you,’ said Luke, turning to Dimitri. ‘But I need to know how you got that weapon. I’ve seen it before.’

There was a long pause.

‘We found it on the beach,’ said Dimitri at last. ‘Five cases of them, all brand new. We assumed they were intended for the garrison.’ He paused. ‘Perhaps they were shipwrecked.’

‘Was it the beach at Fani?’ asked Luke. He stretched out his hand to take the weapon and Marko glanced at Dimitri, who nodded. The bolt was removed and Luke took the weapon. He studied it carefully: it was identical to those he’d seen on the ship.

‘This weapon was left for you to find,’ said Luke quietly. ‘By the Venetians. They want you to rebel against the Genoese so that they can take over the island.’ Luke looked from one man to the other. ‘They’ll be worse masters than the Genoese, I promise you.’

The men exchanged glances. Luke returned the weapon to Marko. There was a dog’s bark in the distance, then another.

‘Look,’ he said to Dimitri, ‘you shouldn’t stay here. Get back to your village and take the rest of your men with you. I’ll ride out to you tomorrow and we can talk then.’

Dimitri nodded once and turned away. ‘Until tomorrow, then,’ he said.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHIOS, SUMMER 1395

The next morning broke fair but smudged with the residue of burning. The west walls of the villa were black with soot but otherwise untouched. The orchard was a charnel house of sodden, still-smoking branches in various contortions. It looked like a battlefield.

Luke rose early and found Longo kneeling amidst the carnage. He was wearing a white cotton shirt and leather breeches with no hose. He looked tired and his hair clung to his head like seaweed. He looked up when he heard Luke approach.

‘They could have done much worse,’ he said, looking around him. ‘I wonder what held them back.’

Luke knelt beside the older man. He scraped away the ash on the ground with his fingers. ‘Isn’t it good for the soil, lord?’ he asked.

Longo raised his eyebrows, surprised. ‘Fire? Yes,’ he replied carefully. ‘After all, it’s all the same.’ Then he looked at Luke, this time with speculation. ‘It is a pity that we caught no one last night. It would be useful to know why they didn’t go any further.’

Luke continued to dig at the ground, lifting earth in his
hands and smelling it before letting it run through his fingers.

‘Luke, did you see anyone?’

The two men looked at each other. Then Luke smiled and nodded. Barely a nod.

He said, ‘My lord, I have to ride south today to meet the men who did this. Not to punish them but to talk to them. Can you trust me?’

Longo whistled quietly through his teeth. ‘I should have guessed. Who are they?’

‘I can’t tell you that, lord,’ he said. ‘I think you know that.’

Longo sighed. ‘Yes. Of course.’ He turned towards the house and, taking Luke’s arm, began to walk. Luke looked up at the balcony and saw Fiorenza standing there. She was watching them.

‘You may go,’ said Longo, ‘but I want you to take Fiorenza with you. She is Greek, Luke. Like you.’

Luke saw there were two horses tethered below the balcony. This had been decided long ago.

‘We should leave immediately,’ he said.

They did not speak on the ride south. The land was flattened and baked by a remorseless sun that annihilated colour and created stark contrasts of form. The well-ordered fields of the Sklavia estate soon gave way to rolling hills of scrub and grass and yellow broom which fell into valleys of olive and carob groves and the strange, stunted trees that Luke now knew to be mastic. The rivers were dry, their beds cracked and scattered with rocks and birds that stood on one leg, erect and motionless. The air was filled with the scent of aridity and stagnation and past abundance.

Luke was absorbed by the rise and fall of the parted mane of his horse and the pimples of rough grey skin between. He thought vaguely of his Greek and Genoan loyalties and of the woman riding beside him who represented some version of both. And when he’d finished considering that, he thought of Anna and of a ride through the night, so long ago, when he’d felt nothing more complicated than the urge to protect.

At one point they stopped to rest the horses and eat a meal of cold partridge, cheese and bread with good wine from a flask that had kept it cold. They ate and watched the horses crop the grass and nuzzle each other and toss flies from their noses.

A week ago they would have talked. Or Fiorenza would have talked and Luke listened and enjoyed the rich cadence of her voice. Now there was comfort in silence.

They rode on through the afternoon and its weight fell heavy on their shoulders and on the beaded necks of their horses. Fiorenza seemed unperturbed by the heat and sat upright and alert as if expecting a summons. Beneath a turban pinned with a wisp of jewel-set osprey, she wore a thin half-veil across her nose and mouth. Her belted tunic was of plain, unadorned cotton, which she wore loose so that she pass for either a woman or a boy.

When the village came into view, they reined in their horses and watched the movement of people below. The villagers had seen them and were pointing them out to each other. In the low evening sun, the shadows of the scattered houses stretched long across the wide central street and divided a gathering procession into patches of separate movement. All were carrying something, a basket with food or a flask, and the air was full of excitement. A festival.

‘It’s the start of the
kendos
, the harvesting of the mastic. It
goes on for the next six months,’ said Fiorenza. ‘They begin it with a night of drinking and love among the trees under the moon.’

Luke looked at her. ‘Drinking mastic?’

Fiorenza laughed. ‘You’ve not tasted it? It’s a medicine, not a recreation.’

Beneath them a flask of wine was being passed along the line, its wicker sides catching the last sunlight. There was a call and someone looked up at them and raised it in salute. A burst of laughter followed and a dog rose and darted between the shadows. Luke saw a figure detach itself from the mass and shield its eyes, looking up. It was Dimitri and he waved.

‘Come, let’s join them,’ called Luke over his shoulder as he kicked his horse forward. ‘And, lady,’ he went on, ‘let me talk. It was I they allowed to live last night.’

Fiorenza took up her reins and followed him down the winding track, adjusting her veil against the dust and evening insects. A thin smell came to them of lime and rotting vegetables among the poppied fields. A clutch of swifts and warblers darted up, startling the horses; a chaffinch rose as a blur and then flapped into yellow motion.

The procession had begun to wind its way out of the village, down the hill towards the groves and orchards, but Dimitri walked forward to meet them. Beside him came the brawn of Marko and neither wore a smile of welcome.

‘It is an honour to greet you, magnificent lady,’ said Dimitri, bowing stiffly towards Fiorenza, his voice measured and without enthusiasm. ‘We didn’t expect such an honour.’

Luke dismounted and led his horse to stand in front of Dimitri. ‘Dimitri, greetings,’ said Luke. ‘Princess Fiorenza is
here because she understands this island better than anyone. Her counsel will be invaluable.’

He looked back towards Fiorenza. ‘If the Princess wishes to dismount, then it would be my pleasure to present you to her.’

In one graceful sweep of the leg, Fiorenza dismounted and walked towards the two men, her unveiled smile as dazzling as on the day Luke had met her. The dimples punctured her cheeks like buttons and she proffered a hand at an angle of tact, to be kissed or shaken as custom dictated.

Dimitri chose to kiss it as Luke thought he might. He said: ‘You are welcome, lady.’ He looked back to Luke. ‘Is the Princess to join us in our conversations?’

‘Of course,’ replied Luke. ‘She knows the minds of the Genoese. Her husband leads them.’

Dimitri glanced at Fiorenza and nodded shortly. ‘Most assuredly.’

Fiorenza stepped forward. She was radiant and entirely at her ease. ‘Can we join the procession?’ she asked brightly. ‘Where do we go?’

‘To the sea, lady,’ replied Dimitri. ‘Or at least we go to the mastic groves closest to the sea to celebrate the kendos. By all means come with us. What better place to talk than amongst the trees that are the cause of our problems?’

An hour later, Luke and Fiorenza were walking their horses down amongst olive and carob trees and between hills which opened like pages on to a sea of dark amber. They had just born witness to the birth of a full moon from its water bed and the disc hung washed-grey in a night of small colour. As it grew in strength, and as they drew nearer, a white scimitar of sand appeared with the sea blunting its edge as it slid over rocks to
the salt flats above the beach. The cicadas were less busy here and an ass brayed above the plodding clink of a bell which sounded somewhere on the hill.

Dimitri walked silently by their side. Luke studied this strange man who had education beyond that of a mastic-grower and anger beyond that called for by piracy. He wanted to know more of him but knew it was not yet the moment to ask.

Someone close by lit a torch and the world beyond its glare vanished to be replaced with a closer scene of low, shrub-like trees with wrinkled scales for bark. Around the base of each had been cleared a circle of white earth, luminous and ghostly. The smell of soil and salt grew stronger as the shapes around them took form, carried perhaps by the clusters of night insects that ebbed and flowed around the light. More torches were winking ahead of them and the murmur of conversation carried up to them on the wash of the waves as they neared the sea.