The Walls of Byzantium (39 page)

‘God bless you, Lara.’

And that was the signal.

The crowd erupted into bawdy cheering and formed itself into some sort of procession, led by the girl carrying the koufeta with candle-bearers at either side. A group of musicians played bagpipes and ouds and drums and children skipped by their side, barefoot and clapping. The villagers danced and sang and shouted greetings to each other as two brawny men picked Dimitri up and put him on their shoulders where he rocked back and forth to the tempo of the drum.

‘Shall we join them?’ said Fiorenza to the only three men in the village not moving. She laughed. ‘You look like dummies at the tilting range! Take off your doublets or Genoan pride will be on its back by noon.’

The way to the church was short and strewn with flowers. On either side were the first three-storeyed houses of the new Mesta, built to Luke’s dream and Barbi’s design, and they were indeed extraordinary. Barbi had spoken of the
carrugi
, the narrow streets of his native Genoa, when he’d heard of Luke’s
labyrinth, and he’d understood immediately the system of vaults, arches and bridges that would allow the villagers to go to any part of their village without their feet ever touching the ground.

The first part of the village to be built had been the tower, which would be the storehouse of the community as well as its place of final refuge. Next had come the church and the laying out of a small central piazza with shops and taverns. Then this, the first of many streets, had been built at the same time as work had begun on the outer, unbroken ring of houses that would be the village wall.

Barbi had brought with him architects, stonemasons and engineers from all over Italy; they’d been given different parts of the village to build and the stiff breeze of competition had blown among them so that the houses had gone up in record time. Now the scaffolding had moved on and the way made clear for the procession that would take Dimitri and Lara to their wedding.

As he walked, Marchese Longo looked around him and was impressed. He hadn’t visited the south of the island for many months and he could scarcely believe the progress that had been made.

‘Luke, Benedo, this is nothing short of miraculous,’ he was saying, ‘but what of this extraordinary decoration on the walls of the houses?’

‘Ah, lord,’ said Barbi, ‘now that was the villagers’ idea. We encouraged them to paint the labyrinth onto the walls of their houses and they came up with these strange designs which they call
ksista
. They’re attractive, are they not?’

‘I’m not sure,’ laughed Longo. ‘Did they work last time?’

The last pirate raid had been a farce. Reaching the abandoned
old village of Mesta, the pirates had conveniently burnt it to the ground, thus giving the villagers plenty of time to prepare for their arrival.

At that time, little more than the central tower and church had been erected, so the entire village had brought their goods and livestock into the ground floor and themselves had occupied the upper storeys. As the pirates had approached the church, they’d been met by a storm of missiles from its roof and some experimental Greek fire. And when they’d tried to reach the missile-throwers, the pirates found they had joined their families in the tower. After failing to burn it down, the pirates had returned to their ships and sailed away. They hadn’t been seen since.

But the pirates had been replaced by a blockade and a month ago three round ships carrying alum to Florence had been seized. The loss of the round ships was little short of a catastrophe, for each could hold over a hundred tons of alum and, with nothing able to get through the blockade, the warehouses at Chora were groaning. If the blockade continued, the Florentines would begin to look to other sources.

Longo stopped and turned to Benedo Barbi. He lowered his voice.

‘The blockade is slowly killing us, Benedo. We’re fortunate that the Venetian alum from Trebizond can’t get through the blockade at Constantinople either, otherwise we’d lose all our markets. Did you know that two more ships were taken yesterday? It’s as if the Turks
know
where to wait for us.’

He took Barbi’s arm and began to walk again.

‘How does your miracle weapon progress, Benedo?’

‘We are not quite there, lord,’ he answered. ‘The mixture is volatile. We will create Greek fire again, but it will take time.’

By now they had reached the church, which was a simple,
whitewashed building with red bricks in herringbone pattern around its arched windows and a roof bright with new tiles. In front of it stood Dimitri and Lara, who were holding the plate of koufeta between them and had their wedding crowns on their heads. The sweets would be left at the church door for the unmarried of the village to take and lay on their pillows to help them dream of the one they would marry. Marchese Longo smiled.

This is what we are protecting
.

After the long service and the much, much longer feast of goat and pilaf at which even Benedo Barbi had been persuaded to dance, Luke and Fiorenza found themselves walking outside the village wall under a giant moon. Marchese Longo and Barbi had retired to Luke’s house and would be fast asleep by now and quite possibly dreaming of the same ksista shapes, intended to entertain by day and confuse by night, that Luke and Fiorenza were discussing.

‘Quite like women, really,’ said Fiorenza, who had lifted her delicious nose to the smell of mastic that hung over the fields and groves. The night was startlingly clear and star-hung and the moon made the surface of the small irrigation lake into a thing of satin.

Luke smiled and turned to her. In the excitement of recent months, he’d almost forgotten what might have happened in the mastic grove by the sea.

‘I’m too young to be confused by women,’ said Luke. ‘They just dazzle me. Or perhaps it’s just you. I’m indebted to you, Fiorenza.’

‘You did it yourself, Luke. Education would have come to you like a thirsty man finds water. Lara, she’s the same.’

‘Lara?’ said Luke. ‘Yes, you’re right. It was her idea for Dimitri to go to the Sultan’s camp and mend his teeth.’

‘Well, I hope he got paid for it. They’ll need money now they’re married. What of your money, Luke?’

Luke’s fortune was still in its infancy but steadily growing. He’d discovered shoots of a sharp commercial instinct within the new growth of his learning and had applied it readily to the business of exploiting the mastic miracle. And miracle it was. Over the past months, he and Dimitri had found more and more uses for it. Not only was it a teeth-whitener, a breath-sweetener and filler of cavities, but it also seemed to work well as a wound sealant and a remedy for snake bites. Before the blockade, the ships leaving Chora with alum had begun to carry mastic in their holds as well and the first sales had been beyond their expectations.

But that was a month ago.

‘We have a spy on the island,’ said Luke. ‘Someone who is telling the Turks when our ships leave port.’

‘So it would seem,’ murmured Fiorenza. ‘The Medici agent perhaps? They’re close to the Venetians.’

Luke shrugged. ‘Did you know that they’ve offered to be bankers to me, as they are to the lord Longo? I’m flattered.’

‘Don’t be,’ said Fiorenza. ‘It is only because they have high hopes for you.’ She paused. ‘But you must watch them.’

Luke glanced at her and saw that she was looking at him with much the same curiosity as when she’d first greeted him on the steps of Longo’s mansion. But now there was something else as well, something that Luke both wanted and feared.

‘Shall we sit?’ said Fiorenza as they reached a tree beside the lake with roots that knotted themselves together like old men’s fingers.

They sat on ground dampening in the early dew, strewn with little stones covered in moss thick as double-cut velvet. Above them was a canopy of branches through which the stars winked and pulsed with the bravado of nightly reincarnation. There was the soft slap of fishes hitting water to their front. Luke knew he had drunk too much and he breathed in the night air deeply.

‘I was at your new house in the Kambos last week,’ said Fiorenza, who had largely been responsible for its decoration. ‘I see you have rooms prepared for guests. Are you expecting anyone?’

Luke wondered at the direction her mind was taking and whether it was into territory new to them both. He breathed in again.

‘Yes,’ he said guardedly. ‘Or rather, no. I have prepared rooms for guests but am not expecting anyone soon. Perhaps in the future.’ He was trying hard to avoid her gaze.

‘Are they for Anna? For your children together?’ asked Fiorenza softly.

Luke didn’t answer and the silence between them lasted for many minutes. Two arcs of silver rose and fell above the surface of the lake before either spoke again. Luke wondered if its water could possibly be as deep as the unspoken understanding between them, or its banks as steep.

‘Where is she?’ asked Fiorenza at last, gently.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Luke. ‘Still in Monemvasia, I suppose.’

‘Why not go there and get her then?’

‘Because they also hold my mother. It would be too dangerous.’

Luke threw the stone and the lake opened and shivered and closed again and no fishes rose for a while.

‘Is she the only one you’ve ever loved?’ asked Fiorenza.

‘Yes.’

‘The only one you’ve ever desired?’

‘No.’

Now she turned to him and smiled and her face was in shadow except for her eyes which were two moons. ‘That is good.’

She paused and then got to her feet. ‘Now we must return to the village. It’s nearly dawn.’

Very early next morning Luke and Fiorenza rode out, alone, to the new port of Limenas, which was an hour’s gentle ride to the north. Longo and Barbi had left at dawn for Chora and Dimitri was presumably still abed and engaged as he should be.

The fields around the village and the mastic groves beyond were deserted and would remain so until the effects of the wine and souma had been argued away. The only sounds were birdsong and the bells of animals, the occasional cry of a rising partridge and the steady clop of their hooves on the earth. The smell of mastic had risen with the first heat from the land and with it came the scent of crushed myrtle and narcissus as the sun drew all living things towards its energy. Luke felt happy to be alive.

Fiorenza hadn’t spoken since mounting her horse and her face was difficult to read behind the half-veil she wore against the dust. For Luke, the silence was welcome as it gave him the leisure to study the trees.

They seemed well tended and their ash-coloured bark had the five or six incisions, or
kenties
, low in the trunk that would allow collection of resin until October. He stopped his horse
next to one with a lighter bark and was frowning as he dismounted.

‘What’s wrong?’ enquired Fiorenza from her saddle.

Luke was kneeling in front of the tree and peering at one of the incisions. ‘This tree is too young to be tapped,’ he said, pointing at the cut. ‘Look, you can see that they’ve reached the bone of the tree. It’s a clumsy cut. We’ve told them again and again that hurting the younger trees will reduce their yields.’

He sighed with frustration and picked a piece of crystallised resin the shape of a tiny pear from the circle of clay around the tree. ‘This should be pale yellow or green, not white,’ he said cupping the crystal in his palm and showing it to Fiorenza.

‘Give it to me,’ she said, leaning forward. She studied the rough, coagulated shape in her hand and began to scrape away some of the earth and clay. Free of dirt, it was still opaque and Fiorenza held it up to the sun and turned it this way and that. ‘It’s beautiful as it is,’ she murmured. ‘I shall make a necklace of it.’

‘You won’t,’ laughed Luke. ‘The penalty for theft is removal of a nose or ear, and Marchese would never forgive me if you lost those.’

‘Your idea? It seems fierce.’

‘Dimitri’s idea. He’s come to realise that this mastic just may be worth its weight in gold.’ Luke wiped the earth from his hands on the sides of his doublet and remounted, waving flies from his horse’s neck as he did so. ‘But it will be worth even more if we can prove its use as a dye fixative.’