Siege (2 page)

She did not love her uncle. He was temperamental and drank too much. Nevertheless, John had been a good emperor, and he had allowed Sofia her freedom. She was nearly twenty-four, well past the age when a princess of the empire should have been married, yet her uncle had never broached the subject. He had allowed her to study, not just the literature and philosophy normally taught to women of the court, but also mathematics, government and languages – Italian, Arabic, Latin and Turkish. At the urging of the Empress-Mother Helena, he had even allowed her to join him in council meetings, where she had learned the art of politics. Whoever succeeded John, Sofia doubted that he would be so accommodating towards her.

Sofia gently smoothed back the emperor’s hair. ‘I have come, Uncle,’ she whispered.

John opened his eyes. ‘Sit beside me, Sofia,’ he gasped. ‘I want to ask …’ John stopped short, his words lost in a long fit of coughing. ‘I want to ask your forgiveness,’ he continued at last, ‘for any wrongs that I have done you.’ Such a request was traditional for emperors in their last days. It was clear that John knew his time was near.

‘You have no need to ask, Uncle,’ Sofia replied. ‘You have done me no wrongs.’

He frowned and shook his head. ‘No, Sofia. I fear I was wrong to raise you as I did. You reminded me so much of my poor dead wife, Maria. I wished to keep you near me, as a reminder of her, and to give you all you wished, as I failed to give her.’ He sighed.
‘I did not prepare you to be a princess, to be a wife. You have not learned your place in this world.’

‘I wish for no other place than that which I have,’ Sofia told him. ‘I do not regret what I have learned.’

‘Nor do I, Sofia,’ John wheezed between ragged breaths. ‘These are difficult times, and the empire has need of you. There are those in Constantinople who would sell the city to the Turks to feed their ambition. We must stop them. Our empire has stood for over a thousand years. We are the heirs of Rome. We must not fall!’

‘But what can I do?’ Sofia asked, a trace of bitterness in her voice. ‘I am a woman, Uncle. I will have little influence at Constantine’s court.’

John shook his head as he was seized by another fit of coughing. ‘No, you are more than that. Look at my mother, Helena. She is a better statesman than any of my councillors. You have her same spirit, Sofia. My brother Constantine is a good man, but he is not a subtle one. When I am gone, he will need your help, even if he does not wish for it.’

‘I will do what I can, Uncle.’

‘You must swear to me, Sofia,’ John gasped. ‘Give me your hand …’ Sofia placed her hand in his, and the dying emperor gripped it with surprising strength. His eyes burned with urgency as he met Sofia’s gaze. ‘Swear that when I am gone, you will do all you can to protect this city from those who would destroy it.’

‘I swear it,’ Sofia replied solemnly. ‘I will defend Constantinople with my life.’

John released her hand and lay back, suddenly small and fragile. ‘Good. Now go,’ he said. ‘And send in my mother.’ Sofia nodded and left. In the antechamber, she told the empress-mother that John wished to see her, and then knelt, joining the others in silent prayer.

Sofia knew they were praying for themselves as much as for the emperor. John had no sons and three brothers, and the people feared civil war if he died. And with civil war came the threat of
another Ottoman invasion. The Eastern Roman Empire was only a shadow of what it had been when Constantine the Great moved the imperial capital from Rome to Constantinople in 330
AD
. The current Turkish sultan, Murad II, had taken the great cities of Adrianople and Salonika. Now, nearly all that remained of the once great Empire of the Romans was the imperial city of Constantinople. It was the last link to a glorious history that reached unbroken to the Caesars; the last barrier between the Turks and the rest of Europe. The sultan’s armies had already gathered in the north to confront the crusade called by John before he grew ill. News of a battle had not yet reached Constantinople, but if the Turks were victorious, and John died, then there would be little to stop the sultan’s armies from marching on Constantinople.

Sofia’s thoughts were interrupted by a loud wailing from the emperor’s room. It was the Empress-Mother Helena mourning her son. The emperor was dead.

The evening sun hung low in the sky when William Whyte reached the top of a long rise and saw Constantinople for the first time. The city was still several miles off, but even at this distance, the majesty of it caused him to stop short. Fields of wheat and herds of roaming cattle lay spread out before him, running right up to the city’s towering walls. The walls stretched for miles, from the Golden Horn, its waters glinting to the north, to the Sea of Marmora to the south. Beyond the walls, the city rose high on its seven hills. Squinting, William could just make out a few monuments: domed churches, sprawling palaces and thin columns towering above the city. It was no wonder they called Constantinople the Queen of Cities. William had never seen anything like it.

William took his eyes off the city as the long rope that led from his bound hands to the saddle of the horse before him went taut, jerking him forward so that he stumbled down the far side of the hill. The man riding the horse – a Turk named Hasim, who had rotten teeth and a greying beard – turned back and shouted
something in his strange tongue. The man’s meaning was clear: speed up, or else. He had already beaten William more than once during the long journey from Ephesus to Constantinople – seven days of hard marching across brutal dry lands, and seven cold nights spent huddled on the ground beneath the unforgiving autumn sky. Thin already, William had lost more weight, and now his ribs showed clearly through his skin. He spat at Hasim but quickened his pace.

It was barely two months since William had joined the crew of the
Kateryn
, sailing for the East from his home, the English port of Fowey. He had thought he was sailing to riches. An Italian, Carlo Grimaldi, who claimed to be an exile from Genoa, had promised that he could lead the
Kateryn
safely past the Genoese and Venetian galleys that dominated the eastern spice trade. Captain Smith, William’s uncle, had been sceptical, but the opportunity was too good to pass up. If they could make a direct connection with the eastern spice traders, cutting out the Italian middlemen, then they would make a fortune. It had been a kindness of Captain Smith to ask William to join the crew. William’s father had died almost ten years ago, when William was only five, and for the past year his mother had suffered from a wasting sickness. The little that William earned as a water-porter, even when combined with his winnings at the knife fights, was barely enough to feed them and pay rent for the draughty, damp room they shared. With the money from the voyage, William had hoped to find proper lodgings so that his mother could spend her last days in comfort.

But his plans had gone awry even before they left port. The day before they sailed, William’s mother died. Once in the East, Grimaldi had led them to a small cove south of the Turkish town of Ephesus, where they had found the tents of a Turkish caravan set up on the shore. Smith had anchored far out, and William had watched from his position in the crow’s nest high above the deck as Smith, Grimaldi and four heavily armed crewmen had rowed ashore to negotiate. They had hardly stepped out of the boat
before archers hidden in the tents cut the crewmen down. Grimaldi had killed Captain Smith himself, striking him down from behind. The remaining crew onboard the
Kateryn
had hurried to set sail, but two Turkish longboats had cut off their escape. The ship had been boarded, and after a brief, bloody fight they had surrendered. William had been lucky; he was young enough to be sold as a slave. So while the old and injured crewmen were lined up on the beach and executed, William had been given to Hasim, who had set off immediately for the slave markets of Constantinople, where a fair-skinned European like William could be expected to fetch a high price as a house slave for some Turkish or Greek family.

Now, as they covered the last few miles to the city, William kept a careful eye on his captor. Whenever Hasim was not looking, William worked at the bonds that tied his hands. It was nervous work. Just yesterday, Hasim had caught William at it and had whipped him, then tied his hands so tightly that the ropes cut into his skin. William ignored the pain as he continued to work the ropes, pulling this way then that as they slowly loosened. If he did not escape soon, it would be too late. Already the Golden Gate leading into Constantinople was looming before him.

The gate’s three archways were each over thirty feet high, and the central gate was wide enough to allow twenty men on horseback to pass through side by side. Beyond the gate was a walled courtyard, filled with pedlars’ carts and a milling crowd. William had never seen so many different kinds of people in one place: local peasants in belted tunics and leather breeches; wealthy Greeks wearing wide-sleeved caftans of blue or red silk, embroidered with threads of gold and silver; Turks in turbans; bearded Jews in skullcaps; and olive-skinned Italians in trimmed velvet doublets and tight hose. There were blued-eyed men from the Caucasus, Wallachians with their dark hair, pale skin and pointed features, and Africans as black as the night sky. They spoke a bewildering variety of languages, none of which William could even identify, much less understand. And the goods being hawked were just as
varied: exotic spices whose powerful scents competed with the general odour of unwashed humanity and animal excrement; steel swords short and long, curved and straight; nervous horses and camels impassively chewing their cud; meat roasting on spits; and dirty prostitutes caked in unnatural-looking makeup. Hasim did not pause to look. He spurred his horse through the market and into the city.

William found himself on a broad, paved avenue. The street was crowded on either side by low buildings, and looking past them to his left, William could see broad fields where cattle and sheep grazed on the dried wheat stalks left from a recent harvest. To the right, the land sloped down to the sea wall and the Sea of Marmora beyond, blazing red under the setting sun. William watched a ship sail slowly across the water and thought of how it would be to be onboard, tasting the sea spray as he sailed back to England. The ship disappeared from view behind a low but massive church, fronted with fat columns and topped with a broad dome. It was nothing like the tiny chapel at home.

Past the church, the road began to climb, passing a sprawling monastery and several more churches. At the crest of the rise, they came to a gate set into the crumbling ruins of an ancient city wall. Past the gate, William was assaulted by a nauseating odour. The city was denser here, with houses built one upon the other, and the streets ran with filth – a foul mixture of emptied chamber-pots, animal manure and offal from a nearby butchery, all draining away towards the sea. At intervals, narrow alleyways led away from the main road. In one of them, William saw wild dogs snapping at each other as they tore at an animal carcass.

The road emptied into a wide square crowded with shouting merchants and squealing pigs packed into pens. In the middle of the pig market, a column soared high above even the tallest trees in the square, its entire length decorated with spiralling bands of stone-carving depicting battles and ceremonies, their meanings long lost. Hasim did not pause. He rode on, pulling William behind him, deeper into the city. They climbed another hill to a
square that looked out over a valley spanned by a monumental aqueduct, well over a hundred feet tall. At the square, they turned right. On the distant hills before him, William saw a massive church, its many domes gilded by the last rays of the setting sun, and to the church’s right the crumbling ruins of a huge Roman arena.

As the twilight gloom began to settle around them, they turned on to a wide street that ran down towards the Golden Horn, the inlet that bordered Constantinople to the north. The street was lined on both sides by columns that supported sheltered promenades. After a short time, Hasim dismounted and occupied himself with his horse’s saddle, unknotting the rope that had pulled William across Anatolia to Constantinople. He took the rope and pulled William after him into the dark shadows under the promenade on the right. Before William’s eyes could adjust to the dark, he found himself shoved forward, and he stumbled until he ran hard into a stone wall. The lead-rope landed next to him, and he heard the clang of an iron gate as it slammed shut behind him. William turned and slumped to the ground with his back to the wall. He was sitting in a small cell, no more than three feet deep and three feet wide and closed off by iron bars.

Peering through the bars, he could just make out Hasim as he walked out of sight. From the darkness to either side of his tiny cell, William heard hushed noises – muffled crying, whispers, scuffling feet, occasionally punctuated by a loud curse in some foreign tongue, or, further off, the baying of dogs. William drew his knees to his chest and sat shaking. Cold had descended along with night, and with it fear. Yet, even as he shook, he permitted himself a smile. After hours of struggle, he had finally managed to slip the bonds that tied his hands.

The sun had only just risen, casting the world in a grainy golden light, when Longo splashed across a ford on the Lycus river and Constantinople came into view. He reined in his horse on the far bank and breathed a sigh of relief. He had caught up with
his men several miles from the battlefield, but it had been a tense journey from Kossova. They had passed through the heart of the Ottoman Empire, travelling within fifty miles of the Turkish capital at Adrianople. It was land that held bad memories for Longo – dangerous land, too, overrun with bandits and thieves, not to mention Turkish troops. Longo had pushed his men hard, avoiding towns and driving them as far and as fast as their horses would allow. Now that they had reached Constantinople, they were as safe as they would be anywhere. But how long Constantinople would remain a safe haven, Longo could only guess. In Selymbria, he had heard that the emperor, John, was dead. If his brothers fought over the throne, then the ensuing civil war would leave Constantinople an easy target for the Turks.