The Emperor's Marble Pavement: Part Two of the Last Vigil: A Novel About the Siege and Fall of Constantinople in 1453

Lands

About the Author

The author was born in 1952. He read English at Exeter College, Oxford, and went on to write his doctoral thesis there on the poetry of James Merrill. He has previously published four collections of poetry, two novels and – under the pen-name S. W. Douglas – Breaking the Flood, part one of The Last Vigil. He is married with a son and daughter.

Copyright Information

Copyright © S. W. Douglas (2019)

The right of S. W. Douglas to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528928021 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528928038 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781528944731 (E-Book)

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First Published (2019)

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Timeline

Part 2: The Emperor’s Marble Pavement

Monday, November 13, 1452,

to

Friday, January 26, 1453

Chapter 1: A Homecoming and an Exile

"His eminence will see you now."

The emphasis which the sallow-faced, lantern-jawed factotum placed on ‘will’ as he re-entered the red marble-floored but rather dingy anteroom where Demetrius and I had been left waiting for some minutes, served to remind us both – if reminder were needed – of his original incredulous reaction to my friend’s request earlier that morning, after we had, as he put it disrespectfully penetrated and disturbed the quiet of his office (really no more than a lumber room), on the floor below.

You wish to go up and see the Megadux? Just like that? Now? With this, this Genoan in tow?

Demetrius had placed a warning hand on the sneering factotum’s shoulder.

I’d be careful if I were you, Manuel. My friend can understand our language better than he speaks it. And he’s not Genoan.

Venetian actually, I had muttered, feeling my anger rise.

The factotum grinned contemptuously.

Very well. What’s it to me which Godforsaken Italian shit-hole he hails from?

Then turning back to my friend before I could react.

Demetrius Alexandrou, you always were full of pride, and I see your self-indulgent and futile travels round the Mediterranean have done nothing to teach you humility.

My friend, whose naturally imperious presence had been enhanced by his donning of a commander’s military cloak or ‘Paludamentum’, high boots and ceremonial sword retrieved the day before from his chest in his mother’s house at Studion, had visibly drawn himself up, sighing in mock pity

Manuel, Oh Manuel… You always were a pedantic rascal. And deeply insolent with it. Do as I say and be quick about it. My friend here won’t brook much more of your filthy tongue I can tell you.

There could be no gainsaying Demetrius’ determination. But still Manuel had resisted. Then allowed a sly half smile to steal across his face.

It’s an expensive business keeping up appearances as the Archduke’s secretary. Especially nowadays, what with the price of grain and wine and…

Demetrius’ face had hardened but, rummaging under his cloak, he, nevertheless, passed a couple of silver basilikons across to the secretary’s waiting hand. Having swiftly assessed then pocketed the bribe Manuel, still affecting an exaggerated reluctance, came out from behind his desk and led us with a deliberate slowness up a flight of cracked and pitted marble stairs to the anteroom. As he was disappearing through a great carved door set into the far wall (a door whose scuff marks loose handle and unoiled creaking hinges bespoke long neglect), Demetrius said in as loud a voice as possible.

These petty officials. They’re the bane of the Empire. They should be mercilessly culled.

And now the secretary was back, holding the door ajar for us to go through with a barely concealed distaste. When, during the interim, I had angrily commented on his bad manners to Demetrius, my friend had looked suddenly weary.

Yes, Niccolo, I am sorry. A guest such as yourself is entitled to expect more of us. But I warned you didn’t I, even when we were chained together in that stinking galley. This is indeed what the city has descended to. We are riven with dissent and factionalism. Class against class. Parent against child. And everyone’s bad points are made trebly worse by the threat that hangs over us. As for this Manuel. I swear he’s grown more obnoxious since I set sail. But he’s Lucas Notaras’ right-hand man. And to see the Megadux, we must go through him and him alone. But look on the cheerful side. In my father’s time, we would have had to grease the palms of twenty such men and even then only be assured of an interview with someone slightly higher up the hierarchy. Our falling on hard times has its advantages I suppose. We are in a sense both too poor and too few to be able to stand on too much ceremony.

Yet you told me coming up to Blachernae that this Notaras was a relation.

On my mother’s side, yes, but very distant.

Do you Greeks have to pay when you want to visit a relative?

Demetrius had laughed at this.

We may not be able to stand on ceremony anymore, but in the Empire, a man’s office still defines him. It is in a sense his reason for being. Manuel knows this and trades on it. He also knows that I know he has Notaras’ ear. And Notaras can be an awkward customer. One would not want to be in his bad books. So yes, I had my fun with Manuel, but I kept him sweet as well just to be on the safe side. And, Niccolo, remember what I told you earlier: this interview or should I call it audience – Manuel I am sure would prefer the latter term – is important, for both our sakes.

And then before I had had time to digest all this information, we were entering the sanctum of the most powerful man in Constantinople below the Emperor himself. As we passed through the inner doorway, I felt the sticky snag of a spider’s web prickling through my hair.

I should not have been surprised at how even this seemingly trivial encounter contained many seeds of ominous import. Hadn’t Demetrius just reminded me of his warnings, issued many weeks ago, before I had even set eyes on the city? Moreover, ever since we had disembarked from the Amalfan cog and crossed over to the Scala de Drungario, I had been aware of presences in the air, a heavy foreboding cut with something brittle and on edge. As Demetrius had himself pointed out, the threat of imminent siege was partly to blame. Yet even he hadn’t been prepared for all the seagates to be closed in broad daylight. At first, when we found that the Gate of the Drungarii had been barred, my friend assumed this to be an inexplicable exception and headed east along deserted quays dotted forlornly here and there with tangled cables, broken spars and upended crates to the next entrance into the city, the gate of St John di Cornibus, John the Forerunner. But this too was closed, obliging us to penetrate still further east, Demetrius announcing confidently that if any gate were open, then the Perama would be. It wasn’t. However, to the left, set in the wall, we saw a small postern door. After knocking on this repeatedly, we were at last rewarded with a suddenly slid back shutter framing an ill-favoured soldier’s face. Demetrius had had to use all his eloquence to convince him that, dressed as we still were in the same drab and indigent looking cast-offs we had acquired back in Rhodes we weren’t a couple of vagrants who deserved to be driven away immediately with curses and kicks.

I left on the Emperor’s business, and I am returning to conclude it. Now let us pass.

The soldier stroked his stubbly jaw nervously, unable to deny Demetrius’ authority but gripped, nevertheless, by suspicion. Eventually, it was only the arrival of an officer who, peering out from the shutter, suddenly, recognised Demetrius as a member of the nobility that saved the day. Swiftly, the shutter was closed and the postern opened. Telling the guard to stand down (who, relieved not to have to take responsibility for an awkward situation, gladly did so, joining some of his brethren for a game of jacks in the dilapidated wooden hut that served as a guard room), the officer ushered us through into a cobbled square from which a single street mounted steeply southwards toward the just visible dome of the Mother Church.

The lad don’t mean any harm, sir, just doing his duty.

Then darting a swift and not altogether friendly glance in my direction.

Your friend, sir, if he’s Venetian like you say, he’ll have to register with Signor Minotto. There’s a quantity of spies and informers on the loose, and we can’t be too careful.

I’ll see to that.

Thank you, sir, but saving your honour, sir, these are bad days indeed when an Angelos and a Spatharios must return to his home city in little more than rags.

Just thank Our Lady that I have returned and can still handle a weapon. How long have you been locking the gates by day?

The officer thought for a moment, frowning.

That would be back in the early summer, soon after your honour left. The throat-cutter was well under way so old Constantine – I mean our serene Emperor – sent ambassadors to the Turk to ask for – what would you call them?– reassurances, that’s the word. He wanted to know his intentions like. Well. We all found out about those intentions soon enough. For the ambassadors never came back. That’s when we got the orders to start locking the gates day and night. And it’s as well we did. Because come the end of August, what did that Turk do but, suddenly, turn up in front of the land walls with a posse of janissaries and sit there making merry in his tent the whole day for all the world like he was on a feast day jaunt? If any of the gates had been open up that way, who knows what might have happened?

Sounds like a reconnoitre to me. He was studying our weaknesses. And the Lord knows there’s plenty of those.

Agreed, sir, which is why work’s started on repairing the land walls. Though that’s a job you might say is as long as a piece of string. But getting back to the Turk. He was gone as quickly as he came. And the very next day we hear the throat-cutter’s finished. If that isn’t making a point, I don’t know what is.

On these last words, Demetrius looked sharply at the officer. Then half turning to me

That Chios harbour master was right, after all. And I thought him a rumour-mongering fool. Well, who is the fool now, Demetrius Alexandrou. Finished you say?

The officer nodded.

A miracle you might aver if it wasn’t so unchristian an act. And now nothing can pass through without stopping and paying a fine. You see those two galleys out in the Horn, beyond the Scala Sycena where the ferry goes over to Galata?

Here he pointed back through the postern which had just been opened again to allow an old woman on a donkey laden with faggots to pass out of the city. Following his pointed finger, we could indeed make out the galleys in question, riding at anchor against the backdrop of the great tower of Pera.

They came in a few days ago from Caffa. I heard Morexini the capitanio – one of your countrymen, Venetian, yes, one Jeruolemo Morexini – say he’d been forced to pay a duty that nigh on cancelled out all the profits he’d made up in the Black Sea. But you can’t argue with the Turk, not when he has bombards trained on the Bosphorous that can fire a ball ten hands round. Go clean through the deck of any boat that would. Morexini said he’d be glad to set sail for the west as soon as possible. I shouldn’t wonder we don’t lose a good few friends that way, now that the Turk is so close as – in a manner of speaking – to be breathing down our necks.

The officer would no doubt have regaled us with more tales and observations regarding both the doings of the city’s trading partners and its mortal and ever ingenious enemy but Demetrius, by now visibly restless, not to say ill at ease, cut him short in the middle of a request that perhaps a good word might be put in for him with the authorities regarding a long overdue promotion and set off, myself in tow, up the steep street leading out of the square.

What did he mean I’ll have to register? Who’s this Minotto?

Girolamo Minotto, your colony’s Bailo. A good steady man for whom I’ve always made time. He has his headquarters not far from here. Opposite Santa Maria, one of the four Venetian churches. This is your countryman’s quarter, Niccolo, running up the hill here between Drungarii and Perama. Why have you stopped?

I had indeed come to a halt and slumped down now on the rim of a small basin set against the wall of a wooden house and fed by a verdigris bronze waterspout shaped like the head of an eagle. From the eagle’s beak there trickled a weak stream of reddish water. I could not for the moment bear to go on. Demetrius came back down the empty street and repeated his demand. At last, I looked up.

How am I to live here Demetrius? How am I to dwell in this place to which you have brought me?

It was Demetrius’ turn to look poleaxed, squatting down on his hams and squeezing his temples as if to exorcise a particularly tenacious headache.

Surely, we have talked these things through, man, many a time. Why bring them up again now. Surely, you know.

I shook my head.

Do I, Demetrius, do I? You, of course, know what you must do here. How can you not. Indeed, that is why you are under the illusion that we have discussed these matters, as you say, many a time. But this is not the case. Since Tenedos, at least, you have been so consumed by your own urgent desire to return that you have quite overlooked my predicament.

Demetrius stopped rubbing his temples.

But in Rhodes, it was you who decided to come here, partly because of what Zaccariah said and partly – I like to think – because of me.

For a moment, Demetrius looked crestfallen, heartbroken even, and I felt a surge of fellow feeling. I must choose my words more carefully.

Old friend, all that is true, I grant you. But consider how I must feel now, having arrived in this great city, penniless, possessed of nothing but these clothes and a few ducats wrapped up in a worthless piece of paper bearing my horoscope. Even the bow and quiver I was given on that cog had to be returned. Look at me. Am I not naked as the day I was born? I repeat: how am I to live here? I cannot simply follow you around like a grateful dog.

If you were first to register with the Bailo…I can vouch for his discretion.

Nevertheless, I would have to disclose what is tantamount to desertion.

But there were extenuating circumstances, surely, the corsairs, the fact that the muda was already in the Levant by the time we reached the island of the Knights…

All very true but I would still be starting at a disadvantage. And despite what you say about this Minotto, I know my countrymen. They are naturally suspicious, detecting deceit or worse around every corner. Even if I didn’t tell him the whole story, I would have to give some account of myself. And what would I do to earn my keep? Wash floors? Think Demetrius. I came here to be with you in your city’s hour of need. That is, after all, what poor Zaccariah seemed to intimate I should do. Is my fate simply to disappear among the well-fed traders of our colony and there try to eke out a subsistence? And what, in any case, will the Venetian colony do? That officer at the Perama overheard Morexini saying he intended to leave Constantinople as soon as possible. Perhaps the Bailo and the others are planning to follow suit. After all, this is not their war. And what will I do then, having gone among them, having become once again, a citizen of the Signoria? Desert a second time?

The splashing of the waterspout was suddenly drowned out by a sharp squall of icy rain. Demetrius stood up and drew his tattered cloak round his shoulders. He was about to reply when a confused shouting from further up the street drew both our gazes thither. Coming towards us was a small party of brown-cassocked and bearded monks. Their leader held a small painted icon of the virgin above his head, as if to shield himself from some ever-present danger lurking in the cloudy sky. Their chant was neither devotional nor supplicatory. It jangled round the empty street with a harsh, defiant and discordant anger.

No to union. No to Isidore. Rid us of the worship of the unleavened wafer. Rid us of all Popish heresies.

The bitter and cacophonous company had soon passed by, dead-eyed, locked in their cold obsession. Here was yet another thread in this city’s intricate and dark-hued tapestry. And as with everything I had seen and heard since making landfall, I seemed to sense the invisible presence of Mehmet himself. This procession of ireful monks was in some strange way the Turk’s doing, as if the enemy without were busy raising enemies within. Having watched them disappear around a corner, still raucously shouting, Demetrius shivered and looked away. It was time to be moving on. I got up from the fountain and made to head up the hill. I had said my piece. Perhaps I had better submit to fate and present myself, a vagabond, to the Venetian Bailo. But Demetrius suddenly placed a hand on my shoulder.

Niccolo, do not think I cannot understand your fears. You are right. You have come here as my companion. Minotto must wait for now. We shall strike out south-west, away from this quarter. At Studion, in the empty quarter, near the point where the land-walls end and the sea-walls begin, lies the House of the Almond Trees, my mother’s house. There we may find some of the answers we need. There at any rate we can consign these filthy trappings to the furnace and get a bath and a decent meal and a drink. That cog was a lousy bucket. Did you hear what they were chanting, those so-called holy men?

I nodded.

Who is Isidore?

A unionist and one time Metropolitan of Kiev. He was present at the council of Ferrara back in thirty-eight, and I heard somewhere that on his return to Kiev the congregation rejected and imprisoned him. But that was many years ago and many miles away. Why those monks should have brought his name up today I cannot fathom. But mark me, Niccolo, something is afoot. Something has happened to stir up this hornet’s nest of devout bigots. No doubt my family, being of their party, will know the cause.

Looking back down the years I see now that this exchange in the wet and empty street, punctuated now and then by the stark cries of the receding troop of monks, marked a decisive shift in my friendship with this haughty Byzantine Greek. Hitherto, in the slave ship and during our subsequent wanderings, I had always – as if by instinct – assumed a secondary role. It was not that I felt inferior, simply that I had stumbled, indeed fallen, into a world whose customs Demetrius understood, but which I could only hope to master by deference to him. Moreover, within this world, always confusing and sometimes too murky to penetrate with the light of mere reason, Demetrius played a significant, not to say commanding role, as both a son of an important Strategos and a soldier of the city in his own right. But now, by asserting that I could neither disappear into the Venetian colony nor be expected to follow my friend around as some kind of unsalaried retainer, I had established myself as someone apart from him, someone who, though homeless and penniless, must be taken into consideration and honoured. From that time on, our friendship took on a surer footing if only because it would involve a mutual frankness.

Meanwhile, the city flowed around us, always unpredictable, always changing. The narrow streets and wooden houses of the Venetian colony soon gave way to a more open, rubble strewn and scrub-infested region dominated by the two storeyed arches of a vast aqueduct marching from west to east between the summits (as I learned later) of two of the city’s seven hills. Demetrius’ passing allusion to the fact that the city had no natural water supply and, therefore, depended on underground cisterns fed by a system of canals connected to this monstrous edifice, seemed almost beside the point. Here was a monument that proclaimed power rather than utility. Yet, like the sea walls, this edifice was rooted in the past not the present. Indeed, like them, it had only survived into the present time by virtue of ceaseless repairs and patchings-up. In fact, it was becoming a settled notion with me that the city upon which Demetrius had so obsessively meditated, was not to be found in the flesh and bones of roman bricks and mortar. Or rather, it could be found in these damaged monuments but only if one looked at them sideways, as one will squint at some woven cloth to discern the pattern which a more straightforward perusal would not reveal. The city presented a sort of many-times-written-over page, each successive sentence having obscured but not totally erased what went before. In this densely layered jumble of design, one might perhaps – after years of practice – decipher some key to the spirit of this place. But for now, all I could do was submit to the moment, swept on, wonderingly, through the landscape of a dream.

The voice that greeted us from the cold shadow of the aqueduct archway was part of this dream. It rose up out of a knot of shadows huddled round a burning pyre of greenly sputtering driftwood.

Any pickings down that way boys?

As we drew closer, we could make out the faces of half a dozen men, draggle-bearded, pinched, scabbed with grime. They were clad in an assortment of tattered robes and sackings which – if such were possible – looked more inadequate than even our cast-off clothing. Yet they had taken us to be of their company, these crouching beggars of the city, so perhaps we made an even worse impression than we had so far assumed. It was, therefore, with a certain grim humour that Demetrius stepped into the role which had been invented for him.

Nothing at all. Just a gaggle of holy men breaking sweat about some religious business or other.

The man who had called out to us spat into the fire, making it hiss and send sparks into the vaulted shadows overhead.

Ach, even the monks aren’t what they were, these days. Time was when up at the Chora you could be sure of a square meal in their cloister every day at noon. Now, it’s once a week if you’re lucky. Isn’t that right boys?

There was a low murmuring of assent.

It’s the times I say with no one knowing what’ll happen next since the Turk cut off our supplies. How’s even a sturdy beggar to get his sustenance if the city herself is starved? And there’s this Cardinal or what have you come from the west. The monks don’t like it. The people half like it then half change their minds. And so everyone’s in a taking, and when us boys raise our begging bowls, we’re kicked away from the door. And all because of some dispute about God. I ask you what’s God ever done for us.

Another beggar answered, hesitantly, from the far side of the fire.

Henokiton I’ve heard they call it. Submission.

They can call it what they like. A man needs a full belly before he can chant in a church. Speaking of which, you’re welcome to what’s left in this pot. A rabbit our dogs ran down.

Back in the shadows, two sharp snouted mongrels, sensing this allusion to themselves, raised their heads from their paws and thumped tails.

Demetrius shook his head and thanked the man. I myself, remembering the meagreness of our last breakfast aboard the Amalfan cog, would have preferred not to be so fastidious.

What more can you tell me of this Cardinal from the west?

Subtly my friend’s voice had changed. Perhaps without realising it, all the men hunched round the fire straightened their backs a little. Even so the man who had addressed us in the first place was still inclined to be familiar if not downright impertinent.

What stone have you crawled out from under? It’s old news. All over the city for days.

Any more talk like that, and I’ll make you wish you had a stone to crawl under.

There was a ripple of nervous laughter. Demetrius made as if to step forward.

Out with it man. The Cardinal?

The beggar addressed flinched then gulped.

"I meant no disrespect, sir. Well, sir. They call him Cardinal Isidore, don’t they boys? He arrived from Rome, sir, at the end of last month three weeks