The Towers of Samarcand

CHAPTER TEN

MONEMVASIA, AUTUMN 1398

It was evening and Pavlos Mamonas was standing on the battlements of the citadel high on the Goulas of Monemvasia looking out across the bay. The first darts of rain had flown in on a rising wind and he couldn’t see much beyond the vague outline of hills on the mainland. Beyond them lay vineyards, mile upon mile of red earth and vine that was now heavy with Malvasia grape. His grape. Could it be harvested in this weather?

The truth was that he didn’t much mind. The wine was, by now, only a small part of the Mamonas fortune. It was the Mamonas Bank on the Rialto that made the greatest profits, and it was the earnings from supplying Venetian cannon and ships to the Turks that had furnished the capital to establish it. He smiled.

But that’s not the biggest prize.

The biggest prize of all was alum. Only two mines provided the vital fixative for the dyeing industry of Florence and the Low Countries and both were in Ottoman hands. What Pavlos Mamonas really wanted was the monopoly in alum. And the man who would give it to him was Bayezid.

He closed his eyes against the rain and moved along the battlements, opening them again when he faced the bridge that joined the island to the mainland. Below were the wharves and jetties and a hundred ships at anchor that bobbed in the sea like apples. Here the drop from the balcony was sheer and he thought of the sea pounding the rocks below, trying to claw this stubborn rock back into its depths. He heard the screech of a cat and, somewhere beyond, a church bell sounding the hour, the noise rising and falling with the wind. He breathed in the smell of salt and decay and turned to look over the Goulas plateau. Beneath the citadel stood the new barracks of the janissaries next to their little mosque. Birds blew like paper around its minaret, white as snow against the bruised sky. The Turks had brought the Mamonas family back to their city and had stayed to guard them from its hostile citizens. He looked at the two big city cisterns next to it. How clever, he thought, for the Turks to control the city’s water supply.

Water. Mamonas. You control both.

He frowned. These days, Pavlos Mamonas did not much like to be in Monemvasia. The citizens hated him for bringing the Turks and he’d left Damian to run the family business there, an easy enough task since it could run itself. He’d come today to meet with his son and tell him some news. But Damian wasn’t there and the palace servants had looked at their feet when asked where he might be found. But Pavlos knew: in a tavern or brothel. And this was his heir.

Now it was evening and he was getting impatient. He was tired and he wanted to eat. Most of all, he wanted to get this encounter over. Where was Damian?

There was a noise from behind and he turned. Damian was leaning against the battlements, his shirt unbuttoned and his long black hair covering half his face. Pavlos could just make out the scar that ran across his cheek below an eye that was trying to focus on him. It was the scar from the accident with the horse.

The accident that started all this.

‘You’re drunk.’

Damian shrugged. He pushed himself up from the wall and began to button up his shirt. He had difficulty with the buttons. He gave up and pushed his hair from his face. ‘I thought you didn’t like this place.’

Pavlos Mamonas’s frown deepened. The truth was that he loved this place. Monemvasia was where he’d been born, its labyrinth of streets where he’d grown up. He loved this little city on the edge of the sea: its endless rhythm of tide and trade; its smells and echoes; its many, many cats. He thought suddenly of Damian as a boy, unscarred and without limp, high on his shoulders, fistfuls of hair in his hands, watching the Mamonas ships come in.

Before the accident.

Six years. It was six years ago that the Varangian’s son had pushed Damian in front of the thrashing hooves of a horse. They’d told him that Luke Magoris had a gift with horses. He had, but he’d used it to save himself. Now Magoris was dead, his cowardly, raping evil expunged from the earth. At least that was something. He looked out into the gathering night and thought of what to say.

Damian spoke again, the words sliding together. ‘Have you come to watch the harvest, Father? Are you worried that I might miss a grape?’

Pavlos remained silent. The rain was coming in harder and he could feel its chill through the cloak. He heard Damian move, stumble, curse. Was it the leg? Then his son was beside him, looking out to where he looked. Pavlos could smell the wine on his breath.

Damian asked: ‘Why are you here?’

Pavlos closed his eyes. It was finally to be done. He hated it with every nerve in his being but it had to be done. Finally. Now.

‘I have come to a decision. You will not inherit,’ he said quietly. ‘The Mamonas bank, estates, studs … everything we own will go to your sister when I am gone.’

Damian didn’t move. He continued to stare into the night, the wind lifting his hair. Pavlos heard him release a long, slow breath as if something deep inside was escaping. He glanced across. Was it rain or tears that ran down his son’s cheeks? He looked back at the dark.

‘You will be provided for. There will be some part of the business you can run. There will be no shame.’

He heard movement beside him and saw that Damian was slowly shaking his head. ‘No shame.’ It was a whisper.

Pavlos Mamonas straightened. He’d said it and it was right. His son was a whoring, hopeless drunk. He couldn’t run his own life, let alone others’. He’d had his chance at marriage and he’d failed in that. He’d had his chance abroad. He was beyond redemption. It was right.

So why do I feel it isn’t?

He knew the answer: Zoe and the deal they’d made for Chios. Was he sacrificing his son’s future for a business transaction? No. He could smell the wine, hear the laboured breaths. It was right. He realised that Damian was watching him.

‘Have you changed your will?’

‘Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first. It will be done tomorrow. You will witness it.’

Damian had looked away and was shaking his head again.

Pavlos opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. Damian’s hand was at his throat. In his other hand was a dagger. Damian hissed: ‘No shame. Is that what you said, Father? No shame?’

Pavlos was pressed against the battlements, his back stabbed by stone. His son was strong and not as drunk as he’d thought. ‘Damian …’ he whispered.

‘What do you know about shame, Father? When have you had to limp your way across the Piazza San Marco with Venetians sniggering into their sleeves? When have you had to suffer the pity of whores? When have you felt shame, Father?’

Pavlos was being pushed towards the open crenellation, beneath which was a drop of two hundred feet. Damian’s hand was tight around his neck and he could feel the point of the dagger in his side. He looked up into the rain. Damian’s face was close to his and his wine-breath hot on his chin. He was nearing the opening, the point when there’d be nothing between him and the rocks.

‘Damian … listen.’

But Damian was listening only to the ringing fury in his ears. For six years, this man whom he’d loved beyond reason had looked at him with disappointment, then contempt. For six years he’d felt the growing tide of failure wash over him, drown him. Yes, slowly, inexorably drown him. Now this.

He said: ‘You’ve not made the will, Father.’ His fingers dug into his father’s throat. ‘So if you die, there’ll be no will.’ The dagger moved upwards, towards the heart. ‘There’ll be no shame.’

Then Pavlos felt emptiness behind his right shoulder. Air. Below were rocks and sea. Far, far below.

‘There will be no shame, Father.’ Damian was drawing back for a final push or stab, his eyes half curtained by hair, his teeth set.

The wall was now only supporting half of Pavlos’s back. He could feel himself losing balance, the rain against the small of his back. He was thinking hard.

He’ll push, not stab. He’ll not want the wound.

Pavlos knew what he must do. And he knew he had to do it now, before it was too late. But it must be finely judged. Too much and his son would fall. He shifted his foot and kicked at where he knew his son’s lameness lay. With a howl, Damian lurched over, his hand seeking a wall where there was none. Pavlos turned to catch him before he fell but his hand caught in his cloak.

‘Damian!’

His son was suspended above the crenellation, clawing the air. Throwing aside the cloak, Pavlos reached out to take his hand. But the hand he held for an instant was slick with rain. It slipped out of his and the body beyond it fell.

Damian’s scream followed him on to the rocks below.

*

In Venice, Zoe stopped suddenly. She’d heard a scream. She looked around her. The street was empty. The scream had been far away. Far, far away. She frowned, then shrugged. There were screams everywhere. Venice was in carnival. Venice was always in carnival.

Carnevale, farewell to meat. Officially, it was the last chance for scandal to run amok before Lent. But, these days, it took any excuse and tonight the city was full of masks.

Zoe, disguised behind her own bauta, had escaped the throng watching the fireworks launched from the Rialto Bridge. She hadn’t been among Tommasi Giacomo’s party in the Mamonas barche since she was in Venice incognito. She had, however, seen the size of the jewel nestled between his wife’s breasts. She’d like to review the factor’s books when she returned in a more official capacity.

As the Mamonas heir.

She wondered, fleetingly, how her twin brother would receive the news.

She was making her way through back streets towards the Jewish Quarter and there was little traffic abroad, the Jews finding themselves, more often than not, the target of Christian revelry at Carnival time. She passed a couple engaged in masked copulation in an alcove, the woman’s skirts lifted and her hands clutching Moors’ heads on the doors against which her bottom slapped. Otherwise she saw nothing but beasts. Carrying her torch high, she saw animals emerge suddenly from the dark. Lions, gorgons, gryphons and hippogryphs came at her from walls and doorways. All around her was the drip, drip, drip of water, the melancholy music of this city of 130 islands and that many churches, this place of secrets, whispers and shadows.

A face loomed out on her right, an old woman with a cup, her grin uneven and dripping water, her eyes sightless.

Gülçiçek.

Zoe would not forget that meeting as long as she lived. No ocean of potions could save the terrible ravages of that face, no mountain of mastic could sweeten the breath of the awful creature that had sat propped up in her bed and talked of terrible things.

Zoe had sat across from her, forcing herself to study the abnormal as if it were normal, forcing herself not to run, retching, from the room. The Valide Sultan had told her what she wanted; what they both wanted: Anna dead. She’d told her of her fondness for her grandson Suleyman and of her determination that he succeed his father to the throne. She’d told her of her understanding that he might want a Greek wife. After all, she herself was Greek.

But not Anna.

She’d said it was her wish that someone more suitable should marry Suleyman and bear his Greek heirs. Someone who would have her confidence … and that of Bayezid.

Zoe had felt giddy as she considered what she was hearing. She could have everything. The hand of the greatest ruler on earth as well as the Mamonas fortune. And it would happen. It would happen because Anna would die slowly, giving her time still to bring back Luke to witness it. And, with Luke, she’d get the treasure too. She hadn’t been deceived any more than Anna by the news of his death and there was someone she knew in Venice who would bring him back for her: di Vetriano’s younger brother. She’d already made enquiries and knew that there was enough hatred there to suit her purpose.

But the poisoning would have to be done so carefully, the perfect poison found. That’s why she was in Venice.

For many years, Bayezid’s mother had tried to forestall the process of ageing by application of the teriaca compound, a mix of powdered viper, crushed stag’s testicles, unicorn horn and forty other ingredients that was made only in Venice. The teriacanto she was visiting was not only the best but also one that made poison as well. Behind a panel in his pharmacy lay his sala dei veleni, the room where he put the powdered viper to other uses beyond teriaca. It was here that he drowned a hundred living scorpions in a vat of olive oil to make his olio discorpioni, where he milked the fangs of serpents to make poison. He was a master of his art and the rulers of the western world, both temporal and spiritual, beat a path to his door. Usually by proxy.

Now Zoe’s torch shone upon a window of leaded glass through which light could be seen. She knew she was in the right place because the air smelt of sulphur and the door had a viper’s head to knock by. She pulled her hood around her mask and lifted her torch to the viper. But before she could knock, the door opened.

The Jew was bent so low that she didn’t see his face as she entered. When he rose again, she nearly cried out for there was hardly a line on that skin. Closing the door, the man led her through the pharmacy and into his sala dei veleni, where a fire burned in the grate and the shelves on the walls were lined with glass and ceramic jars, each labelled. Beneath the shelves were benches and in front of them a strange confusion of vessels and tubes and receptacles in which coloured liquids were in motion. On a table sat a mortar, pestle and large set of scales, its pillar shaped as a serpent. Beside the scales was a small bottle, unlabelled, which contained a clear liquid, and beside it was a single sheet of parchment. Beneath the table were latticed containers full of snakes that made no noise but glistened as they moved. There was no light in the room except that bestowed by fire.

‘Sit, please,’ said the Jew, indicating a chair before the fire. ‘Forgive the darkness. I am engaged in the sublimation process by which coarse elements become noble. Light disturbs it.’

The man spoke in a whisper and Zoe felt it unlikely that his voice was ever raised above it. Was it the result of a life spent with snakes? She took a deep breath and glanced up at the ceiling. Low beams, blackened by fire, bore down on the room. She very much wanted to be outside again. She looked at him. ‘You received the message?’

‘That your patron wanted something … unusual? Yes, madonna. It was passed to me.’

Zoe waited while the man sat down opposite her. Lit by the fire, his unlined face was almost a child’s. ‘She will pay well.’

The man smiled, a horrid motion. It occurred to Zoe that he was already half-snake.

‘It is not the money, madonna,’ he whispered. ‘What I do is an art that has taken eighty years to perfect.’

Eighty? Zoe looked at the unlined face and felt sick. She held her hands tight to her lap.

‘But the commission is not without its fascination,’ he continued. ‘To create something that works so slowly, so implacably, that it is untraceable? Now that is a challenge.’

‘Can it be done?’

The man smiled again and raised his head. Zoe saw with horror that his lips were wet. ‘Everything can be done, madonna,’ he said. ‘I have something prepared. It has the viper for its base but I’ve added the juice of many other reptiles, most from an island in the Greek seas. The compound has an ingredient that releases the poison very slowly. It is flavourless and without smell. And it dries in an instant.’

‘Dries?’

The Jew rose from his chair and went over to the table. He picked up the little bottle, removed the stopper and poured a small part of its contents on to the parchment. He brought the parchment over to Zoe.

‘Invisible.’

He showed it to Zoe, then lifted it to his nose, his nostrils dilating. He closed his eyes.

‘Odourless, and …’ A long tongue darted from his moistened lips. ‘… tasteless.’

Zoe recoiled.

The Jew smiled. ‘It is as I said: it works slowly. The amount I have ingested will do me no harm. But over weeks, every day …’ He put the bottle and parchment down on the table and sat again. ‘Does the victim read?’

Zoe was startled. The question seemed irrelevant.

The Jew continued: ‘Books. Does she read books?’ He paused. ‘I assumed her to be educated.’

Zoe nodded. ‘Yes, she reads. Whatever she can.’

‘And a favourite book?’

Zoe considered this. Of course. There was the book she’d given to her: the book about the Emperor Alexios. ‘Yes. There is a book.’

‘Good. Then you will coat the top corner of each page with this liquid. She will lick her fingers to turn the pages.’

Zoe looked at the tiny bottle. It looked like water and yet it would kill. Slowly, steadily it would kill. Anna would read, sicken, take to her bed and read again.

It was perfect.