The Walls of Byzantium

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHIOS, SUMMER 1395

The consensus amongst the twelve Genoese families that ruled Chios was that the Longo estate at Sklavia was not only the finest on the island but also the closest to paradise it was possible to find on this earth.

It was further generally agreed, amongst the men in particular, that Marchese Longo was a lucky dog to have married Fiorenza Komnene, niece to the Emperor of Trebizond and certainly the most beautiful woman on Chios, if not in the world. And everyone agreed that it was the combination of these two felicities that rendered him a man of such amiable disposition.

When Luke had first set eyes on Fiorenza at the top of the steps to Longo’s villa, his breath had left him like a bellows. He’d stared at her in silence before remembering to bow and had been rewarded with two perfect dimples that bracketed a smile of pure warmth.

‘May I introduce my wife, Fiorenza?’ had come a voice from behind him.

Fiorenza descended the stone steps like a zephyr, placing each slippered toe in front of the other with grace, to stop two above Luke where she had the advantage of equal height. She looked him straight in the eye, her head slightly tilted, and lifted her hand to be kissed, dimpled smile intact.

Fiorenza was thirty years of age and, like the day around her, at the late pinnacle of her loveliness. Her hair, yellow as buttercups, fell in tendrils over her cheeks and, rippling back from her forehead, was caught in a fall of intricate and tight-plaited loops, all threaded with ribbons. Her eyes were a pellucid blue beneath arched brows and her skin was fair and untouched by the sun.

Luke’s tongue had become lead.

‘Luke Magoris,’ he said in a whisper and straightened to see kind amusement in her face. Her hands dropped to the side of a simple dress of cream silk, its bodice lightly embroidered, from which her bosom rose and fell without hurry. She was studying him with some interest.

‘Luke is from Monemvasia,’ continued Longo, joining Luke on his step and kissing his wife’s hand. ‘He has made a fortunate escape from Venetian slave traders and will be our guest.’

‘Then you must be tired and in need of something cool to drink,’ she said, turning to Luke and taking his hand. She led him to the top of the steps and on to a broad veranda where two servants waited with trays.

That had been six months ago when Luke was still raw with grief and a blank tapestry on which Fiorenza might weave. Her interest at that first meeting on the steps had been that of a keen intellect confronted by something different. Fiorenza was clever, adored by her husband and bored to distraction by island gossip. And since God had yet to bless their marriage of ten years with children, she was in need of a hobby.

And here was a young man of eighteen in need of rest, friendship and, above all, education. From the first day of their aquaintance, Luke showered her with questions; about the island, about its people, its trade, about her. And through it all, she discerned an unspoken sadness, a sadness that sought some diversion in learning.

Fiorenza quickly saw that there was something about their guest that was beyond the ordinary. He was certainly imbued with physical advantage, as evidenced by the giggling servant girls. But he also seemed to have a capacity to absorb and retain information that was truly remarkable.

Then there were the horses.

From the start, Luke had displayed his skill with horses. There was a stud at Sklavia where a Berber stallion from the Maghreb had recently been put to Persian mares, the experiment so far showing disappointing results. The blood-mix had proved volatile and the offspring was unworkable.

But Luke had stepped calmly into its paddock, Marchese and Fiorenza holding their breathe from the fence where they watched, and begun to talk to the animal. And little by little, day by day, they’d seen the horse change so that, within a week, Luke had a saddle on its back and, within two, was riding it across the fields of the estate.

A week after this, Luke had made a request.

‘I want to learn. Will you teach me, Fiorenza?’

She had been in the garden, picking flowers.

‘What do you want to learn, Luke?’ she’d asked.

‘Everything you know.’

So Fiorenza had begun the task of giving Luke the education of a Princess of Trebizond. She had concentrated on those bits of learning most expected in a cultured man: languages, mathematics, history, astronomy and literature, with some Latin to provide mortar between the bricks. Led by Fiorenza, Luke’s mind had roamed across continents, lingering with the Venetian Marco Polo in the palaces of Kublai Khan before riding on the backs of Greek Gods through Ptolemy’s heavens to sit among the seven hills of Rome listening to the love calls of Catullus.

Fiorenza used the whole island as her laboratory — its landscapes and skies, its legends and memories — to bind the strands of human knowledge to her purpose. She told Luke the story of the birth of the island, of how the God Dionysus had first taught the islanders to cultivate wine, having rescued his wife Ariadne from the clutches of Theseus and the trauma of the Minotaur; of how her wedding diadem had been set in the heavens as the constellation of Corona; of how their son Oenipion had been its first king and his daughter Chiona had given the island its name.

They would ride to the village of Vrontados to sit on the rock where Homer read his Iliad and visit the forests of the Voreiochora to rest in pine groves on the slopes of Mount Pelinaios, needles deep as fleece beneath their feet. They would shiver beneath stalactites in the caves of Ayios Galas and welcome the warm bounty of spring as they galloped through clouds of lavender and meadows of poppies.

Book upon book was laid as a tantalising feast before Luke and he gorged himself, falling asleep to dreams of shapes and numbers and words and music. At night, he sometimes thought of Plethon and of his yearning for fusion between the cultures of East and West, a fusion that would bring reason and logic and peace. He thought that Fiorenza might be the perfect symbol of that fusion, being all that was most elegant and mystical about the East yet having transplanted so well into the rich, commercial soil of Genoese Chios.

He also thought about Mistra. Somewhere in that city might lie the clue that would connect his dragon sword to the Varangian treasure. But Mistra was hundreds of miles away and he had no means of getting there.

But most of all he thought about Anna and the gulf between them. The more Luke learned of the world, of its grim logic, the greater the chasm yawned. He was the son of a soldier. She was the daughter of the second man in the despotate. It had all been an impossible dream.

Part of his learning would be to forget Anna.

And now, on a still summer evening, Fiorenza sat at one end of a table set out under a vine-woven trellis in the gardens of Sklavia. The lamplight shone on the latticework of her sleeves and the exact and regular folds that defined the bones of her body. A woman fingered a lute somewhere in the shadows and frogs pulsed in the trees and scented undergrowth of the borders. And far above them the arc of Corona was clear and curved and bright in the heavens and Luke looked at it and felt the ancient voice of the island breathing all around him.

Around the table sat the twelve families of Chios, or at least their signori, and their wives. Here were the Campi, the Arangio, the Adorno, the Banca and the other families which, fifty years ago, had formed this remarkable experiment in collective, joint-stock money making on an island they called Scio and for which they paid the nugatory annual rent of five hundred hyperpera to the Emperor in Constantinople. At their head sat the remarkable Marchese Longo, handsome, astute, good and married to the miracle of Fiorenza, Princess of Trebizond, and together they ruled, first among equals, in justice, wealth and splendour.

Apart from Luke, there were two others present not of the twelve families. One was Benedo Barbi, engineer to kings, emirs and two popes. He had been born in Genoa but had come to the island from Alexandria. He had been here for over a year now to build new defences for the port of Foca and the castle at Chora, and advise on irrigation systems for the vineyards of the Kambos.

The other was a man from Cyprus who was telling them about sugar. ‘It is the best thing the Arabs have given us,’ he was saying. ‘The very best. The West has a sweet tooth that cannot be fed by us in Cyprus alone. Even the Sultan eats a bowl of sugar every day. You came here to Chios fifty years past and we took Famagusta twenty years ago. Your wine,’ and here he raised his cup in salute, ‘has prospered but our sugar has prospered more. You have room to grow sugar cane here, especially in the south, and we think you should try it.’

‘But we’re building up our mastic business there,’ said the elderly Gabriele Adorno, shaking his head, ‘and we believe that the Turk will take more and more of it as the taste for it spreads beyond the harem. Besides, it’s what we know how to do.’

‘Indeed,’ joined in Giovanni Campi, ‘and as for wine, we are experimenting with a Grechetto grape which we believe will blend well with the Malvasia variety. We’ll need more room for that.’

Luke watched a lizard hang from the fluted sides of a pillar and thought about sugar cane and the mills and refineries and factories that would be required. Benedo Barbi had provided a practical and commercial edge to Fiorenza’s teaching and with it had come the confidence to offer his opinion.

‘Would the money not be better deployed building up the defences of the island?’ he said. ‘The Turkish pirates are growing more daring in their raids on the south and you will lose your workforce down there if you don’t do something to protect them.’

Heads greyer than his nodded around the table and a moth the size of a small bird landed in front of Luke, spreading its wings as if delivering something.

Benedo Barbi spoke. ‘Luke is right. The system of small forts we are planning in the south will eat up a lot of capital. Sugar is an expensive business; I have seen the factories in Syria and they are sophisticated.’

‘Yes, yes,’ replied the man from Cyprus, ‘but growing sugar can be its own defence. The Turk will not take an island if the tribute he gets from sugar grown with our efficiency is more than he would get doing it badly himself. But wine? Apart from the Sultan, none of them drink it.’

‘But what of our mastic, which they so crave?’ asked Zacco Banca. ‘We give them tribute from that. The Turk knows nothing of growing mastic.’

‘They could learn,’ said the man. ‘And from what I’ve heard, your Greeks down there might feel safer under Turkish protection. How close are they to rebellion, do you think?’

There was silence around the table and Luke looked at Fiorenza, who’d said nothing but had watched the conversation closely through her bright, intelligent eyes. The moon had risen behind her like a halo and a bat or skittish bird had fluttered across it. Pastilles had been lit to ward off the mosquitoes and their scent lingered the length of the table. The sound of the cicadas was unbroken and comforting in its uproar. She smiled.

‘Well,’ she said, glancing at her husband, ‘we have a plan for that.’ She looked around the table and settled her gaze on Benedo Barbi. ‘Signor Barbi and Luke will travel tomorrow to the south and agree the location of the forts. Luke is Greek and well placed to reassure the villagers of our intent to protect them.’

Later on, when the pastilles had burnt out and the wine run low and the smells of this perfumed isle had drifted in with the night, Luke listened half-heartedly to the subject that any gathering of Genoese with time on their hands would revert to: the Venetians.

It was more than twenty years since Genoese and Venetian guests had lit the fuse of war by brawling at the coronation of young Peter de Lusignan of Cyprus, and fifteen years since the Genoese had taken, then lost, the island of Choggia on the edge of the Venetian lagoon. The hatred felt by the rival cities was now firmly centred in the eastern Mediterranean and in particular on the islands of Cyprus and Chios, where fortunes were to be made and exchanged in the businesses of alum, wine and sugar.

By this time, Fiorenza and the other women had retired to their beds inside the house, along with some of the older gentlemen.

The man from Cyprus refilled his glass and said, ‘The Venetians want your alum and your wine and they want your island. What if they find common purpose with the Turk? I hear rumours that the Serenissima’s envoy is well received at Edirne. Not by the Sultan, but by his son Prince Suleyman.’

Luke felt drowsy and a little befuddled but he knew the answer to this. ‘If you can get the people of Chios on your side then this island can be defended against anyone,’ he said. ‘Currently, the Venetians can exploit the divisions between Greek and Italian. Who’s to say they’re not behind these pirate attacks?’

Marchese Longo nodded in agreement. He turned to the engineer. ‘Benedo, how quickly can we get forts built in the south?’

‘Quickly enough. Perhaps a year, lord,’ replied the engineer. ‘But I am working on something else as well. Luke knows about it.’

‘Something else?’ asked Longo.

‘Greek fire, lord.’

‘Greek fire? But, Benedo, the secret’s been lost!’

‘To the Greeks, perhaps. But its ingredients are known to chemists in Alexandria: naphtha, quicklime, sulphur and nitre. It’s just a question of getting the mixture right. I am experimenting.’

‘I heard it was a state secret,’ said Zacco Banca. ‘They say that its operators only knew of one component each, that only a handful understood how to put it all together. What does it do?’

‘It burns on water,’ said Barbi. ‘Perhaps it is even ignited by water. Certainly the reaction between quicklime and water is explosive. It can sink a pirate fleet.’

‘Well,’ Longo said, ‘you must continue to experiment, Barbi, and whatever you need will be given to you. But for now, we must think of these forts. How will we find the garrisons to man them?’

Luke said, ‘Why not simply make each village into a fort? It would be a lot cheaper.’

‘But what if they rebel?’ asked Banca. ‘Won’t that just encourage them to rebel?’

‘Not if you do something else as well,’ replied Luke. ‘I think, signori, you might consider allowing the villagers some share in the profit from the mastic. Why not make their interests align with yours? It would be cheaper in the long run.’

At this, there was an uncomfortable silence and glances were exchanged around the table. The Genoese were not famous for sharing profits. Wine washed into glasses and the cicadas argued more loudly.

‘Luke is right. And my wife agrees with him,’ said Longo carefully. ‘The Greeks will fight to defend a just government.’

As he spoke Luke smelt something unexpected. There was sulphur in the air and the sweet, acrid smell of burning citrus. The others had smelt it too and Longo lifted his head and pointed his nose to left and right.

‘Is that burning I smell?’ he asked. ‘Can anyone else smell burning?’

There was a shout in the distance and the sound of feet running fast across grass. Luke could see a glow in the sky behind the garden beyond.

In the direction of the house.

‘Lord!’ came a voice from the darkness. A body emerged from the shadows, dishevelled and flushed from running. ‘The orchards around the house are ablaze! The fire is spreading towards the house!’

Longo came to his feet. ‘Are the women within?’

‘I don’t know, lord,’ panted the man. ‘The servants …’

Before the sentence was out, Longo was running fast across the lawn and the other men were following, their doublets left on the backs of their chairs.

As they jumped the borders and ripped their hose on thorned roses, the smell grew stronger and the glow brighter. This was no small fire, but one that spread across a wide field of lemon trees and its flames could now be seen dancing in jagged abandon against the night sky. The house, when it came into view, was wreathed in swirls of smoke but didn’t seem to be alight. Its towers and castellations were black and vivid in silhouette and the Giustiniani flag stood stark and unmoving on its pole. Luke whistled softly.

At least there’s no wind.

A mass of people surrounded the house, some with buckets, some with rakes. They had cowls lifted to protect their noses and mouths. Nearly everyone was shouting.

Luke looked around, searching every face. None was Fiorenza. He saw Longo look at him quickly, alarm etched into every feature. They ran towards the arch leading into the front courtyard, nearly colliding with their guests, all in their nightgowns and holding garments to their faces. Fiorenza was not among them. Luke stepped aside to let them pass and then ran into the house, Longo beside him.

Longo stopped. ‘I can see to my wife. This fire didn’t start by itself. Take some men and see if you can find the people who did this.’

Luke nearly said something, but then he turned and ran back across the courtyard to where the Genoese were standing in a huddle, husbands comforting wives.

‘My lords,’ he said, ‘this fire was lit by men who may still be here. We must find them. Will you help me?’

Swords were drawn to solid nods and the toss of heads casting off the effects of the wine. There were now lines of men feeding water to the fire and its spread to the buildings seemed checked. The trees in the orchard were throwing off sparks of exhausted flames and the grass beneath was black and smoking. Luke led the party into the field, signalling for the men to spread out, and each ran with his blade ahead of him, ready for the rush from the shadows.

Deep into the orchard, Luke saw something. A shadow amongst shadows. A running figure, hunched, darting between the ruin of the trees. Luke launched himself into a sprint, his boots smoking, his shirt wet with sweat and smudged with falling cinders. He could see little in front of him but heard the break of wood and the rasp of desperate breath. Then the figure was ahead of him and moving fast and a spent torch was in his hand until he flung it away. He was weaving between the skeletons of trees and Luke could see the rough smock and breeches of a Greek peasant.

Luke was gaining on him and the man knew it. He looked over his shoulder. Luke recognised him. He was the man from the village, the man who’d given him his horse. Luke threw himself forward and brought him to the ground. He rolled him over, his sword at his throat.

‘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.