The Walls of Byzantium

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHIOS, SUMMER 1396

‘Come out, Lara!’

It was as if the kendos was happening again. Behind the door to Lara’s house in the new village of Mesta, there was a good deal of shouting, some giggling and much singing, all of it female. And Dimitri, waiting outside, felt like joining in.

But then that wasn’t the custom. The custom had it that, on the morning of his wedding day, the groom would arrive at the house of his bride with his family and she would come out, in all her finery, and they would process to the church. Dimitri, however, had no family and Lara, who’d been living with him in flagrant sin for the past two years, no house. So the village had improvised and Dimitri had vacated his house a week beforehand and gone to live with Luke and now he was back, with Luke, Fiorenza, Marchese Longo, Benedo Barbi and most of the village, to collect her.

It was the first day of May and therefore another excuse for celebration on the island. The unmarried girls of the village had risen early and had poured in a giggling torrent into the fields to collect garlands of wild flowers to lay on their doorsteps. That night the young men would roar like bulls through the streets, stealing them from doorstep and balcony to present to the girl they most admired. Lara’s garland, pinned to her door, was a twisted riot of poppies, butterfly orchids and hyacinths tied together with the woody stem of fennel.

Prometheus had brought fire with a torch of fennel. Dimitri had brought his love.

He was standing with a small plate of candied almonds, koufeta, in his hand and wondering what they’d done with his goats. Like all of the new village houses, his front door usually opened on to the cosy domestic arrangements of a goat couple that greeted visitors with even more noise than today. It was all part of the revolutionary plan for this new kind of village. But all plans had to make way for a wedding.

Beside Dimitri stood Luke dressed in his best doublet of flowered silk, belted above a hose striped yellow and red which, Fiorenza had insisted, was the latest thing in Siena. Fiorenza herself was dressed less colourfully, restricting herself to a long coat of pale saffron damask above pointed slippers of Moroccan leather. Her perfumes were discreet and her golden hair was gathered in a jewelled coif with a peacock’s feather behind.

Marchese Longo and Benedo Barbi were both wearing black silk, in pourpoint and hose, and boots that reached high up their calves. The four of them, as planned, exuded an air of prosperity and optimism.

‘Lara, come out!’ called Dimitri again, laughing and shaking the garland with his banging.

There were squeals from within and someone started a song that rang through the door like a challenge.

‘The church will be dust by the time I get you there!’ He turned to Fiorenza, his arms open and palms to the heavens.

‘Try rattling your plate,’ she suggested.

But he didn’t have to, for then the door opened and a handmaiden appeared bearing a tray on which sat two wedding crowns, decorated in flowers, and an empty dish. Nudged by Luke, Dimitri stepped forward and emptied his koufeta on to it and then stepped back to await the coming of his bride.

Lara stepped forward into the sun dressed in a pure white chemise of silk that fell to her ankles. Her black hair would have been blacker had it not been tinged with henna and it hung in flowered waves to her shoulders.

‘God bless you this morning, Dimitri,’ she said, taking the empty plate from his hand and rising on tiptoe to kiss him on both cheeks.

‘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.’

‘A dye fixative?’ asked Fiorenza. ‘Like alum?’

‘Like alum,’ said Luke, and kicked his mount into a trot.

An hour later they were sitting on their horses on a hill overlooking the new, and still largely unbuilt, port of Limenas. It was currently made up of two large warehouses with some quays and jetties, all under construction, which stood on the flat ground at the head of a long, enclosed bay. The water was deep here and, with its natural leeward protection, the port could shelter large numbers of ships of any size and would, hoped Luke, eventually be the main place of export for his mastic.

A single square-rigged cog was being unloaded at one of the quays, which surprised Luke, who’d not believed the port yet open to business. A dark shape was in the water beside it with two smaller shapes on either side.

‘Is that a horse?’ he asked.

‘Yes, it looks like one,’ said Fiorenza, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand.

‘What’s it doing in the water? I think it’s coming ashore from that boat. There are men in the water with it.’

‘Shall we go and look?’ suggested Fiorenza and she put her heels to the side of her mare and started down the hill. Soon they were cantering across the levels towards two men who had emerged with the horse from the water and were, more or less, nude.

But as they got closer, it was only the horse that Luke saw. It was a magnificent stallion of perhaps fifteen hands and blacker than the deepest shade of darkness. It had a powerful neck that curved into a head held high, its mane clamped to it like seaweed. Beneath was a broad chest that shone with sea and muscle as the animal moved in its fear. Its legs ended in socks white as snow. Luke was transfixed.

‘What is he?’ he asked the older of the men, who was hurrying into a pair of cotton breeches.

But the man didn’t answer and Fiorenza, looking up at the arms of the Kingdom of Seville and Leon which were emblazoned on the ship’s pennant, said, ‘They’re from Spain.’

But one of them had understood. The younger man bowed low to the Princess, straightened and said in Greek: ‘It is the Horse of Kings, Sir. The Cartujano in our tongue.’

‘Cartujano?’ asked Luke, dismounting. ‘What is that? Is it a breed?’

‘It is the horse of Al-Andalus,’ said the man, ‘and it is the great-grandson of Esclavo. It has been bred by monks, the Carthusians of the monastery of Cazalla in the foothills of the Sierra Morena. It is where we are from.’

‘You’re monks?’ asked Luke, walking over to the horse and taking its big head with slow and practised gentleness in one hand while stroking its neck with the other.

The young man laughed and then said something to his companion and they both bowed from the waist so that two globes of sunburnt flesh appeared before Luke like pomegranates.

‘Monks indeed,’ said Luke. ‘What is Esclavo, Father?’

Fiorenza answered. ‘Esclavo was the foundation stallion. You can tell from the horns on his head.’ She smiled and took his hand. ‘Happy birthday, Luke.’

The horns turned out to be low protruberances of bone behind the horse’s ears which, like the warts beneath its tail and the whorls of white hair on its rump, confirmed its Esclavo provenance. Asked to name him, Luke in his joyous bewilderment had chosen the one he already had: Norillo. It seemed appropriate.

Luke had hardly waited to thank the monks or Fiorenza before leading the horse away to the shade of a nearby tree to make its acquaintance in the way he knew best. The monks watched how the animal became still as Luke talked quietly into its ear, how its high head fell to nuzzle Luke’s hair and face and how, eventually, it allowed Luke to saddle and bridle it with leather that still dripped with the sweat of another horse. Then he was on Norillo’s back and patting the huge neck with his palm.

Fiorenza turned to the two monks.

‘Thank you, Fathers. You have brought a horse from the sea worthy of one who will understand it like no other. Please convey my thanks to His Majesty.’ Then she climbed on to her mare and, with the cry of the hunt, smacked its rear with the flat of her hand and sprang into the gallop.

The rest of the day passed as a blur of passing landscape. Leaving the juvenile port of Limenas behind, Luke and Fiorenza raced each other up the coastline with all the speed that the terrain would allow. Norillo turned out to have a balance and instinct far in advance of his three years and his reaction to even the subtlest instruction was instantaneous. Luke looked down at the ears, alert as antennae, and at the mass of black, glossy mane that submerged the proof of special parentage. He felt the muscle moving beneath him and a joy he hadn’t experienced since Eskalon.

At midday they stopped by a windmill at a point that overlooked the little island of Nisaki where stood a chapel that sailors used both as a place of worship and a lighthouse. A month before, Luke had built a stone beacon next to the church which, along with a chain of others along the coast, would be lit in times of danger. Now there was no flame apart from the reflection of the sun on the sea and the tiles of the chapel roof and they ate a lunch of bread and cheese and melon in the shade of the windmill’s white walls and talked, languidly, of horses.

Afterwards they slept for a while until Luke was awakened by the wet, puckered lips of a big head that leant down to him with the shyness of early friendship. Luke opened his eyes.

‘Norillo!’ he laughed. ‘You want to go on. Of course you do.’ He reached up and scratched the soft, velvety pad of the nose and then in the hollow beneath the jaw. The horse snorted and blew and tossed his head high in his impatience to be off.

‘I think the message is plain,’ came the voice of Fiorenza who was sitting, back against the windmill. She had been watching Luke sleep.

Luke rose to his feet and helped Fiorenza to hers. He tightened the horses’ girths and held out cupped hands for her to mount. Then he swung into his saddle and broke into a gentle canter down the hill in the direction of the coastal track.

The afternoon was drawing to a close when they finally reined in their exhausted horses at the top of Cape Pari. Although no breath disturbed a hair of their heads, there was wind out on the sea before them, and the carpet of waves was patched with white as its fingers passed over it. Luke had seen dolphins here and, once, the gigantic mass of a whale. Now only fishing boats sat like fat, gaudy women with nets spread like skirts. Fiorenza sighed with contentment and leant back in her saddle.

‘Trebizond,’ she whispered.

‘Is that where you think of when you look at the sea?’ asked Luke.

‘Sometimes. When I’m happy.’

Luke looked at her happiness and said, ‘We’ve talked of everywhere in the world except Trebizond. Why is that?’

‘Because to think of it in any mood less perfect than this makes me miss it.’

‘So can we talk of it now?’

‘If you like. But not here. Not in view of the sea.’

They turned their horses away and walked them, side by side, through a field strewn with poppies that fell gently to a thickly wooded valley. Once amongst the trees, the shock of sudden shadow left them both blinded for a moment, and the cool beneath the canopy of luminous leaves, green as if painted on glass, made them shiver. Here were ancient oaks with gnarled and bulbous branches that twisted their limbs in dark embrace like widows at a funeral. As their eyes adjusted to the gloom, they could see that they were riding on a thick carpet of fern and moss tattooed by the shifting light above them.

Further on, the gradient of the slope steepened so that they were riding into a deep ravine, at the bottom of which could be heard the rush and gurgle of a stream. As they drew closer, their horses rocking from side to side as they placed hooves amidst the pebbles of the track, they could see that the stream had high banks that were swathed in sunshine. At their end was a waterfall, its glottal sound spreading down the valley like organ chords.

Closer, where the stream gathered into pools and the banks were lower and sunlit and dotted with flowers, there were butterflies that danced in and out of the light like child ballerinas. It was a place of overwhelming beauty and Luke knew that Fiorenza had come here before.

They tethered their horses in the shade of the trees and walked out into the sunshine amidst the butterflies to sit by the side of the stream. There was a fungoid smell of earth and leaves and hidden flowers and something sweeter that must be attracting the butterflies.

‘Tell me about Trebizond,’ said Luke, lying back on the warm grass with his hands cradling his head. A dragonfly fanned its haphazard way through the ferns and he stretched his toes towards it.

‘Ah, Trebizond,’ said Fiorenza. She seemed lost in a memory and a faint smile lifted the corner of her lips and deepened her dimples into tiny dots of shadow. ‘There are three jewels remaining in the imperial crown of Byzantium,’ she said, ‘and they are Constantinople, Mistra and Trebizond. And much the finest is Trebizond.’

She paused to pick yellow verbena from the ground beside her, crushing it to powder between her fingers and lifting them to her nose.

‘Imagine a city of marble and gold rising in its own amphitheatre to look out over a sea called Black but which is in fact bluer than lapis lazuli,’ she murmured. ‘Imagine it built on a table of rock which sits in front of pine-forested mountains that march inland for fifty miles. Imagine deep, wooded ravines either side that plunge to boiling cataracts, fed by springs from those mountains. Imagine walls of the purest white within which are palaces and orchards and temples and libraries and baths and everything that provides comfort for the mind and body. And imagine the smell of incense mixed with myrtle and citrus fruit and musk, and imagine it with you every day of your life.’

Luke’s eyes were closed. ‘I can imagine.’

‘Then you are in Trebizond,’ said Fiorenza.

And when she said that, Luke saw a man and woman seated on backless ivory thrones within a palace, perched high as an eagle’s nest, where every window and terrace looked out over golden domes and the greens and blues of forest, mountain and sea and the speckled verdigris of twin gorges full of tumbling water and birdsong. He saw, standing beside them, three women who looked like Fiorenza holding hands and waiting for something.

‘I was the lucky one,’ said Fiorenza. ‘I was niece to the Megas Komnenos, the Basileus Alexios III, Emperor and Autocrat of the Entire East. Had I been his daughter, I would have been married to a khan or emir that threatened our frontiers. The Komnenoi are famed for their beautiful daughters and use them as coinage to buy peace with local barbarians.’

‘And why is Trebizond so rich?’ he asked.

‘Why? Because much of the silk and spices that end up in the markets of Venice, Florence or Bruges go through Trebizond. And the Basileus takes his cut every time.’

‘Could we sell our mastic there?’

‘Better than that,’ replied Fiorenza, gently rubbing pollen from her fingers. ‘From Trebizond, you could sell it across the entire East. The caravans that come over the mountains have ten thousand camels in them and stretch for fifteen miles. They could certainly manage some mastic on their way home.’

Luke opened his eyes and saw his dragonfly engaged in desultory dance with another of its species above a rash of pink clover. It hummed above the agreeable burble of the stream and the music of the woman by his side who spoke of fabulous things.

‘And alum?’

She glanced at him.

‘You didn’t mention alum,’ said Luke. He rolled on to his side and rested his cheek on his palm to look at the Princess from Trebizond. He said, as if reading from a report, ‘Trebizond also exports alum. A great deal of alum. Fourteen thousand cantara from the quarries at Karahissar every year, and its quality almost matches Phocaea’s. The monopoly belongs to Venice, who snatched it from the Genoese using bribery and threat. But it’s expensive because it takes longer to mine and bring over the Kerasous mountains and because the Basileus imposes high rates of duty.’

‘You are well informed,’ said Fiorenza, smiling.

Luke dipped his head to the compliment. ‘And the price of alum is soaring because we can’t get ours off our island and the Venetians can’t get theirs through the blockade at Constantinople.’ He paused. ‘Which is why we must find ships.’ He rolled on to his back. ‘Or I suppose we could make it irrelevant.’

‘Irrelevant?’

‘What if mastic does the same thing as alum? It’s certainly cheaper to produce. What then?’

Fiorenza smiled and studied the tips of her fingers, smudged with dust. ‘Then my uncle would become very nervous.’

‘Nervous?’

She blew the dust with the lightest of breaths so that it rose in a tiny cloud and vanished. ‘Why do you think the Turks have let his tiny empire survive so long? Do you know how big his army is?’

Luke shook his head.

‘Four thousand men. My uncle has survived because of the beauty of his daughters and the tribute he pays into the Sultan’s coffers. Tribute from alum.’

They were silent after that, both thinking of similar things, both staring at the ground.

‘What makes you think it can fix dye?’ she asked at last.

‘Benedo has been working on it. He thinks it might. It needs to be tested.’ Luke looked up. ‘Like your loyalties, Fiorenza,’ he added quietly. ‘Are they not tested? For Chios’s gain would seem Trebizond’s loss.’

Fiorenza’s frown was temporary and, magically, turned into something else. She laughed. ‘My loyalty is untested, Luke. It is entirely to my lord Longo.’

Luke rose. ‘Then we should drink to it. Did we finish the wine at lunch?’

‘I have more in the saddlebag. Lie down. I will bring it to you.’

Luke obeyed and closed his eyes. The late-afternoon sun brought forth golden dots that pulsed to the rhythm of his heart.

Fiorenza poured wine and the conversation turned, like the day, from the clear to the unclear and from the seen to the unseen. It was a conversation about love and allegiance and loyalty and about all the things that were invisible and in question between them. It flowed and divided like the stream beside them and its sound was often lost in the noise of water and the first cicadas as they picked up the song of the approaching night.

Luke had not tasted wine so good or so strong in his life before. Its taste filled his mouth and then his senses, one by one, so that he felt light-headed, with a strange tingling in his limbs. Fiorenza talked on and he tried to listen but something else was speaking to him. Her voice was an infusion of desire into his very soul and he felt alive with need.

Then it was night and she had stopped speaking and was regarding him with some calculation and her dress seemed to have slipped at the shoulder. Luke could hardly breathe.

‘What is this place, Fiorenza?’ he asked thickly. His head was swimming. ‘Who else do you bring here?’

‘Hush, Luke. Do not speak of such things.’

And she was next to him then and her scents were mixed with those of the grass and the river and the flawless texture of her skin was touching his and the calls of the night were muffled by the sounds she spoke into his ear.

‘My beloved is unto me …’ she murmured and her tongue was soft and her breath warm.

‘My beloved is unto me a cluster of camphire,’ she whispered and Luke turned his head and felt her tongue travel slowly across his cheek until it found his mouth.

Now she was lying beneath him and the masterpiece of her beauty looked up at him in its calm perfection.

‘I … I can’t,’ he breathed.

‘You can, Luke. And you must.’

He felt her legs open beneath him and her lips brush his and then stay there should any word escape.

You must.