The Walls of Byzantium

The Walls of Byzantium Read Online Free PDF Page A

Book: The Walls of Byzantium Read Online Free PDF
Author: James Heneage
Tags: Fiction, Historical
new technology. But the Despot had merely laughed and waved the man away. He’d rather use the money for new churches.
    Anna said, ‘So Bayezid means to conquer the world?’
    Her brother nodded. ‘This Sultan is far more warlike than his father. He has boasted that he will water his horse at the altar of St Peter’s in Rome.’
    Anna shuddered at the thought of such desecration. Rome might be the seat of a Catholic Pope but he was still a Christian.
    Just then a light gust of wind lifted the cooking of a thousand campfires.
    ‘Come, Anna,’ Alexis said. ‘We’re in God’s hands now. Let’s go inside and see what our mother has for us to eat.’
    Anna did sleep that night. So quiet and well disciplined was the Ottoman host that only the neighs of their horses and the sound of mallet on tent peg disturbed the rest of those citizens of Mistra that lay abed.
    When dawn came, it was as if a city of tents had risen from the ground in the night. The people of Mistra, emerging sleepily from their bedrooms, wondered at the sight before them. Even the cats were silent.
    This was order indeed. For as far as the eye could see therewere row upon row of tents, with streets and squares laid out between them and corrals for the horses on the banks of the Evrotas River. At their centre stood a gigantic pavilion, made up of silks of every colour imaginable. It had gardens around it with rows of fruit trees in tubs and caged birds suspended from their branches and neat lawns on either side with borders of tulips gently swaying in the dawn breeze.
    Ten minutes later, the Protostrator Simon Laskaris and his daughter were hurrying up the streets on their way to the citadel. The streets were full of jostling crowds anxious for news or simply there to fill amphorae with the water they’d need for the siege. Simon was pleased to see that the praetors, whom he’d ordered be armed the night before, were keeping some sort of order in the queues for the wellheads. The city’s population was already swelled to triple its normal size by the influx of refugees from the countryside.
    When she’d heard that her father wanted her to accompany him to meet the Despot, Anna had guessed that he wanted her with him to amuse the Despoena while the men talked. In fact he’d been so impressed by her calm at dinner on the previous evening that he wanted her with him as an example to the city.
    And it seemed to be working. People stopped to bow to the Protostrator and stare at the girl striding behind him. They were used to seeing Anna chasing her brother through the streets with a catapult. They knew her as a tomboy, with mud on her knees, the women secretly worrying for the day they knew she would be forced to make some illustrious marriage.
    But here she was dressed as a woman.
    Anna Laskaris had Norman blood in her veins and it showedin the cascade of hair, soft and red as fox fur, that fell to her waist and in the two malachite eyes that stared out on the world from a face traced with the lightest patina of freckles. Dressed in a chemise of the finest white lawn and with the plaits of her hair braided with flowers, she radiated calm.
    They arrived at the citadel to find the Despot already dressed in armour, his breastplate burnished to a perfect sheen. With him was the Despoena Bartolomea, who hurried over to greet them. ‘Anna, you look ravishing! How many soldiers did you distract from their important work on your way up? Come, let’s go and feed my marmoset and you can tell me how things are. That man’ – she nodded in the direction of her husband – ‘tells me nothing.’
    The Despot, however, was not to be cheered by the sight of Anna. When the women left, he was still arguing with a Frankish knight over a scroll that lay on the table between them. Eventually, the Despot ripped it in two, handing one half to the knight who bowed stiffly and left.
    ‘Normans!’ said Theodore. ‘They can’t write and they won’t do anything unless
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