The Towers of Samarcand (The Mistra Chronicles) Read online

  He’d begun the leap when his pony went down. Shot through the leg, it could do nothing but fall. It sank to the grass, twisting as it did so and bringing Luke with it. He was pinned. In seconds the herd would be on top of him. He closed his eyes and prayed.

  The horses came on, jumping the obstacle one after another. Then one shied and was hit by those behind. Yet still they came on and Luke held his breath, waiting for the hooves that would trample him, feeling their thunder shake every part of his being.

  Then the thunder passed and he lay beneath the rough underbelly of the horse and listened to the beat of his heart. He felt something hard digging into his side and managed to move an arm. It was the arrow.

  He pulled it free and there was no sound from the horse beyond the horrid slurp of release. It was quite dead. And it was heavy. Digging his elbows into the ground, he managed to shift himself to the side of the carcass. Then, with another heave, he was free. He looked up.

  There was his pursuer, pale as a ghost in the moonlight. The man was small and slight and almost entirely hidden by the monstrous mask he wore. His horse wanted to follow the herd and was straining against the rein, turning circles on the flattened grass. But the rider was out of arrows. He threw the bow to one side and drew his knife. Then he charged.

  Luke waited to the last moment before throwing himself to one side. As he did so, he thrust the point of the arrow up like a dagger into the upper arm of the man. The man? The cry of pain was not that of a man; it was a boy’s. And the arm glimpsed in the moonlight was hairless. The horse reared and the boy came down. Luke recovered his balance to see the horse moving away to catch the herd. He lunged for the reins and with one finger, caught them and looped them round his wrist. Then he threw himself into the saddle and kicked.

  There was no time to look back. He had to catch the horses.

  *

  At the Germiyan camp, daylight brought the misery of seeing.

  The light arrived slowly, creeping out from behind the stars like a jewel-thief, and the people of the camp sat around wrapped in blankets and stared silently at the ground. The only sound came from dogs that moved like servants from person to person, heads tilted in query. The gers stood charred and stripped to the bone, the ground around them black and strewn with things dragged out before the torches hit. Felt was everywhere, burnt and curled and stinking.

  The camp had lost only two men but all of its horses. Those standing there now, nose to nose, belonged to Gomil’s hunting party, which had just returned. They were waiting for the order to remount and follow the raiders.

  Gomil was standing next to his father, who had blood on his face and a bandage around his thigh. They were talking together in low voices and Arkal was standing a little apart, listening to every word and squeezing Tsaurig’s hand every time he drew breath to cry. She had found her parents alive but beyond speech. Now she wanted to know about Luke.

  ‘The girl says that Luke went after them,’ said the older man. ‘One against twenty. He will die and we will be blamed.’

  Gomil looked gaunt and tired. His deel was filthy. ‘It is because of him that they came,’ he said. ‘You said it yourself: they were looking for someone not of the tribe.’

  Etabul shook his head. ‘They followed you to the camp,’ he said. ‘They wanted the horses.’

  Gomil grunted. ‘We should not have stopped for the night. They must have overtaken us then.’

  Etabul looked up. ‘Why were you so late in returning?’

  ‘The girl would not let us go. I had agreed the marriage with her father but she kept arguing. I couldn’t leave.’ He looked beaten. He waved Arkal and Tsaurig away. ‘Father,’ he said quietly, looking over his shoulder at the waiting men, ‘we can get new horses but we must get rid of the foreigner. He has brought us trouble.’

  His father turned on him. ‘New horses?’ he asked. ‘Tell me how we can get horses when we have no horses ourselves.’ He stared at his son and then glanced at the men around them. His voice fell to a whisper. ‘Without horses we are nothing.’

  Gomil frowned. He knew it was true. A tribe with only twenty horses between them was finished. They would be forced to join a neighbouring camp, subservient to others’ whims. Suddenly he felt very angry. ‘It’s Lug’s fault,’ he said.

  Etabul grunted and looked up at the sky. The first rays of the sun had crested the ridge and scattered across the sky, turning cold grey into blue. Small birds left the trees behind them in clouds of tiny wingbeats. Today would be spent in planning for a desolate future. He felt drained. ‘Well,’ he sighed, ‘at least you won’t have to marry the Karamanid girl. They won’t make a match with a horseless tribe, whatever Yakub wants.’

  Gomil had considered this and had been surprised that relief was not among the emotions he’d felt. He’d been told by the father to look at the girl’s legs. Strong legs would mean a strong, child-bearing wife. But he’d looked instead at her face.

  ‘Was she ugly?’ asked his father.

  ‘No,’ replied Gomil. ‘She wasn’t ugly.’

  A falcon screeched and they looked up to see it soar into the rising birds and emerge with a shape between its claws. Gomil was about to whistle for its return when he heard a shout from one of the waiting hunting party. The man was pointing south along the valley. Father and son turned to look.

  There were horses coming towards them. Far beyond the woods, there were horses, hundreds of them, and they had no riders. They were spread out along the valley bottom, some in the river, water splashing around their hooves. At their head was a rider, upright and waving.

  ‘Lug,’ Etabul said softly.

  Now people from the camp were running, running towards the horses. Children had broken free of their parents and were skipping and jumping and clapping their hands. Even the sheep and goats had raised their heads and were calling out the news.

  Etabul turned to the waiting party. ‘Give me a horse,’ he said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  VENICE, SUMMER 1398

  Pavlos Mamonas, Archon of Monemvasia, was in the Arsenale of Venice learning about the making of cannon with his son Damian. Or, to be more accurate, they were learning about the unmaking of cannon, for the examples they were looking at had all split asunder.

  They were standing in a large courtyard, high-walled, that was attached to the gun foundry. Both men had disposed of their doublets and their linen camicie were open to the waist and dark at the armpits. The foundry had been hot. With them was the chief gunsmith, a man called Rudi, who’d come from Ragusa on the Dalmatian coast. He was the best gunsmith outside China and also one of the richest, his salary from the Serenissima augmented by Plethon’s bribes. He was explaining to Pavlos what had gone wrong.

  ‘It’s the size, master. No one has ever tried to make them this big before.’

  Pavlos wiped his brow. ‘So what happens?’

  Rudi pointed to a long hollow frame that was lying on its side, its wood charred by heat. Next to it stood two brass bells, both cracked, and behind them their own flasks, bell-shaped.

  ‘It happens in the flask. Bells, cannon – it’s the same. We put in the clay pattern, pack the sand around it, then take it out and pour in the molten bronze.’

  Pavlos had seen the crucibles suspended on chains in the foundry. Their heat was still on him.

  ‘Once the brass has hardened,’ continued Rudi, ‘we break the mould and take out the barrel. But every time there are these air bubbles trapped in the metal. They make it weak.’

  Pavlos looked at the man. He was dressed in a long leather apron and little else. He was as bald as a eunuch and had a face reddened by the furnace. Pavlos remembered his last visit to the Arsenale and the more complicated dress he’d been obliged to wear: the clothes of the plague doctor. For a moment he wondered whether the calm of the Doge had split like these cannon when he’d heard the news.

  Mastic doesn’t, after all, cure the plague.

  Pavlos turned to the cask. He’d taught
himself about cannon. There was too much at stake not to. ‘Why not try steel then?’ he asked. ‘After all, it’s harder.’

  The gunsmith shook his head. ‘Too brittle. Bronze has the malleability and is better with friction. The balls are iron now.’

  ‘What about the pattern then?’ asked Mamonas. ‘I’m told they use wax in Delhi, and chase it out with the hot bronze. Would that work?’

  ‘No I’ve tried that.’ The gunsmith looked back at the flask lying on its side. ‘The only thing to do is make the cannon walls thicker, so that the air bubbles matter less. It’s what we’re trying now.’

  The Archon was worried. He’d promised the cannon in June and now it was August. And there was another problem.

  ‘We need more brass. We’re running out,’ said Rudi.

  Pavlos’s head ached. He had no idea how to get brass. He glanced at his son. Damian was standing apart looking, with no interest at all, at a bell. Suddenly, Pavlos felt irritated. ‘Do you have any suggestions, Damian?’ he called.

  His son turned and walked back to his father and the gunsmith. His limp seemed more pronounced than ever. Pavlos had heard that he’d come back to the fondaco at dawn. He could smell the wine still on his son’s breath.

  Damian said, ‘What about iron hoops? Why not wrap them round the barrel? Wouldn’t that stop it?’

  Rudi was shaking his head. ‘Wouldn’t work. If the crack’s on the inside of the barrel, the ball won’t come out properly.’

  Damian turned away, already bored. He walked over to where their doublets were hanging from a stave and began to put his on. Clearly he felt that the interview was over. Pavlos Mamonas looked at his back and thought of the conversation with Zoe. He’d still not decided.

  He walked over to his own doublet. He looked down at its rich, patterned broadcloth, too thick for August. He didn’t want to put it on. He turned to the gunsmith. ‘I don’t much care how you do it, but I must have cannon big enough to bring down Constantinople’s walls by the end of the year.’ He put an arm through a sleeve. ‘If you are unable to do it, then we’ll give the commission to the Hungarians. And you will have to answer to the Doge.’

  *

  Later that same day, the philosopher Plethon was half a mile away studying the workings of the Rialto. He was standing in a little square next to the rising bridge of that name. The square was bordered by cantilevered buildings – banks, insurance agencies and tax offices – above which rose the squat tower of the Church of San Giacomo with its useful clock. Plethon was looking at its face and wondering whether he had time for lunch before his meeting with the Doge.

  The square was unpleasantly hot and filled with overdressed people and Plethon silently blessed the ancient connection of philosophy with toga. The air smelt badly of the fish market next door and Venice in the heat: a mix of rank canal and ranker humanity. At least the mastic had improved people’s breath. The noise was appalling. Seagulls, calling above, mimicked the calls of commerce. Plethon wondered why money always had to raise its voice to be heard.

  His eyes travelled from the clock face to those of a stout banker and his wife, awash with discomfort in the crowd. They were clearly a couple of some standing. She wore a high-collared cioppa of figured silk, decorated with the pomegranate motif. Her head was veiled and her long hair gathered in a knot beneath with a ribboned tail running down her back like a dog’s lead. Her husband was top-heavy in black doublet and hose, the doublet slashed to reveal enough colour to please the dyers’ guild but not so much to challenge the sumptuary laws. They were middle-aged and there was a fat son in tow.

  Plethon watched the couple approach a table with weights and measures and coin on its surface. A blackboard was propped beside it with the exchange rates for the florin, gazzetta, marengo and other currencies chalked up. Next to it were other boards showing commodity prices, and Plethon saw the man stoop to the line showing Malvasia wine and take note. Then the man moved to another board on which were written the prices for metals. He spent some time looking at the price of bronze. He shook his head. Plethon walked over to them.

  The man’s wife saw him first and her face coloured with alarm. Conversation with a toga’d stranger might not be helpful in their rise through society’s ranks, were Venice’s ruling caste ever to be opened to new families again. She tugged at her husband’s sleeve.

  The philosopher stopped in front of them and bowed. Straightening, he threw a fold of toga over his shoulder. He smiled. ‘Georgius Gemistus at your service,’ he said.

  The couple blinked at him. Plethon was known but Georgius Gemistus unheard of. ‘Tommasi Giacomo at yours,’ said the man uneasily, bowing. ‘My wife, Dominia.’

  Plethon turned and bowed again. ‘Forgive me. I saw you interrogate the blackboard and note down the price of Malvasia. I myself have a commission to buy the wine in bulk and thought, perhaps, you might know how I can make the transaction?’

  Giacomo thawed slightly. ‘I am factor to the family that makes it,’ he said. ‘Their fondaco is nearby. We can talk there.’

  Plethon shook his head. ‘Sadly, I am to meet elsewhere. But, tell me, would that be the Mamonas family of Monemvasia?’

  Giacomo smiled. He was nearly as proud of his position as his wife and he hoped they were being overheard. His wife raised a warning finger to the boy who’d begun to whine. ‘The same. And you are from?’

  ‘Mistra and Chios. I have houses in both,’ said Plethon, without a blush.

  Giacono had interlocked his fingers and begun to rub his palms against each other. ‘Would your transaction be in cash or in kind, sir?’

  Chios might mean mastic and the market was short of mastic.

  ‘In kind. But not mastic. I have copper. And tin from Cornwall. Some of it mixed. The best.’

  Bronze.

  The factor lowered his voice and glanced around. He drew Plethon to one side. ‘What makes you think my master has need of such metals?’

  There was the sound of a slap and the boy began to cry. The factor ignored it. Plethon frowned.

  ‘But’, went on the factor hurriedly, his voice low, ‘it is possible that the Arsenale …’

  Plethon nodded. ‘Is your master in Venice?’

  The factor looked uncomfortable. He’d had strict instructions to say nothing of his master’s movements, not even that he was in the city. But this Greek had bronze. He looked around him and lowered his voice still further. ‘It is possible that he might be in Venice. And he might be able to talk for the Serenissima on the subject of … metals. He acts for them in other areas.’

  ‘I would want an exclusive. The status of sole provider for three months. It would be reflected in the price.’

  For someone revolted by trade, Plethon had mastered its language surprisingly well. He sounded convincing. The fat man nodded and glanced back at the blackboard. The price was its highest yet. He pressed his hands together. ‘I will do what I can. You would meet with him?’

  Plethon shook his head. ‘No, it is better that this transaction is done through intermediaries. The quantities are considerable.’

  A light veil of sweat now covered the man’s face. He could no more conceal his excitement than his wife could prevent the child from now giving voice.

  *

  Twenty minutes later, Plethon was humming as he crossed the Piazza San Marco on his way to meet the Doge. If anything, the day was even hotter and the crowds had abandoned the square to the pigeons, men in black clinging to its shadowed sides like bats. The philosopher was too absorbed in thought even to shake his customary fist at the bronze horses of the cathedral.

  He was wondering whether the ruse would really work. He’d used some of the considerable funds that Luke was amassing in Chios to bribe miners of copper and tin. He’d asked them to create a flawed alloy, one that a colluding gunsmith could make use of. The idea of the exclusive had come to him at the Rialto.

  Three more months of delay. It all helps.

  Plethon was humming so hard t
hat he didn’t hear the request from the two excusati guarding the entrance to the Doge’s palace. He found himself facing a cross of tasselled halberds. ‘Ah yes. Georgius Gemistus Plethon. I am expected.’

  The halberds rose and he entered a large courtyard with an imposing staircase that led up to a loggia. Men in long scarlet robes were walking down it – men of the Grand Council. With them, and in deep conversation, were a covey of cardinals. Red and purple, a pope’s ransom in dye flowed towards him down the marble steps. Two cardinals known to Plethon stopped to talk. Their news from the meeting was not encouraging.

  Not long after, Plethon was standing in the Scudo Room where the coat of arms of Antonio Venier, Doge of Venice hung. Unlike Pavlos Mamonas, he’d only met this man before within the confines of his palace. He bowed.

  Venier said, ‘You will have been trampled by prelates on your way up. And the cardinals are not light.’

  Plethon liked Venier for his ruthless pragmatism. There was never any skirmish to their conversation. ‘Weighted with disappointment it seemed, magnificence,’ he replied.

  The Doge went over to an open window and looked down into the courtyard. The buzz of conversation below rose as a faint music. ‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘Still …’ He turned and looked at Plethon. There was silence between the two men, broken only by the tide of Plethon’s breathing. The steps had been many and steep. ‘They want me to stop building things for the Turks.’

  ‘And the Grand Council?’

  ‘To build faster, of course. They worry about our alum not getting past Constantinople because of the blockade. And they worry about Genoa.’

  ‘Genoa?’

  The Doge turned back to the window. In its frame, he looked like the study of a man bent under the burden of age and cynicism. A little wind ruffled his unruly beard and he put his hand to it. ‘They worry that if we don’t help the Turk, Genoa will, and all the gains of the last many years will be wasted. Genoa controls the alum from Chios, as you know.’