“Why are hospitals everywhere so noisy?”
This question turned through Nicolo’s mind as the sickrooms passed by, one after the other. The answer was obvious, yet the question continued to gnaw at him. Ten years had already passed since he entered the medical faculty at the University of Padua, and the only thing that hadn’t changed since the day he first followed his professor into a ward was his irritation at the noise and clamor of these places. He had to smile ironically, though, when he recalled that the noise didn’t bother him at all when he had entered the hospital, not as a doctor, but as the relative of a patient.
The patients weren’t the noisy ones. It was the family members, who talked loudly with no consideration for others and whose voices echoed back from the arched stone ceiling as an indistinct cacophony. The quietest were those patients who had no relations here in Venice and who had fallen ill returning from their pilgrimages. They were also the only ones staring blankly at the depictions on the walls of Christ’s miracles, solitary sufferers whose eyes anxiously followed the doctors and nurses around the room.
Walking out of the especially noisy hospital, Nicolo saw the black-robed man standing near a water tank in the middle of the square whom the gatekeeper had told him about. The gatekeeper had said only that there was somebody who wanted to speak with him near the well; Nicolo assumed it must have been a relative of one of the patients. When he realized that the man was an acquaintance of his from the Admiralty, he hesitated in surprise. The man approached him. In a quiet, polite voice he said, “Admiral Trevisan would like you to make a discreet visit to the Admiralty tonight at the ringing of the vespers.”
“I’ll be there.”
The man nodded slightly and Nicolo returned to the hospital.
In order to get from Nicolo’s hospital in the San Paulo district to the Admiralty in the San Marco district, it was necessary to cross the Grand Canal. Unfortunately Nicolo, who had changed from his white hospital garment into his usual black robe, arrived at the foot of the Rialto Bridge just as it was being raised in order to allow a ship to pass. He was forced to wait for quite some time. He looked at the masts of the ship passing by, a sight to which he should have been thoroughly accustomed, with a sense of freshness and wonder; behind him the bells of the Church of San Giacomo gently began to announce the vespers. Nicolo was seized once again by the question that had filled his mind all afternoon: Why had Admiral Trevisan, who was supposed to be on the island of Corfu, secretly returned to Venice?
The Admiralty was located in the Palazzo Ducale. Nicolo knew the building well; he entered through the door facing the San Marco wharf and went directly towards the Admiralty division without need of direction. As a member of the Barbaro family, it was Nicolo’s aristocratic right, and indeed duty, to serve in the Great Council of the Republic, which was precisely what he did every Sunday as long as he was present in Venice.
The entrance to the Admiralty would have been bustling with people going in and out earlier in the day, but it was the custom in Venice’s official bureaus that the ringing of the vespers, barring some emergency, signaled the end of the workday. Now the only person standing in front of the imposing door to the Admiralty was the man who had come to visit Nicolo that morning. Without saying a word he led Nicolo inside and through five separate rooms until they reached a locked door mounted with a ring-shaped iron rapper. The man knocked three times, and without delay the door opened from inside to reveal the imposing figure of Admiral Trevisan on the other side. The admiral smiled at his old friend and politely gestured him into the room, quietly shutting the door behind them.
Like Nicolo Barbaro, Gabriele Trevisan was an aristocrat. Nicolo led the more unconventional life of the two: he had chosen medicine against the wishes of his older brothers, who had gone into trade. For the aristocracy of a maritime power such as Venice, a life at sea such as that chosen by Nicolo’s brothers or Trevisan was the more common. Trevisan’s exceptional talent, even among such a competitive field, was acknowledged by many: he was deputy commander of the fleet stationed at Corfu, a post for which he was chosen twice in a row. For the Venetians, who believed that naval superiority in the Adriatic was the key to their nation’s security, such a responsibility was the equivalent of entrusting him with their own personal safety.
Indeed, Trevisan also possessed a physique that inspired confidence in those around him. No doubt his long years at sea had merely forged a body that was already robust to begin with. The only physical signs he showed that he was already in his early fifties were the gray hairs that had started to multiply on his head and in his beard.
Nicolo had already taken two voyages with the admiral, serving with Trevisan’s fleet during merchant vessel escort missions. The first voyage was to Alexandria in Egypt; on the return leg they had sailed to Syria and made ports of call at Cyprus and Crete. It was common for Venetian doctors to serve aboard ship even after they had begun working at the university or a hospital, so there was nothing special about Nicolo’s case. Nonetheless, duty on an escort fleet was somewhat dangerous, and in fact Nicolo had witnessed three naval battles, albeit small ones, during the journeys to and from Egypt. These and other factors had delayed their return to Venice by two full months.
The second voyage had been to Negroponte in Greece, with a return via Crete. Since this voyage had been confined to waters firmly in Venetian control, they had been able to return home on time and without incident. It was during this occasion that Nicolo came to know Trevisan well, both his deep humanity and his calm composure, unwavering in peace and war.
Trevisan dispensed with formalities and began to speak as soon as Nicolo was seated. “I think you may already have some idea of why I’ve called you here. It was resolved two days ago in the Senate, although it still hasn’t come before the Great Council, that the Republic of Venice will send a fleet to Constantinople in response to a request for aid from the Byzantine Empire. I have been appointed commander of this fleet. I want you to join me as the fleet’s doctor. I have sailed with many doctors, but I believe that you, despite your youth, are the one best suited for this duty.”
Hearing these words from Trevisan, whom he had long revered, suddenly made thirty-something Nicolo feel much younger. Depending on the company, a man in his thirties can seem to have the presence and maturity of a man a full decade younger or older than he actually is.
“I’ve never been to Constantinople. It would be my pleasure to accompany you,” Nicolo replied.
“We may see battle.”
“Ever since I was a child I’ve been hearing that the fall of Constantinople was only a matter of time. Yet still it endures. Surely it can continue as it is for some time longer?”
Nicolo, not having given the matter much thought, was merely regurgitating the opinions of his colleagues in the Great Council. Despite being an aristocrat, Nicolo had chosen his own path in life and essentially didn’t have much interest in politics. He attended the parliamentary sessions because it was his duty as an aristocrat and because, if he missed even a single session without a pressing reason, he would be penalized nearly two years’ pay; but in the fifteen years since he had assumed his position, he had barely spoken twice, and only then because they were discussing countermeasures against the plague. Trevisan blinked at the young doctor’s stated opinion and continued speaking:
“The fleet will be composed of two large galley warships. We set sail in mid-September, in ten days. The official reason that will be given to the Great Council for the dispatch of these warships will be to meet a merchant fleet sailing from the Black Sea at Constantinople and then to escort the same back to Venice.
“As the chief medical officer, however, it will be your responsibility to select and procure the necessary medical supplies: you need to know more than just the official explanation. The reason I’ve asked you to come here tonight is to fill in the missing pieces.”
Nicolo tended to become quiet when he was tense. He nodded wordlessly and Trevisan continued:
“As you are aware, people have been saying that the Byzantine Empire is in mortal danger for a long time. If we begin counting from the date that their emperor first asked the Western powers for military assistance, a whole half-century has already passed. During those fifty years there were periods when things took a turn for the better, but at present, the empire is completely surrounded by Ottoman territory except for the sea; it is completely cut off by land. Twenty years have passed since the first time that a Venetian Ambassador had to be sent off to Constantinople with instructions as to what to do if the ruler of that city, upon arrival, were no longer the emperor but the sultan. It would be fair to say that, in terms of the Byzantine Empire, a state of emergency has become the everyday state of affairs.
“That said. What those who are entrusted with the safety of others must be most wary of is the making of false judgments simply out of habit. Even if a state of emergency has become the norm, it’s always possible that at any time it could turn into a real emergency, and one has to be prepared with a response for such a case. We have received reports that the sultan is building a stronghold along the Bosphorus. I would like you to join this mission with the understanding that you will not merely be a ship’s doctor. You will be a military doctor.”
Nicolo finally felt as if the fog had lifted. Yet as he listened to Trevisan he felt a certain doubt begin to form within him and now couldn’t help expressing it out loud. “In that case, Admiral, aren’t two galleys rather too few?”
Any further explanation from Trevisan was motivated simply by his personal good will towards Nicolo; with avuncular patience for Nicolo’s naivete, he answered, “As you yourself know our country has long had a non-aggression treaty with the Turks; in fact, it was just renewed last autumn. At the same time, our friendship treaties with the Byzantine Empire have a long, continuous history. In other words, we are on good political and economic terms with both the aggressor and the defender. The Turks, furthermore, have made no declaration of war against us. At the same time, if we were to refuse a request for aid from a fellow Christian nation, our standing in Western Europe would inevitably be compromised. We also cannot forget that Constantinople is an essential base for our trade with the Orient. Under such circumstances, even if we had fifty ships to send, we wouldn’t be able to. Two galley warships is the norm to escort a merchant convoy in peacetime.
“As for sending reinforcements, I’m sure the government will give that matter its utmost consideration. Since there won’t be time to come back to Venice to deliberate, it is my duty, in addition to commanding the fleet, to decide which reaction to events will be most favorable to Venice’s interests. If that means fighting and dying, so be it.”
Trevisan said these words in a very matter-of-fact way, and that was the spirit in which Nicolo took them. Yet even if Trevisan’s tone had been more dramatic or animated, Nicolo would not have been fazed. Although he had little interest in politics, Nicolo Barbaro was a member of the aristocracy. He had been taught from an early age by his father and grandfather that he possessed the qualifications to belong to the front ranks of the ruling class, and this of course demanded a certain standard of behavior.
At supper that evening, when Nicolo told his oldest brother that he was sailing to Constantinople with Trevisan’s fleet, the only reply was, “I see.” His brother, who sat on the Senate, clearly must have understood all of the implications of that statement. Nevertheless, he said nothing more about it, and made no effort to find out just how much Nicolo knew about the situation. His second brother on the other hand, who was involved with trade and in charge of overseeing the family fortune, had just returned from a trip to Alexandria and was full of energy and things to say.
“Take a good look around when you get to Constantinople. See how the capital of the once-glorious Eastern Roman Empire has fallen into ruin. And furthermore, when you see just how high-handed the Genoese there are, even you, the very model of calm, will come to hate Genoa in a day, at most. I think it was very wise of Venice to move the base of our Orient trade to Alexandria.”
The conversation never turned to the wife and young child that Nicolo would be leaving behind: it was a given that their livelihood would be taken care of by Nicolo’s brothers during his absence, in perpetuity if it came to that. These were the unspoken values of the Venetian nobility. Nicolo himself was most concerned about drawing up a table of the necessary medical supplies and choosing a successor for his work at the hospital.
Two days later, when he was passing the drawbridge at the Church of San Marco on his way to the Admiralty to deliver his completed supply requisition, he came upon a long line of sailors waiting to board ship. This was a common sight in Venice and normally he would have kept walking, but the thought occurred to him that this might be his own ship and so he went to the head of the line.
His hunch proved correct; he found Trevisan standing there. Seated at a desk next to him was a scribe who was writing down the names of all of the sailors into a ledger. In the Republic of Venice, neither the captains of merchant vessels nor those of military vessels chose their own men; rather, sailors applied to serve aboard the ships of captains of their own choosing. Since the captain’s identity was always confirmed ahead of time, simply posting his name on a notice board should have obviated the need for him to be there during the recruiting, but his presence was nonetheless customary and expected. Perhaps this was to allow the sailors to look once into the eyes of the man to whom they were entrusting their lives, and thereby fortify their resolve to serve him to the end.
As he walked away from the long line of waiting sailors, Nicolo thought to himself that he and the sailors were in complete accord on that much: Trevisan was a captain they could trust without reservation.
In Tana, which was located at the innermost part of the Azov Sea at the northern edge of the Black Sea, the harbor became crowded with ice floes as early as late autumn. Since merchant vessels had to leave the harbor by mid-autumn, summer was an extremely busy time of preparations. Of all of the Venetians and other Italians’ trading ports, Tana was the furthest to the north and to the east. It took longer to sail back home to Italy than it did to sail north up the River Don all the way to Moscow. But it was still attractive enough to European traders that they were willing to endure its long, harsh winters: it was a noted source of slaves, fur, salted fish, and wheat.
A lone figure was walking along the pier overflowing with people and cargo; one could tell from a glance at his long black robe fluttering in the salty breeze that he was a European trader. He was Jacopo Tedaldi, a Florentine merchant. His gait was as buoyant as ever, but his head was spinning with the rumors he had just heard at the Venetian Mercantile House. Apparently the Turks were in the process of building a massive fort on the western bank of the Bosphorus. Tedaldi, who had been busy buying furs along the upper reaches of the Don, was hearing for the first time information that had been the talk of Tana since the beginning of the summer.
For the past ten years, Tedaldi had used Constantinople as the base for his trade in goods from the Black Sea coast, and thus he knew that the mere building of forts was in itself not cause for alarm. There were already two imposing Genoese-built citadels on the hilltops along the thirty-kilometer-long Bosphorus, but those were built solely for observation purposes and not to attack the ships passing below. The Turks, however, were building a fort on the banks of the strait—and at the narrowest point of the strait, no less. In fact, they already had one fortress, albeit a smaller one, on the Asian side. Tedaldi felt he had no choice but to agree with the conjecture of the Venetian merchant who had told him the news:
“They’re building it to control passage of the Bosphorus. Surely they’re going to attack Constantinople.”
The city was blessed with a geography that was strategically advantageous to the defenders, and it was known to have the strongest ramparts in the Mediterranean. Even for someone like Tedaldi who intimately knew the grim state of affairs in the Byzantine Empire, it was hard to believe that Constantinople would fall easily. But it was a plain reality that, even if the capital were successfully defended, trade in the Black Sea would become difficult.
“I think it’s about time I finish my work here and go back home.”
He had left his wife and child in Florence and hadn’t returned there in five years. Having made up his mind, he turned on his heels and went back the way he came. He would return to the Mercantile House and book passage for himself and his cargo.
“There are quite a few days left before the ship sets out; maybe I can use that time buying some wheat. I’ll take the fur back to Europe and sell the wheat in Constantinople—that way I can make the most of things until the last possible moment.”
When Tedaldi imagined what his life would be like, approaching forty-five years old and back on land for good, a wry smile floated across a characteristically Florentine face which looked like all of the excess fat had been trimmed off of it.
Mihajlovic stepped out of the royal palace and took a deep breath. He looked up and the cloudless summer sky filled his eyes. He had reason to be excited. He had just turned twenty-two. Despite his youth, he had just been put in charge of a 1500-man cavalry regiment. “Lead this regiment of horsemen to Asia,” the king had ordered.
Serbia was one of the Christian nations that had the misfortune of bordering on an Ottoman Turkey that was expanding westward with frightening vigor, having left only Constantinople standing as if it were some kind of undesirable wasteland. Despite their almost touching efforts at defending their country, the Serbs had suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of the Turks and had just barely kept their independence by offering one of the royal princesses to the sultan’s harem. Yet when Sultan Murad died a year earlier Princess Mara had produced for him no heirs. The new sultan’s actions had also been deeply worrying, so much so that the king couldn’t sleep at night. Yet while the young sultan had cold-heartedly disposed of his deceased father’s other wives and concubines, he granted Mara, and only Mara, her wish to be returned to her home country. This was something quite unexpected for a fanatical Muslim to do, and created a buzz of speculation. In Serbia, in particular, people believed that the young sultan simply could not but respect Princess Mara’s virtue and cultivation.
This had reassured the king for the time being that the Turkish threat was receding, as did the fact that the sultan had sent him a request for military reinforcements. The Bey (or ruler) of the principality of Karaman was leading periodic uprisings against the sultan in the provinces of Anatolia and the sultan had wanted help in subduing him; the wording of the letter had been quite polite. It would have been out of the question for the Serbian king to refuse. Although it meant helping the Turkish heathens, the situation was redeemed for the Christian Serbs by the fact that the enemy they were being asked to fight were also Turks. The king decided to send 1,500 riders just as the sultan requested. When he assigned Mihajlovic to lead the regiment he also gave him a letter addressed to Mehmed the Second from Mara. The letter read, “Praying that the suppression of the rebellious Turkish tribes may be hastened, we offer you these 1,500 horsemen. There would be no greater happiness than to know that they were of assistance to you.”
Mihajlovic was also entrusted with selecting the soldiers who would serve under him. He decided that the primary criterion for selection should be the ability to handle horses on the harsh Anatolian landscape; his candidates were therefore younger horsemen in their twenties.
Mihajlovic wasn’t surprised by the fact that they were scheduled to depart during the winter. In order to reach the Turkish capital of Adrianople they would have to set out east from Serbia and cross Bulgaria. After assembling in Adrianople they would have to move east once again, crossing the Bosphorus near Constantinople and then moving on to Anatolia. In order to avoid the harsh Anatolian winter and arrive in time to fight during the summer, they would have to leave Serbia while it was still winter.
Mihajlovic spent the days and weeks before their departure training his men. Sultan Mehmed the Second had asked Serbia to send fifteen hundred of their finest troops. The sultan held the key to their homeland’s security: to guarantee it they would have to fulfill his every request, to the letter.
For the past few days Cardinal Isidore had struggled to hide the deep emotion welling up within him and maintain the proper dignity of his position. Were he to give in to his natural impulses he would probably forget his rank and his fifty years of age and run through the streets of Rome shouting for joy. His firm hope and conviction of twenty years, one he had maintained even in the face of cold stares from his friends, was finally coming to pass. What was more, it had been made his own personal duty to make his dream come true. He felt no doubt that it was the only possible way to save his homeland, the Byzantine Empire. He firmly believed that a reunification of the Greek Orthodox and Catholic Churches and the assistance that it would elicit from the nations of Western Europe would effectively counter the Turkish menace.
While the path to unification would be fraught with difficulties, the cardinal’s own life history, rather ironically for one whose life had been devoted to the service of God, was perhaps no less stormy.
He had been abbot of the Saint Demetrios monastery near the Sea of Marmara in Constantinople when, in 1434, the then Emperor Ioannis ordered him to attend an open council in Basel. Having just turned thirty, Isidore was the youngest member of the Greek Orthodox delegation and threw himself into the work; it was his first opportunity to meet high-ranking clergy from other countries, and the experience left its mark. For his part, he left an indelible impression on those assembled as a theologian of great ability; the reputation he established at the meeting led to his appointment as the Patriarch of Kiev as soon as he had returned to Constantinople. This was the highest ecclesiastical position in all of Russia, and because of this Isidore became an indispensable member of the Orthodox delegations to the subsequent councils in Ferrara and Florence.
These visits to Italy, however, had brought about a fundamental change in his thinking. In Venice, in Ferrara, in the “City of Flowers,” Florence, Isidore was able to sense, feel, and have his eyes pried open by the new intellectual movement that would later come to be called the Renaissance. There was no trace of this in Byzantine civilization, where religion regulated every last aspect of life and therefore tended to stifle the unhindered expression of human vitality. Italians respected Byzantine civilization and vied with one another to emulate certain of its aspects, but only those they found agreeable—all else they ignored. Those scholars who had forsaken Greece in favor of Italy had done so because, in Italy, they were surrounded by people who took a genuine interest in their work; life there was far more energizing than in Constantinople.
Isidore, until then skeptical, had begun to believe that a synthesis of Byzantium and Western Europe was possible. He had even reached the conclusion that there was no choice but to reunite the Western and Eastern churches and that this would occur under the banner of Roman Catholicism; the Byzantines had once looked down upon the western Europeans as barbarians but now it was they, and not the Greeks, who were overflowing with newfound energy. Only one other leader of the Greek Orthodox Church, a peerless theologian named Bessarion, shared Isidore’s beliefs. Five years after moving to Rome, he and Isidore were baptized as Catholics and made cardinal.
Isidore and Bessarion had never believed, however, that it was a realistic possibility for the Greek Orthodox Church to incorporate itself with the Catholic Church. Despite that, they continued arguing for such a unification in the belief that it was the only hope for their doomed homeland. In their eyes, those Greeks who opposed unification and treated them like traitors were obstinate fools, anachronistic dreamers clinging to past glories.
While Bessarion remained in Italy living the life of the scholar, Isidore bore the weight of his compatriots’ hatred for both of them. The next ten years were exceptionally busy; he was sent to Russia to preach unification to the Orthodox followers there, and failing to convince, spent time in jail.
He eventually managed to escape and return to Rome, after which he traveled back and forth to Constantinople countless times. Even these trips home couldn’t shake his conviction that the two churches should be united, as there were many Byzantine statesmen and intellectuals who shared his view; the opposition came mainly from the monks and the general public. He believed, however, that their antipathy would fade once concrete aid came from the West.
And now Isidore was about to depart for Constantinople with ships and soldiers provided by the Pope. He could already hear the magisterial joint Mass of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in the Hagia Sophia. He could hear, too, the war cries of a united Christian army routing the Turkish infidels.
If one turned north halfway along the boulevard leading from the Gate of Charisius to the Hagia Sophia and followed the gentle slope down towards the Golden Horn, one eventually came to the monastery of the Holy Church of the Almighty Messiah. One of the rooms of the monastery belonged to Georgios, who had lived there for over two years.
Georgios hadn’t always been a monk. After studying ancient Greek philosophy and theology he began teaching privately; the depth of his learning soon became known to the court and he was employed as the emperor’s secretary. He attended the Councils in Italy along with Isidore and Bessarion. But unlike Isidore, who was a few years his senior, when Georgios returned home from Italy he began to work against a unification of the two churches.
He had not been oblivious to the stirrings of a vital new era in Italy. And he was not opposed to a unification of the two churches per se. What he opposed, and what Isidore and Bessarion supported, was a reunification on terms set by the Catholic Church. In Italy he had had the acute impression that Byzantine civilization and Western European civilization were fundamentally different. It would be impossible to carry out the unification under the aegis of Catholicism without doing away with what might be called the spirit of Greek Orthodoxy. The end result of a forced unification would be repeated divisions within the Greek Orthodox Church and its eventual disappearance. Georgios could see that, once they were severed from the Greek Orthodoxy that connected them, he and his coreligionists would devolve into mere Greeks, Slavs, Armenians.
Of course he knew that the Turkish sultan was building a new fort on the banks of the Bosphorus. He shared the concern of the Emperor’s aides that this was a harbinger of Constantinople’s downfall. Yet, from his standpoint, even if Constantinople fell and the Byzantine Empire along with it, that would simply be the fate appointed by God. It would be the Byzantines’ divine punishment. To forsake your religion in order to defend your nation was blasphemy. What kind of true believer would sacrifice his eternal salvation to protect his ephemeral existence?
Georgios believed that the powerful faith of those Greek Orthodox Christians living in countries already under Turkish rule was proof of his thinking. Even if they threw away their long-standing traditions and managed to sew together a unified church, those Orthodox believers in every country who opposed such a step would turn away from the Church; it would be better to be defeated by the Turks while continuing to maintain their faith than to lose the Orthodox Church altogether. This was the conclusion that Georgios, who avowed a love for the Byzantine Empire as great as any man’s, had reached.
For him, the outward collapse of the nation was nothing more than a relative concern. There were many Greeks who shared his thinking, and his monastery had become the focal point of resistance against unification.
A young Italian was among those who regularly visited Georgios’s cell. He was a student named Ubertino who had just turned twenty-one. He had been born in a northern Italian protectorate of the Republic of Venice called Brescia, and after studying Greek philosophy had longed to deepen his knowledge of the subject in the center of the Greek world; he had arrived in Constantinople two years earlier in the spring, and had been Georgios’s pupil for over a year.
Although it was customary for Western Europeans studying Greek philosophy and language in Constantinople to live on a stretch of land along the Golden Horn known as “the Latin Quarter,” Ubertino alone chose to live among the Greeks. The only time he went to the Latin Quarter was to claim money sent to him by his family at the bank in the Venetian mercantile center, or to pick up letters from the post office of the Venetian embassy.
In truth Ubertino, as a Catholic, couldn’t help feeling some discomfort sitting through Georgios’s heated religious discussions with other monks and visitors. At some point though, after he had grown accustomed to all aspects of Byzantine life both good and bad, he began to feel that he could no longer so easily divide things into the acceptable and the unacceptable—those that residents of the Latin Quarter very rationally rejected and gave no further thought to. Although the lessons in philosophy grew further and further between, the young Italian student continued to visit his tutor with enthusiasm unabated. He didn’t take part in the discussions, instead sitting unobtrusively outside of the ring that surrounded Georgios. While the fanatical Greek monks may have ignored him, they at least didn’t denounce him.
Ubertino of course knew about the fortress that had been completed on the shore of the Bosphorus, which was all that people in the Latin Quarter could talk about. Among the Venetians, who made up the majority of those living in the Latin Quarter, the number of people who took the threat seriously enough to evacuate their wives and children was growing by the day—but in Constantinople in the summer there were few ships available for that purpose. All of the merchant vessels were taking advantage of the fair-weather summer months to maximize their profit; even to evacuate to the Venetian protectorates of Negroponte or Crete meant waiting until the ships returned from the Black Sea in autumn.
The Greeks living in the neighborhood where Ubertino lived showed a different reaction than those they called the “Latins.” They believed that the Turks had built the fortress, called “Rumeli Hisari” (Turkish for “Roman Castle,” i.e., the castle on the European side) in order to rein in the trading activities of the “Latins” as they passed through the Bosphorus on their way to the Black Sea coast. Many Greeks resented the fact that the Western European merchants were using their city for heedless self-enrichment, and felt a secret satisfaction at the thought that the Black Sea trade would run into trouble; there were very few who understood that their own well-being was also at stake. Furthermore, the Turks had tried to conquer Constantinople twice in the past, and both times had had to break off the siege. Few Byzantines seriously entertained the possibility that the capital would fall. And if the worst did come to pass, they felt, there was nothing to do but resign oneself to the will of God. In true Byzantine fashion, the Greek residents of Constantinople combined within themselves optimistic predictions along with a fatalistic worldview.
One afternoon, after yet another meeting where instead of discussing philosophy or religion Ubertino merely listened to the others’ impassioned speeches, he was surprised to be stopped on his way out by Georgios, who asked to speak to him privately.
“Have you thought about returning to Italy? My reputation is not very good over there so I won’t be able to write you any letters of introduction, but it shouldn’t be difficult for a young man of your abilities to find a good tutor or employment. At this point the study of Greek philosophy would probably be more profitably carried out in Venice or Florence or Rome than here. Italy has more teachers and more books.”
Ubertino merely thanked his teacher for his concern and left the monastery. Of course what Georgios had said was correct. Unlike the merchants who had interests to supervise in the city, Ubertino had really no reason to remain in Constantinople. Yet it was difficult for him to set his heart on returning home. He himself did not know why. It was just that making a definitive decision too soon felt somehow unnatural. Perhaps he had taken on that Byzantine habit, routinely denounced by the Latins, of missing the forest for the trees. He hadn’t smiled in a long time, but the thought brought a bright smile to his faintly boyish face.
From the top of Galata Tower one could enjoy a commanding view of the entire city of Constantinople on the other side of the Golden Horn. One could see the ports where the groups of merchant ships were docked, and beyond them a castle wall with towers at strategic positions. There were openings here and there, gates through which workers busily ported cargo back and forth in the midday sun; they looked like small toy soldiers at that distance, but were still large enough to count. On the other side of the castle wall could be seen the Latin Quarter with its warehouses, mercantile centers, and shops. The port was always bustling with people, cargo, and ships.
Hagia Sophia occupied the highest point in the city, from which its copular rose to an even more imposing height. Looking toward the west, one could exhaust oneself simply from counting the bell towers of the many churches for which Constantinople was famous. In the far distance could be made out the tall, square imperial palace, as well as the castle wall that extended to the shores of the bay of the Golden Horn. Standing here in this place, taking in the expanse of the largest city in the Mediterranean, Lomellino felt an extreme tightness in his chest. Indeed, he felt it every single time he had to stand there.
“Why do I of all people have to be in this mess at this point in my life?”
He sighed again heavily, indifferent to the fact that those around could hear him.
Angelo Lomellino was the Podesta, or magistrate, of the Genoese settlement in Galata, also known as Pera. Facing Constantinople from across the Golden Horn, his district was an important stronghold of Genoese trade. With this, “the Genoese Tower,” at its center and including a castle wall that extended down to the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, the district had been the exclusive preserve of the Genoese for two hundred years. The island of Chios in the Aegean, Galata, and the Black Sea port of Caffa were the three main centers of Genoese trade, and it was because of these holdings that the Genoese merchants had been thoroughly able to overwhelm their long-time rivals, the Venetians. Everything in Pera, from the docks to the rows of warehouses, was for the exclusive use of the Genoese. This was in stark contrast to the Venetians; though they may have been the main tenants of the Latin Quarter across in Constantinople proper, they had to share the space with merchants from Florence and Ancona, as well as those from Provence and Catalonia. Galata Tower, which provided a commanding view of the workplaces of their rivals, was symbolic of the position of the Genoese within the Byzantine Empire.
The building of this tower and the two fortresses in the hills along the Bosphorus had been eminently sensible measures. Genoa had invested all of its resources in the Black Sea trade. The Venetians had long held control of trade with the Orient and the south, Alexandria in Egypt and all of Syria. Constantinople (and the trading ports of the Black Sea to which it was the gateway) was only one of the many bases of the Venetians’ diversified business dealings.
If for that reason alone, the post of Magistrate of Galata was truly an important one for the Genoese economy. For the honest yet sluggish Lomellino, it was too heavy a burden. He himself understood this better than anybody, and wouldn’t have taken the position if not for the fact that he was promised that his tenure would be short. Indeed, a new magistrate was appointed a mere three months after Lomellino took the post. He awaited the arrival of his replacement with eager anticipation. All he prayed for was that his time in office would pass as uneventfully as possible.
This was not to say that he was negligent in carrying out out his duties. He immediately sent word back to Genoa when the Turks started building their fortress in the spring, and it was he who advised that this development would very likely have serious consequences for the Genoese economy. Later, alarmed at the speed with which the fortress was progressing, he kept asking how Pera would cope with the attack that these developments portended. It was only now, months later, that Genoa had replied that they were sending two ships and five hundred soldiers.
The safety of the residents caused Lomellino considerable worry. Unlike the merchants in the Latin Quarter who were there for the short term and had left their families back home, the Genoese were long-term inhabitants and most of them had their wives and children with them; there were even quite a few “Genoese citizens” who had been born and raised in Galata. Such people had their whole lives invested here. The current situation was not something that could be solved just by issuing an evacuation order.
Lomellino was responsible for solving the most difficult problem imaginable in an already difficult situation: how to do everything possible, in light of the fact that Genoa’s orient trade was wholly dependent on the retention of Galata, to maintain friendly relations with the Turks without provoking the ire of the Byzantine Empire and Genoa’s Western European neighbors. There is nothing as difficult as maintaining neutrality when your existence is not absolutely necessary for either side, but that was the task the Genoese government had given him. In his mid-sixties, Lomellino had already crisscrossed the Mediterranean as a merchant, but was now at an age when most men return to their native land and quietly enjoy their retirement. He had lost his wife and had no children. He had been ready to hand over the businesses he had built in Pera to his nephew, and return to Genoa to quietly pass the remainder of his days with his brother’s family. Yet just as he was about to leave, this tremendous responsibility had fallen upon his shoulders; he had good reason to keep sighing.
“Maybe I should send another couple of goodwill ambassadors to both the Emperor and the Sultan, just to be safe,” Lomellino mumbled to himself as he carefully descended the spiral staircase of the Galata Tower.
Phrantzes could not suppress the warmth that filled his heart whenever he appeared before the Emperor. Phrantzes had been twenty-seven when he began working as a secretary for Constantine in the days when the latter was the ruler of Morea. Constantine was three years younger than he, and although he Phrantzes had been promoted to Minister of Finance when Constantine had inherited the throne from his childless older brother Ioannis four years earlier, the fond veneration he felt for his ruler hadn’t changed at all since the days when he was a mere secretary. The Emperor, too, could sense this devoted loyalty that had spanned twenty-four years, and it was still his habit, whenever anything called for secrecy, to rely on Phrantzes.
“There is nobody more noble in body and mind than my Emperor.”
Phrantzes said this with pride almost as if he were speaking of himself. Indeed, Constantine XI, although thin, was tall and well proportioned, with a narrow, deeply-chiseled face, a beard, and warm eyes. His appearance combined regal bearing with human warmth. When he rode his white horse with his crimson cloak fluttering in the wind, not only Phrantzes, but all who saw him, were fascinated by this figure as imposing as the caesars of old. His personality, too, was a perfect model of integrity, probity, and truthfulness. He patiently listened to the opinions even of those with whom he disagreed. Even Georgios, who led the movement against reunification with Catholicism, could only venerate the Emperor as a man. Constantine was also, needless to say, beloved of the people.
Yet Phrantzes had to admit that he felt no little pity at just how unfortunate Constantine’s family life had been. Constantine’s first wife, whom he had married when he was twenty, died a mere two years later. They had no children. Thirteen years later he remarried, this time the daughter of the lord of the island of Lesbos, but she too died young and left him no children. He remained single thereafter until assuming the throne, at which point he could remain single no longer if he were to continue the royal lineage. Two years earlier, the search for an empress had begun, under the direction of Phrantzes.
Among the candidates were the daughters of the Doge of Venice and the Emperor of Trebizond, but the most appropriate choice of all was thought to be Princess Mara of Serbia. The first reason was that she was still young enough to bear children. The second reason was that she had not converted to Islam while in the previous sultan’s harem, and was a fellow follower of the Greek Orthodox Church. But the most important reason of all was the fact that she was respected by the new sultan, Mehmed the Second. The relationship with the Turks was an issue of paramount importance to the Byzantine Empire, and this qualification alone was considered a more than sufficient “dowry.” Another member of the Byzantine imperial family had already set a precedent by marring the widow of a sultan, so that presented no obstacle.
As ideal as this arrangement seemed, however, it was ruled out by Mara’s refusal. The Christian princess who had entered the harem in order to save her country had sworn to God that if she ever made it out of the harem alive she would never marry again. Hearing this, there was nothing the Emperor could do. In the end, the bride they settled upon was the princess of the small nation of Georgia in the Caucasus Mountains. The previous autumn Phrantzes had traveled to Georgia to finalize the arrangements, but the princess had to sail the Black Sea to reach Constantinople. Although she would try to arrive as quickly as possible, it was impossible to set a firm date for the ceremony.
The Emperor for his part wasn’t permitted the ease of mind to be counting the days he had to wait until the wedding. He had barely been able to enjoy a moment’s rest since February of the previous year.
The chain of events that had occurred during that month never left the Emperor’s mind: the sudden death of Sultan Murad, who had allowed the Byzantine Empire to remain in its current state, followed by the ascendancy of the young Sultan Mehmed the Second, whose real intentions were difficult to ascertain. This development filled him with unease, which was only somewhat alleviated by the fact that the reliable Halil Pasha and his three ministers had retained their posts and the non-aggression treaty had been readily renewed. After all, the Ottoman Empire was an autocracy. The Byzantine Empire was surrounded by the Turks on three sides. And now those Turks were being led by a twenty-year-old whom the seasoned Emperor found more or less inscrutable. He sent even more envoys to the West to request military aid.
That had been the spring of 1451. The delegation, headed by a member of the imperial family, immediately left Constantinople; in April they arrived at the home of the Este family in Ferrara, and went from there to Venice. In August they arrived in Rome, where they met with Pope Nicolo V. From there it was on to Naples, where they planned to request aid from the King of Aragon. In terms of who had the most invested in Constantinople, the best candidate for aid would have been the Republic of Genoa, but as a polity Genoa was too weak to take much action. In any event, the aim was to appeal to the nations of the Christian West to help counter the Muslim Ottomans. The first duty of the delegation was to inform the Pope that the Emperor was willing to allow the reunification of the eastern and western churches under the banner of the Roman Catholic Church.
That autumn, Pope Nicolo V sent a letter to the Emperor promising military assistance given the terms of reunification offered. Venice agreed to offer financial assistance and promptly ordered the Venetian bank in Constantinople to transfer a payment, but refused to send a military force on the grounds that Milan and Florence were engaged in a civil war; Venice certainly couldn’t send its own army by itself; the only hope was for civil war to be brought under control and a grand coalition of Western nations to come to Constantinople’s aid together. The King of Naples demanded the Emperor’s throne as a condition for sending military aid, a condition that Constantine needless to say could not accept. The highest secular authority in the Catholic world, the German emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, was engaged in a war with fellow Catholics of the Kingdom of Hungary and couldn’t be bothered with what was transpiring in the Orient. The King of France was equally indifferent. Spain had its hands full fighting the Muslims within its own borders.
The coming of a new year, 1452, didn’t herald any great changes in the situation in Europe. The anti-unification faction learned of the Emperor’s stance and showed signs of stiffening resistance; that was all. A single day didn’t pass that mobs of monks did not gather in front of the heart of Constantinople, Hagia Sophia, shouting their disapproval as they marched in procession, followed by hordes of gloomy commoners. At the center of it all was the black-robed figure of Georgios.
Resistance began to show itself in the Emperor’s inner circle as well. His chief minister and relative Lucas Notaras even went so far as to say, “We would rather be buried under a sea of Turkish turbans than have to look at the Pope’s triple crown!” The only person among those in the inner circle who felt the Emperor’s agony as if it were his own was Phrantzes. Even if the Emperor didn’t say anything, he could tell that Constantine’s one and only hope was that armies from the West would appear and somehow soften the resistance among his own people to reunification.
Yet by February of that year there was still no sign of an army coming to the rescue; news that Mehmed the Second had ordered five thousand workmen to be assembled took Constantinople by surprise. At first many predicted that the sultan was just going to have a new palace erected in Adrianpole. They could only fall silent when they saw that the workmen were gathering hundreds of miles away from Adrianople, on the far side of the Bosphorus. Then, on March 26th, the sultan himself arrived, accompanied by thirty ships. The sultan’s fleet emerged from Gallipoli, sailed north through the Sea of Marmara, and then entered the Bosphorus in front of Constantinople. The Byzantines, who had no navy, could do nothing but watch helplessly. A military force exceeding 30,000 men had marched east from Adrianople and then met up on the European shore of the Bosphorus with the force that had arrived by sea. They immediately got to work building the fortress.
Responsibility for the building was divided among the three major ministers, Halil Pasha, Zaganos Pasha, and Karadja Pasha. A spirit of competition sped up the construction considerably. In a surprisingly short period of time the fortress took shape in front of the watchful eyes of Mehmed the Second, who gave it the name Rumeli Hisari, or “Castle of Rome”—that is to say, the castle on the European shore. The fortress on the other, Asian bank, was named Anadolu Hisari, or “Castle of Anatolia.”
The Emperor of course immediately lodged a formal diplomatic protest. The Rumeli Hisari was quite blatantly being built on Byzantine territory. While construction of the Anadolu Hisari, which had been built by Mehmed’s grandfather, began only after receiving approval from the reigning Emperor of the time, Mehmed began building the Rumeli Hisari with no prior consultation.
Another cause for protest was the fact that a Greek Orthodox monastery at the building site had been unceremoniously torn down and its stones appropriated for the fortress. In response Mehmed argued that the fortress was being built to secure safe passage through the strait; the Byzantines had just as much to gain as the Turks from an end to the piracy then rampant along the Bosphorus. When the Emperor’s young envoys dared to complain that surrounding villages were being plundered in order to feed the workmen and soldiers, however, the two twenty-year-olds were immediately beheaded without a further word.
The Emperor had the six hundred Turkish residents of Constantinople arrested and imprisoned, but there was nothing else he could do. The Byzantine Empire not only had no navy, it also had no army worthy of the name. In the end Constantine released the Turkish prisoners, and sent the sultan a gift of wine along with a request that no further harm be done to the local villagers.
Mehmed took note of this request, but to his way of thinking the only villagers who should be spared were those who put up no resistance; if they did resist, they were in transgression of his agreement with the Emperor. Indeed, those towns which, giving up any hope of the capital rising to their defense, put up their own resistance, were completely massacred. Any Byzantine cavalry group that ventured outside of the city walls was invariably decimated, with only a handful of riders returning home alive.
The fortress was completed at the end of August. Shaped like an inverted triangle, the Rumeli Hisari was built on an ascending foundation that hugged the rising landscape of the shore. It was 250 meters long, 50 meters high, and was surrounded by a wall three meters high. It had three high towers 70 meters tall and nine smaller towers that gave a clear view of every conceivable tactical point. A battalion of soldiers was stationed inside, while the high towers on the waterfront were outfitted with large-scale cannons. Even with this information in hand, which had been provided by Venetian spies who had infiltrated the enemy camp, the Byzantine Empire couldn’t count on the help of the Europeans.
A fresh terror soon assailed the Emperor. Once the Rumeli Hisari was completed, Mehmed would have been expected to return to Adrianople over land, but instead he remained with his entire army right outside the castle walls of Constantinople. While the residents held their breath behind the locked gates of the city’s triple-layered castle walls, the Turkish army stayed its ground, tents still erected. The Emperor had trouble bringing himself to imagine exactly what this meant. From the city wall next to the Imperial Palace, he could readily see the clusters of Turkish tents in the far distance. Among those of various colors was one that was especially conspicuous: a large, red tent that no doubt belonged to the Sultan. Three days later, when the Turks finally struck their tents and their men and horses receded into the west, the Byzantine people were able to breathe again at last.
Anybody who even glanced at twelve-year-old Tursun couldn’t help but be astonished at the young Turk’s beauty. His extremely smooth, white skin, cool to the touch, was like porcelain; beneath his thin, crescent-shaped eyebrows, his black almond-shaped eyes exuded a quiet, passive sexuality. He had a slender, lithe body and moved with reserve and unruffled grace.
Tursun had been employed as Mehmed’s page for the past two years. There were many pages working in the Sultan’s palace, but pure-blooded Turks were rare. It had been custom since the reign of Mehmed’s father Murad to bring, by force, teenage boys from Christian lands under the Empire’s rule to the capital every few years; from this group, those of both superior intellect and appearance were converted to Islam and made pages in the court, where they received an education that prepared them for careers in the imperial bureaucracy. The remaining boys were also made to convert, but groomed instead for service in the Sultan’s elite Janissary corps, which was famed for its bravery in battle. The Turkish name for the Janissaries, Yenicheri, means “New Troops.” Because of this practice, unique to the Turks, almost all of Mehmed’s pages were actually Christian slaves who had been forced to convert to Islam. The reason that Tursun, a pure Turk, was chosen was that he had been a servant to Mehmed even before he became Sultan.
When Tursun began his service, Mehmed was serving as Governor of Asia Minor, but in title only; although he was the designated heir, he wasn’t allowed to remain longer than a few days in the capital, and his posting was little more than a glorified form of exile. Although Mehmed could look forward to a complete transformation of his circumstances once his father died, Murad was still in his prime in his mid-forties. In those days Mehmed passed his days in drunken revelry and sexual indulgence with both genders. He was indeed a difficult lord under whom to serve, a wounded beast of sorts, and yet Tursun’s service was exemplary. That Mehmed went against precedent by bringing this page along with him when he ascended the throne was due not only to Tursun’s matchless beauty but also to the fact that Tursun, who literally grew up by Mehmed’s side, understood him better than any of his other pages.
When the Sultan felt thirsty, Tursun was already there behind him, kneeling down and holding up a cup. One could tell from the coolness of the water inside that it had just been poured. When the Sultan felt cold, he turned around to find Tursun waiting with his cloak in hand. When Mehmed once flew into a rage and threw his wine cup against the wall, Tursun didn’t grow pale or begin groveling the way the other pages did: he understood that the Sultan was angry because he had seen the triple walls of Constantinople reflected in the wine of his tilted cup. While the other pages jostled with one another to win the Sultan’s affection but only managed, each and all, to meet with his antipathy, Tursun alone was high above the fray.
This is not to say that Tursun was indifferent to the pleasure that came along with the pain that seemed to pierce his spine when his lord bestowed his affections upon him. He simply understood that when Mehmed was preoccupied with something, he forgot all else: wine, sex, hunting. If his master didn’t call for him, that merely meant that his master had lost himself in his thoughts and that it would not be appropriate for Tursun to disturb him with his own expressions of desire. The beautiful twelve-year-old boy seemed to know, if only subconsciously, that to play the coquette in this manner would actually fan the flames of his master’s desire.
Although he felt that nobody could guess the wishes of the lord better than he could, Tursun knew that this was only true when it came to the trivial matters of daily life. This feeling only grew stronger by the day after Mehmed became Sultan. This is not to say that Mehmed’s appearance and manner had changed at all. Although he certainly didn’t give any impression of weakness, Mehmed still had the slender, narrow body of a man in his early twenties, still had the pale, long face, still had the black almond-shaped eyes that seemed to swallow whomever they beheld, still had the hooked, slightly prominent nose and the light red lips that he had when Tursun first became his page. Yet now there was something more of a distance between Mehmed and his retainers, as well as a new gravity to his bearing that was rare in one so young; the impression he gave had indeed changed.
Tursun had heard many voices critical of the young new Sultan. Mehmed’s father Murad had been frank and open; he had enjoyed mixing among the common soldiers, and his relationships with his ministers were bonded with trust. He had the genuine devotion of his subordinates, whereas they saw Mehmed as haughty. Where Murad had lived with simple austerity, his son loved ostentatious clothing and demanded gorgeous pageantry in everything. In contrast to his father the rough-hewn warrior, Mehmed’s words were polite and courteous to the point where one could hardly believe that here was a ruler with absolute power in his hands. From Tursun’s perspective as his servant, however, this was nothing more than a sign of Mehmed’s cool detachment. Indeed soon this young ruler, who would allow no one to glean the workings of his mind, began issuing orders that took his ministers wholly by surprise.
The first of these was his decision to recall the army sent to put down the unrest in Asia Minor, even though the rebel forces had by no means been completely subdued. It was no simple matter to suppress the forces of Kuraman Bey in the mountainous terrain of Anatolia, and Mehmed decided that it was enough for the time being simply to limit their sphere of influence and to leave it at that.
Then, in the spring of the following year, he ordered a large number of workmen to be recruited. He told his ministers that he wanted to build another fortress at some point along the shore opposite the Anadolu Hisari in order to ensure safe passage across the Bosphorus. Ottoman territory straddled both Europe and Asia, and crossing the Bosphorus was the only way to travel from the western to the eastern regions of the empire. For the past few years, however, Spanish pirates had been a conspicuous presence in the waters of the Bosphorus and had been creating headaches for the Venetian and Genoese merchant vessels that also plied those waters. Mehmed’s stated objective thus seemed reasonable to everybody—everybody, that is, except Halil Pasha, who suspected that it was actually preparation for an eventual attack on Constantinople.
The building of the Rumeli Hisari, based on sketches of European fortresses and on Mehmed’s own ideas, proceeded extraordinarily quickly for a project of its type. Instead of relying on one building supervisor, it was Mehmed’s idea to assign each of the three major towers and their surrounding embattlements to a separate supervisor. Knowing that the Sultan was perpetually looking over their shoulders, the three supervisors vied with one another to do the best job in the shortest time; the effectiveness of this method was proven by the fact that the fortress was completed far sooner than anybody had anticipated. Mehmed the Second was able to return to his capital Adrianople on a fine, clear day at the beginning of autumn.
A Hungarian by the name of Urban appeared in Adrianople in late October. He visited the palace, claiming to be able to build a cannon that could break through the castle walls of Constantinople. At first the courtiers laughed at him and waved him away. Yet, at the same time, there was their inscrutable Sultan to worry about: one of the palace officials, fearing that he would be beheaded if the Sultan learned of such a missed opportunity, decided it wouldn’t hurt at least to announce Urban’s presence. Mehmed ordered the man to be brought to him immediately.
Urban, whose lower face was buried under a thick, curly, reddish-brown beard, was led to the Sultan’s chamber by Tursun. He had a bundle of scrolls under his arm, which he unrolled on the ground for the Sultan one by one after taking his seat on the Turkish rug as instructed. Tursun couldn’t make sense of the wild tangle of lines drawn on the pages, and at any rate didn’t have much interest in a cannon that was claimed to be able to break through the wall of Constantinople, reputed to be the strongest wall in all the Mediterranean, a wall so strong that even Allah might not be able to strike it down. In fact, it made much more sense to Tursun that this Hungarian, before coming to Adrianople, had gone to the palace at Constantinople to offer his services and been rebuffed.
Yet Mehmet seemed different when Tursun glanced at him sitting on his low, Turkish-style chair. The young Sultan was listening without saying a word, his gaze transfixed on the drafts rolled open on the floor in front of him. From that day on, he would be Urban’s patron. Mehmed promised him three times the fee that Urban had requested of the Byzantine Emperor. From that moment, there was one person and one person only who was allowed an audience with the Sultan unannounced: not the Grand Vizier Halil Pasha, not even his own son Beyazid, but rather this Christian with long hair and a scruffy beard.
The Sultan’s appearance soon changed. Even during the daytime he seemed as though possessed, so much so that even Tursun was a bit hesitant to approach him. There had been times before when Mehmed had been lost in thought, but never for such long stretches. At night Tursun could hear him in the next room, tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep. The young Sultan no longer drank and had seemed to lose all interest in sex. Until then there had been times when Tursun could sense the heat of the Sultan’s lusty stare when he bowed to excuse himself as he left the room, but now it seemed as if his beautiful page no longer even existed. Although Mehmed was normally exceedingly conscious of his grooming and dress, these days he often forgot even to trim his beard. His once beautiful, almond-shaped eyes glared instead beneath sunken eyelids. The pages and slaves shrank back. Only Tursun, maintaining his usual reserved manner, remained by the side of Mehmed the Second. He now understood. His young lord had finally found a way to realize his long-standing dream.
Now the Sultan began to go out onto the street disguised as a common solider. Accompanied by Tursun, also dressed as a soldier, and a black slave famed for his physical strength, he would sneak out into the streets of Adrianople in the dead of night and head to his soldiers’ garrison. If any of the soldiers he encountered recognized him and attempted to make the appropriate salutation, the soldier was immediately cut down by the slave.
One evening after midnight, Tursun heard the Sultan calling from his bedroom, ordering that the Grand Vizier be summoned immediately. Halil Pasha soon appeared with the black slave sent to bring him; the fact that he had been summoned at such an odd hour made him suspect that the inevitable day of reckoning had finally arrived. He walked into the Sultan’s chamber carrying a silver tray heaped with gold coins, many of which fell to the floor as he crossed the threshold. Tursun rushed to pick them up.
Mehmed, dressed in his nightgown, was sitting on his bed. The aged Grand Vizier knelt before him, touching his forehead to the ground. He pushed the tray of gold coins forward as if in offering.
“What is the meaning of this, teacher?”
When Mehmed had briefly assumed the throne at the age of twelve, his father Murad had instructed him to think of Halil Pasha as his teacher and to listen to his advice. From that time on, and even now that he had become the undisputed ruler of the empire, Mehmed addressed Halil Pasha with the honorific title lala, or “teacher.”
The aged Grand Vizier replied, “My Lord, when a ranking retainer is summoned by his ruler in the dead of the night, it is the custom that he cannot arrive empty-handed. I am merely following this tradition—but, in all honesty, what I bring now belongs to you, and not to me.”
“I have no need for such things. There is something you can give me far more precious than this. There is one thing, and one thing only, that I want from you.
“That city. I want that city.”
Standing to the side, Tursun could see the Grand Vizier’s face grow pallid and stiff. Mehmed’s face, on the other hand, was as placid as the waters of a still lake. Mehmed the Second didn’t utter the word “Constantinople,” but he didn’t have to; in fact, the choice of words made it clear to Halil Pasha that the Sultan’s determination was something quite out of the ordinary.
Grand Vizier Halil Pasha knew that the policy of co-existence and mutual prosperity that he had believed in for so long was collapsing around him. Drained of strength, his head bowed down, he had no choice but to promise to do everything in his power to satisfy the Sultan’s desire. As he escorted the old man out of the room, Tursun was surprised to realize the grand old vizier no longer looked like much of a vizier at all.