The Lost City: Installment 2
The avalanche of letters was a poor substitute for the in-face meetings that should have shaped the Empire. The ancestors may have been pagans, and even at times foolish, but the Senate House and the Great Stage of Rome itself was open to all actors until the Republic's blood poured forth from Julius Caesar's veins. New Rome desperately needed unity in the face of the long night of the Turk, and a prolonged struggle for the crown of Basileus would only serve to further tarnish the fading light of the dream of the Great Constantine.
Putting his quill to parchment again, Constantine resumed his letter to the mother he had not seen in a dozen years.
There is a time and a place to all things; this, however, is neither the place nor the time for division among the Palaiologos. While John had named me heir, I understand why Demetrios wishes to contest for the throne; I would expect no less, from a patriot. The Empire matters more than any of us, though, more than any claim to the purple pressed by the collected Despotes in the aftermath of the passing of our beloved brother. To that end, with this letter, I am dispatching my slaves to Mistra, Trebizond, and the City herself, to announce my claim will be released if no resolution is found by Easter. I will not invite the Turk to arbitrate a throne that he will soon enough seek to annex. I ask my brothers to consider the same, so that if our quarrel among ourselves may not be resolved, our City may find a leader chosen by God to lead us in these dark hours that is worthy of the inheritance of the Caesars.
*****
The sharp knock awoke Constantine from his dreamless sleep. He never dreamed, or at least, never remembered his dreams. Twenty years of fighting the Turks would have given most men nightmares, yet his slumber was peaceful; it was one of the small blessings for which Constantine was truly thankful. Rousing himself from the warmth of his bed, he trudged to the door. The dawn was still hours away. What would merit waking him at this hour?
The chamberlain looked ashen at this early hour, and spoke unbidden, in gross violation of protocol.
“Visitors for you, Despotes. Come quickly.”
The fog of his somnambulent state lifted quickly. The chamberlain was clearly shaken by something, and the man had served the Palaiologos family for a lifetime. Such a man had seen the temper of the Emporers themselves, without shrinking from their fury-- what could shake such a man?
Drawing himself up to look the part of a proper Despotes, Constantine prepared for the inevitable catastrophe that must surely await. Pausing to yawn as he collected his wits, Constantine tried to put on a smile, even chiding the chamberlain “An embassy from Sultan Murad, Bardas, or just his army? If it's the army, can't it wait until after breakfast?”
Bardas didn't even seem to register the attempt at humor, “Despotes....it isn't the Sultan; it is your family-- all of it.”
Constantine blinked; his brothers and his mother had all left their tenuous situations, risking riot and revolts to trek to this Spartan backwater? The throne had been decided, then. All in all, he'd rather face the Sultan's army. If his suspicions were correct, though, he would soon enough.
*****
The spectacle of a public coronation was more than the treasury could possibly hope to bear; a simple ceremony in a rickety church, tucked a fortress, nestled among the rocky crags of Greece was more symbolically appropriate anyway. The City and it's people were in desperate straights; enemies surrounding it, the treasury empty, an economy thoroughly dominated by exploitative Latins. The hour ordained by God for the passing of the Empire drew closer each day, and every Roman knew it. Constantine's immediate family, and the Patriarch would see him don the purple, but none else. Glory was not, he knew, from the Crown, but from the achievements of the man wearing it. His Empire had been founded by a man named Constantine, the middle son of a woman named Helena. Now, eleven hundred and nineteen years later, another man named Constantine, the middle son of a woman named Helena would ascend to the throne.
The Imperial Crown itself had long since been sold to the Genoans; only a simple glass replica served as the marker to adorn the head of the Baselius as the Sovereign of the Christian peoples. It was, Constantine, though, weighty enough a burden without having to drip with gold. As the 137th man to bear the title of Imperator and Caesar, Constantine's thoughts could not help but dwell upon the diminished status of their proud legacy. His coronation was the first held outside of the Hagia Sophia since Justinian; he prayed that it would not be the last coronation of a Roman Emperor, anywhere.
Not allowing himself to dwell upon the state of affairs was impossible; John VIII's reign had seen disaster and defeat snagged from the jaws of victory, seeing what little breathing room remaining to the Romans choked out by the Armies of Murat, when the Hungarian Crusade had fallen apart; what little had been left to the Empire had almost all been bet upon the fortunes of the brilliant Hunyadi, and his unbalanced King Władysław. When the mad king ignored his General, he had lost his head at Varna; with his head, though, Constantinople had lost it's last hope for avoiding the catastrophic encirclement by the Turks. Even before the calamity of the failed crusade, John had misplayed even the weak hand he had been dealt; Thessolonika ceded to the Venetians for their aide; the promises to the Latin church of reunification that had split the dwindling population from their sovereign. Their father, Manuel II, had been hounded to his death by the humiliation of paying tribute to Murad, after John's first war, a part of his heady days as co-Emperor, had failed. The tears that had flowed from their father's eyes in his last hours, Constantine believed, were those of bitterness and regret; bitterness for what he had been unable to abate the decline of his inheritance; regret for having made the wrong son the man who would succeed him.
The humiliation had come at the hands of Murat, an implacable enemy of the Empire; his son Mehmet, once again Sultan, would likely be insulted that he had not been consulted regarding the controversy of succession, as the Sultan viewed the City as a vassal to his grand desire at best. If the Sultan wished a pretext for a war, this defiance of the Palaiologos family would be sufficient.
*****
The screams of the Shia mystic pierced the calm of the Edrinenian night; the smell of burning flesh wafted throughout the Sultan's palace; the tears of loss and humiliation stung in the eyes of the boy Sultan Mehmet. His father was restoring order to a court in turmoil; the events of the rapidly encroaching Hungarian Crusade had placed the newly minted capital in chaos. Too many of the sparse Muslim population of this conquered city had flocked to the banner of this religious upstart, and even his son had welcomed this man into the Court.
Murat had thought that placing the boy as Sultan would ensure succession, but this experiment had quickly degenerated into chaos. Mehmet would rule one day, but it was Murat's responsibility to bequeath him a functioning kingdom-- and the flames engulfing the Balkans threatened to dissolve the still-precarious Ottoman position in Europe. Drying away the boy's tears, Murat looked into his son's eyes, and spoke softly.
“Remember, my son. This is what treachery yields; the disorder and disunity fostered by Roman treachery, paid for by Roman gold, knows no bounds. You may hate me tonight, but remember-- hate the Romans forever."
The seed had been planted-- and Mehmet would neither forgive nor forget.
*****
Mehmet bolted upright in bed. The dream had come for him again in the night. Gabril had held the red apple before him, offering the Sultan the Empire of the Stars, if only he would strike the hated enemy of Allah, where the ring of jewels encircled the Bosphorus.
Mehmet arose, plodding towards the door. Too many nights of indolent luxury had made the young Sultan fat. The comforts of city life had softened the edge of Ottoman steel. The hated Romans were still the bone in the throat of the armies of Allah, and if the Sultanate was to push the Dar al Islam to the gates of Buda, or to Vienna beyond, the detested walls of Theodosius would have to be breached, and the Emperor of Christ crushed under the heel of the Sultan. John was a weak man, and perhaps a show of force might get him to throw open the gates.
The knock on the Sultan's door was sharp.
“Come in, Halil.”
Only the Grand Vizier would dare to interrupt his sleep. Even then, Mehmet often considered having the man flogged.
“John is dead, Sultan. Helena moves quickly to secure her son's succession. We anticipate an embassy to ask you to arbitrate the matter.”
Mehment smiled. An opportunity had come from the hand of Allah, to deliver the Romans into his hand-- to either permanently rupture Roman unity, or to pick the weakest man to crush under heel. He considered briefly the likely actors; all seemed weak and vacillating, so long as it wasn't Constantine. Only a river of blood would wash away Constantine.
“Receive the Romans with honor. When we chose the one who will lay his head upon the block, they will thank us for their troubles.”