“However, you will not live in the sultan’s house until you have begun your womanly show of blood. Your father has arranged it that way. If you are lucky Orkhan will die before then, and you will come home to make a good Christian marriage. In the meantime, you will reside in your own house, safe within the walls of St. Catherine’s Convent in Bursa. Your presence there will guarantee your father Ottoman aid.”
The child sniffed and nestled close to her mother. “I do not want to go. Please don’t make me, Mama. I would sooner take the veil and remain here at St. Barbara’s.”
“My child!” Startled, Theadora looked up into her mother’s shocked face. “Have you heard nothing I have said?” exclaimed Zoe. “You are Theadora Cantacuzene, a princess of Byzantium. You have a duty. That duty is to aid your family as best you can, and you must never forget that, my daughter. It is not always pleasant to do one’s duty, but our duty separates us from the rabble. They exist merely to satisfy their base desires. You must never shirk your duty, my dearest daughter.”
“When must I go?” whispered the child.
“Your father now besieges the city. When it is taken, we will see.”
But Constantinople was not easily taken, not even by one of its own. On the land side, the walls-twenty-five feet thick-rose in three levels behind a moat sixty feet wide and twenty-two feet deep. Normally dry, the moat was flooded during siege by a series of pipes. The first wall was a low one used to shield a line of archers. The next wall rose twenty-seven feet above the second level and sheltered more troops. Beyond lay the third, and strongest, bulwark. The towers-some seventy feet high-held archers, Greek fire machines, and missile throwers.
On the sea side, Constantinople was protected by a single wall with towers set at regular intervals which also enclosed each of its seven harbors. Across the Golden Horn was stretched a thick chain, which prevented unwelcome ships from sailing up the horn.
And across the horn the two sub-cities of Galata and Pera were also well-walled.
The city was besieged for a year. And for a year its gates remained closed to John Cantacuzene. But the presence of his army on the landward side of the town and the sultan’s fleet sitting off the harbors were beginning to take a toll. Food and other supplies began to dwindle. Cantacuzene’s forces found the source of one of the city’s main aqueducts and diverted it so that Constantinople’s water supply was cut.
Then the plague broke out. The infant daughter who Zoe Cantacuzene had borne in sanctuary died. Frantic that he might lose Theadora and, thus, lose the sultan’s aid, John Cantacuzene arranged an escape from the city for his wife and two youngest daughters.
At the Convent of St. Barbara only two people knew of the departure-the Reverend Mother Thamar and the little nun who kept the gate. The night chosen was during the dark of the moon and, by a fortunate coincidence, there was a storm.
Dressed in the habit of the order that had sheltered them, Zoe and her daughters slipped out into the night and walked to the Fifth Military Gate. Zoe’s heart was hammering wildly and her hand, holding the lantern that lit their way, shook uncontrollably. All her life she had been surrounded by slaves. She had never walked through the city at all, much less gone out unescorted. It was the greatest adventure of her life and, though frightened, she walked with determination, breathing deeply, mastering her fear.
The wind whipped their rough, dark skirts about them. Large fat raindrops were beginning to spatter them. Helena whined and was firmly told to be quiet. Theadora kept her head down, walking doggedly along. The months during which her father had besieged the city had been a blessed reprieve for her. At the final end of this journey waited her bridegroom, the sultan. Theadora dreaded it. Despite her mother’s reassurances she could not rid herself of Helena’s evil words, and she was frightened. She did not reveal it, however. She would neither give Helena the satisfaction nor grieve her mother further.
The tower of the Fifth Military Gate loomed above them, and Zoe fumbled in her robes for their pass. It had been signed by a Byzantine general within the city-a man friendly to John Cantacuzene. Zoe checked to be sure that the girls’ faces were covered by their heavy black head veiling. “Remember,” she warned them, “keep your eyes lowered at all times, your hands hidden in the sleeves of your robes, and speak not! Helena, I know that you have reached an age where young men fascinate you, but remember that nuns are not interested in men. If you flirt, if you attract attention, we will be captured. You will never get to be empress then, so mind my words.”
A moment later came the challenge, “Halt! Who goes there?” A young soldier blocked their way.
They stopped. Zoe said, “Sister Irene of St. Barbara’s Convent. My two assistants and I are bound outside the walls to help a woman in labor. Here is my pass.”
The guard glanced briefly at the parchment, then said, “My captain will see you in the guardroom, good sister. You and your nuns may pass through my checkpoint,” and he pointed the way up the steps of the tower to a landing with a door.
They climbed the unrailed stone steps slowly, clinging in the strong wind, to the side of the tower. Once Helena slipped, and she whimpered in fright. Theadora grasped her older sister and shoved her to her feet. Finally they reached their goal. Pushing the door open, they entered the guardroom.
The captain took the parchment from Zoe’s slim white hand.
“Are you a doctor?” he asked. In Byzantium it was not unusual for women to be doctors.
“Yes, captain.”
“Would you look at one of my men? I think he may have broken a bone in his wrist today in a fall.”
“Of course, captain,” said Zoe kindly, and with more assurance than she felt. “But might I do so on my return? Your man’s case is not desperate, and the woman we go to attend is the young wife of a childless old merchant. The gentleman has always been very generous to St. Barbara’s, and his anxiety is great.”
Theadora listened in utter amazement. Zoe’s voice was calm, and her story plausible. At that moment Theadora’s respect for her mother increased a hundredfold.
“He is in pain, sister,” said the captain.
Zoe drew a small box from her robes and shook out two small gilded pills. “Have your man take these,” she said. “It will ease his pain, and he will sleep until I return.”
“My thanks, good sister. Trooper Basil! Escort the doctor and her nuns out the moat postern.” Saluting neatly, the captain bade them a safe journey.
Silently they followed the soldier down several flights of stairs into a long stone corridor, the walls of which were wet and green with slime. It was damp and bone-chilling cold in the tunnel. The corridor was lit at intervals by smoking pitch torches stuck into rusting iron wall holders.
“Where are we?” asked Zoe of their guide.
“Beneath the walls, sister,” came the reply. “I’ll let you out a small postern gate on the other side of the moat.”
“We pass beneath the moat?”
“Aye, sister,” he grinned at her. “Just a couple of feet of dirt and a few tiles between us and nearly a sea of water!”
Plodding along behind her mother, Theadora felt a swelling of panic in her chest, but she bravely fought it down. Beside her, a white-faced Helena was barely breathing. That’s all we need, thought Theadora, Helena fainting! She reached out and pinched her older sister hard. Helena gasped and shot her a venomous look, but the color began to creep back into her face.