Porphyry and Ash (The Porphyry Novels Book 1) by Peter Sandham

Author:Peter Sandham [Sandham, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Thomson Fleming
Published: 2019-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

XIX.

T

he gaggle of ladies hurried along the road from Chora, quickening their steps now that the gunfire had commenced. Earlier, when they had come this way in the dawn’s early light, there had been an empty tranquility to the landscape. The fields and abandoned houses of the city’s hinterland seemed untouched by the concerns of mankind. The gentle serenade of birdsong, the low chirp of insects and the delicate sigh of the wind through the long grass were the only sounds. The road, a livid brown scar across the green, had lain empty before them as the laughing girls skipped along it, dressing their hair with flowers, careless to the burden of their fruit-filled baskets. The imminent threat beyond the looming walls made everything within seem the more precious.

Now, as the growing heat of the day burned off the morning’s cooling mist, they scampered away from the white cliff, chased by phantom fears.

The cannon fire had scuffed the top off an ant nest of defenders. Trumpet calls had replaced the birdsong, messenger riders galloped past down the roadway and the breeze carried the faint whiff of smoke.

‘We must take food to them again tomorrow,’ Anna resolved aloud as she marched at the head of the group bedside her faithful handmaiden Zenobia. ‘No matter the cannon fire, we must bring them something to keep their spirits up.’

‘Despoina,' said Zenobia, ‘I will happily take them something again, but you must promise me this was your last journey to the wall.’

Set in the smooth kaolin clay of the younger woman’s face, the hazel eyes narrowed with amusement. ‘Don’t be foolish, Zenobia. You are not going to keep me hidden away like that.’

Zenobia knew her mistress well enough to see when a course had been mentally set from which nothing would divert her. Stubbornness was a Notaras family trait, but it had taken root most firmly in the youngest daughter.

Nonetheless, it was her duty to keep Anna safe, and so she said, ‘Perhaps then it would be wiser for us to take food as far as Chora next time. Then the soldiers could send some of their number to fetch it from the monastery as they see fit.’

‘That would rob them of men on the wall,’ Anna pointed out.

‘We will only get in their way or prove a distraction if we go strolling about like we did today.’ Zenobia paused, unsure whether to say anything more. ‘He won’t see you,’ she wanted to say. ‘He is a sulking child who does not accept the world for the disappointment it brings, and so he won’t face you.’ Instead she bit her tongue, as she so often did.

‘I shall go and see Giustiniani about it,’ said Anna after a moment’s thought. ‘I will ask him what arrangements he would prefer. We are all in his hands now.’

That of course was a sore point with the Notaras household. To see the city’s care placed into the hands of a Latin foreigner and Loukas Notaras reduced to guarding the baggage was quite intolerable.

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