The Lost Prophecies Read online

  Myself, I go for more modest scenarios in order to make a living. I had been living in Sudak, albeit rather poorly, off a scam that we Venetians call ‘the long trade’. Don’t ask me why. The trick is to set up a company in a false name, or with a gullible but reputable fool as a front. Using the fool’s reputation, you then obtain goods on credit over a long period, paying small deposits to keep your creditors happy. Then you rapidly sell off everything you have stored very cheaply, and finally disappear in order to avoid those creditors. Leaving the front man to take the blame. Simple, as long as you can hold your nerve. I lost mine when I was threatened by a big bear of a fur trader from Russia and came out with nothing. I should have stuck to honest trading, especially as the only other time I had reached for the stars had been an unmitigated disaster too. You may recall that I tried to rig the Doge’s election to no avail, ending up with a murder rap. In short, that’s why I had been holed up in Sudak using fat old Carrara’s name as my own.

  But that’s all in the past now. Tonight I have to set about saving my own neck from the noose in connection with another murder. Though neck and noose are not exactly precise references. If I am found guilty of murder, the Tartars whose company I am forced to bear in this snowstorm will either tie me up to two horses and thrash them until they fly in opposite directions, taking pieces of me with them, or, if they deem me sufficiently noble, will wrap me in a carpet and merely trample me to death. The carpet treatment is to prevent my noble blood from despoiling the earth.

  I suddenly feel dizzy and take another pull from the skin of kumiss to drive such thoughts from my head. I think of the body lying in the snowdrift outside. When the storm abates, he will be interred, and all traces of his existence under heaven obliterated from his Tartar god, Tengri. But before that happens, the barbarous bastards who claim to be his comrades will make an end of me. Which, if you think about it, is pretty unfair as it must have been one of them who slaughtered him. So, the thing is, I wouldn’t mind so much facing death, but I did not kill the man. Then neither do I have the faintest idea who did. Yet I must find out, or suffer the consequences of being named the murderer myself.

  I reluctantly set aside the skin of kumiss and huddle down in the warm goatskins beside the fire in the centre of the stove-house. I stare into the flames as they crackle and pop and rue the reasons that brought me to this pretty pass.

  Back in Sudak, the good Friar Alberoni had let me into a secret.

  ‘I have a book of prophecies made ages ago by a Celtic priest. And if I interpret it correctly, there is a verse or two about the Tartars that guide my mission.’

  He rummaged in the bundles that half-filled the floor in his lodgings overlooking the harbour. He seemed to have all sorts of gewgaws for trading with the Tartars – beads and furs mainly. As though they were primitives who could be bought for a few trinkets. I knew better. If the stories I had heard were true, it seemed that they themselves had more treasures than we could imagine. Items of great value like pearls, and precious stones, cloth of gold and silk, as well as strange items like black stones that could be lit and would burn for days. What would they want with beads and trinkets? But the stories were that they were interested in everything the West had to offer and were prepared to trade for the things they couldn’t gain by conquest.

  A cold wind ruffled the wave-tops in the harbour, and I stared out over the Ghelan Sea. I fondly imagined that my gaze could stretch through the straits at the sea’s western extremity, across the ancient lands of the Greeks and into the Adriatic and Venice. Where fair Caterina Dolfin awaited my return. Or not, if my deepest, darkest moods were to be believed. Why should she wait for me, when I was as poor as a lagoon fisherman, and a marked man to boot?

  ‘Here it is.’

  I sighed and turned my gaze back to the confines of the room. Alberoni was waving a darkly bound tome at me.

  ‘This is the Black Book of Brân – prophecies that go back hundreds of years. But still speak truths to us today. Listen.’

  He proceeded to recite one of the quatrains, which were all in Latin. Now it may surprise you to know that I knew the Church language myself. It may shock you even more to learn that I know it because I studied once for the priesthood. That was before the jingle of money diverted me on to a more lucrative path and broke my mother’s heart. She had been set on me being a priest. Anyway, the poem, if I recall went something like this:

  Though lightning and bare skull his banner bear

  And all the world is ’neath a storm confined,

  When hands across the sea are joinéd there,

  Then righteousness is brought to heathen minds.

  This he took for justification for his holy embassy to the pagan Tartars, even when I pointed out that they rode under a banner of nine yak-tails, not a skull.

  ‘Don’t quibble, Niccolo. They have left enough skulls behind them for it to be true. And the rest fits – the storm of the pagan hordes sweeping across the world. And if the West joins hands – we can bring righteousness to them.’

  I sniffed in disdain. ‘You can make any events fit such vague ramblings. Have any of these prophecies actually come true?’

  Alberoni’s eyes lit up. ‘Yes, yes. They say that at the end of the last century a rebellion in England was clearly prophesied. If the scribe of the book lived in Ireland in the seventh century, how could he know about such an event?’

  A little mouse of doubt began to scurry across my brain. I needed to reassure myself that a book of prophecies written in a far-off land hundreds of years ago was nonsense.

  ‘Let me see.’

  I took the thin but oddly heavy book from his reluctant grasp, flicking carelessly through the pages. Scanning the verses quickly and choosing one at random, I stabbed a finger at a quatrain.

  ‘Take this one, for example.

  “When three popes all murdered lie,

  And Christ’s own kingdom desecrated . . .”

  ‘Three Popes murdered? It’s ridiculous. Or this:

  “Tartarus’ hordes irrupt through Alexander’s gate.

  Six Christian kingdoms crumble in a breath.

  Though Latin traders use long spoons to eat,

  It won’t protect them from a demon’s death.” ’

  I had intended to pour scorn on the prophecies, but suddenly this quatrain struck a chord, as if my choice had not been random after all but directed by a hidden hand. ‘Tartarus’ for the Tartars? And did the ‘Latin traders’ refer to me? Something had made me shudder when I read the last line too. It spoke of a personal foretaste of doom. Outside, a chilly wind whipped across the window opening, and I pretended my shivering was all to do with the plummeting temperature.Then I started to examine the book more closely. I could see straight away that it was not several hundred years old. The pages were relatively crisp and the illuminations bright and clear. I chortled.

  ‘The book is not ancient at all. No wonder the faker could insert a verse about an event sixty-something years ago. It was already in his past. This is like the letter that some claim to have seen that Prester John wrote to the West. The one that would make him over a hundred and fifty years old.’

  Alberoni’s face went red. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, he had good reason to believe in the well-known Prester John myth. It centred on a letter purporting to come from the Far East, where a Christian ruler awaited his call to come and save the West in its hour of most need. To me, it was a neat forgery by an expert who made his money selling hope to the fearful. My mother had told me fairy tales of a similar king hiding under the earth in England. I didn’t believe that either. But lots of people are gullible when it comes to forlorn hopes. And a good con man can make plenty of money pandering to them. This Black Book looked like a similar scam.

  Alberoni snatched it back from my disbelieving hands.

  ‘It’s not the original book. Did I ever say it was? No. It’s a copy made in the west of England by a scribe with a fair hand, which was then taken to R
ome to add to the glories of the library at the Vatican. That is where I . . . found it. Languishing in a dusty corner. Unread and unappreciated.’

  ‘And they just let you have it?’

  I had an inkling that Alberoni had not obtained the book legitimately. He scowled.

  ‘It was cast aside because there was some tale that the scribe was possessed with evil.’

  That was all he would say, and I knew then that he had stolen it from under the nose of the Vatican librarian. His hesitancy over revealing the book’s recent history – when he realized he had gone too far – spoke volumes to me. And that was when I decided to steal this Black Book of Brân from him in my turn. His offer of a long and arduous journey to the ends of the earth, even with the possibility of profitable trade at the end of it, didn’t stack up against a quick buck. I was still recovering from my drunken bingeing over the failure of the long trade. A fast and dirty deal appealed to me more at the time. I knew I could sell it to make some money, and so start trading again. I mean, if it had fooled Friar Alberoni, then it would fool another priest eager for its contents. And how could he object or protest, if he had filched it himself in the first place? So I hope you’re now beginning to understand how I came to be stuck in a Russian stove-house with a drunken Orthodox priest and a dead Tartar.

  As soon as Alberoni’s back was turned that day in Sudak, I grabbed the book and was off on my toes. I know, you’re telling me that a trader like me should have planned it more cleverly and waited for the best opportunity. But don’t forget I had not heard the jingle of coinage for a while, and I was thirsty. I didn’t have the time to plan it more neatly than that. However, I did have a good idea whom I would sell this little treasure to, so the theft wasn’t completely stupid. I had first heard of this mad priest who lived on the banks of the Dnieper river from a gang of Russian traders in fur – one of whom had later threatened to detach my head from my body if I didn’t return the furs he had given me on a sale-or-return basis. He had got wind of my long trade scam and caused the collapse of the whole deal. But before that, I had been his drinking companion. Him and a bunch of the hairy giants. I had spent a drunken night with them in Sudak planning how I might find an opening to trade with the Tartars.

  Everyone else west of Sudak thought the Tartars were hounds from hell. But here on the wild frontier – the entrepôt where West met East and anything was up for sale – these fearful demons who held the yoke of Rus’s slavery were just another possible business partner. And a Venetian never passed up a chance for a deal. The Russian traders, all as hairy as the furs they dealt in and as smelly, swore that a certain Father Kyrill was well in with the local Tartar lord. He had a reputation not only as a wise prophet but also more practically as a healer. For these reasons he was welcomed at the court of the local khan. It seemed the Tartars loved a heady mixture of religion, magic and prophecy, and Father Kyrill obligingly supplied it. He thus held the key to lucrative trading with his master based at Sarai on the Volga. When he wasn’t at Sarai, the priest lived in a cave above the banks of the river Dnieper near Kherson. And positively drooled over anything to do with omens and prophecies that came his way. He could use it to impress his Tartar overlords. I reckoned I could kill two birds with one stone therefore. I would use the Black Book of Brân to buy Father Kyrill, who would then lead me to the Tartars’ main encampment and the boss of the Golden Horde. I didn’t know then that I would encounter the Tartars sooner than I had anticipated.

  The howl of the wind outside the shack stirs the heavy cloth covering the door, causing a series of sharp cracks. It makes the flames of the fire flare up and brings me back to the present. The little band of Tartars now sits stony-faced across the fire from me. The Tartars are a moon-visaged breed at the best of times, with a sparse sprinkling of hair on their chins. Their narrowed eyes give the impression that they are always gazing in suspicion at whatever they see. And at this very moment they are staring suspiciously at me. I am a stranger, and therefore at the forefront of suspicion of the murder. I need to say something to ease the tension, but I don’t know what. Drink is passed, and I am reminded of earlier that fateful night, before the murder took place.

  It was just my luck that the weather changed for the worse soon after I set out for the riverside cave of Father Kyrill. By the time I got to the Dnieper, a blizzard was raging, and the river had frozen over. I later learned that even the Ghelan Sea had frozen for three leagues from its shoreline. Father Kyrill was not in his cave, which was lucky for him. If he had been, he would have been a slab of frozen meat by then. As I would be if I didn’t find shelter. Even wrapped in furs as I was, the Russian winter is so intensely cold that a traveller can die in minutes if he remains in the open. That is why rich magnates had built stove-houses along major highways to act as refuges for themselves and other travellers. These square houses were made of great beams of wood that fit so snugly that no wind or cold could penetrate. The only openings were a small door to enter by, and a vent-hole for the smoke of the fire. Struggling through the biting wind that drove the snow into my face, I was lucky to spot one just before I froze. It stood out as a dark patch in an unrelenting vista of white. And someone else had beaten me to it. A thin plume of smoke was sucked from the vent-hole before it was whipped away by the blizzard. I pushed hard on the door and stumbled into the warmth. The fire was the only thing in the gloomy room that exuded any heat.

  Seated in a bunch on one side of the central hearth was a gang of hard-faced slant-eyed men I knew immediately were Tartars. And on the opposite side of the fire, completely on his own, squatted a hairy-faced Russian whose fur hat merged as one with the lank, black, greasy locks of his head and beard. When he realized the newcomer was one of his own breed, a grin broke through the forest of hair, exposing yellowed, broken teeth. He spoke a few words in Russian, which I roughly understood from my days carousing with his countrymen in Sudak. I responded in kind.

  ‘Kak dyela, stary durak.’

  I could see he was a holy man from his black garb, so to ask how the old fool was doing was a sort of compliment. They liked being considered simpletons for God. He thrust out a grimy fist.

  ‘I could be worse, young man. I could be frozen meat. So sharing the warmth with these hounds from hell—’ he cocked a thumb at the silent and suspicious Tartars ‘—is at least preferable to freezing in my cave. My name is Kyrill.’

  I have long given up marvelling at the strange ways of coincidence in my life. I prefer to call it luck. A commodity my life had been short of for a long while. So I merely took the presence in this sanctuary of the very man I had sought as a sign that my luck had changed. I squeezed his hand vigorously and immediately wished I hadn’t. His fist was as filthy and as greasy as his locks. After I had recovered my hand, I surreptitiously wiped it clean on my furs. I noted that he wiped his own on his long, grey and greasy beard. I proffered him my name and jerked a thumb at our enforced companions.

  ‘I’m Nick Zuliani. Trader. Who are they?’

  ‘The devil’s brood,’ he grumbled.

  As he settled back on his haunches, a stone jar slipped from the stinking folds of his clothes. He grabbed it before it shattered on the floor and, leaning across to the upper shelf of the stove, carefully placed the jar on it. I fancied something lurked in the jar, for it rocked slightly even after he had set it down. But then, it could have just been my fertile imagination. He wiped his beard and continued his story.

  ‘Though the old boy’s not so bad. His name’s Sartakh, and he says they have been escorting Prince Alexander back to Kiev. They were returning to Sarai when the blizzard caught them out. That’s all I’ve got out of them so far.’

  I had heard of this Russian prince, Alexander Nevsky. He alone in Russia had dealt with the Tartar overlords, rather than try to fight them. And so he had saved his lands from devastation for years, where other princes and their subjects had fought and gone under. His pragmatism would have made him a good trader. So these Tartars were from
Sarai and had been ensuring the prince’s safe return to poor old Kiev. An old city ruined in the Tartar invasion years back, and not much restored now. My luck had definitely turned. They might now be my passport to the heart of Sarai, and Berke Khan, the boss of the Golden Horde. I slid my hand inside my furs and stroked the smooth leather binding of the Black Book of Brân. Maybe I wouldn’t have to bribe Kyrill with it after all. I put on my best business manner and turned to face the Tartars. My smile was met with frosty suspicion, and my offered hand ignored. I saw I would have to work hard here.

  I reckoned the only way to break the ice – no pun intended – with this bunch was to draw them into a little game of chance. All soldiers liked to gamble, and who knows? Maybe I’d even live long enough to spend my winnings. I reached slowly into my furs to ensure they didn’t think I was producing a knife and pulled out a couple of dice. I shook them with an inviting rattle and tried the Tartars with a little crude Turkish.

  ‘Gentlemen, the game is Hazard. As the caster, I will call a number between five and nine and put a stake on the table. You will cover that, and if I throw my number – my main – I have nicked it and win the bets. If not . . .’

  They may not have understood a word I had said, but my intentions were clear enough. I had the complete attention of the little gang of round-faced men, agog at the two dice rolling around in my fist. The Russian priest disdained to play the game, naturally. But then he’d probably got no money anyway. Having gone over the rules again with a lot of waving of hands and holding up of fingers, I threw the dice. Of course, to draw the rubes in, I played it straight for openers. One of the younger Tartars got on a winning streak, and the pile of winnings moved his way. Then I started tapping the dice on the ground before each throw, as though in exasperation at losing. Soon the pile of coins shifted its location and grew on the rug in front of me. The session began to draw out long into the night, and they started to teach me Tartar words as we gamed.