Only when I stopped and let myself fall, exhausted, to the ground, did I realise that I was soaking wet, water mixed with sweat dripping from every surface and every pore, my clothes and my hair, and forming shining paddles at my feet.
I felt as if I had been dragged backwards through a hedge. I tried to recover from my close brush with death. I sat down under a great plane tree and tried to remember how to breathe normally again and find some semblance of calmness, before I did what I urgently had to do: talk to my mother.
She appeared before me, as impressive as ever, her larger-than-life presence filling every nook and cranny of the rocks and the motionless vegetation around me and invading every pore of my skin.
Her voice sliced through the air like a blade. Her voice was a booming echo filling my brain, with copious blood rushing to engage the intruder, and almost giving me a paralysing seizure.
‘Finally, our sick lady has succumbed to her fate. It was sad to see her at her sickbed fading away. But history will take its course and we cannot change that. We should not change it at any case. Michael, there is much to do, but we must move with extreme caution. The identities and secrets of the members of the Order may have been compromised and it will be difficult to know whom to trust. It is imperative to find that child and the fate of the real Emperor. Have you found the Likureian icon?’
‘No, I did not get the chance to even properly conduct a search for it. Mother, have you heard anything from Mark?’
‘Not yet. I will let you know when I do.’
And with those final words, she was gone.
Before I could be on my way I had a strange vision.
There was a castle and a beautiful garden next to an old harbour and a child was trying to climb an ancient olive tree and kept failing to get a grip, and kept falling down, but persisted and kept scratching the trunk and pulling the branches.
A short distance away, a woman, most likely the child’s mother, was smiling, full of pride at her child’s exploits and persistence, her eyes twinkling in amusement, a matching pair of two flawless emeralds, reflecting the sun’s rays and the surrounding landscape in a myriad colours.
Her mind was plotting her child’s future. I was surprised to be privy to her thoughts. The boy kept calling his mother to join him, to help him. From somewhere I heard a male voice calling the woman’s name and a blurred figure started to appear into this picture of blissful oblivion to the horrors of the world.
I was fully absorbed by the scene and smiling with them. But then I was forcibly dragged out of that dream when the landscape suddenly grew dark, and a ferocious wind ripped through the castle, the harbour, the child and the mother, turning everything into rubble, piles of ash, the entire scene stained with purple splashes falling from the sky, indistinguishable fragments of stone, soil, plant, flesh and bone, all swiftly turning to dust and scattered far away by a terrible twister, as if they had never existed.
Even though I was inside this vision I remembered myself feeling crashed by the scene of utter devastation; the air was blown out of my lungs. I collapsed to the ground and cried.
Soon after I was transported to a different scene. I saw figures, alternating between dressed in dark sinister hooded cloaks and then into dancing figures, magnificently dressed in vibrant attire and decked in glittering jewels, accompanied by a gloriously hypnotising hymn- singing, interspersed with images of what appeared like barbarian battle-dancing around a roaring fire, and an idol which I could not quite make out. I felt drawn in by this tune that was ringing in my mind, long after the vision ceased.
And then again I was abruptly and brutally taken into the middle of a furious battle with arrows and swords going right through me, as if I was not really there, but it, nevertheless, felt very real and the noises and battle cries were deafening and terrifying and I automatically brought my palms to my ears.
I tried to run to the sidelines of the chaos around me, but my feet were dragging ever so slowly, as if fighting through snow or sand or a bog, and then I caught someone’s eye and that person seemed to have momentarily ceased fighting, as if paralysed on the spot.
He stared right through me or at me, I wasn’t sure, but he seemed to have recognised me. And it started to trigger a memory in me, but I could not quite place it, a name…, just give me a name, that face… I tried again and again, but when I thought I had got it, it slipped away from me, and, at that moment, I saw that person being speared right through like a goat about to be roasted, and I let out a terrible cry which nobody could hear, as nobody present turned to me, a cry that changed nothing around me.
As suddenly as it appeared the vision disappeared and I was suddenly brought back to reality with a thud. I found myself drenched in sweat back in Constantinople. I felt confused by the riot of images that assaulted me.
I thought about that person I saw who seemed to be the only one to recognise me, but could not understand what happened, what it all meant. I tried to remember the woman’s name in the first scene, but it eluded me. After a while I gave up.
I strained my ears to hear the sounds of battle, but, strangely, could hear nothing. Had the Ottomans got bored of the looting and destroying and raping or was there simply nothing left to rape, loot or destroy? Whatever the case might be, I had to get out of there.
We had to find the child, which was as much ours and the Order’s as the Emperor’s and the mother’s that bore it, but whose identity and fate was unknown.
A piece of paper fell from the book that Elli was reading. She bent down and picked it up. It was three pages folded together. She unfolded them. It was a handwritten note with the date of 21 ^st December 1922 A.D. written on the top right-hand corner. She had seen the handwriting before, but could not remember where. Her curiosity piqued, she began to read.
CHAPTER 10
Smyrna, Asia Minor
July 1921 A.D.
Smyrna was one of the wealthiest cities in the Mediterranean. Its port was a constant hive of activity with cargo travelling between East and West. Trading was the blood that ran through the city’s veins and was at the root of its success.
It was the Greeks that formed the majority of the city’s population and dominated its economic, cultural and political life.
Smyrna’s commercial and cultural life rivalled Alexandria’s, which also boasted a powerful and dominant Greek community amongst its many thriving foreign communities. Greek, Italian, Jewish, French diaspora; they were all there.
However, Smyrna’s residents were oblivious or chose to ignore the ever-increasing dark clouds for an impending doom. This would come a few months later in 1922; an event that would lead Smyrna to be burned to the ground by the troops of Kemal Ataturk.
All of that excitement, though, was still to come. Life continued to roll along its normal buzzing rhythms, with trade and business, glorious balls and performances by world-renowned sopranos, the most wonderful fairs and celebrations and religious festivals, all forming part of a charmed life; a life that would prove short lived. It would only amount to a few decades of flourishing culture; just like the Golden Age of Athens in the first half of the 5 ^th century B.C.
On this day the sky was clear of clouds. The sun drenched the city in a stifling heat. Zozo was sitting on the edge of the waterfront gazing at the glorious riot of colours and flags of the world’s trading ships and fishing and military vessels dotted around the harbour.
Nearby, children were playing. Three of those were her brothers, Iakovos and Spyros and her sister Eleonora. Zozo was the eldest and her father’s favourite. Zozo’s father was Antonios Symitzis, one of the most prominent businessmen in the city.
The family originally hailed from Constantinople, what was throughout most of the Middle Ages the largest
