a member of the group turning and briefly looking at them with intense interest.
Aristo smiled and shook his head, as if to chase the thought away. Katerina’s paranoia was rubbing off, Aristo told himself as a private joke. He wouldn’t dare voice it out loud.
They went round the wall in time to see the old man suddenly stopping, sitting down, lighting a fire and beckoning them over, not to roast chestnuts or meats as there were none around to be seen, but, they gathered, to talk. But he then, suddenly, got up and more swiftly than they expected, moved away.
Aristo and Katerina didn’t see it, but the member of the group they had just passed, discreetly distanced himself from the rest of his apparent companions, and, with raw purpose, headed down the street.
Aristo and Katerina reached a strikingly beautiful courtyard and the noise of the street died behind their footsteps. They then saw the slightest glimpse of a cloak dart through a door at the far end of the courtyard and they chased after it. The room they entered blinded them.
In the hushed silence, they saw in the centre of the room a sphere, suspended in mid-air, vibrating violently and shining brightly, and emitting a deathly purplish colour, smattered with gold and a ghostly white, that drew their stare inside its depths and then threw it on the walls and the space beyond, into the far doorway ahead and the next room opening up beyond it.
The whole spectacle presented an unashamedly irresistible invitation. It unfolded before them intending to impress and to seduce. Subtlety was not a language it spoke. It was drawing them in with a trick and a tickle of the senses, the smell of glorious food and an earthy smell with a smattering of a glorious floral perfume announcing what was to come, and then snatching it away before they could get closer and properly drink in its delight.
And where there was nothing before, the smells began to grow flesh and bones, and take the shape of trees and plants and flowers, an enchanting forest and an otherworldly sunken garden filled with birdsong.
The scene was changing and the contents of the next room were approaching fast, still vague shapes and forms, but were running away the moment Aristo and Katerina thought they could make them out, as if they were playing hide and seek with them, challenging them to try and tease their secrets out of them.
Aristo and Katerina wanted to see what came after that room, and then the room after that, but they steeled themselves. They had the feeling that it was a trick to hypnotise them, to make them drunk and vulnerable and that was dangerous. They closed their eyes and fought their curiosity.
When they started to breathe normally again and opened their eyes, they saw that they had managed to snap out of the spell that had engulfed them in its guiles and a universal dreamworld without the harshness of reality. They had to get back to the task at hand. The old man was nowhere to be seen.
Katerina pulled at Aristo’s sleeve indicating the sphere, which had stopped vibrating and had begun to turn slower, its surface covered with images, like a film.
They saw Elli, Aristo’s mother, stirring a large pot with both hands, then stopping and dipping her hands into the mixture and taking them out almost instantly. She then held her hands with the palms upturned, and out of each hand appeared a different representation of the Earth and she exclaimed in slight pain as if she was going into labour. The two Earths were coming closer and closer. Aristo and Katerina saw flashing dots, all in the Eastern Mediterranean. Then the dots became bubbles that began to expand outside the spheres in three-dimensional guise. They could almost touch and smell Cappadocia, Athens, Alexandria, Constantinople, Smyrna, Pergamon.
A strange thought entered Aristo’s brain. The two spheres were parallel universes. The dots on each sphere were in seemingly identical locations. In his mind’s eye Aristo saw his mother owning or controlling those sites, and manipulating what was happening in them and moving things from one place to its soulmate in the parallel Earth, like moving pawns on a giant chess set. As exciting as that sounded, Aristo dismissed the thought as outrageous.
‘Aristo, those are all the places that relate to the last Emperor, the Likureian icons or places that we have been to as part of this quest. Pergamon where we are now is the last one. I wonder whether…’
Aristo completed her thought. ‘… our next destination will appear.’
But instead of a dot appearing, as they expected, on any of the spheres and showing them their next destination, a series of images appeared. Their high expectations of a clear message started to rapidly deflate till they shattered. It would not be as easy as they had hoped after all.
They tried to make sense of the images. There were two boys playing who then began to grow into young men and continued to grow older. Whilst they were holding hands till then and standing on what looked like somewhere in the Southern Peloponnese in Greece, they suddenly let go of each other and started to walk away. One briefly wore a crown whilst in the Peloponnese, before taking it off and leaving it behind. He then entered what looked like Constantinople and put on a new crown.
The other stayed in the Peloponnese and walked a short distance, coming to a stop in the Evrotas valley with the mighty mountain of Taygetos rising above it like a lonely sentinel. He picked up the crown left behind by the other man and set in on his head. There the image suddenly vanished.
‘Aristo, that’s where Sparta is isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is. Let’s think about this. We saw two children holding hands and playing together. Let’s assume that they were brothers. Do they remind you of anything?’ Aristo paused and they both racked their brains, looking around for inspiration. It was Katerina that solved the riddle.
‘Aristo, I know. I know what it’s trying to tell us. It’s plausible. It fits. The two brothers are the last Emperor, Konstantinos XI Palaiologos, and his brother. The location there in the Peloponnese is not Sparta. It’s Mystras, just outside Sparta. When Constantinople was ransacked in 1204 A.D. by the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade, who were “graciously” invited to intervene in a Byzantine dispute over the succession to the throne, and were not paid for their trouble, the Byzantine Empire was divided into independent Latin fiefdoms. But amidst that swathe of Latin fiefdoms, three islands of Byzantine tradition remained. Those were the Empire of Trapezounta on the Black Sea, in North-Eastern Asia Minor, the Despotato of Epirus in Northern Greece and the Empire of Nicaea in Asia Minor, from where Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos launched his campaign that eventually resulted in the retaking of Constantinople in 1261 A.D. The Despotato of Morias or Mystras, with Mystras as its capital, was created in 1261 A.D. when territory was captured from William II Villehardouin, Prince of Achaea, in the Peloponnese. It later became a province of the reconstructed Byzantine Empire and, from 1380 A.D. onwards, it became a tradition for the sons of Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos to become Despots, with both the last Byzantine Emperor and his brother, Demetrios, having held that position. The Despotato remained a Byzantine stronghold even after the fall of Constantinople, but it eventually succumbed to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II in 1460 A.D.
‘The important thing is that the last Emperor was born in Mystras and was ruler or Despot of Mystras before becoming Emperor and that he was succeeded by his brother. Mystras is the place that is common to them both. I think that’s our next destination. Mystras, the city of churches, now ruined with only some of its surviving, almost intact churches in use, but with many visitors treading its paths and feasting on its ruins and the view of the surrounding landscape.’
‘I believe that you are right. Your theory is sound. We have to give it a shot. Let’s not be tempted to explore the sequence of rooms and their intriguing spectacles opening up before us that appears endless. It must be a trick to distract us from our mission. Let’s go.’
Katerina felt there was something significant she had to remember, that they had to do before they left, and then it came to her. ‘Aristo, let’s check the tablet outside the Library on our way back. It may be important.’
Aristo and Katerina returned to the Library, but the tablet was no longer there. However, high up above the entrance there were glowing letters that Aristo could not understand, but had a strange feeling that Katerina could. And right on cue she delivered.
‘Aristo, I can read it. It’s written in my make-up language. It says: “For you who enters with purity of soul and having seen the sphere, the crystal temple of knowledge that is partly here and partly elsewhere, is yours”.’
CHAPTER 30
Mystras, outskirts of Sparta
Peloponnese, Greece
