He bid them a silent farewell, praying that they would watch over the city in his absence.
14
Early March
LADA WAS NOT certain which was more surprising: that she had been invited to one of Hunyadi’s inner-circle councils, or that his son Matthias had not.
Hunyadi sat at the head of the table, with several similarly grizzled men around him. At the opposite end of the table sat two priests. The seat next to Hunyadi was empty. He stood and gestured for Lada to sit there. The sting of invisibility that had plagued her in the week since swearing her loyalty disappeared as she sat at Hunyadi’s right hand. As soon as she was settled, he leaned forward, slamming a fist against the table.
“Constantinople!” he roared. “Once again it faces a threat. Perhaps the greatest threat it has ever known. We cannot let the heart of Christendom, Rome of old, fall to the infidels. If Constantinople succumbs to the Muslim plague, what is to stop them from spreading over the whole world?”
One of the priests nodded vehemently. The other remained impassive. A few of the men were engaged, but several leaned away from the table as though distancing themselves from the topic.
“What are you suggesting?” the excited priest asked.
“We crusade, as we have before. We gather the righteous until we swell around the walls like God’s own wave, to forever drown the infidel threat.”
The other priest smiled drily. “I believe the last successful Christian crusade actually sacked Constantinople.”
Hunyadi huffed, waving away the words with his hands. “Italians. They have no honor. If we let the Muslims take Constantinople, the heart of Eastern Christendom, what is next? Transylvania? Hungary? Long have we stood between Islam’s expansion and the rest of Europe. As defenders of Christ, we cannot ignore the plight of Constantinople.”
Lada watched, trying to figure out Hunyadi’s angle. The Ottoman Empire already surrounded Constantinople. If the city fell, it gave them a virtually impregnable capital, but it did not move them any closer to Hungary or the rest of Europe. The threat was merely spiritual, not physical. It would be demoralizing to lose the great city, but not damaging. At least not to Hungary.
“You have led us against a sultan before,” said one of the men, his head shiny and bald, but his beard still dark. “We fought with you at Varna. We lost. We lost our king. Hungary still suffers the consequences and will continue to until the crown is once again stable. Why would we risk that again for Constantinople?”
“It is not about Hungary. It is about Christianity. Have you heard of the priest who led peasants—ordinary peasants!—against the Ottomans? They drove them back with the ferocity of their faith! They won a decisive and shocking victory, because Christ was on their side.”
“Yes,” the bald man said, rubbing his face wearily. “And then the priest caught the plague and most of the peasants froze to death.”
Lada watched as Hunyadi tugged on his beard, trying to impose his intensity on the other men. He had no angle, she realized. There was no political advantage for him, personally, at Constantinople. If anything, he stood to lose all he had worked so hard to build here for himself and his son.
Listening to him talk and argue, Lada could not help but be stirred. He was passionate and charming, utterly adamant in his belief that defending Constantinople was the right thing to do. She weighed it against Mehmed’s fervent desire for the city. She knew others thought he did it for gain—even his own men wanted the city only for the rumored riches—but that was not what moved Mehmed. Mehmed felt the weight of prophecy and the burden of his god on his shoulders. That would not disappear until he took the city or died trying.
Lada wondered how the world could survive with men such as Mehmed and Hunyadi on opposite sides. Or perhaps that was how it did survive. If they served the same purpose, she could not imagine any nation not falling before their combined might.
Each god, Christian and Muslim, had champions, keeping the other at bay.
Whose side would she fall on? Could she join Hunyadi?
Could she go against Mehmed?
That evening Lada walked, Stefan at her side. He did not have much to report, other than that the king’s mother did not like Hunyadi and was trying to either subvert or marry him.
“What do you think about Constantinople?” Lada asked, looking up through the bare branches at the twilight sky.
“Hunyadi does not have enough support to go fight, but he will. The king’s mother is encouraging him. She hopes he will die there, and solve some of her problems. She will make certain he has the forces and the funding he needs.”
“I mean you. What do you think? What do the men think? If I asked them to march with Hunyadi and defend the walls … would they?”
Stefan was quiet for a long time. Then he lifted his shoulders. “I think they would.”
“But it is not our goal. It is not what has kept us together.”
“Goals change,” he said simply. “If you ask, most will follow.”
“Will you?”
A ghost of a smile disrupted the blank space of his face. “I do not know.”
Lada nodded, looking back up at the sky. “That is fine. I do not know, either.”
Two weeks after the council about Constantinople, Hunyadi invited Lada to dine in the castle. She always ate with her men, so this was unusual. Against her better judgment, she agreed, but only after Hunyadi said she did not have to wear a dress. She would not put herself through that again.
She entered the dining room with her back as straight as a sword, hair tied in a black cloth in defiance of the elaborate styles of the Hungarian court.
She need not have worried so much. Dress or trousers, curls or cloth, she was still invisible.
As dishes of food were passed by servants, Lada tried to listen to the conversations around her. Her dinner companions spoke of people she did not know, of matters that did not concern her. Nowhere was there anything for her to contribute to or even enjoy. The familiarity of it all exhausted her. It was the same as what she had grown up with: circles of gossip, words and favors traded for power, deals made for which the nobility would see none of the work and all of the benefit.
Since she had nothing to offer anyone, no one paid her the slightest mind. Hunyadi fared better. He was wildly popular, regaled with requests to tell stories of his conquest. But his otherness was inescapable. He was a soldier, through and through, and though he was undeniably charming, there was a gruff directness to him that was out of place here. The nobles deferred to him with a certain patronizing arrogance. The king’s mother, Elizabeth, asked him for story after story, each circling back to his childhood.
Lada realized with a spike of anger what it was: Hunyadi was their pet. They were proud of his accomplishments, boastful of what he had done, but they would never, ever see him as their equal. And Elizabeth made certain no one forgot where he came from.
He was worth more than every glittering waste of a person in this whole castle.
Though Hunyadi never drank when they were campaigning or riding, Lada watched as he downed glass after glass of wine. She revised her previous thought that he was doing better than she. He was miserable. As the meal broke up and people stood in groups to talk, Hunyadi suggested dancing several times. Lada had seen him dance—he was a wonderful dancer—and she understood his need to do something with his body. Movement was freedom. But there were no musicians, and his suggestions were met with laughter, as though he jested.
Lada stomped across the room and took his elbow. “I need him,” she snapped at the courtesans polluting the air with their aggressive perfume. They pouted, protesting mildly that he had not finished his story, but as soon as Lada removed Hunyadi they filled the space as though he had never existed.
“Thank you,” Hunyadi said, swaying slightly. “These people are more terrifying than a contingent of Janissaries.”
“And far more ruthless.”
Lada guided him toward the door, but he stumbled to a stop, a smile of true joy parting the haze of alcohol on his expression. “Matthias!”
Matthias, his own auburn hair oiled and carefully styled, unlike his father’s mane, paused in his conversation with several other men. Lada knew he had heard Hunyadi, but he continued as though he had not.