The Tales of Johannes GrantJohannes Grant was a real character; an engineer, probably actually German but I've gone with a hypothesis by Byzantinist Steven Runciman that he may have been a Scot. All that's really known about him is that he came to Constantinople with the forces of Giovanni Guistiniani, the Genoese captain who masterminded much of the defence at Constantinople in 1453. He was responsible for countermining against the Turks. I've taken the character and run with it, using him as material for short stories for English exams mostly.
I'm going to put his stories and life here in chronological order
Born 1425
Left home 1446 (aged 21)
Safe Landings - 1447 (aged 22)
They had landed safely, but none of them knew where they were. The rocking of the ship had finally gone, though. And in theory, so were their pursuers. In theory.
The young Scotsman, his sword loose in its scabbard, looked up and down the storm-tossed beach. The ship’s crew hastily tried to unload the few provisions they could, but the storm was quickly soaking their clothing. The ten mercenaries guarding the ship did their best to help, but it was clear not much could be done.
“We shall have to get to somewhere drier, sir! There’s no future in this damned Flemish weather.”
“I haven’t a clue if it’s Flemish or Dutch weather. Could be French or Danish for all I know. Nevertheless, you’re right. Get moving, all of you!”
The Scot, who had spoken first, hefted a crate and began struggling up the cliff-top path to see what might be nearby. It had been sheer idiocy trying to make a merchant voyage in this weather with mercenaries as inexperienced as he knew he and his companions were. This was his first job; he’d never killed a man, let alone fought pirates, and he suspected his companions were much the same.
At the top of the cliff, a dim glow that might signify a village could be seen not far down the coast. Calling to those following him, he trudged down the muddy tracks of Flanders (for it was Flanders) towards his only hope of shelter.
The Captain of the ship finally reached the clifftop, and hurried up next to his mercenary.
“Johannes!”
“Sir?”
“How long do you think it will take to get to that place? And will they be able to take in a ship’s crew?”
The questions had not only occurred to Johannes, they were frightening him a lot. He was about the only member of the mercenaries capable of intimidating anything more than a ship’s rat, and in the pelting rain it was hard to see or judge the distance to their destination. Nevertheless, he was not planning to bother his employer with such things.
“Shouldn’t take long, sir. We’ll be fine.”
In bitter silence, the men tramped towards the pinpricks of light, rain and thunder the only things conversing on that damp day in 1447. Johannes Grant, mercenary and now inadvertent leader of the men, was still trying to make out anything that might tell him even what country they had found themselves in. There was nothing, though; the fields had a few wet and pathetic animals in, and beyond that nothing could be said nor seen of this place.
Finally, bedraggled and tired, thirty men made out the outlines of houses, and cheered raggedly as they walked down into the village. Johannes, prompted by a nudge from their rather shy captain, took charge. He walked up to the tavern and rapped on the door. It opened before him, and a scarred face peered out.
“We are merchants; we were wrecked after being chased by pirates, and I thank god that we landed safely. Please, where are we? And are we likely to be able to find… to fin...”
The man barged his way out past Johannes (despite being a good head smaller) and gazed around the pale faces in the dark. He took one look at the scruffy cabin boy, clutching a sodden roll of velvet, and suddenly bawled out into the night.
“Lads! We’ve got ‘em this time!”
A hue and cry went up as, bursting out of the houses, the very men that unfortunate crew thought to have escaped from were set upon with sword and buckler; rain, blood, and dirt mingled. From the high screams of the cabin boy to the low, groaning wail of the Captain, it sounded like the cries of every animal in the world being put to the axe. Only for the men there, though; for just a mile away, families were happily eating their suppers in ignorance of what the thunder and the rain were masking.
Johannes pulled his sword out. The strange, shiny object in his hand felt alien to him as he desperately tried to block a savage cut from a man who had leapt from the tavern at him. He thrust it forward, and saw red in the rain. Turning, he stole down beside the tavern and fled, leaping the village fence and running, running, running. Safe landings were only one thing… He was alive, but that was the end of all the rest.
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NOTES
Didn't like the title here so much (actually the task was to continue a story from "They had landed safely, but none of them knew where they were.") It's kinda come out okay, but the ending was rather hurried. it probably took me forty minutes
Constantinople 1453 (aged 28)
The Traitor (aged 28)Behind every great story, every heroic tale, lie the people who did the dirty work.
For quite a few tales, that person was Johannes. He pulled his hat down low, and he didn’t slink away into the night. He didn’t even steal into a side alley. He wandered on down a normal road, and knocked on a normal door, and walked in.
Eight minutes later, he left again, with a small brown parcel in his pocket. None of the people in Constantinople suspected him; he’d been a great help so far in defending the city. So what if he went calling on various houses occasionally?
Johannes was about thirty, with a stubbly beard and long, unkempt hair. His blunt and wide-featured face was generally friendly, and a face to trust – so people said. What they didn’t realise was that the Sultan and his besieging armies trusted him as much as they did.
The soul of Johannes Grant had many stains. Johannes thought back to that first meeting. The deep, chestnut eyes of the Turkish spymaster had looked into him, the soft tone of his courtier’s voice eking out all he could. He saw treachery, and liked what he saw.
So Johannes Grant, one of the bravest fighters in the defense of the city, just needed to take the package to a merchant, a Genoese. That was all. People smiled at him, hailed him as they passed in the ancient streets. So many people, so innocent.
This was not Johannes’ home, though… he had come so far. Still he thought of his own family, his wife, a son he barely knew. He could escape this soon! Out of this doomed place, and homeward. The bright eyes of his son looked at him through his mind’s own eye – an eye slitted and pained by long years of staring into the distance.
Johannes looked down. The bright-eyed face of a Greek child smiled at him. The boy could not have been more than five. He blinked, happy to see the big famous man who people had talked so much about. Setting his mouth to a line, Johannes pushed roughly past the boy. He had a job to do. A job to do, a betrayal to make, and a home to return to.
Then he turned around, looking back at the little child who, wide-eyed, stared at the traitor. Johannes saw two blue Scottish eyes in his mind, then they blinked with the child’s, becoming brown, then blue, then brown…
He walked back to the child, and knelt down in front of him. The child was barely tall enough not to be looking up at him, even then.
“Are you Mister Grant?” Johannes’ Greek was still stilted and halting, but he could just about make out the words and answer.
“Yes, child: I am.”
“My daddy says some Genoese have run away. Are all you Kelts going?”
Johannes looked the child in the eye. The Greeks, from the eldest man to the youngest child, were in fear of being abandoned with their city. A third of the defenders were Italians, and many had begun to desert. The child looked, blinking, at Johannes, who hung his head.
“Not all.” He shut his eyes, and couldn’t look at the child. He couldn’t bear to.
“And will you go?”
Johannes saw the child, and saw his own child still, in his mind’s eye. This city was a death trap… and now it suddenly seemed that his mind’s eye had closed. Reality, and a small Greek urchin, were before him. John – his son John – was behind him, in a far off village, but for Johannes only in his mind.
“No. I’ll stay.”
Turning away from the child, Johannes walked, then strode, then, reaching the main road, began to run. Not to the market and the merchant; not to the port and freedom. To the walls.
He looked at the main in fron of him. Konstantinos Palaeologus, the last of the Emperors. The eyes of two doomed men looked at one another, and Johannes Grant bowed to the man whose shroud would be an empire.
He retrieved the small brown package, and broke his oath.
“Sir?”
Sometimes the question is not whether to be a traitor. The question is who to betray.
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NOTES
This was Johannes' first adventure, as written off the top of my head in my GCSE year under timed conditions. I've neatened it up a little, but not much.
- 1454 (aged 29)
It was on a cold, autumn morning that a man stepped out of a battered wooden jailhouse door. He stepped out for death.
He passed under the grey and misted eyes of the dignitaries, each one looking into the middle distance, far past the man they had sentenced. Ha! He thought he had known one or two of these. Now here they were, cold and lifeless statues ready to see his last moments dancing a macabre jig as if it were little more than the passing of a cart in the street – not that that would not have been something to stare at; not a trader had passed up into this isle since the Sultan’s men had come.
Walking flanked by two large guards, he did not stop until he came to the one man who had been his greatest adversary these last two months. The sultan’s cat, he had sneeringly dismissed Johannes Grant as. But better to be the Sultan’s cat than the dead Emperor’s mouse, perhaps. Perhaps… it all seemed rather pointless now. That dance of sword and crossbow across the Aegean, the laughter, the blood… what had been the point?
Johannes looked down at the rebel. Damn him! He wished – at least, that part of him that cared about something other than survival wished – that he had not had to catch Leopold. The rebel had fought bravely, and for a cause that Johannes would readily have aided had there been any hope left in it. But, captured after the fall of Constantinople, had he had a choice? Dragged into the Presence, the young and ruthless fanatic who led the Ottomans had looked down at Johannes and decided, somewhere in the curious machinery of his mind, that Johannes could be of use to him. Choice? Who believed in choices, anyway? He’d chosen death on the walls of Christendom, and hadn’t got it.
The rebel and the mercenary gave each other a stiff nod. Leopold looked down towards the bay of Chios, where fast ships left regularly – a way out of the Ottoman dominions, to Monemvasia and Crete and thence to Italy. But he could not have left his men, and there were too many of those to take ship without trying to capture the harbour. Rather, there had been too many. Maybe twenty of his eighty bold friends had escaped; the rest dead or rotting in prison. Not Leopold, though. Examples, as Lord Gattilusi had explained, had to be made. Regrettably.
A fast ship to Crete waited down in the bay. Its captain, a young Greek named Assenion, gazed up towards the town. His last passenger was not here yet – waiting for the execution to be over, he presumed. He shook his head. One of the last Christian fighters in these lands captured! And not only that, but his captor was to be sailing with him to Crete. He’d happily have pushed that damn Scot overboard if it wasn’t for the Sultan’s signed letter telling him that harm to Grant was not to be looked upon with favour. A letter like that was ignored at the peril of anyone from Italy to the Holy Land. Damn it, though – if only Leopold could escape!
“If only Leopold could escape.” A young German mercenary, watching the execution murmured the treason to his leader.
“And then what?” Johannes did not look away. “Another three months sailing round Lemnos and Imbros looking for the devil?”
“But…”
“I know. I know.”
He did know. But he had had to do what he had to do. And now a ship waited to take him away, along with Karl, to Crete and then back to safer (or at least more Christian) lands. As soon as he got there it could sail… as soon as…
“Karl?”
“Sir?”
“When I say the word, jump out and run for the goddamn ship”
“Sir?”
“There should have been a “Yes” there.”
“Yessir.”
The rope was placed around the rebel’s neck. The hangman checked the noose, the bent down to look at the trapdoor hinges. They were the last thing he ever saw.
A sword stabbed into the small of the man’s back, pulled free, then slashed through the hanging rope. The Greek crowd looked up in awe as the Sultan’s representatives and guards rushed forward, but Johannes was dragging the rebel with him.
“Come on!”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Just come on, damn you!”
Three men leapt into the crowd and dashed through the faces that parted like the sea before them, then as quickly closed up so the guards were unable to get through. Kaymal, the Sultan’s representative on Chios, watched as three men ran towards the port.
“There’s really no telling with these mercenary devils, is there?”
“Just as you say, Kaymal.” Lord Gattilusi suppressed a smile.
“There will be official complaints, you understand.”
“Of course, of course. Most remiss of my guards.” And he did understand. But that was hardly important; both that damn Scot and that damn rebel were gone. The world turned a little… for the better.
And as for Johannes, the sea spray in his face and the Greek sun on his skin reminded him of the day he’d first sailed into Constantinople. He’d honoured himself and his promises for once; the rebel was captured, and now the rebel was free.
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NOTES
Well, it's the day before the exam so I hope I'm writing OK by now!
- 1467 (aged 42)
Each step hurt a little. Each step a little heavier, taking a little longer to get to the next, long, heavy footfall. Plodding onwards, the lone traveller looked down the dirt track. So far to go… and yet he had come so far! The crumpled rims around his eyes showed that much, at least. A tapestry of memories unfolded before him, a thread unpicked and loosened with every step back, every day spent trying to find the only thing he’d ever really regretted.
Had the man had a name once? Yes, he had, hadn’t he? What it was, even he couldn’t remember. He’d had other names too since then, too many names and too many lies. The man who’d stood and seen the greatest city in the world fall; the man who’d fought his way across Germany with the finest commanders in Christendom; the man who knew little fear. Spy, engineer, fighter… and now he was just a lost, lonely traveller on his way to Scotland.
An oak by the wayside provided a little shade for him. The tatters of his hat had been thrown by the wayside a few days ago, useless as the helmet that had been fenced to a Flemish merchant or the mail-coat that he’d left in a counter-mine that day at Constantinople. All his possessions seemed useless now. The sword still hung by his side though, and a battered old coat still hung loosely from shoulders that were once so broad and powerful that Guistiniani himself had asked if he had a pole stuck across the top of his coat! He drank a little water from a skin that hung by his belt, and sat down.
A stooped gait, forced on him by years of mining and countermining and reinforcing barricades and building redoubts, made it a little difficult to sit comfortably, but eventually the man found a comfortable place by a tree to sit. He tried to remember what life had been like once, before he had been so many people, once when he had been himself. He remembered setting out one midsummer morning, striding through the long grass of the lowlands, down a well-trodden path to a well-ridden road, down a well-ridden road to Edinburgh and the sea. And from the sea, to everything and the world beyond. Before that. There was something before that midsummer morning. Unwind a few more threads. Look further back down the tapestry…
And the child is there. Blue eyes, smiling face; a babe in arms, seeing his father for the first time. The father – the man? Yes, he had been a father. His child… and a memory, the last memory of the roads of his mind, the one memory they all led to. The child, not even christened yet; his mother’s face as she received a parcel of all the money her young husband had remained unseen, as did the view of her as she watched him stride down through the midsummer sun and away, tears in her eyes and no rain to hide them.
The green leaves of that midsummer had turned to brown twenty-one times since then, and the memories were faded, mostly. Except the face of one young child.
The man stood up, stretching in the heat of another midsummer, a later midsummer, and looked over the lowland valley, the heavy forests of the South Downs looking parched and in need of rain. But summer rain was not easy to come by… or was that only in the Levant? Did it rain in English summers? So long, so little memory.
A small village in the woods came into view as he loped forwards, trying to make out what it was like. A couple of peasants herded their pigs out of the way of the man, still not unimposing in stature, as he shambled into their village and leant on the door to their tavern, shoving it roughly inwards.
“Who are you, stranger? What’s your business here?”
“Give me some ale, damn you, man.”
The innkeeper looked with distaste at his customer. Strangers like that shouldn’t be allowed to roam these parts, he thought. Vagabond. Waistrel.
“Ha! Not until you’ve told your business. We don’t like strangers here, we don’t.”
The man looked up at him. A once wide and friendly face, haggard with care and travel, twisted into strange expression as it tried to answer, failed, then tried again… and then a little shaft of light, a stitch in a tapestry linked, a picture beginning to form…
“My name is Johannes Grant. I am looking… for my son. I am going back to my village in… Scotland.”
“Aye?” Mollified a little, the man poured an ale, hesitated, then began to speak again. “Is it true you’re allowed to have several wives in Scotland?”
Johannes sighed, drained his ale, muttered a reply, then left. He put a foot on the path, then another, then another. He had to find his son… it was a long, long walk home.
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NOTES
This was Johannes' second story, written as a practice for English writing. It took me about 35 minutes to write.
