City of God

by S. J. A. Turney

  Something else struck Arnau, and he peered down at the Franks for a moment before pulling away from the window and hurrying back into their apartment, shutting the door and crossing to Ramon.

  ‘Bochard had a Frankish visitor,’ he said in a quiet voice.

  ‘Hardly a surprise. And realistically, since there is now no state of war in place, there is no reason not to.’

  ‘Same coat of arms that was outside that church door the other day. And he had crossbowmen with him. I tried to see if any of them had pomegranate stains on their tunic, but it’s getting dark and they were too far away. But I would bet my teeth that one of them did.’

  Ramon frowned. ‘I’ve been thinking about those coats of arms. I’m sure I saw one of them back in Acre before we set off.’

  Arnau blinked and slapped his head in irritation. ‘That’s it. I’ve been trying to place it ever since the church. I knew that I recognised it from somewhere.’

  ‘And if that blazon was in the mother house in Acre, then the man has a Templar connection. No wonder he and Bochard are in collusion. One wonders how he came to be in Acre and then also here, but he is a direct link between the preceptor and the Franks. The perfect man to negotiate between them. Good money says that this knight is the man who secured transport for Bochard’s relics.’

  ‘And there were Venetian soldiers at his door earlier too. Men with access to ships. Why would his man shoot at us though?’

  ‘If he did. You cannot say for sure. But yes, it is a worrying question.’

  They lapsed into silence, and the rest of the night passed, tense but uneventful.

  The following morning the two knights joined Bochard at the church of Saint Mary of the Blachernae for the services, as they were denied their usual haunt of the Pisan church now. Arnau couldn’t help but feel throughout the entire proceedings that above and beyond the general feeling of discontent from the various forced converts sitting through the to-them incomprehensible Latin service, there was a special and specific resentment being aimed by the formerly Greek Church priest against Bochard. There was a tension between the two men almost bowstring taut. It was actually a relief to leave the church and venture out into the hot sunshine of the dangerous city once again.

  The preceptor, without a word to them, returned to the palace proper. Arnau and Ramon made their way instead around the sea walls of the city, taking everything in. The scars of the past months lay like stinking lesions upon the place, and the buboes of the coming days looked fit to burst into open rot too.

  From the Blachernae, they first passed the site of the furious fight for the walls, with the damage that remained to remind all that it had happened. Almost seamlessly, they moved from the site of this violence to the burned-out region of the city, acres of black and grey civic bones rising from the hillside all the way to the crest at the heart of the city. And almost immediately beyond the edge of that ash-scape, they walked alongside the empty and sepulchral enclaves of the Italians who had left the city in haste. By the time they had reached an untouched area of the city bearing no war wounds, they were almost at the ancient acropolis, most of the way along the Golden Horn, next to the old silted-up harbour now used largely for shipbuilding. Here remained the only surviving foreign enclave in the city, such as it was. A small trading post nestled at the base of the great headland, centred around – of all things – a mosque. There were few residents there, but Arnau found its presence fascinating. Despite the constant troubles in the East and the Crusades called to free the Holy City over the past century, pragmatism, combined with the fact that long periods of peace and stability interrupted the wars, had led to the emperors allowing a small mosque within the city for the Arabian and Saracen traders that still brought distant and exotic goods to the empire. It was almost a relief to see the simplicity of the Saracens here, for they represented no dogmatic headache for a brother of the Order.

  ‘Heaven help us,’ Ramon said suddenly. ‘Looks like trouble again.’

  Arnau turned from the small Saracen enclave and peered out across the water to where Ramon was looking. It took him moments to spot the small flotilla. Perhaps ten boats had set off from the wharves of Galata, angling directly across the Horn towards the city proper.

  ‘Franks. Nothing new.’

  Ramon pursed his lips. ‘I disagree.’

  Arnau looked left and right. Little seemed to be troubling the soldiers along the wall. He frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they usually come two at a time, or three at most. Ten is more like a fleet than a ferry. Ten boats betrays a grander purpose’

  ‘Maybe a deputation?’

  ‘Maybe, but that usually means nobles on horses with an entourage. They would come around the land side to where the Blachernae palace lies. No, I don’t like this.’

  Arnau watched. The boats were making directly for them, for the less popular and often treacherous docks in the silty Prosphorion harbour. That was also unusual. ‘Come with me,’ Ramon said quietly.

  They descended the stairs and reached the bottom, where the Warings hesitated. Their leader, a blond, barrel-chested beast called Octa, cleared his throat. ‘Where are you bound?’

  ‘Trouble comes across the water on boats,’ Ramon replied. ‘We go to see what sort of trouble.’

  Octa frowned. ‘I advise staying on the walls. We are forbidden by imperial command from becoming engaged in trouble with the Franks.’

  Arnau rolled his eyes. The weakness of blind Isaac showed through the cracks in the empire every day. ‘Stay here, then,’ Ramon advised them in return.

  The two men stepped down into the street and crossed to an archway in the walls, hidden in shadows, where they waited. Octa and his Warings remained on the steps, torn between protecting their charges and steering clear of Frankish warriors by imperial order. Shouted voices outside the walls opened the gates with no argument and the two Templars watched as mail-clad men, armed and with shields strapped to their sides, stomped in through the gate as though they owned the city. Ramon hissed and pointed and Arnau followed his gaze until his heart leaped into his throat. Some of the men carried unlit torches, pitch-coated and so, so dangerous in the tinder-dry summer city.

  ‘Holy Mother of God,’ Arnau breathed. ‘They can’t be?’

  ‘It looks like it.’ Ramon turned to the stairs nearby as dozens of men thumped past carrying all the tools of destruction and death. Once the last man had passed and they were not in danger of being spotted, Ramon emerged once more and waved to Octa. ‘How dear is the city against your oath of non-interference, Waring? They carry torches.’

  To their credit, Octa and his men looked extremely worried and uncomfortable.

  ‘The Lord watch over all his children,’ Ramon said and gestured to Arnau, walking purposefully in the wake of the Franks. There was a brief pause only and then, with curses in some northern Angle tongue, the Warings hurried after them.

  The six men trotted through the streets as lightly as knights and Nordic giants in armour could, following the path of the Crusaders. Arnau’s initial fear, born from the direction of the boats’ travel, was being borne out. There were several major thoroughfares that led into the heart of the Byzantine city up the slope or to the headland acropolis, and yet the Crusaders had instead forged ahead into a warren of narrower streets.

  Straight for the Saracens.

  ‘A fine time for the Franks to remember they are on a Crusade,’ Arnau grunted.

  Ramon nodded. ‘The mosque. Perhaps they see it as a holy duty. More likely, I fear, they think it will turn the remaining city in on itself.’

  They rounded a corner and entered a wide square, surrounded with buildings of old-fashioned Byzantine construction and yet adorned with very Moorish-looking arcades. The mosque sat at the centre of the square, a squat minaret rising from it.

  They were too late. The Crusaders were already entering the mosque, swords drawn and roaring passages from the Good Book as though the Lord might condone their actions. So
meone had clearly brought and used a flint and steel, for those pitch-soaked torches were now dancing with golden light. Cries and shouts arose from within the mosque. Ramon threw out an arm as Arnau made to race forward, stopping him.

  ‘What?’

  Ramon gestured to the scene before them. Saracen traders and their local contacts who lived in the enclave were gathering up whatever they might be able to wield in anger and were racing for the mosque.

  ‘This is not our fight, Vallbona.’

  ‘What? You were the one who dragged us after them.’

  ‘To observe, not intervene. They are sons of the Church. We are forbidden by Rule and command. Need I walk you through it all again?’

  Arnau felt the frustration building. Yes, the Saracen occupants were theoretically more heretical even than the Byzantines. But they were merchants and women and children, living in peace. The Franks might be nominally Christians, but the values they were currently displaying were more Satan’s work.

  ‘This cannot be allowed.’

  ‘We are forbidden, Vallbona.’

  ‘The Rule should guide us to acts of forgiveness and mercy,’ Arnau spat.

  ‘And Bochard—’

  ‘Fuck Bochard.’

  Arnau was truly angry. In fact, it was fair to say he was about as angry as he could remember ever being. He was angry at the preceptor for supporting mindless hatred and what appeared to be theft without a hint of compassion. He was angry at the Franks for their stupidity in ravaging this place all because of the Doge of Venice and his hatred. He was angry at the Venetians for engineering this whole thing. He was angry at Ramon for his refusal to intervene. Most of all, he was angry that the men who supposedly championed the word of the Lord for the West seemed to be either committing acts of depraved wickedness, supporting those acts, or refusing to do anything about them, while those men who seemed to embody the true peace of the Lord in their hearts were heretics and Mussulmen.

  It was all so wrong.

  With a roar, he pushed past Ramon’s hand, sword torn from his sheath. Fuck Bochard and fuck Ramon if he disagreed, but Arnau couldn’t watch this happen and not do something. Ahead, the Saracen imam had been hauled from his mosque’s doorway by two burly armoured men. His long white robe was already drenched in crimson. Smoke had begun to pour from the mosque’s various apertures, and other Crusaders emerged, coughing.

  The local residents met them in the most appallingly mismatched fight, shopkeepers with sticks against Frankish knights with great steel blades. Before he could justify himself further, had he felt the need to, Arnau pushed a feeble-looking old Saracen out of the way, wincing at the sudden pain as he moved sharply and his rib shifted, his sword rising and then falling to bite some unwary Frank in the shoulder. The man wore a chain shirt, which prevented the heavy blow from cleaving deep into flesh, instead spreading the impact. It did not save the man, though. The blow landed with enough force to utterly shatter the shoulder, arm and several ribs. The knight screamed and dropped his sword, falling back.

  Arnau didn’t care. Even the pain of his broken rib was nothing, a note lost in a song of war. He was not working to a strategy. This was no duel. This was one man standing against a massacre, and if he died, he would approach Heaven’s gate with a clear conscience. Right now, Arnau could not have planned his attack if he’d tried. He had surrendered himself to something deep within that he’d not been aware was there – a primal anger riveted to a cross of justice.

  His sword lashed out again, this time taking a man in the unprotected face, turning it into a mush of red and white. The scream died away in a moment, lost in the ruined mouth, but Arnau was implacable, unstoppable. He felt something thud against his leg; two blows on his shield. He felt the ache of what would be bad bruises later.

  He yelped more from the shifting of his damaged rib than from the blows that were seemingly raining down on him constantly and yet with little more effect that light taps. God was with him. The Lord was shielding the righteous, he was sure, just as Sebastian had claimed the Holy Mother protected him. He swept low, breaking the thigh of a man who disappeared into the press with a cry, then rose and smashed his shield into the raised sword arm of another Frank, who cried out at his breaking knuckles and dropped his weapon.

  Slash and hack, hammer and barge, he pushed his way ever onwards, amid a sea of colourful Frankish surcoats and drab local Saracen garments. His voice rose in a melodic roar.

  ‘Thou hurtlest down to me the instruments of battle, and I shall bring down nations with thee, and I shall destroy realms in thee.’

  Then suddenly he was moving backwards. His arm seemed unable to move. He cut down with his sword, but his arm would not fall. His boots skittered off stone and his shield wouldn’t move. He shook his head. He was at the far side of the square now, away from the fight. Suddenly he saw the oddly mismatched figures of Octa and Ramon holding off angry Franks making to follow him.

  He blinked.

  His eyes spun as his head twisted this way and that. He was being dragged by two huge Warings, who had his arms pinned. He struggled, but already he could feel his righteous fury ebbing, giving way to some sort of exhausted sadness.

  The mosque was properly aflame. Black, roiling smoke rising into the clear blue. Those few Saracens who had remained were being butchered. Most had fled. The headless body of the Saracen imam lay on the stones of the square, pooling in blood. Already two more buildings around the square were alight, sparks carried by the channel’s strong winds from the burning mosque. Even with attention, the chances of arresting the fire swiftly were small, but the population had fled, and only blood-hungry Franks remained, men with little intention of preventing a fire. Indeed, some were already looting the stores.

  ‘You fool,’ Ramon snapped, suddenly arriving once more at his side. ‘And what is it with you and fires? You seem to carry a conflagration with you wherever you go.’

  ‘They deserved to die,’ Arnau spat. ‘They still do.’

  ‘That was never in doubt, but it is the Lord’s place to punish them, not ours.’

  Arnau turned angrily on Ramon. ‘What are we if not an instrument of the Lord?’

  ‘Save your philosophy until we are safe in the palace.’

  Arnau shrugged out of the grip of the Warings, who continued to watch him carefully until he wiped and cleaned his blade and then followed along with the others.

  ‘My conscience is clear,’ Arnau said with an accusatory look at Ramon. ‘How yours is, I cannot imagine.’

  ‘I’m glad your conscience is clear. Now we will have to see whether Bochard decides to punish you or even cast you from the Order.’

  ‘I’m no longer sure I recognise Bochard’s authority,’ snarled Arnau.

  Ramon stared at him for a long time, and Arnau deliberately held his fierce expression. Finally, the older brother nodded. ‘Perhaps it is better that he doesn’t hear about this at all.’

  ‘This city’s descent into Hell proceeds apace,’ Arnau grunted as they reached the walls and began to climb.

  Chapter 14: The Angry City

  September 1st 1203

  ‘Do you think he has any intention at all of doing as he promised?’

  Ramon turned to Arnau. ‘The preceptor is learning from my examples. I used his vagueness to find loopholes that allowed us to face the Venetians, and Bochard has picked up on that. His strict adherence to the Order’s Rule will not permit him to outright lie, even to heretics, but I have heard him come close at times now. He suggests, intimates and agrees, but not once have I heard him confirm that he will definitely do something. I may have created a monster in that regard.’

  Arnau sighed. Sebastian had begun talking to Bochard’s squire more in the last few days, and information had leeched through him back to the two knights. The preceptor was now dealing directly with the new Venetian patriarch of the city who had, in theory, overall control of all churches in the city and their priests. Through that channel Bochard was now acquiring r
elics at an increased rate. But he had been more and more cunning in the past weeks. As well as using the new regime to achieve his ends, he was playing the sympathetic ear to the disenfranchised Greek priests and offering to save their treasures from the Franks by shipping them to the great monastery at Mount Athos, where the Greek rite was said to hold strong. The chances of any of those relics loaded onto Venetian ships reaching Mount Athos was next to nil, to Arnau’s mind.

  Ramon had waited until Bochard had been in a particularly buoyant mood following an important acquisition, and had once more carefully posited the notion of leaving. He had been shouted down in an instant. Far from this increased success glutting the preceptor and leaving him ready to depart, it had made him hungry for ever more. Arnau was of the opinion that Bochard would not leave Constantinople now until every church roof had lost its lead.

  Ramon had been so silently disapproving of Arnau’s violent outburst at the Saracen enclave that the younger knight had forced his anger and all memory of the event deep down inside where it would not come between them, where it simmered, hidden but not forgotten. He both liked and respected Ramon, and had no wish to be at odds with him. Moreover, it was enough to be at loggerheads with one fellow Templar without doing the same to the other, and in Bochard’s case Arnau was just a few short steps from outright rebellion, whatever Ramon might say. He had always thought Ramon one of the more easy-going of Rourell’s knights, but it seemed that he had reached his limit in this dreadful place. Arnau couldn’t help but wonder what Balthesar’s responses would have been had he been here instead. He suspected the old knight would have been up to his eyebrows in Frankish blood by now, denying Bochard at every turn.

  ‘Do we have to go? It’s a job for servants,’ he grunted, fastening his sword belt.

  ‘Simple choice, Vallbona: defy the preceptor or obey him. I might not agree with what he is doing as such, but I am still not ready to break my vows because of him. The day he steps outside the Order’s Rule himself, I will act. Until then, my vows mean more to me than my disapproval of a superior. You are still young in our order, Arnau. I know your idealism is getting the better of you. I know you want to wear your heart on your breast alongside the cross, and to defend the weak whatever the cost, and I laud you for it, but there must be structure. There must be obedience, lest our order simply comprise a gang of disparate brothers who act each according to his own will. Can you imagine the chaos and the danger in that? There are strictures in place. When Bochard steps out of line, there are avenues for us to follow to put things right. But think what you like, the preceptor has yet to actually do anything wrong. And as long as he acts within the interest and bounds of the Order, we will obey him. So the answer is yes, we have to go.’