by Simon Acland
“You go too,” he said to me quietly, “and listen carefully to what they say to each other in their own slippery tongue.”
I grinned with delight before I remembered the gravity of the occasion and dressed my face with a suitably fierce military expression. The Count de Vermandois had been taken aback by the force of Godfrey’s reaction, and I now clearly saw the weakness beneath his pompous kingly manner. He turned to look at his Byzantine companions, as if for instruction. Two of them wore splendid gold body chains, which reached over their shoulders and under their arms, to secure a pierced disc of gold at front and back. Their leader, grey-bearded, and clad in a silver studded leather cap with bizarre ear flaps which hung down far below his lobes, shook his head slightly. At this signal the Count turned back to Godfrey and began to remonstrate.
“My Lord Duke, you do not understand the power and prestige of this emperor. His lands stretch almost as far as you have travelled. The wealth and splendour of his court outdoes even my father’s. As a king’s son myself, I know how to treat an emperor such as Alexios. How can I expect you to fully understand royal sensibilities? But I do ask you to follow my advice in the interest of our great cause.”
Angrily Godfrey cut him short.
“Go away, you pompous popinjay. You may be easily won with flattery and gifts but in the House of Boulogne we are made of stronger stuff, are we not, eh, Baldwin, Eustace?”
Despondent, the French Count turned and left the tent, followed by the rest of his party. Godfrey brusquely indicated to me and three others who happened to be standing by that we should now follow. Concern touched my delight as I reflected that I was being sent where my master had said he feared to tread. Godfrey’s words about the Emperor’s untrustworthiness echoed in my ears. Further displeasure came when I saw Bagrat forming up as a member of our party at Baldwin’s command.
We rode back a league or so the way we had come on the previous day, down the length of the walls, before turning into the Golden Gate across a wide drawbridge over the city moat. The gate was topped by four huge bronze statues of exotic creatures unlike anything I had seen before. Their noses hung down almost to the ground between curved tusks at least twice as long as my sword, while wide flat ears framed each side of their wrinkled faces. These fearsome sentinels stood guard over sights beyond of which I could not even dream.
Once inside the walls I was struck first by the sheer numbers of people about their business in the street. Our embassy passed through great squares packed with many hued crowds, varying so much in form and dress that I knew they must have come from all the corners of the earth. They swirled before my eyes, so that I caught brief impressions of different figures before my attention moved on. Behind the billowing purple cape of one proud citizen I saw two men with black faces – devils surely! That was my first reaction before I discerned slavery in their humble demeanour. The crowd opened respectfully before their master and they disappeared. Then I blushed under the curious gaze of a pretty olive skinned girl. Did I look as odd to these Greek citizens as they looked to me? Her strange dark ringlets were swallowed up in turn by the throng which was packed especially tightly around an open space where two bug-eyed dwarves were raising laughter and alms by tumbling and mumming. I dragged my attention away from this human theatre towards the slender pillar nearby. It was topped with a robed figure, utterly realistic except that it was two or three times life size. Similar graceful statues, and vast beasts fashioned of bronze and marble, occupied every public space. The streets and squares were lined with fine colonnaded buildings, their large windows, some even covered in precious glass, watching my passage as if to ask ‘Have you ever seen such splendour and magnificence?’ I affected nonchalance at all these sights, not wanting to show my Byzantine escorts how their city stirred and impressed me, lest I revealed how different it was to the crude and humble towns of my homeland. I was also conscious that Bagrat had seen all this splendour before. At no cost would I compare poorly with my rival.
But for all this affected calm, my head was spinning as I tried to absorb the sights, to breathe the exotic smells, to catch the foreign sounds of unfamiliar tongues and distant music. Then we reached the greatest square of all, in which a colossal bronze statue reared up of a mounted emperor – from his proud mien he could only have been an emperor, and I later learned that this was none other than the famed Justinian – holding in one hand a crossed orb, and raising the other as if in admonition to any enemies who dared to threaten his city. Behind the emperor crouched an enormous building, its corners rounded like the haunches of some mythical beast about to pounce. I could conceal my amazement no longer, and I felt my mask of impassivity cracking and falling apart. I fear that the knowing Byzantine at my side had watched my struggle with amusement beneath the gleaming cone of his helmet. Now he beamed in triumph and murmured through his beard in Greek.
“Our cathedral of Haghia Sophia. Isn’t she magnificent?”
Then, in spite of myself, I started with surprise at one of twenty-four doors flying open on a great mechanical clock. Bagrat sneered openly at my naivety; at least the Byzantine had the decency to turn away to hide his smile.
“The clock tells that we have an hour before the time appointed for the audience with his Highest Majesty Emperor Alexios. I would be pleased to show you inside if you wish.”
I understood that another opportunity was being taken to awe and cow me ahead of our imperial audience but I thought to score a diplomatic point of my own by comparing favourably the noble abbey church at Cluny with this bizarre, multi-domed structure. So I gratefully accepted the invitation. My hopes of outfacing the Byzantine began to fall before the splendour of the glittering gold tiles that decorated the vestibule’s arched ceiling. Then they shattered on the marble floor of the huge body of the church as I saw that it could have comfortably swallowed Cluny whole. I could not stop myself gaping at the magnificence of its decoration, the pillars, capitals and panels of semiprecious stone, red jasper, orange cornelian, blue lapis lazuli, cream chalcedony and green heliotrope, yellow citrine and every other colour of quartz. My Byzantine guide told me proudly that each stone column had the power to cure a different disease if the sufferer rubbed his body against it. I had just enough presence of mind to reply that I was in perfect health, thank you. My guide pointed out the huge silver iconostasis that screened off the chancel, unnecessarily for it was the height of six or seven men, and crowded with pictures of unfamiliar saints. He spoke proudly of the relics kept there: the Holy Cross and the actual lance which pierced Christ’s side, both brought from the Holy Land by Saint Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine; the bones of Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, and of many other saints.
“Our relics here are the genuine ones, not the copies and counterfeits so often seen elsewhere.”
I would remember that assertion well in the times ahead.
In the round apse above the altar, where Cluny had Our Lord Jesus Christ supported by Saints Peter and Paul painted in mere coloured pigment, Haghia Sophia boasted a richly gilded mosaic of Mary the Virgin Mother of God, the Holy Christ Child nested in Her lap, supported on either side by the Archangels Gabriel and Michael. Above all this splendour a majestic dome seemed to hover without support. A second look showed me that it was held up by columns between two score arched windows, some glazed in jewelled colours of the type for which my abbot had longed for his church at Cluny. Others were plain, allowing light to fall in moted beams, to pierce the gloom of the vast chamber and illuminate the quiet movements of the worshipping throng below.
Speechless, I crossed myself and staggered back outside with the rest of my party. I was now utterly overawed as we turned towards our reception in the Emperor’s old palace. In its entrance hall stood a life-size bronze of a lion savaging an ox. From this it took its name – the Boukoleon. When I had overcome my astonishment at the realism of this statue – the animals might simply have been frozen there in mid-fight – I could not help myself i
magining the Emperor as the lion and its bovine prey as my master Godfrey. If Haghia Sophia spoke of incomparable religious power, this imperial palace, marbled, gilded, dressed in gorgeous silks and rich fabrics, told a tale of unparalleled secular might and wealth.
We passed through courtyards filled with fruiting shrubs and plants, exotic beyond compare with the simple herbs in Cluny’s gardens. I longed to pause and taste them but we were hurried on to an imposing entrance. Fearsome figures stood on duty here – Varangian Guardsmen, the axe-armed Northmen who formed the Emperor’s personal bodyguard. They could have provided more than a match in hand-to-hand combat for the best of our men. We entered an antechamber and I jumped with surprise, seeing what at first glance I took to be an internal window with a young man walking on the other side. Then I looked again and saw that I was looking at my own image in a polished silver disc held up by standards wrought with fruited vines. Involuntarily I lifted up my hand to touch my bearded cheek and saw my own hand moving there on the wall. Captivated like Narcissus, I drank in my own clear reflection for the first time. The brown colour of my hair I knew because the ends are sometimes long enough to catch out of the corner of my eye, and had sometimes been cut. I did not know that my eyes matched my hair, though, and I tried to make out their expression. Did they always contain that look of wonder or was that provoked by all the new spectacles that I had seen that day? My brow above was high and clear. The nose looked straight enough. My chin seemed firm under its beard, itself lighter than the hair on my head and flecked with red. Set against my companions I looked three or four fingers taller than I had expected – perhaps before I had measured the level of my eyes against the crown of their head. Self-consciously, and not displeased by what I saw, I straightened my back and squared my shoulders.
Then the great gilded doors swung wide to reveal the high-pillared rectangular throne room and its inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold. Arched windows stretched the length of the right-hand wall and were filled with glass of such fineness and transparency that they gave a clear view over the busy shipping entering the Bosphorus, the taxes from which flooded the imperial treasury. Beyond the crowd of courtiers, under a coffered ceiling, in a chair like a burnished throne, set on a dais higher than all around it, so that none save God should be above the Emperor, sat Alexios I Comnenos, dressed in cloth of gold – the master of this magnificence.
I bowed low with my companions. Then we hesitantly approached the throne. Behind on the wall I saw a row of crowns, which I supposed had sat on the heads of Alexios’s predecessors and were perhaps intended to attest to his long lineage. The Count de Vermandois took the lead, and I filled with disgust at the sight of this arrogant son of a king making such easily bought obeisance to the Emperor. Watching this royal masquerade, I glimpsed from the corner of my eye Bagrat melting into the crowd, and registered surprise before thinking that he had perhaps noted an old acquaintance from days gone by. Then all my attention was absorbed as thwarted pride spoiled the urbanity of Alexios’s face at the Count’s report of the Boulognes’ refusal to wait upon him. With a brusque gesture of his bejewelled hand the Emperor commanded silence. The thunderous anger now in that regard rekindled my fears for my own safety.
“Who are these unruly knights, believing in their arrogance that they can ignore our imperial summons? Do they think that I, Alexios, the Roman successor of Augustus, Justinian and Constantine, will allow them to cross my wide dominions without swearing the customary oath of allegiance?”
Then he turned to his advisers clustering around the throne. I strained to catch his quietly spoken words of Greek, realising that with Bagrat elsewhere only I could hope to understand this aside.
“We must move these ruffians on across the Bosphorus and away from our precious city, before the other turbulent Crusader bands catch up. We know Raymond of Provence and the one I fear most – my sworn Norman enemy Bohemond of Taranto – are close behind. Joined, they might even be a match for my armies.”
Then Alexios raised his voice again in a tone intended to reverberate around the room.
“Very well. We shall see how you all enjoy the Feast of the Nativity with no provisions. When you have shown yourselves willing to act as worthy guests, we will welcome you again as generous hosts. Meanwhile you may celebrate Our Lord’s birth with a holy fast.”
My heart sank into the empty young stomach below, which had been eagerly anticipating Christmas rations more plentiful and varied than normal. Given to understand in no uncertain terms that the audience was over, we bowed and our guards began to reverse us away from the throne. It was just then that hope surged up in me, as a small figure emerged, revealed behind a line of taller courtiers. A white habit stood out against the backdrop of richly coloured garments, the only one of that colour in the room, for, as I later discovered, white was the colour of mourning to the Byzantines. Wasn’t that the costume of a travelling friar? Surely such a garb could belong only to Peter the Hermit? I rapidly scanned the room for the bulk of Walter Sans Avoir. If one leader had survived, perhaps so had the other…and perhaps his retinue. Was it possible that the reports of the annihilation of the Crusade’s first wave had been cruelly exaggerated? I longed to stop my relentless flow towards the door, and to question the figure whose white garment stood for sudden hope. But the escort penned me in and swept me inexorably back through the gilded doorway. Outside the palace I found myself being guided reluctantly back towards our windswept camp. There was nobody I could ask who would confirm or deny the identity of the man in the pale habit. My eagerness overcame even my distaste and without thinking I asked Bagrat, who had emerged furtively from the crowd in the audience chamber and was now riding alongside me, whether he had noticed the friar and whether he thought it might be Peter. I immediately regretted my words, for Bagrat’s shrugged reply managed to combine ignorance and lack of interest with scornful derision. I completed the journey in silence, knowing only that I had to find some way to return inside the city walls to find and question the man in white.
Our camp’s muddy squalor and cold discomfort provided a harsh contrast to the extraordinary splendour I had just witnessed. I found Godfrey in a black mood, uncomfortably closeted with Baldwin and Eustace.
“My Lord, I can scarcely find words to communicate the splendour of this city and the power of the emperor who rules it.”
“Don’t bother me then,” he growled. Confused by this rebuff, I could recall only my reflection in the mirror, my glimpse of the white habit that I so hoped was Peter’s, and my image of the ducal ox being savaged by the imperial lion. I faltered before pulling myself together to offer my more useful piece of information.
“But he knows his power is not invincible, my Lord. I heard him say in an aside to his advisers that he fears our strength if we combine with the armies of Count Raymond the Provençal and Bohemond the Norman. He will deny us provisions because he wants to force you to swear his oath and move you on across the sea before the others arrive. His scouts have plainly told him that they are not far behind.”
Godfrey now looked up sharply.
“You see! What have I just been saying to you, Eustace? There is no need to swear the oath. With a little patience and persistence we will soon have this emperor where we want him. And you see, Baldwin – we do not have to rush to confront the Byzantines – we will not have long to wait for our allies to arrive.”
I was delighted by the warm smile Godfrey bestowed on me, and cheered further by the sharp look that Baldwin turned on Bagrat with the angry unspoken question why he had not heard this intelligence.
“So that decides us. We will continue to refuse the Emperor’s oath. We’ll just wait as the approach of our allies increases the pressure upon him. He’ll crack. You’ll see.”
“Very well,” Baldwin hissed, “and if this slippery Greek will not give us provisions, we shall take what we want. Let’s give our men a special gift to mark this Christmas feast. They should be at liberty to plunder these s
uburbs at will.”
Baldwin’s eyes glittered, betraying his preference to take with violence rather than to receive in peace. Godfrey shrugged in idle concurrence.
That Christmas was not a good time for the unfortunates who lived beneath the great walls of Constantinople. Once already they had suffered the violent depredations of soldiers who supposedly worshipped the same God as they, when Peter the Hermit’s mob had swarmed through their homes. Now they suffered the organised cruelty of Baldwin’s men. I stayed in the camp and prayed fervently that this savagery of Christian on Christian would cease, that this wicked behaviour would not turn God against our noble cause. I tried to close my eyes to the brutality around but I could not shut my ears to the heart-rending screams of the women dragged back to the camp to be used at will by the soldiery. What if Blanche had suffered a similar fate?
Just after sunset on the third day of this savagery I was writing in Godfrey’s tent when I heard a commotion outside. I emerged to see three captives being hauled along by men of Baldwin’s. The pointed helmet still worn by one marked them as Pechenegs. I knew them by now as the Emperor’s policemen. They had been given the task of escorting us on our arrival and were now detailed to do what they could to contain our army’s worst excesses. These three unfortunates had already plainly taken a beating for their pains. Two were young, scarcely my own age, and where their swarthy faces were not marked with blood and bruises they were pale with fear. The third was older, struggling to set an example for his younger colleagues by maintaining a firmer demeanour.
Baldwin himself approached, his eyes hard with anticipation.
“Bring me fire and tools,” he ordered. Then he hissed to Bagrat, who stood as usual simpering close to his master’s side, “Translate for me.”
“So you are three. Yet I need only one messenger to take back to your imperial master the news of how we treat those who dare to thwart us. Should I kill two of you and release the third? That seems most unjust to me and I am nothing if not fair. So I will spare all your lives.”
