by Tom Harper
We crouched on our knees, and pressed our fingers into a groove where he directed. When we tugged, a broad square of planking came up in our hands, opening a shallow pit to our view. On the packed earth within lay a small boat.
‘The wise merchant guards against every risk,’ said Domenico proudly. ‘And thus never loses everything.’
‘If you can get us across the Horn, you will gain a great deal more.’
We bent over the hole and lifted out the boat by its prow. I was glad of Sigurd’s strength, for Domenico did little but fuss: together we managed to haul the craft across to the door by the wharf. The hull rasped and grated horribly as we dragged it over the floor, the noise redoubled by the towering walls, but the barbarians must have exhausted their appetite for plunder, or indulged it elsewhere, for none came to trouble us.
With a final push, Sigurd heaved the boat over the edge of the wharf and watched it splash into the black waters of the Horn. There was a ladder bolted to one of the pilings which even the Franks had not bothered to destroy: we slid down it, and soon we were splashing away from the dock, away from danger, away from the horror that had once been Galata. Though looking across to the far side of the Horn was no comfort, for by some unknown devilry there seemed to be flames there as well. I lay back against the thwart and stared at the sky, floating between the shores of a world on fire.
26
It was like some vision of the apocalypse, for around the entire sweep of the bay flames licked into the night. In Galata they were burning out, dying slowly, but along the coast the barbarian’s progress could be measured by the heights to which the fires still rose in every village and settlement. To my horror, they did not stop at the bridge, but continued back along the southern shore even into the city itself. I stared out through the darkness, trying to judge if any were near my own home, but it was hidden in the hills. Where were the barbarians now? Had they entered the city, as Baldwin had promised they would, as the flames seemed to herald? Was the empire betrayed into slavery? I wanted to weep, but tears would not come. The last time there had been violence in the city I had spent three days and nights at my door, sword in hand, refusing to sleep lest the mob come for my family. There would be no consolation if I had failed them now.
Sigurd made a crude boatman, but he managed to bring us across the Horn, between the moored ships, and towards the walls. They were clear to see, for on that night even the waves burned: sea-fire had been spread over them, to deter all who might approach and illuminate any who did. I could smell the oily smoke, hear the spitting as the flames danced and swayed on the water.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked Sigurd. We seemed to be heading north-west, towards the headwaters. ‘Take me to the gate of Saint Theodosia, so I can return to my house and find my children.’
Sigurd never looked back. ‘We’re going to the new palace. The Emperor will be there, unless he has changed his ways. We need to warn him of the danger he faces.’
I almost laughed. ‘Look around you — he can guess at the danger, if he still lives. I must see to my family.’
‘We all have families, Demetrios. But if the empire falls to the Franks, we will wish they had never been saved.’
I was too feeble to argue, and I said nothing more as Sigurd sculled the boat to the stone pier by the new palace. We were close to the barrage of sea-fire now, and I sat up in the terror that the current would carry us into it, but a small opening had been left and Sigurd deftly worked us through it. Guards came running, and I saw with relief that here at least Romans still held the walls. Their faces glowed orange in the firelight, as indeed did the stones, the water and even the air about us, but there was mercifully little panic in their faces.
‘Who approaches?’ they challenged. ‘Declare yourselves, or we will burn you into the sea.’
‘Sigurd, captain of Varangians, with news for the Emperor. Is he here?’
‘He is. He directs the war on the barbarians from his throne.’
‘War?’ I echoed. ‘Is there now a war between us. Have they entered the city?’
The guard laughed. ‘They have sacked the outer villages, and paraded before the walls, but it will take more than a rabble of men and horses to force our defences. The city is safe enough — for the moment.’
‘But what of the fires?’
‘Our own mob. They came into the streets this afternoon, demanding that the Emperor unleash his full might on the barbarians and make the Lycus red with their blood. When he refused there was violence, and some set fire to the tax collector’s office. But the Watch have the ringleaders now, and the streets are under strict curfew.’
‘Thank Christ for that,’ I breathed.
‘Thank Him when it is finished,’ reproved the guard. ‘There are still barbarians beyond our walls, and great anger within. But for now, I will take you to the court.’
We scrambled out of the boat and came through the water-gate into the new palace. Everywhere was in turmoil: companies of soldiers hurried between the walls, and in the courtyards whetting wheels scraped plumes of sparks from steel blades. Spears and shields were stacked all about, while serving boys from the kitchen laboured under baskets of arrows. We climbed many stairs, often pausing to let files of guards push past, until at last we came to the great bronze doors. A dozen Patzinaks, armed and helmed and with spears in their hands, barred the way.
‘The Emperor is in council,’ their sergeant growled. ‘He will not see petitioners. The secretary. .’
I cut him short. ‘Is the chamberlain within? Tell him that Demetrios Askiates and Sigurd the Varangian have returned from Galata. Tell him we have news which must be told.’
Whether from the surprise of being countermanded, or the flat certainty in my voice, the sergeant disappeared through the door, and emerged humbly ten minutes later to confirm that the chamberlain would see me immediately.
It was probably the most exalted gathering I would ever witness, I thought, as the bronze doors closed behind me. I had entered the room where I had once met the Sebastokrator, the broad chamber built atop the walls overlooking the plain. It was filled with the light of many candles, and with the glittering array of more generals, counsellors and their retinues than I could count. Apart from Isaak and Krysaphios, I recognised the Caesar Bryennios, the Emperor’s first son-in-law; the great eunuch general Tatikios whom I remembered from his triumph against the Cumans; and myriad others in gilded armour and the regalia of their offices. All stood save the Emperor himself, who sat on his golden throne in the centre of the room and inclined his head to the arguments which flowed about him. On the marble floor, between the pointed shoes of his courtiers, I thought I saw blood.
I was too shabby to be noticed by that shimmering assembly, but Krysaphios noted my arrival and gradually slipped around the edge of the throng to greet me in a corner.
‘You have returned,’ he said calmly. ‘When we saw the barbarians marching from their camp, we feared the worst. Particularly when we received reports that some of our soldiers had been executed.’
I stared into his shifting eyes. ‘It was a trap. If the monk was ever there, he was not in the house when we arrived. Instead we found barbarians, hundreds of them, waiting for us. They cut down many of our force and took the rest captive. When they started murdering prisoners for the sport of their crowd, we escaped. They know that the Normans will come, and they are eager to seize the spoils for themselves before that day.’ I leaned closer. ‘When the barbarian captain Baldwin addressed his army, he told them he had an agent in the city who would see to it that the gates were open to them. I have discovered that he was taught at the same school where the monk learned to hate Byzantium. He and the monk must be in league.’
To my surprise and chagrin, Krysaphios laughed openly at this news. ‘Your effort does you credit, Demetrios,’ he told me, immaculate condescension in his voice. ‘But you are tardy with it. The Emperor’s enemies have already revealed themselves.’
I stared a
bout the room. The Emperor Alexios still lived and breathed — so much was obvious. ‘Was the blood on the floor. .?’
‘The monk’s doing? No. Those windows through which the Emperor surveyed the battle make an inviting target from without. Many Franks tried their aim with arrows, and one struck the man who stood beside the throne.’
‘I winced to think how nearly we had been undone. What was this battle you speak of?’
Krysaphios glanced back to the middle of the room, where a stout general was making an impassioned oration against the barbarians, recapitulating their historic offences. ‘I told you that the barbarians had revealed themselves as our enemies: so much was obvious, as soon as they had ambushed your expedition. After they left Galata, they pillaged their way around the Golden Horn until they arrived at the walls. The palace by the Silver Lake is entirely destroyed.’
‘They left little untouched in Galata either.’
‘Then they drew up their army over there’ — Krysaphios pointed through the windows — ‘and began an assault on the palace gate, trying to burn it open. All afternoon they launched themselves at our defences, while within our walls the mob rioted and demanded war.’
‘But the Emperor did not succumb?’ I said, remembering the words of the guard by the sea gate.
Krysaphios’ eyes narrowed. ‘Not yet. Invoking the sanctity of the day, he ordered the archers to keep to the walls and fire over the barbarians’ heads, or at their horses if they pressed too close. Even now, when they hammer at our gates, he holds out hope that there can be peace and does not admit his folly. But fortune will desert them tomorrow. Even the Emperor cannot defy the howl of the mob forever, and when the barbarians attack again he will have no choice but to destroy them. As many have long demanded.’
‘But what if he commits to battle and does not destroy them? What if they pierce our defences and break in?’ I saw scorn rising on Krysaphios’ lips, and hurried on. ‘What of the monk? Surely tomorrow will be the day he strikes.’
Unexpectedly, Krysaphios chuckled. ‘The Great Friday of Easter — a good day for martyrdom. But the Emperor will never be alone; his guards, family and commanders will attend him constantly. And it would need more than one man to open our gates, against the will of all who manned them. If even that concerns you, then stay and keep watch. Unless you again prefer the familiarity of your own bed.’
‘There is enough of the soldier left in me that I can sleep where I am needed. But I fear for my daughters. If the mob riot again tomorrow and they are caught up in it, I will not forgive myself.’
Krysaphios’ lip turned a fraction upward. ‘Every man in this palace has a family, Demetrios, and all those wives and sons and daughters must wait in their own homes with the rest of our people. Do you really struggle between your obligations to two girls, and your duty to the millions in the empire?’
I had no patience for such contempt. ‘If the empire cannot protect my family then I have no use for it; my duty is to my kin. You yourself might understand if you had more than a mule’s seed.’
I regretted those words even as I spoke them, but the toil of the day had crushed my patience and loosed my wits. I saw anger sear Krysaphios’ cheeks and did not bother to wait for its eruption.
‘I will go and guard my family. If I were you, Krysaphios, I would not stand too near the windows tomorrow.’
I turned on my heels and walked stiffly from the room, invisible to the gilded company who still threw the same arguments between each other. Neither Krysaphios nor the guards tried to stop me, and once I was past the bronze doors there was too much confusion for any to notice. I descended the stairs in a daze of bitter misery, and had just gained the second courtyard when I heard running steps behind me, and felt a hand on my arm.
I turned, to see a handsome, apologetic-looking young man. His dalmatica was of the finest fabric, fastened with a brooch in the shape of a lion, while the ornament on his tablion betold a rank far above his years.
‘My apologies, Master Askiates.’ His voice was light, and his manner friendly. ‘My lord Alexios the Emperor saw your departure and begs you to stay. He fears he may need you tomorrow.’
‘The Emperor was wrapped in a council of war when I left — can he really have seen me?’
‘My lord Alexios has both eyes and ears, and he does not always use them in unison. Will you stay, by his invitation?’
It was hard to resist the easy humour of this youth, but the single purpose in my mind overrode all else. ‘I must return to my home. I worry for my daughters’ safety, and I fear there will be more danger in the streets tomorrow.’
‘And the Emperor shares those concerns. He will send his guards to bring them here.’
At a stroke, all my resistance ebbed away. Though the palace was far from safe, and though any battle in the city would rage fiercest here, I would rather see my daughters by my side in a stout fortress than at the mercy of the mob. I nodded my agreement. ‘I will stay.’
The young man smiled, though there was a strain in his cheeks. ‘Thank you — it will relieve the Emperor. God alone knows what else will on this accursed day.’
‘Accursed indeed if my doings are his only comfort.’
‘Today has been bad. His enemies have risen, and his friends circle the throne like dogs; his choices are few, and ever diminishing. Yet these are merely the first breaths of the storm.’ He played absently with the clasp of his brooch, scanning the sky as if for a portent. ‘Tomorrow, I fear, it will break.’
27
It was the Great Friday of Easter, the holy day when Our Lord was crucified, and I woke in fear. Not fear of the barbarian armies who massed to strike us, nor of the assassins who might haunt the palace halls, nor even of the mob who could tear the city in two at their Emperor’s cowardice. It was fear of my daughters, fear that they would wake too soon in the small chamber where we had been lodged, and see their father curled shamelessly on a mattress with a woman who was not their mother.
Anna must have sensed that I stirred, for she twisted herself so she could see my face. ‘I should go. There must be some in need of a doctor here, after yesterday’s violence.’ She shook her tangled hair. ‘And though your daughters guess much, there are some things they should not see.’
‘Some things their father may not wish them to see,’ I added quietly. My spirits had leapt when Zoe and Helena arrived at the palace with Anna, she having still been at my home when the guards came. When at last I had finished roaming the passages near the Emperor’s apartments, well after midnight, I had been grateful, if cautious, of her embrace.
All thoughts left me as a stern knock came from the door. I was on my feet in an instant, trying to kick the blanket free of my legs, while Anna rolled against the wall and affected sleep. I heard tentative sounds from the far corner, but by the time Zoe’s head had peeked above the covers I was at the door and looking into the unblinking face of a guardsman.
‘You are summoned.’
I had grown tired of this abrupt phrase, seemingly the only form of invitation familiar to the guards, but I was glad of an excuse to be out of that room, and followed willingly. The smudged light I saw beyond the windows suggested that the dawn had not yet come, yet still we had to force a way through the bleary-eyed functionaries bustling about, until at last we came to a door guarded by four Patzinaks. My escort spoke something unintelligible to them and they stepped apart, flanking the door.
‘Go up,’ said my escort. ‘We wait here.’
Trying to affect calm under the Patzinaks’ hostile stares, I pushed through and began climbing the stairs beyond.
After a time, I began to wonder if this was some joke on the part of the guards, for there seemed no end to the stairs, only a succession of turns and counter-turns leading inexorably up. Nor did it seem that any others attempted the ascent: I passed no-one, saw none descending, and heard nothing but the lonely sound of my own footsteps. Even the slitted windows were sunk too far through the walls to reveal a
nything but grey light beyond.
I turned another corner, identical to every other, and saw a slab of sky above. I ran up the last dozen steps, and emerged onto a broad, flat platform. It was a high place, as high as I had ever been in my life and perhaps as high as man could build without provoking the jealousy of the Lord. By day it must afford an extraordinary view of the city, and all the lands for miles about, but in the predawn darkness I could see only a skein of embers spread across the landscape. A low wall lined the tower’s edge, utterly out of proportion to the depth of the drop beyond. Certainly inadequate beside the magnitude of the imperial life it now had to protect.
I dropped to my knees, glad of the excuse to be hidden from the dizzying space around me, and prostrated myself.
‘Get up. By tomorrow you may have to save your homage for another man.’ He spoke gently, but there was a weariness in his face which gave his words an unintended bitterness.
‘Is your confidence in me so low, Lord?’ The altitude must have enfeebled my mind: how else could I presume to jest with an Emperor?
He stretched his lips a little under the thick beard. ‘Confidence? Demetrios Askiates, you are one of the few men in whom I keep any confidence. Every one of my generals thinks me a coward, or worse, and my subjects denounce me in the streets. Many of my predecessors have found their eyes put out and their noses slit open for less.’
‘They pray that you will live a thousand years,’ I protested, but he rolled his eyes in impatience.
‘I have ruled fifteen years already,’ he said. ‘Longer than any since the great Bulgar-slayer himself. Yet what will a later Theophanes or Prokopios write of my reign? “He spent his life fighting the barbarians when they attacked, yet willingly surrendered them the empire when they came as guests.”’ He turned to the east, where a smear of crimson heralded the sun’s rising. ‘I stood here when Chalcedon burned with the fires of the Turkish army, when a single mile of calm water kept us from their advance. Without the Franks, and the Normans and Kelts and Latins and whomever else the pontiff of the west sends us, the Turks will come again, and they will not pause at the shores of the Bosphorus.’ He kicked the balustrade, and I tensed for fear that he might trip and topple over it. ‘My counsellors and their mobs do not understand that we no longer have the might of our ancestors. We cannot march across the world, as a Justinian or a Basil could. We are a nation rich in gold but poor in arms, and if I am to protect my people I must let others fight in their place.’
