by Aidan Harte
The mess made Fabbro queasy, but the baying crowds were making it hard for him to concentrate; all he could think of was the humiliation, the ingratitude. ‘It wasn’t his tongue that destroyed the lion,’ he said at last. ‘This fellow’s no orator.’
Geta laughed. ‘That’s the idea!’
At last Jacques fought as he realised what they intended, and condottieri piled on top of him, hanging onto his limbs while others tightened the chains until he was too trussed-up to struggle.
‘Let’s do it properly,’ said Geta, and started heating a blade, ready to cauterise the wound.
Geta asked for volunteers to wield the blade, and when Becket at once backed away, muttering, ‘Not I – my life would be worthless!’ Geta realised everyone was fearful of revenge during the dark nights to come.
‘Podesta!’ he cried, ‘this is your honour.’
‘Yuri! Yuri!’ they called, in a paroxysm of relief.
Yuri took the axe in silence, as if he himself were the condemned man. Jacques started up at him, proffering his neck, his eyes eloquent: Kill me, but do not do this.
Silently pleading too, Yuri looked at Fabbro, but like the priors behind him, his jaw was set. The axe struck the ground with a ringing note and sparks flew, dying, hissing, in the heat of the blood. Before Yuri raised the axe a second time Jacques had passed out.
Geta expertly sealed and wrapped the wounds as the smell of cooking flesh filled the cell. He looked up at Yuri with a friendly wink. ‘Clean work, Podesta.’
CHAPTER 70
The Land across the Water JERUSALEM
Before the second millennium was a century old, Jerusalem was wrested from Infidel hands. Until we appreciate this achievement we cannot appreciate why the crusaders’ children consider themselves a chosen people. Consider the Radinate as a whole, enveloping the Middle Sea in a great crescent, from the harbour of Alexandria to the redoubt of Byzant.29
True, it was beset by rivalry, but what empire is not? The scepticism of cosmopolitan Ebionites can be well imagined when the strange soldiers of a strange sect came rudely claiming Jerusalem as their birthright. This amusement turned to horror when they saw the Crusaders fight. The Curia had schooled the crusaders in Water Style,30 an art the Ebionites had no means, initially, of combating.31
The Crusaders promptly founded a kingdom, stretching initially from Jaffa to Bayrut, called Oltremare.32 Its official capital was Jerusalem, but Akka, with its magnificent harbour, was its true heart. The military invasion was followed by one of civilians: Ariminumese merchants travelled from Akka33 into Ebionite territory and beyond to the bejewelled cities of Asia, trading wool and saffron34 for silks and precious stones.35 Trade and the drudge of administrating their patchwork kingdom doused Crusader fanaticism, but the sectarian spark soon found other fuel – the people they had enslaved.
CHAPTER 71
Usually Sofia rose with the sun, but it took a screeching gull at the window to wake her on this morning. She had been too exhausted last night even to look around her chamber; she did so now. The window opened onto a balcony, covered by a long lace curtain that trailed onto the coloured marble floor, reminding her of the wedding dress she had never worn. All the furnishings were made from the same rich, oily wood as Fabbro Bombelli’s banco, and carved in the most intricate shapes – Akka did not lack for labour; that was obvious. She wondered first what hope her mission had, and then what species of a sin it was to try to draw this prosperous realm into a distant war. Perhaps it was hypocrisy to pretend that she had fled for some reason other than saving her own skin.
Clothes had been laid out for her on a red cabinet beside the bed. Sofia didn’t care about fashion, but she knew the importance others placed on it. Donna Bombelli, and Levi, too, had often counselled that matters of form were not trivial in diplomacy. Sofia picked up first a headdress and veil, then the flowing, pale-coloured silks, looking at each with equal scepticism. She disliked the foreign style, but her old clothes had exhausted their powers of expansion.
‘Courage, Sofia,’ she told herself, and went to work. After she had donned the pieces in roughly the right order and the right way round, she stepped in front of the long mirror – she hadn’t seen one since Ariminum – to examine herself. The change just a few weeks had wrought elicited an involuntary gasp. No silks, however flowing, could conceal her condition now.
Plaintive bird cries drew her away from her terrifying reflection and she pulled the curtain aside and looked upon Akka, its bay, its churches, its high walls … The city was built from a pale yellow stone that intensified and reflected the sea’s harsh light into nooks and alleyways, places that ought to be veiled in a decent darkness. Rather than tolling bells, a clacking like an army of crickets sprang up from the white-domed churches, calling the Marian faithful to prayer.
Unlike Ariminum’s cramped but efficiently organised harbour, Akka’s chaotic sprawl had room to expand indefinitely. Some of the ships were fat-bottomed merchant haulers along the lines of Ezra’s old cog but there were strange small galleys with protruding mizzens and narrow hulls that narrowed into dangerously long bowsprits. With their slanted lanteen sails, they looked fast and predatory besides the staid Europan boats. Smaller vessels along similar lines, flimsy but elegant, manoeuvred among them like swallows around towers, and little tugs towed heavier ships into their allotted places like boys leading truculent bulls around. There were a few galleys in the Tancred’s class, though not quite as big; they docked further out and small skiffs ferried their passengers to and from shore. Akka had been the Oltremarine Empire’s temporary capital, until they abandoned all pretence of rebuilding Jerusalem and that status became official. As the Oltremarines started serving their own interests and not Europa’s, Akka blossomed like a deep-smelling steam-house orchid.
Sofia opened the door and found a blank-faced Ebionite servant standing there. As he silently bowed, she wondered if he had been there all night. She walked down the winding marble staircase, feeling the cool stone through her silk slippers, into a long, spacious corridor that felt more like a crypt. The walls were decorated with geometric patterns, interrupted intermittently by huge slabs of marble that rippled with dark veins like a shroud. On slender plinths in the middle of these slabs stood white ovals that Sofia at first assumed were marble portrait busts. It was only as she came closer that she realised with a sudden chill what they were: this was an Ancestor Room. The Akkans had preserved traditions that had long since died out in Etruria. The rows of peaceful faces looking down were the death-masks of Queen Catrina’s predecessors. The names and dates inscribed beside bold Etruscan mottos on the plinths were unnecessary: the progression was obvious.
The men, to begin with, were muscular, brutish Normans, with scars and broken jaws and a commanding intensity that survived even sudden death. The women were Ebionites with aquiline noses and docile, intelligent expressions: slaves with haunted, youth-frozen faces who had lived hard lives quickly. As Sofia progressed through the generations, she saw the ruder, softer characteristics being weaned out: the men became less brutish and died younger while the women became less docile and lived longer. They gradually mingled to the type Sofia had seen perfected last night in the cold, superior face of Queen Catrina. This panoply of ghosts had probably watched Catrina’s first uneven steps, had seen her fall down the stairs a dozen times. She must have learned early on that there was no sympathy from this audience. Now those same empty eyes glared coldly at Sofia, interrogating her motives.
She found Levi on a balcony, already eating. He was dressed like an Egyptian slave, and they teased each other about their costumes. The view from his floor was not as lofty as hers, but from it they could see the considerable breadth of Akka’s walls. Last night they had seen how the city was fortified against the desert; now they saw how the sea was kept at bay.
The walls were patrolled by the Lazars, who carried long, heavy axes, like the one Fulk had used to behead the Sicarii. The lighter battle axes were slung at thei
r hips. In the light of day the Lazars looked more Ebionite than Europan; over the centuries their uniform had become a fusion of Occidental and Oriental that was offensive to all sensibilities.
Sofia looked back at her companion. ‘Arik couldn’t understand why the Sicarii didn’t cut your throat when they found you.’
‘You know me: my tongue’s my best weapon.’
‘You’re Ebionite, aren’t you, Levi?’
‘Me!’ Levi scoffed. ‘You clearly got too much sun out in the Sands.’
Sofia didn’t press him. She looked out at the sea. It was less pristine than it had appeared from her room: drifts of scum and rubbish sat on the water, swarming with hovering flies.
Levi stood up and leaned on the banister. ‘My mother taught me early to pretend I was born Marian. She crossed the Middle Sea on an Ariminumese galley, in chains, and pregnant with yours truly. My father was some dog of a slaver. A fisherman from Syracuse bought her and let her earn her freedom. All she ever wanted was to get back to this place – can you imagine? The day she died, I left for the mainland to join a Company. I didn’t want to be pushed around any more.’
‘You don’t have to keep pretending.’
‘Oh, I think I do. Ebionites are even less popular in Akka.’
‘This alliance was your idea.’
‘Rasenna’s my country now,’ he said testily. ‘I’m no more Ebionite than you.’
As they ate their breakfast of dates, nuts and bread with yogurt and sour milk, they watched a gang of local children playing on the walls. The knights ignored the children as they took turns diving fearlessly from the walls into the sea. Neither the height, nor the filthy water nor the jagged rocks below the surface bothered them, though they had to time their leaps with the tide’s flow to avoid breaking their necks.
A slave pounded his mace to announce the queen’s entry and Sofia and Levi rose as Catrina walked in, followed by her retinue of veiled beauties.
‘Good morning, your Majesty,’ said Levi. ‘We’re admiring your leapers.’
‘Don’t worry; it’s not terribly infectious,’ the queen said cheerfully, then laughed at Sofia’s and Levi’s confused reaction. ‘Oh, you meant the children! Leapers, lepers – I thought you meant the Lazars!’
‘All your knights are lepers?’ Sofia said in disbelief.
‘Yes indeed – but as I said, one has to make a special effort to catch it. The Lazars are very careful; they have their own baths and laundries. They’re as jealous of their disease as the rest of us are disgusted by it.’
‘If it’s not so contagious, how do they all come to have it?’
The queen’s smile thinned at Sofia’s question. ‘Etrurians never understand that holding a kingdom together in this land entails sacrifice. We are surrounded by a people who dream of pushing us into the sea. My ancestors devised a means to push back. The Ebionites dug up the old name of Sicarii to stupefy us with terror, so we responded in kind. The Sicarii consider themselves the only pure Ebionites. They are hypersensitive about cleanliness, so touching the dead is anathema to them. For such an enemy, lepers are the perfect foil.’
The queen threw herself onto a couch and took some grapes from one of the silent servants holding trays of fruit and sweetmeats. ‘But never mind that. Come, let me admire you, Contessa. Now: is that not a more becoming costume for you? And I love how you have made it your own. If any of my ladies were so pretty, I would allow them not to wear a veil too. Let the world see you; why not?’ The queen’s retinue’s obligatory tittering had a dangerous edge that reminded Sofia of the circling dogs in the desert.
Levi was eager to discuss the Etrurian situation, but the queen mocked his haste. ‘This is not Etruria, Podesta. There is nothing but time in Akka. I insist you allow yourselves to fully recuperate before we even think about the future.’
Levi, seeing she was used to having her way, gracefully acquiesced, suggesting instead that he explore the walls’ perimeter. Sofia accepted the queen’s advice, that she visit the markets, out of the abrasive sun.
The listless air in the bazaar did not stir even the pale sheets overhanging the narrow passages. Sofia had grown accustomed to checking the wind’s direction by its touch on her skin and its force by the moving clouds, but here there were no clouds, and her sweating skin detected no breeze. Perhaps the air had been fresh when the first Crusaders breathed it, but it was stale now; it was the sun that reigned over this captive city, bleaching the cobbled streets the colour of old bone.
A bawling donkey shoved its way through slaves carrying baskets on their heads; black-eyed children ran between their legs. The roar of the sea echoed over the crowd’s shouting. It would be easy to get lost here, Sofia thought. In Rasenna, before she had grown heavy, she could have climbed the walls to escape, but even walking exhausted her now. The queen was right; the desert had drained her more than she had realised.
Akka was less a city than a collection of warehouses, like a magnificent multiplication of those streets in Rasenna owned by the Wool Guild. In place of the damp, mannish odour of wool was the scent of spices and luxurious silks. Most of the merchants were Ebionites, and their customers were the senior servants of Akka’s noble houses. They emulated their mistresses’ haughty manners and haggled aggressively. Every servant was shadowed by a guard who carried their shopping in one hand while the other rested on a sword, lending weight to the haggling. The Akkan women preserved their pale Norman skin with masks and veils – or faked it with ash-coloured powder; Sofia, with her bandieratoro’s tan, looked more like an Ebionite. But all the women, high or low, Ebionite or Oltremarine, wore veils.
The language sounded comprehensible at first, but Sofia found herself more and more confused. A fishmonger advertised his wares with a sign of an open book; a tavern with an egg-timer; outside a candlemaker’s shop hung a birdcage, with a skeleton perched on a swing inside. Like Akka’s language, the skeleton was a mangled composite: a falcon’s streamlined ribcage, an owl’s porous skull, the dainty wings of a swallow. The connections were illogical, perverse and arbitrary. Clearly, there had been a realignment of meaning, and everyone but Sofia understood.
The street corners had niches like those found in Rasenna – but the statues within depicted a skeletal maiden in royal apparel instead of a generously smiling donna. Stacked below the niches were faded shards of plaster – gothic noses, broken lips and empty eyes that stared for ever. Sofia avoided looking at the shattered death masks; Akkans paused only to spit on them.
No one paid her much attention either, and when they did deign to notice her, they simply cried, ‘Move!’ If she hesitated, overzealous guards pushed her aside. After it happened once too often, Sofia pushed back, and sent a well-dressed elderly woman tumbling into a fruit stand. The lady’s red-faced guard quickly stepped in, shouting, ‘Ebionite whore!’
When Sofia grabbed his beard he grunted in surprise and reached for her face. Sofia tilted back, grabbed his thumb and, holding it, turned in a circle, at the end of which he was on his knees and Sofia behind him. She rammed her knee between his shoulder blades and he fell face-first to the ground.
The sympathies of the staring crowd were obvious and she quickly backed away, followed by a barrage of hurled insults and fruit. The guard picked himself up, even redder now, and started after her, with the crowd behind him.
In rising panic, Sofia turned a corner which led to an intersection: one path on the left was a dark tunnel leading downhill, the other led up – up, Sofia reasoned, to the palace. She had just turned right when a man stepped out of the shadows of the dark tunnel and called, ‘Contessa?’
Sofia was ready to fight, then she recognised the voice. ‘Fulk!’
‘This way.’ Fulk might be Grand Master of the Queen’s Guard, but his rank would not slow a mob in pursuit of what they imagined to be an uppity Ebionite whore. He led her through the dark alley to a sloped street which ran red with a stinking stream of blood. The stalls on either side were hung with the skinne
d carcases of lambs and calves and imbecilic-looking goat heads lazily attended by swarms of blood-drunk flies.
‘Nobody comes this way if they can avoid it,’ Fulk said. ‘What happened?’
‘He called me a whore,’ Sofia said.
‘And?’
‘That’s not sufficient explanation?’
‘Well, I’m not surprised – you’re not wearing a veil. None of the queen’s retinue warned you?’
‘It was the queen who suggested I go out.’
‘Huh,’ Fulk said, and quickened his pace.
Sofia sensed his annoyance. ‘I wanted to thank you for saving Levi yesterday.’
‘That was my duty,’ he snapped, then, more gently, ‘It requires no thanks.’
‘And this?’
‘My pleasure. We’ll have to go the long way back to the palace, I’m afraid.’
‘That’s all right. Is all the tour this scenic?’ she asked, swatting away the flies.
The Lazars protected Akka, but the citadel was the type one saw only in garrisoned towns: a thick-walled fortress built to separate the population from the soldiers. The main part was a tall hexagonal building standing on a forest of thick pillars, and beyond these pillars were several dark but airy chambers used for storage. The largest was set aside for Lazar training, and they spent an hour there watching the men spar under the seneschal’s instructions. Ignoring Sofia, Basilius asked Fulk if he’d care to go a few rounds. It was an intense exhibition, though Fulk was the superior fighter. Throughout it and afterwards, he kept the blank mask of his helmet down; only the redness about his eyes and the huskiness of his voice hinted at the corruption beneath. Though the chamber was cold and sparse, Sofia felt at home for the first time since she’d arrived in Akka.
Fulk was obviously proud of his men’s prowess. ‘Akka would perish without us. The Radinate may have been shattered, but the tribes remain.’
