A Place Called Armageddon (19 page)

Nearly every man crossed himself, murmured amen. After a moment, in a quieter voice, Giustiniani went on. ‘Since my arrival three weeks ago, and in the company of our exalted sovereign, I have studied the rolls of our forces. I have walked the walls – these we stand upon and those that line the shores of the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara – to see how we should disperse those forces. Now each of you who are not native to the empire – you of Venice and Genoa, of Crete and Chios, of Spain and Catalonia – are used to being only under your own command, going where you will, fighting for as long or as little as you think fit. Yet since we are now so united, in faith and fervour for our cause, I ask that you consider these dispositions, and hold your allotted place as long as a single comrade, of whatever nation, holds the one next to you. Let no man fail his neighbour.’

He turned. Enzo and Amir were standing behind him, each at one end of a large cloth pinned to the stones of the inner wall. Reaching, they pulled it down.

Gregoras and Grant, like everyone else, stepped forward for a better view. Etched in chalk was the unmistakable dog’s-head shape of Constantinople. The land walls, against which it was drawn, were a vivid red slash down the neck. Small banners marked different sections, some containing symbols, others names. Both were too small for even Gregoras’s keen eyes, but not for those who crowded closer. Once read, they provoked many oaths and exclamations, and a rising babble of dissent.

One voice was clear above the others. ‘Why are all these Greek names by the harbours of the Golden Horn?’ the Venetian
baillie
Minotto called out. ‘While the Venetians are here and here and here.’ He jabbed his finger at various points. ‘Why do you separate sailors from their ships?’

A Genoan voice came from the thick of that city’s merchants. ‘Isn’t it obvious? To stop those sailors sailing away at the first whistle of Turkish shot.’

‘You lie!’ The body of Venetians surged, shouting, around their leader, who stepped toward the Genoans. Hands gripped daggers. ‘And you are all safe because of your colony of Galata just across the Horn,’ someone cried. ‘You are the ones who will scuttle for your homes when the first sword is drawn.’

The babble became a roar. Men stepped closer, as Giustiniani shouted in vain … until the bugle’s blast sounded again.

‘Enough!’

It was Constantine who called, his cultured voice hoarse with use. He stepped forward with arms raised, and men turned to listen to the emperor. ‘Enough, lords, gentlemen, citizens of mighty Genoa and proud Venice. Remember where your enemy is.’ He threw his arm back behind him. ‘There, the other side of the walls. Not within them. There!’ The hubbub died a little, and he continued in a softer voice. ‘This is a preliminary plan only, and we will listen to all your concerns. If some Venetians want to stay with their ships, why would we object? You have all sworn to stay and fight, and the oaths of such men are their honour and so are unbreakable.’ His gaze swept over the crowd, his voice grew stronger. ‘But do you not see why we have suggested this disposition? It is
because
of Venice’s honour. You can do good service at the harbours, sure. But the main fight will not be there. It will be here.’ He turned, placed his palm at the top end of the dog’s neck, against the red painted lines. ‘Here would stand the intrepid Bocciardi brothers of your city, here where the walls are thought vulnerable. In the lion’s mouth.’

Three men, almost identical behind their thick beards, swept off their hats and bowed. ‘We will die there to protect it,’ they declared in chorus.

‘I know you will,’ Constantine said, smiling. ‘But there is a more dangerous spot even than that.’ He ran his hand up the red line, stopping where it seemed to bulge inwards. ‘For here is my palace of Blachernae – and there is only one man I thought to ask to defend it.’ His eyes sought and found that man. ‘Will you yourself, Minotto,
baillie
of Venice, protect my home?’

The Venetian ran a hand through his coiffed hair, then bowed. ‘It is a great honour, majesty, and I thank you.’ His dark face flushed. ‘And, as leader of the men of Venice, I declare that not one of our number shall desert you, while there is life in your body and while the banners of Constantinople fly.’ He turned to glare at his fellow countrymen. ‘Not one!’

A huge cheer came. Constantine waited for it to die down, and in a quieter voice went on, ‘And I will stand sometimes here at my palace, or here at the gate of Charisius, that some call Adrianople. Wherever the action is hottest,’ he said, a slight smile coming, ‘for since my winters in the mountains of the Morea, I have always craved the heat.’

There was some laughter. Hands were withdrawn from hilts, as men peered closer at chalked lines and words.

‘And have you a place of honour for an old servant, sire?’

The man who said this was as old as Theodore. But he did not look half as vigorous: gangly, stooped, rain running from the rim of an old-fashioned steel helm like water from battered eaves. His voice piped high, and though one hand rested on the basket hilt of a sword, the other was more heavily supported by a servant’s shoulder to his right.

‘Ah, my good Don Francisco de Toledo.’ Constantine smiled. ‘Do you not wish to wield the famed steel of your city beside your compatriots?’ He gestured to a group of sunburned men to the Spaniard’s left.

‘My liege,’ replied the don, bowing slightly, ‘if you are referring to the detachment from Catalonia, then no. Castilians and Catalans make the rivals of Venice and Genoa look like children, squabbling over dice.’

No one was quite sure who was the most insulted. Before they could decide, Constantine stepped forward and offered the old man an arm. ‘How would you like to fight beside me, Don Francisco? I could use Toledo steel to guard my back.’

The Castilian unfolded himself from his stoop. ‘An honour to me and my country, sire.’

As the emperor led the don to a barrel beside the wall, Girolamo Minotto stepped away from it. ‘I have a question, Giovanni Giustiniani Longo,’ he called. ‘Where will you be? You and your seven hundred men? I do not see your name in chalk. Are you leaving us so soon?’

The Commander, who had stepped back when Constantine spoke, laughed as he advanced again. ‘We will go wherever we are most required. But I suspect we shall be here, or close. Between the palace and this, the Fifth Military gate.’ Amir came and whispered in his ear. Giustiniani nodded, then raised his voice again. ‘Take note of this, all of you. I am reminded that it is a custom of war here to name the military gates after their nearest civilian one. That is a confusion to me, and battle is confusing enough.’ He shook his head, continued. ‘I am here not to jiggle with names but to fight. So know that this gate we stand before will henceforth be known only as St Romanus. When I summon urgent reinforcements, let them not go to the wrong one.’

He gestured at the tower atop the gate. ‘Now. I have studied the land, spoken to men who withstood Murad’s siege in ’22. And I know the Turk. He will attack the length of the walls. He will raid the shoreline. But his cannon will mostly pound here. His finest troops will attack here. So I will be here.’

A murmur arose again. Men crowded ever closer to the wall and its chalk. One of the brothers, whom Gregoras had heard named Bocciardi, was having a loudly whispered debate with his siblings. At last he threw a restraining arm off himself and turned. ‘There are many Italian names here,’ he called. ‘Mainly from my own city of Venice, a few less from Genoa …’ his voice rose over the dispute he’d provoked, ‘others from the Papal States, from Tuscany, Sicily, Umbria. But where are the Greek names? I see hardly any. This
is
a Greek city, is it not?’

Others voices loudly joined the call. Constantine raised his hands. ‘You see only some names – Loukas Notaras, the
megas doux
, for example – because these are the men we know are in the city. Others are on embassy or soldiering beyond our walls. When they return, they will command our imperial forces …’ He broke off, looking suddenly above the heads of the throng, just to Gregoras’s left. ‘And here are the men who will be able to tell us what those forces are! Come forward, old friends. Come.’

Gregoras looked. The first man to come through the gate masked the other, and that first was George Sphrantzes, court historian and friend to emperors past. He cleared … and Gregoras saw the man he’d concealed.

Theon Lascaris.

Gregoras’s first thought was his knife. His hand dropped onto the hilt, but instead of drawing it, he swung away, turning his head to the north. When he glanced back, his brother had gone past, eyes fixed on the beckoning Constantine.

He let go of his knife. Theon, he thought, but the name sounding in his head did not bring with it the clear, bright hatred it had brought for so long. That had become muddied by Sofia’s revelation the day before – that beside Theon, raised as his own, would be Gregoras’s son

My son. Mine! He thought of him now, as he had not thought of him till this moment, too stunned to consider, as if from a mace blow to his helmet. What does he look like? he wondered suddenly. And then: does he have my mother’s laugh?

He tried to focus again on the group of men before him. The aged Sphrantzes had drawn Constantine aside to whisper in his ear, and Gregoras watched as such colour as there was fled the emperor’s face. He beckoned Giustiniani, who stooped to hear and go pale in his turn. Questions were being asked that Gregoras could not hear. But he could hear the words that came from beside him, though he had not heard the approach of the man who spoke them.

‘I know who you are,’ came the whisper. Fingers tightened on his arm. ‘And I had to feel that you were alive and not a ghost.’

Gregoras turned. It was a rare man who could take him unawares. But Theodore of Karystenos had always been a rare man.

Gregoras looked up into watery grey eyes. Saw no danger in them, no threat that the traitor and exile was about to be unmasked. Only the same amusement that had ever been there, mixed now with curiosity. ‘How did you know me, master?’

‘By the way you stand, my young man. Even when you wielded a bow, and despite the years I spent trying to beat it out of you, you always stood that way, ever forward, like a heron about to strike. Once I’d finished calling on the Virgin to protect me from ghosts and demons, once you did not vanish into stone or rise into the air spouting flame, I had to know for sure.’ Fingers like small iron bars kneaded Gregoras’s forearm. ‘You are with these Genoans?’

‘I am. I sought refuge in their company. Have fought with them on a dozen ventures.’

‘Fought?’ His hand settled again on Gregoras’s arm, higher up. ‘But not with the bow, certain. You have the muscles of a girl.’

Gregoras smiled. ‘They use the crossbow.’

Theodore spat. ‘An assassin’s weapon! And you, an archer of the guard, one of the elite! What’s become of you, boy?’

His smile vanished. ‘Treason and exile, master. One must make one’s way as one can.’

Sadness replaced the humour in the old man’s eyes. ‘I know. I know,’ he said, gently shaking the arm he held. He stepped closer, his voice lowering further. ‘You have to know, Gregoras, that none of your comrades believed … that
I
did not believe in your villainy. No one who truly knew you did. But when those bastard Turks brushed aside our wall in the Morea as if it were gossamer, and some poured through that sally port that was left ajar, well …’ He shrugged. ‘Many sought to quell their despair in God’s fury, or treason. I was unconscious for three days from a sling stone to the head.’ He sighed. ‘By the time I recovered, it was too late. The first part of the sentence …’ he gestured vaguely to Gregoras’s face, ‘had been carried out. And you were gone.’

Gregoras grunted. It meant something, a little anyway, that his mentor had not thought him a traitor. But it was still too late.

Theodore continued, ‘You were unlucky, lad. Wrong place, wrong time. And the Turkish gold in your pack …’

‘I found it. In our one counterattack on the Turkish camp. I came back through that sally port and I locked it. Locked it!’ Gregoras was a little startled by his heat. He thought he’d cooled it in a thousand wineskins.

‘I am sure.’ The older man patted his arm, looked away. ‘At least your brother was there. To plead for you. To save you from a worse fate.’

‘Worse?’ The heat flared higher. ‘You think there is something worse than this?’ He pressed his face out against the mask. ‘Than exile and dishonour? To be “saved” by a brother? A brother who then …’ He broke off. It was not something to discuss, even with a man who had once been a father to him.

‘My young man,’ Theodore said softly, raising his hand to the other’s shoulder.

Then his words were interrupted. Constantine was speaking. ‘I have had news I must attend to,’ the emperor declared. ‘We will meet tomorrow at the imperial palace to discuss further dispositions.’ He held a hand against the questions that were being called out. ‘All will be answered then.’

He began to move towards them at the stairwell, Giustiniani at his shoulder. ‘I must away with him,’ Theodore said. He squeezed Gregoras’s arm again, half turned away, turned back, gripping harder. ‘Why do you not come too, lad? The emperor did not believe the accusations against you any more than I did. But there was never time to reconsider them. A brief retrial. A decree issued from the palace. Your name restored to you.’ He smiled. ‘When he sees you here, returned to fight for your city …’

Gregoras shrugged the hand off his shoulder. ‘No,’ he said, with more force than he’d intended, startling the older man. He breathed deep, then spoke more softly. ‘Not now. There are … affairs I must attend to first. Leave me now and I will join you later. When the time is right.’

Theodore studied him for a long moment, then nodded. ‘Very well. But do not delay too long. If you were recognised and …’ he hesitated, ‘unmasked, it might go ill for you before we could intervene. There are many in the city who, as before, seek vengeance to assuage their terror.’

‘I will be careful. And I will come soon.’