A Place Called Armageddon (40 page)

She fought for her footing, won, propelling herself off the body. ‘Thakos!’ she screamed again, praying her saviour that he was upright, beseeching the mother Maria to protect another’s son, to return him to her.

Her prayers were answered. The tide that had ripped them apart flung them together again. His foot was trapped in someone else’s fall, he was crying out as another tripped on his twisted leg, falling towards her. She caught him and, with a strength she did not know she possessed, wrenched him clear.

‘My foot,’ he wailed, and she held him up, looked around. There were three roads that led south from the square, and she could see that the main one, the one they’d come up, was blocked with the hordes trying to force their way through. They were closer to one that seemed to be letting some people run. An arm under his, she half carried, half dragged him towards it. Bodies bunching, sticking, a huge shove, the sound of limbs cracking and they went through with the surge, vaulting some of the bodies that rolled there, stepping over others. People ceased screaming, to run faster. She heard the hooves behind her, but her son could not run, so she cut sideways, beneath the flailing arms of cursing men, and stepped into the doorway of a shop.

Cavalrymen clattered by, interspersed with the fleeing crowd. She heard the steadier march of shod boots on stone, stole a glance back. Down the alley marched the halberdiers, beating the fallen and any who still stood nearby with the butt ends of their weapons.

‘Can you run?’ she whispered. But Thakos just shook his head, flicking tears onto her dress.

She hesitated … and then a voice spoke from behind her, through a grille in the door she only then noticed. ‘Is there anyone near you?’ came the whisper.

Sofia looked around. ‘No,’ she replied.

Bolts were shot, a latch lifted. ‘Swiftly,’ the voice said softly.

She shoved Thakos ahead of her, followed into the gloom. The door was slammed shut, quickly locked again. At first she sensed, rather than saw, shapes crowded there. Gradually the little light from grille and shuttered windows revealed a half-dozen people, mainly women. Some stood; some were collapsed onto the floor; some sobbed; some stared ahead.

‘Welcome to my house. Remain until it is safe,’ came the same voice from behind her.

She turned. An old Jew stood by the door, long grey-black locks hanging down his face, a cap in the centre of his head. ‘Thank you,
kyr
,’ she said. ‘Thank you for saving me and my son.’

He smiled, nodded, turned back to look again through the grille. She bent to Thakos, crying on the floor, clutching his ankle. Gently she parted his fingers, looked, raised the foot. It was swollen already, sprained, she thought, but not broken. Clutching her son to her, she tilted her head, listened to the fading cries from the street, and prayed again for her daughter’s deliverance.

It took a while for the cries to die away entirely. A while longer before the Jew threw back the bolts and cautiously looked outside. He stepped back in, nodded. ‘I think it is safe,’ he said, ‘but you can all remain longer if you will.’

Some left, passing through the door without saying a word. Some stayed. Sofia could not. Helping Thakos to rise, she moved to the entrance. ‘Thank you,
kyr
,’ she said. ‘You have saved us.’

The man shrugged, then looked down at Thakos’s swollen ankle. ‘Here,’ he said, reaching behind the open door, picking up a walking stick there. He offered it to Thakos, who took it, stood on his own.

‘Thank you again,’ Sofia said.

‘I have a grandson out there,’ he said, nodding to the street. ‘I hope someone, somewhere is perhaps giving him a stick.’

They left. She had no thought but to go home, leave Thakos there, send for her husband, begin the search for her daughter. Where was Gregoras? She had not seen him since the day before the failed assault on the Turkish fleet, though her husband had said he had survived it. Perhaps he could help, him and his mercenary comrades. But how to find him?

Mind churning along with her guts, she went as swiftly as her hobbling son would allow through streets that bore the scars of riot. There were bodies surrounded by bunches of gawkers, patches of blood on the stones. But they passed through these streets fast enough into others that bore no trace of what had happened. Wine stores were open, and men were drinking. Shops were selling a meagre supply of goods. In one square there was even a bread stall, a large but orderly queue before it. When Thakos could no longer walk swiftly enough, she found the strength to lift him onto her back.

She prayed unceasingly to keep the terror at bay until she was able to do something about it. And then all her terrors were swept away, as she rounded the corner onto her own street, by an angry cry.

‘Where have you been, Mama?’ Minerva was rising from the doorstep, on which she proceeded to stamp. ‘I am hungry and I want my bread.’

Strangely, the last piece of bread from the Forum of the Bull was still tucked into Sofia’s dress. But before she could hand it over, she half squashed it by pressing her daughter hard against her. Minerva, looking over her mother’s shoulder at Thakos on the ground, stuck out her tongue.

‘So it was achieved,
basileus
, as you commanded.’

Theon bowed, stepped back. He had given his report bluntly, like a soldier, reining in his desire to elaborate. He had not removed any of the dust from his armour, the muck that had kicked up from hooves. In fact, he had decided he did not look quite dirtied enough and had added a little more from the stables below.

His words, his demeanour, had their effect. ‘You have done well, Theon Lascaris,’ Constantine said. ‘Twenty dead and others with cracked limbs to be displayed through the streets will be a good example. The mob will not rise again.’

‘And yet it might, lord.’ The voice came on a wheeze from the aged adviser, George Sphrantzes. ‘People who are always hungry, who either fight upon the walls by day, or spend the nights repairing them, who sleep little and eat less, will resent us of the noble class, those who have, perhaps, more than they and show it.’ He gestured to his own ample belly. ‘The Holy Father knows that we have few enough citizens to defend our own. And if these despair, lose all hope, how long may we survive?’

‘I am everywhere, showing myself. And I sleep less and eat as little as any man in the city, I’d wager.’

Sphrantzes raised his hands against his master’s fierce tone. ‘I know this, lord. But people who are hungry are not apt to remember anything but empty bellies for long.’

Constantine sighed, running fingers through his greying hair. ‘You are right, as ever, old friend. We must take action.’ He looked up at a sharp report, a dull thud that caused dust to float down from the ceiling. ‘We must address their resentment. We must husband our resources, make sure they are distributed equitably … and show that all defenders of Constantinople are the same.’ He turned to another man beside him. ‘Megas Doux, will you take charge of a committee of relief?’

‘I?’ The tall, grey-templed Loukas Notaras mustered all the disdain he could into the single syllable. ‘I, act as a broker to the mob? What do I know of tallies and measures of corn?’

‘We need a name, Loukas. You are the second man in the city. Sphrantzes and Lascaris will organise everything. But you will sign your name to it, and appear before the people to distribute what is collected.’

Notaras looked as if he was about to reply harshly, rudely again. But Theon, watching him closely, saw the words withheld, the light of cunning in the eye. The
megas doux
was ever seeking to advance himself further. All knew he had always had designs upon the purple itself. And all could see – save perhaps Constantine, who, Theon had learned, was not attuned to all the subtleties of rule – that Notaras was being given a gift here. If, one day, he aspired to be more than
megas doux
, he would need the mob behind him, however much he despised it. The rabble of Constantinople had placed more than one emperor on the throne before – and torn others down.

The tall man folded his height into a low bow. ‘As the
basileus
commands,’ he said.

Constantine stared at him a moment, before turning to the two churchmen on his other side. ‘Archbishop Leonard. Cardinal Isidore. You shall aid the
megas doux
, for it is to the Church we must go for the funds we need now. And we will begin with the heads of all the holy houses, the monasteries and nunneries of the city. I will approach them and personally seek donations. We will need gold to buy the grain in the foreigners’ warehouses.’ He raised a hand at the murmur that rose. ‘Yes, buy. They are our friends and we depend on them for their arms, for their support. But they are merchants too. Do not fear.’ He smiled, briefly. ‘I know how to haggle, and will get a good price. Once the grain is ours, and the bakeries organised, we will produce a regular supply and distribute it fairly – and free. Yes?’ He looked around, received the nods, continued, ‘And what else was said here?’ He paused again, pinched between his eyes.

Theon wondered when his emperor had last slept a night through. Back in the Morea, he suspected.

Constantine looked up. ‘We were speaking of resentment and despair, were we not? How it saps the will of men to do what must be done. The first … well, I can see how resentment would be fired by the sight of well-fed nobles and churchmen not doing their share for the defence. Examples must be set.’ He turned again to Leonard and Isidore. ‘We have a large body of men in this city who perhaps are not doing enough. The monks. When we speak to the abbots about gold, we will also talk about manpower. Let the monks become the main repairers of the walls the Turks knock down.’

‘Would they not be better engaged, majesty,’ Archbishop Leonard said, his tone cool, ‘in moving among the people and urging them to pray correctly to the Holy Catholic Church and its father in Rome? To come to the cathedrals and beseech God for deliverance and not to avoid them as if they were houses of contagion?’

Constantine sighed. ‘I think, if we are trying to reduce resentment, we will not do it by coercing people to pray in a way alien to them.’ He raised his hand against the churchman’s interruption. ‘I have done all I can in that regard, for now. Let us address it again in time of peace, after our victory. For now, all our concern must be to secure that.’ He turned away from the prelates. ‘I think that our noble families must also be seen to be more active. My own dear sister went to the walls one night with her ladies and helped repair a breach. It inspired all who witnessed it. Perhaps some more of your families could do the same?’

Theon found himself nodding, along with other noblemen there. Unlike most of theirs, he thought, my wife will consider it her duty and be the first to go. Her ability to sacrifice herself had always irritated him.

‘And now, as to despair?’ Constantine went to the window. From it he could just see a section of the Horn, and Theon knew what he would be looking at there – the bridge that the Turks, in command of the waters now, were building. When it reached the city shore, close to the palace, they would be able to pour fresh men across it and assault the walls there too. The way they built, it would not take them long. ‘We need a message of hope,’ Constantine said without turning round. ‘And since no vessel has brought one since our Genoese heroes broke through, it is time to go out and seek it.’ He turned back, looked at his adviser, Sphrantzes. ‘Let a fast vessel be prepared, crewed with able men and dispatched in dead of night and under Turkish colours. Let it seek the Venetian fleet that was ordered dispatched three months since. If they do not meet them in the Archipelago, let them venture as far as Euboea. And if they do not encounter them, let them return and tell us so … and we will find ways to manage our despair with knowledge and prayer.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I must sleep, my friends. Try, anyway. Let my orders be performed. And let us meet here early on the morrow so we can discuss them further.’

He lifted his hand, saluted them, turned away. They were dismissed. Though Theon was tired too, he knew he would get little sleep this night. Sphrantzes was already beckoning him into an antechamber, Notaras stalking ahead. He would need his abacus, he was sure, a weapon he wielded more assuredly than the sword he had drawn that day. Yet both were building his influence in the court. If they survived, he would have a new status in the city. And then …

‘Give me mine,’ he murmured, with a smile.

–
TWENTY-SIX
–

Hades

16 May: fortieth day of the siege

He had fought at the Blachernae palace most days since his near drowning, thought he knew its every stone and stairwell. Yet when Gregoras and his company of guardsmen, in that darkest hour before the dawn, were sent to seek out the Scotsman, and even though he was given directions as to how to discover him, still he wandered the length of the inner wall, calling out, ‘Grant! Grant! Where are you, man?’ and, for the longest time, heard no reply.

Then he got one, of a kind. He was lifting his torch high and peering again at what appeared to be just another ruined flight of stairs leading down, its crumbled steps filled with broken chunks of masonry, when there came an explosion, not another from the enemy beyond the walls, no cannon shot, but from the dark depths he stared into. It was preceded by, and accompanied by, a high-pitched and rising shriek of ‘No, no, NO!’ Then some portal was flung back below, smoke gushed forth and, a moment later, he’d found his man as John Grant came running up the steps.

On fire.

‘St Peter take the Pope in the arse,’ the Scot screamed, beating at his flaming clothes. ‘Holy St Katherine, feast upon my …’

Gregoras had his cloak unclasped and swirling in a moment. He engulfed his friend, threw him to the ground, threw himself atop him. The curses – saints and obscene acts quite ingeniously combined – still came muffled from within the heavy wool, along with the scent of singed flesh. When the thrashing and the cursing finally stopped, Gregoras slowly pulled back the top of the cloak.