A Place Called Armageddon (5 page)

‘God is our protection – or so you always tell me, wife. Your mother, bless her memory, is dead. And the funds the embassy left with me have nearly run out. I need the means to bribe one more minor official here. You have them round your neck, in gold and lapis.’ In the mirror he returned the gaze she gave him. ‘And what’s left might buy your passage home.’

She knew he could have just taken it. She could not have denied him, as she could not have denied him that morning. But she also knew he was using her as his whetstone still. He would spend his day trying to win arguments. He might as well begin with her.

She lifted the gold chain from round her neck, kissed the amulet once, and laid it on the table. Then she continued to the bedroom, closing the door on his soft laughter.

Theon stepped through the iron grille onto the street. His bodyguards rose from beside the entrance but he did not acknowledge them. They would follow. They would defend him, if the odds were not too great. They did not exist beyond their function. And he wanted to remain for a moment in the rooms he’d left, even as he walked away from them.

He observed his sense of triumph and wondered at it. Such minor victories, scarcely worth the fight, against an opponent who barely fought back. He had given her what she asked for, when he’d been planning to send her back anyway. In return he’d taken something she loved, for which he had a slight use. He had taken her, though it probably gave him as little pleasure as she. But that was not about pleasure, he reminded himself. That he got elsewhere, and the sending away was part of it, so he could indulge himself without even the slight restraint that Sofia provided. It was not about the hope for more children – the two he barely knew back in Constantinople were proof enough to the world of his potency.

What was it, he wondered, that he had once gone to such lengths to obtain? Her beauty? He had not been immune to it, but it had not driven him. The fact that she seemed to possess a secret? Well, all people were locks and his delight was in seeking their key. He’d been disappointed to discover that hers was little more than a deep capacity for love – for God, for her city, for her children … even for him, if he’d chosen to accept it. He had not. Love blunted, it did not sharpen. He observed it, as he did everything else.

As he turned into the Piazza de Ferrari, his larger bodyguard opening a passage in the noonday crowd, he realised what the small triumph was. Heard it like the faintest echo of a greater triumph.

He hadn’t conquered Sofia. He’d conquered his brother. He’d conquered their love – observed it, taken it, severed it. It was his first real triumph in a battle that had begun in the cradle. In the womb, no doubt. He had preceded his brother by a breath and it had been the only time he had beaten him to anything. Gregoras had always been faster, stronger, near as skilled in rhetoric, far more skilled in arms. Yet who had ultimately won? Who had taken for wife the girl they’d grown up with? And where was Gregoras now? Dead, probably. Disfigured, certainly, the beauty that had come from their mother, and manifested only in the one twin, marred. Wit had triumphed over beauty. Brother over brother.

Theon chuckled, surprised that this old victory still gave him such pleasure. Far, far more than the fruits of it had given him that morning.

They’d reached the entrance to the Doge’s palace. Piero was announcing him to the gate guard. Over the hubbub of solicitors demanding entrance, Theon heard his other servant, Cassin, arguing. He turned – and saw that his man had his hand on the chest of a large Turk, whose outstretched arms spread his robes wide to show he was unarmed, whose dark brown eyes sought Theon’s.

‘Let him come,’ Theon called, and Cassin stepped back, allowing the Turk closer, but not near.

‘Peace be with you,’ the Turk said.

‘And with you and all your family, friend,’ Theon replied, the Osmanlica coming as easily as the second tongue it was for him. ‘What is your desire?’

‘Only this, most esteemed. To inform you that my master, Hamza Bey, seeks conference with you this night.’

Theon had heard of Hamza, a rising man at the new sultan’s court. He was surprised to hear he was in Genoa but kept that surprise from his face. ‘When and where?’

‘At the ninth hour of the evening, excellence. My master has taken a room for the purpose above the tavern of the Blue Boar.’

‘I know it. Tell your master I shall be honoured to meet him there.’

The messenger nodded, bowed, and was gone.

A Turk wants to meet me in a tavern, Theon thought. Perhaps the bishop I am about to bribe will take me to a brothel?

He allowed himself another chuckle. After several weeks, he now knew, almost to the ducat, what concessions the Genoese would demand for their aid. It would be very interesting to hear later what the Turk had to offer.

–
THREE
–

Rhinometus

Genoa
The same day

Gregoras ignored the mockery, the disparagement of parentage, the comparisons of his marred beauty with a donkey’s puckered arse. Another time he would have given as good as he received, traded verbal blows; triumphed too, for his years of schooling had given him thrusts that most of the illiterate mercenaries lying around the courtyard of the Black Cock tavern could not parry. But their rough jests were not ill-meant; it was their way of expressing pleasure at his return. He had fought with them in a dozen campaigns, and they appreciated his skills of war even as they winced at his wit.

Later, perhaps, he thought. Later to sit down with Half-Ear Mario or Giovanni One Thumb and compare mislaid body parts, losing himself in camaraderie and flagons of wine. First, though, he needed money, and plenty of it. For that he had to see one man.

‘Rhinometus!’ came the bellow as soon as he stepped into the room. ‘Now I know we are doomed, boys, when this beakless raven appears!’

‘Eminence.’ Gregoras bowed, sweeping off his hat with a flourish, holding the courtesy.

‘Eminent arseholes, Zoran. Where have you been? I have had messengers out for you for months now. I thought we were going to have to set forth without our talisman of ill-fortune. Rather have it beside me than levelling his crossbow at me, eh?’

Gregoras rose from his bow. Giovanni Giustiniani Longo had changed little in the year since they’d last fought together. A little greyer, a little stouter perhaps, but still the tall and vigorous figure he had followed over ship’s gunwales and through breaches, dressed as ever in his blue-black armour, the large medallion of San Pietro ever at his throat. Like most killing men, the great mercenary leader was deeply religious. Superstitious, too. Years before, in a galley fight off Crete, Gregoras had deflected a crossbow bolt that would have ripped out the Commander’s throat. The Genoan had considered him his lucky star ever since.

Gregoras extended his bow to Enzo the Sicilian and Amir the Renegade, Giustiniani’s most trusted lieutenants. The latter brought him a goblet of wine from around the table they all stood behind, muster rolls and maps scattered among the daggers and bow strings. ‘Welcome back. Allah’s blessing on you,’ he murmured.

‘And Christ’s on you,’ Gregoras replied in Arabic. He and Amir had a history of wine-fuelled religious debate all the more furious because neither of them cared much for the faiths they’d been raised in. It made him feel immediately at home, the only home he’d known since his exiling. Though if the money was good enough, perhaps that was about to change.

‘So where
have
you been, Zoran?’ Giustiniani repeated. ‘We wondered if you’d settled down with a whore, or been knifed in some Ragusan tavern by now.’ The lined brow contracted. ‘Or worse – that you’d taken a contract with those sodomite donkeys the Venetians.’

It had suited Gregoras to claim a name and a city that were not his. It was not entirely untrue either, for he had a home of sorts in the city some called Ragusa and others Dubrovnik and he was known as Zoran there. It made for fewer questions. For if they knew his real name, his birthplace …

A home, he thought. It was why he was there. Why he’d picked up his sword and his crossbow again and made the arduous journey to Genoa. His home was a hovel. But it had the best view in Ragusa, out over the Adriatic Sea. It was like the view from his childhood home, when his parents had been wealthy. He wanted to build a home just like it. But Istrian stone was expensive, as were its crafters. He needed one last campaign, for the wages and especially the booty it offered. Then he would hang his crossbow on the wall of his new home and stare at the view for ever, unmasked, unaccompanied, with no one there to pity him.

‘Venetians? Never. I care too much for my reputation – and my arse.’ The three men laughed, and he continued, ‘No, my lord, if I am going to get fucked, it may as well be by people I love. So I came to seek you out.’

‘Love? The Pope’s testicles, Zoran.’ Enzo smiled. ‘You heard we were paying double wages.’

‘Good.’ He hadn’t. Had heard nothing, because he’d stepped off a boat and come straight to the company’s tavern from the docks of Genoa; but it was excellent news. ‘Even though, as you know, I’d work for less than nothing for the pleasure of your honoured company.’ He rode over their guffaws. ‘So who do you want me to kill?’

All three replied. ‘Turks.’

‘Better. Storing up treasure in heaven with the slitting of infidel throats.’ He crossed himself, careful to do it the Roman way and not the Orthodox he’d been raised in, two fingers not three, right-left not left-right. Two of the men imitated him, one did not, and he looked at him. ‘No insult meant, Amir.’

‘None taken, uncircumcised dog.’

‘And when does this well-paid crusade begin?’

‘We sail within the week.’

Gregoras smiled. ‘Best,’ he said. ‘Then I will go fetch my gear from the whore I’ve been living with.’ It was not true, but it was what they wanted to hear. ‘I’ll sign the articles straightaway so you can pay for my wine. Till later, comrades.’ He turned to the door, then turned back. ‘Not that it matters much, your eminence, but where do we fight this time?’

‘Oh, some backwater.’ Giustiniani spun a map round. ‘See?’

There was a restrained excitement in the Commander’s eyes, in his tone, that made Gregoras, who truly did not care where he was going, who he was to kill, turn back, look down … and have his breath taken. Though he had tried to erase every aspect of the place from his mind and memory, the hound’s head of land thrusting into water was unmistakable. And it was as if a dog had come and snatched his last bite of food, for all his hopes were gone.

‘It’s always hard to tell beneath that mask,’ Giustiniani was saying. ‘And if it is true, it is as rare as a nun’s virginity. But do you know, my boys, I think we have finally shocked the Ragusan.’

Gregoras sought a quip, failed. He could not summon breath, let alone words. The home he had envisaged crumbled in his mind. The journey that had exhausted the last of his funds had been wasted.

The silence lengthened. ‘It’s Constantinople,’ Enzo said, helpfully.

‘I know what it is.’

‘And you know the Muhammadan is planning to take it.’

‘As he has for eight hundred years,’ Gregoras murmured.

‘But this time he means it.’ The Commander rested his knuckles on the table. ‘Their new sultan, Mehmet? A kid, full of piss and wind. But he fancies himself the next Alexander. Another Caesar. It’s said he’s assembling the biggest army the Turks have ever raised. And he’s already begun to take the city. Did you hear that he built a fortress here?’ Giustiniani jabbed his finger down on the map and, reluctantly, Gregoras looked. ‘See? It’s right on the water, opposite their older fort. He calls the new one “the Throat Cutter”. You can see why.’

Gregoras could. As a young man, he had often ridden on that stretch of cliff, standing in Europe and staring at Asia across the narrow sea channel the Turks called Bogaz, ‘the Throat’, and the rest of the world knew as the Bosphorus. If the Turk now had a fortress either side, he commanded one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. He could sink any ship trying to bring grain from the Black Sea into the city. He hadn’t so much cut Constantinople’s throat as closed it, preventing it from feeding.

Giustiniani spoke as if to his thoughts. ‘A Venetian captain, name of Rizzi, tried to run the gauntlet. Wouldn’t heave to when ordered. The Turks sank him with one fat ball, fished him from the waters – then shoved a stake up his arse.’ He winced. ‘Still, being Venetian, it probably wasn’t much of a hardship.’

The three men laughed. Gregoras didn’t. Looking at the place of his birth, the source of his disgrace, hearing tales of it, his mind was numbed as it never was under cannon fire or swung swords. One thing came through, and he voiced it. ‘Why … why would you go and fight for them? Who would pay you? They have no money.’

‘This very city, son,’ Giustiniani said, straightening. ‘It has been decided in the last few days.’

Gregoras raised a hand to scratch a sudden itch on his nose, dropped it fast, when he remembered there was no nose to scratch. ‘But why? Does not Genoa still have a treaty with the Turks?’

‘Aye. And we will not break it either. Even though I am a nobleman from one of the foremost families of this city, yet I will go as a leader of a rabble of Genoese mercenaries – and the odd renegade Musselman.’ He threw a punch at Amir, connected with his shoulder, the Syrian trying to smile away a painful blow.

‘The sultan will not believe that …’

‘The sultan will turn a blind eye, because it suits him to do so. If he takes Constantinople, he will still want to trade with us afterwards. If he does not – he will still want to trade with us afterwards!’ Giustiniani stabbed the map again, on the point of land opposite the city. ‘And remember, we fight for our land there too, our colony of Galata. If the Greek city falls, Galata will too.’ He grinned. ‘No, on balance, we’d rather have those cheating sodomite Greeks in Constantinople. As you’ve said, they have no money any more, no power. Less serious rivals for our trade, eh? The Turks drive too hard a bargain. Bad as Jews!’ He grinned. ‘And the Pope is now calling it a crusade, since those blaspheming Greeks have agreed to full union of their Orthodox and our true Roman Church again.’ He crossed himself once more. ‘So we serve God and our city both. Profit on earth and in heaven.’