A Place Called Armageddon (67 page)

sipahi
– armoured cavalryman

solak
– archer of the guard

stauroma
– stockade

Switzer – Swiss soldier

tavla/tavli
– backgammon

trireme – Turkish vessel with three rows of oars

tug – horsetail war standard

tugra
– inscribed symbol, brand or seal

ulica
– Korculan street

vizier – high official

xebec – ship of the eastern Mediterranean

yaya
– peasant recruits

AUTHOR’S NOTE

For me to write, a sense of place is vital. Unless I have been, there exists a chasm that imagination, however much I prize it, cannot fill.

This has never been more true than in this book.

I was fortunate to go to Istanbul twice, in three years. The first time, in April 2007, I was in Romania, researching my novel
Vlad: The Last Confession
. Istanbul was a short plane hop across the edge of the Black Sea.

This novel was not even a nag in my brain then. Though I am always interested in battles, and I visited the Theodosian walls, it was the post-conquest and modern city that captivated me. I did the full tourist thing, was suitably awed by the Hagia Sophia, the luxuriant Topkapi and dazzled by the Blue Mosque. Took my boat across the Golden Horn and up the Bosphorus. Played backgammon in alleys in Pera. Bought a rug in the grand bazaar and smoked narghile filled with apple tobacco in a place just beside it. Ate it, drank it, smoked it. Loved it … and left.

Three years later I returned, this time for a purpose besides pleasure. I was there to research my novel about the fall of Constantinople in 1453. I knew the city much better by then – from books. But I needed questions answered about the place – and especially its people. I’d already decided to tell the tale from both sides of the walls, defenders and attackers, Greek and Turk. Now I had to meet their descendants.

I have always been a lucky traveller. I think it’s because I expect good things to happen, so they usually do. In all my travels – and in some quite dodgy situations – I have always been fine … and had my knowledge expanded. It was serendipity that in this case, I’d gone to explore one of history’s truly great battles – and kept meeting warriors.

Murad Sağlam was one of the editor-translators into Turkish of my last novel,
Vlad
– which, in another example of Humphreys’ Luck, had just been published in Constantinople. (Signing copies of one of my novels in a bookshop there was one of the thrills of my life!) He very kindly took me around, to the walls, out onto the Bosphorus (I needed to feel the
anafor
, the famous chop where three waters meet, for myself). He generously shared his knowledge on all subjects, especially on Islam and his own faith and philosophy of Sufism. And he was the first of the warriors – a former member of Turkey’s national judo team.

The second fighter was Suliman. Undoubtedly ‘magnificent’, he joined me over a narghile to practise his English. And he was a national karate champion, a huge man with a smile to match. The model for many I would write about.

I was there for warriors – and for places. I wrote in
Vlad
how there is a resonance in stone, a vibration that can be picked up if you allow it to come. It did, upon the still fantastic Theodosian walls. I stood on them, gazed up at them, walked along them, sat and time-travelled upon them and wondered at the will it took to both attack and defend them. And I found a different vibe at a place I’d read about that was not on the tourist’s beaten path: the tiny church of St Maria of the Mongols. It was hard to locate, tucked away in the working-class neighbourhood and steep, narrow roads of Fener. Somehow my publishers found it. It was locked. But twenty bucks to the caretaker opened it and bought us some time in its whitewashed vaults, before its gilded ikons. It had survived the fall, was still a church, a living echo of Byzantine Constantinople. How it was spared the sacking that destroyed so many intrigued, and its beauty inspired. I knew I’d have to write about it, make it central to my characters’ lives. So I did.

What I gained most from this second, targeted, still too brief visit was a sense of the people. I talked with citizens, from warriors to publishers to concierges. With a man I’d met over a pipe before, the gentle philosopher Akay, disciple of Omar Khayyam. I soon realised that my ambitions had shifted. If I’d ever conceived this as a story between good guys and bad, between gallant, outnumbered Christian defenders and hordes of fanatical Muslims, that attitude swiftly changed. The people I talked to had ancestors who had fought either side of the walls. And they were united now in their love of what they’d fought for. My attitude even changed towards Mehmet, ‘the Conqueror’, whom I’d depicted as so evil in
Vlad
. He was still prone to blinding rage, as the chronicles tell, but he grew in my story from selfish youth to a man who was fighting for something other than pure self-glory. For a cause. For a history. For a most fabulous place.

There is one man whom I have not yet mentioned, who had a huge effect on the writing of this book, and to whom it is dedicated – Mr Allan Eastman. Allan optioned my first novel,
The French Executioner
, and most generously invited me to write the screenplay of it with him in Dubrovnik in the summer of 2002. He still lives close to that (other) fabulous city, hence the part of the tale from there; and from Korcula, whose curving/straight alleys – and the choice they presented to a fleeing man – I was always determined to get into a novel!

Both times I went to Istanbul I was in his company and benefited hugely from his advice. Allan is a film-maker, a history buff, a time-traveller, a lover of life, a warrior too. We talked and talked the battle, standing in the very places where it happened, sharing the resonances that came from the stones. Over pipes, apple tea and bottles of raki, his director’s visual eye pointed out details I wouldn’t have noted, while his sense of story, of character, of driving narrative helped to shape mine.

And when we were attacked by Turks upon those walls, he helped me drive them off!

Kinda.

What happened was this. We were trying to walk a pretty deteriorated part of the walls, not far from the Golden Gate. There was waste ground behind, some run-down houses across the way. Suddenly, a pack of kids were running across, about ten of them, the eldest maybe twelve. They were in school uniform and they were demanding first cigarettes, then cash.

They were young, but we were seriously outnumbered, as the defenders had been in 1453. They blocked our way. With hands raised and smiling, we pushed through. They muttered but didn’t lay hands on us – until I felt what could have been a shove in my back. I turned, glared, retreated. We made the road and safety. It was only later, back at the hotel, when I was emptying my backpack, that I realised what the ‘shove’ was – when a lump of jagged masonry fell out. The boy had thrown a rock at me. Not only that – it was a piece of the fabled wall. Had probably been created by his ancestors’ cannon balls striking the stones in 1453. My backpack had been open and he’d lobbed it in.

I had taken Turkish fire upon the Theodosian walls!

The lump sits on my desk as I write this. It always makes me smile.

There are so many people to thank in the creation of a novel. Briefly, and in no order of importance … John Waller, my fight mentor at drama school years ago, retired Director of Interpretations at the Royal Armouries, Leeds, who knows more about medieval weaponry and life than probably any man on the planet and who kindly showed me how to
shoot
(‘For Chrissake, don’t say “Fire!”’) a crossbow one afternoon in his garden in North Yorkshire. My Turkish publisher, Tahir Malkoç, who took me to the walls when the conquest ceremony was on – for I’d timed my visit for 29 May, the anniversary of the fall. His assistant editor, Celen Çalik, and the aforementioned warrior Murad Sağlam, for their tour guiding, the book signing … and all that raki after it! Hasmet Konsiz, now living in Vancouver, a poet who shared his poetic visions of the city of his birth. My wife, Aletha, always acute with her advice and who let me wander off to be attacked by Turks! While my six-year-old son, Reith, helped me make a new slingshot when my old one fell apart and inspired so much of the father–son stuff in the novel. And also my tabby cat, Dickon, who has the ‘M’ on his forehead and so inspired Ulvikul.

There’s my agent, Simon Trewin at United Agents who somehow keeps my career from careening! And my team at Orion is extraordinary. Rachel Leyshon, who always observes kindly and keenly; Jade Chandler, who has a sharp eye for the art of editing, for character, structure … and the odd excess (I think she may have kept me out of the Bad Sex Writing Awards!). And of course, and ultimately, the man who commissioned the book and guided it all the way with his shrewd notes and bolstering enthusiasm, my editor, Jon Wood. Behind these talents lies an array of others, in design, marketing, publicity and management, too numerous to name in an author’s note. You know who you are and I thank you.

I have named the many great sources in the bibliography that follows. But if I had to single out one influence beyond words and people it would have to be, again, the city itself. If Gregoras is right – that ‘a room with a good view is a surer possession than virtue’ – then perhaps one day I’ll trade in my few virtues and seek one there. To spend the hours watching the sun run down the line of the Bosphorus, gilding the pink-petalled Judas trees, shining on the domes and monuments, on the crumbled walls … and on the people, descendants of both Greek and Turk, as the laughing dove calls.

C.C. Humphreys

July 2011

BIBLIOGRAPHY

My bookshelves sag with books about the siege and fall of Constantinople, and the peoples who fought it. My brain is filled with images from so many great websites I cannot begin to list them.

Perhaps the single biggest influence was the spectacularly detailed
The Destruction of the Greek Empire and the Story of the Capture of Constantinople by the Turks
. It was written by Edwin Pears and published in 1908. This man spent years in research, both at the city and in the libraries of England. He compares and contrasts the various ‘eyewitness’ accounts to reach likely conclusions, and he lays out the ground brilliantly – completely exposing, for example, the misnaming of the ‘civil’ St Romanus gate, which the Turks still believe was the one referred to and where the city finally fell! (He lays out why this is not so in exhaustive detail, and you only have to walk the walls and see the destruction to know that the military gate of St Romanus is about half a mile over!) If he suffers a little from the prejudices of the time against the ‘infidel’ (he was a Knight of the Greek Order of the Saviour, after all!), he is still generous as to their ingenuity and courage. His was my bible and I could not have written my book without his.

I skimmed both Runciman and Crowley (see opposite), but knew I could not refer back too deeply – their writing is so good, I would have been tempted to borrow!

Here, then, is a by no-means-complete list:

THE SIEGE

The Destruction of the Greek Empire and the Story of the Capture of Constantinople by the Turks
: Edwin Pears

Constantinople
: Roger Crowley

The Fall of Constantinople
: Steven Runciman

Constantinople 1453
: David Nicolle

GENERAL HISTORY

Byzantium
: John Julius Norwich

Forgotten Power – Byzantium
: Roger Michael Keen

The Late Byzantine Army
: Mark C. Bartusis

The Janissaries
: Godfrey Goodwin

The Mirror of Alchemy
: Gareth Roberts

ISTANBUL/CONSTANTINOPLE

Istanbul – Imperial City
: John Freely

Istanbul – The Collected Traveler
: edited by Barrie Kerper

WEAPONS

Medieval Combat
: Hans Talhoffer

Medieval Arms and Armour
: J.H. Hefner-Alteneck

FAITH

The Orthodox Bible

The Holy Qur’an

Eyewitness Islam
: Philip Wilkinson

AN ORION EBOOK

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Orion Books.
This ebook first published in 2011 by Orion Books.
Copyright © Chris Humphreys 2011

The right of Chris Humphreys to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.