Terror of Constantinople (54 page)

    I cut him off. ‘Your duty’, I said, ‘is to take that child back to Rome. Beyond that, you look to your own safety. We don’t know for certain it’s all up for Phocas. If it is, I’m more likely to get out safely if I’m alone. We’ll have dinner in Rome yet. I’m sure you can persuade Sveta not to poison me.’

    Martin ignored me. ‘I bought a relic of Saint Victorinus when we got back to the City,’ he said. ‘It is attested by the Holy Fathers of his own monastery. I want you to wear it when you go out on the streets. He saved you once before.’

    ‘My dear Martin,’ I said, trying not to laugh at the shrivelled finger he passed across the desk. ‘Put that thing back in its box.’

    ‘Then we shall all pray for you,’ he said.

    ‘I’m not going to my death just yet,’ I reminded him. ‘I’ll be back at dawn.’

57

After several months in the place, I’d come to take the sheer size of Constantinople for granted. Now I was put in charge of its defence, I was brought back to my first realisation. There are nearly ten miles of wall to cover. As I keep saying, the City walls are impregnable; and, as hardly a decade goes by without one of more attempts to breach them, they are always kept in excellent repair.

    My problem, though, was a shortage of men. Just about all the officers in the garrison and in the City Guard had now deserted. Phocas had caught a few and hanged them, but that didn’t solve the immediate problem. Many of the common soldiers were staying at home, and there was no way of getting them back on duty in time for the expected attack. The rest made it clear to me that they’d do their minimal duty of holding the walls, but would do nothing to endanger their own lives.

    I might be its Count. Bugger me, though, if I saw one member of the Palace Guard.

    When Priscus had been told to recruit the citizens to mount an internal defence, that had been largely to keep everyone busy and take their minds off the coming struggle. No one had seriously expected that this line of defence would be needed. Now it was the only line of defence. The Green Faction, under old General Bonosus, was looking after the Main Harbour. The Emperor had dug his younger brother out of a brothel to muster the few regular troops who remained in the City.

    As head of the City’s defences I’d spent much of the night hurrying from barricade to barricade, inspecting them and giving little speeches of encouragement. The outer barricades had been largely deserted, and I’d moved the few armed citizens who were there back to a smaller line around the central areas. Some of these obeyed. Many others, I later discovered, had gone off home.

    The only enthusiasm I found was among the university students. They had no commitment to Phocas or to anyone else, but the thought of a good fight was far more exciting than reading up for examinations. I bumped into them as I came away from the Eleutherian Harbour, where I’d been watching brightly lit ships darting about some business which the decrepit veterans assigned to my staff were unable to explain.

    ‘Have any of you read much military history?’ I asked after draining one of the wine jugs offered me. I’d paid little attention to battles myself, except in Thucydides and a few other historians, where they are integral to the text.

    ‘No,’ answered one with a piping voice – he looked about fifteen – ‘but an uncle of mine did once write a poem about Saint Sebastian. It had lots of killing in it.’

    ‘That will have to do,’ I said. ‘Now listen,’ I told the whole group. ‘I don’t doubt Heraclius will get into the City. When he does come, it will probably be from two or more directions at once. Therefore, we don’t go out of the main ring of barricades. Go outside, and we’ll be cut off in no time. I want you gathered by the Great Church when news comes of an attack. We then go together to whatever place needs additional defence. We fight together. We stay together. We don’t face the enemy at any time in open terrain. We pick them off half a dozen at a time, and preferably from behind.’

    I knew nothing yet of generalship in the regular sense, but I had led that band of ruffians on the Wessex borders with reasonable success. Defending a gigantic city with a thousand miles of streets was beyond my present abilities, but I felt some comfort in having my own group of irregulars.

    I made a literary speech about deathless glory. Then I sent everyone home to get some rest.

The Great Church was crowded when I arrived there. With bonfires to keep off the night chill, hundreds lolled on the pavements of the square outside, eating and drinking. It was hardly a merry occasion, but the drink had cheered everyone.

    Theophanes caught up with me as I was admiring myself in a shop window. He was alone.

    ‘Aelric,’ he said, puffing at the exertion of having to move quickly around the City without his chair – ‘Aelric, I want you to know that this wasn’t any of my doing. All I wanted was for you to stay in the Legation and wait on events. My juggling has not worked out as expected.’

    ‘What’s done is done,’ I said and waved dismissively. ‘But what are your plans now? Have you come to volunteer for a place at the barricades? You’re a neat hand with a dagger, as I recall.’

    He smiled grimly. ‘You don’t seem to understand the seriousness of what is happening,’ he said.

    ‘I understand perfectly well what is happening,’ I snapped. ‘As ever, I don’t understand
why
it is. Now, Theophanes, since I hardly think you’ve come here with any new revelations, I’ll simply ask what I can do for you.’

    Theophanes looked quickly around. There was no one in hearing distance. He leaned close to me.

    ‘There is a little monastery by the Pantocrator Church – it’s the one close by the old wall of Constantine,’ he said. ‘Go there if the need arises. The Fathers are all Monophysites but good people otherwise. They owe me much for the protection I’ve given them over the years. Show them this—’

    With an effort, he pulled a black ring from one of his fingers. ‘Give them this, and trust them. Once order is restored, dress as one of their own and set out for Pavia or Marseilles. So long as you don’t show your face or hair, you can easily pass as a cleric of any theological persuasion. No one ever stops a monk.

    ‘Go, and don’t ever come back to the City or to any Imperial territory.’

    I took the ring and held it up to the light. I’d noticed it outside the City, when it had been the only one not stripped from him by the barbarians. It was of heavily worn and pitted bronze.

    ‘Why are you doing this for me?’ I asked.

    ‘I do it because I can,’ came the answer. ‘If I could do more, I would.’

    ‘And what of you, Theophanes?’ I asked.

    His face closed over. ‘Be assured’, he said, ‘that Theophanes the Magnificent has his own plans for when the moment comes. Only remember that I served the Empire to the best of my abilities when I could. The Persians may overwhelm you. If not them, some other race will finish the job. It could all have been so different if only this ghastly Religion of the Son hadn’t come to divide citizen from citizen.

    ‘You’re a Westerner. Even if in Latin, you’re trapped within the circle of Greek theology. None of you – Greek, Latin, barbarian – has ever realised that Easterners don’t fundamentally care about the Son. For us, it has always been the Father and the Father alone. That isn’t just the Jews – it’s all of us.

    ‘If Constantine had only realised this, he could have united the Empire for eternity. He missed his chance. No one else after him thought to repair the mistake. Now, if it ever is repaired, it will be from without your civilisation, and to the eventual ruin of your civilisation.’

    The last thing I’d expected from Theophanes at this moment was a lecture on theology.

    ‘Will I ever learn what you and Phocas and Demetrius were up to?’ I asked.

    ‘Pray that you can ask that of His Excellency the Dispensator in Rome,’ Theophanes replied. ‘He knows all.’

    ‘Will the Emperor be joining me tonight?’ I asked.

    Theophanes laughed bitterly. ‘His Majesty is currently so drunk, he can’t hold a pen to sign the last death warrants. Pray you’ll not see him again.’

    He turned abruptly and walked away from me. Some old men squeezed into armour blocked his way at first. As he reached them, they suddenly stood back and bowed for him to pass. I watched him walk briskly across the square past the Great Church. At the far end, he turned not in the direction of the Ministry, but towards the palace.

    I watched until he was out of sight. Then I turned back to the shop window. Inside, clearly visible in the torchlight, were some beautiful shoes. One pair I was sure would fit me. I had only to smash one of the panes and reach in for them. No one would stop me.

    In the end I decided it would set a bad example. So I went home to catch up on sleep.

As the gate of the Legation swung shut behind me, I breathed a sigh of relief. The lamps were turned down but I could see that all was neat and orderly. I crossed the hall and rapped on the door to my suite.

    ‘Who’s there?’ Martin hissed from behind the heavy wood.

    ‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘I’ve come for a break from leading my army of old men and schoolboys.’

    Fully clothed, I lay on my bed. Martin sat beside me.

    ‘I went out myself earlier,’ he said. ‘I know you told me to stay inside, but I had to get out for a walk. Everyone was talking of you as a future Emperor.’

    I sat up. ‘In the name of God!’ I cried. ‘Let’s hope that doesn’t get back to any of the Imperial rivals. Besides, the last thing I want is to rule over this mob of lunatics.’

    I showed him the ring Theophanes had given me. ‘This means’, I said, ‘we all have some means of escape. You can now stay here in good conscience with the others.’

    ‘God spoke to me while you were out,’ Martin said in a voice that he might have used for reminding me of a lunch appointment with Sergius. ‘He told me you would be saved if I did my duty. He finally told me why I was spared in the Yellow Camp.’

    I lay back and stared up at the plaster vaulting. Outside my window, all remained dark. I really should try to get some rest. Before leaving me, Martin passed on some thoroughly grim news that no one else had seen fit to share with me. Just before nightfall, the chain securing the Golden Horn had been let down from the Galatan shore.

    The City was now indefensible on every side.

58

The attack started in the middle of the next morning. It was a fine day. A good south wind was blowing away the broken cloud above the City. We’d not be fighting in rain or cold. Nor, though, would it be too hot for action.

    Bathed and oiled with unusual care, I stood in my fine armour on the dome of the Great Church. From here, I had an unbroken view of the whole City and of the seas and the countryside that lay beyond.

    The smoke signals I’d arranged went up from four places at once along the land walls. They went up, and then vanished in the wind.

    ‘The Second and Fourth Military Gates,’ Martin said, pointing due west. ‘Plus, I think, the Saint Anna and Charisian Gates.’

    I doubted if there had been any military resistance at all. What surprised me was that anyone had bothered to follow my orders to signal that the gates were open. Perhaps every gate had opened.

    All that mattered was that Heraclius was now inside the City. His forces would be marching up along those straight, wide streets, and they’d be on us in due course.

    As we joined the crowds gathered outside the church I was met by the aged guard who’d stopped me all that time ago outside the Senatorial Dock.

    ‘If it may please you, sir,’ he gasped, out of breath from running, ‘the Green Faction has betrayed the Main Harbour. They’ve declared for Heraclius and turned on the Blues.’

    I looked at the Aged Guard. He looked steadily back.

    ‘Is it worth fighting at all?’ I asked uncertainly. Was this the excuse I’d been hoping for to call the whole thing off?

    He smiled and drew himself more stiffly to attention. ‘Duty is duty, sir,’ he said. ‘So long as you lead us, we’ll fight for you.’ He touched the blue cloth that covered part of his breastplate. ‘In any event, sir,’ he added, ‘it’s too late for any of us to back out. Our enemy now isn’t Heraclius. It’s them shitbag Greens. If we try dispersing, they’ll pick us off in the streets. Those of us what escape won’t never hear the end of it in the Circus.’