The Golden Horn (3 page)

She looked hard at him. He moved with striking grace, but he
was not quite steady; his breath came a shade too rapidly. And there was his
face. “You’re not as well as you pretend.”

“I’m well enough to travel.”

“I don’t think so.” She regarded him
sternly. “You were dangerously ill when I found you. You’re shaking
now though you think you can hide it. Go back to bed.”

He sat on his heels. “I’m sorry, my lady. I can’t.”

If he had been one of her offspring, she would have fetched him
a sharp slap to teach him sense. “You are a stubborn boy. Must I call my
men to put you to bed by force?”

“It wouldn’t be very wise,” he said.

“Arrogant too.”

His head bowed. “I’m sorry. But I have to go to
the City.”

“Why? Are you one of the Crusaders?”

“God forbid!” His vehemence startled her; he
went on more quietly, “I’m as filthy a Latin as any. But not…of
that kind. No; I want to see the City and learn from its wise men and worship
in its holy places. While there is time. There’s so little left. So very
little.”

She shivered though the morning was already hot. His eyes were
wide and luminous, the color of water poured out in the sun, his voice soft and
rather sad. “Understand,” he said. “Those are not monsters
camped across the Horn, but men like any others. Most of them think they’ve
only paused on their way to free the Holy Sepulcher. They can’t see what
must happen now they’ve come so far into such hostile country, led on by
a foolish prince’s promises. Both greed and honor will have their due.
And then—” He stopped. Perhaps, at last, he had seen her fear.

“And then?” she asked through a dry throat.

He turned away, fists clenched at his sides. “Nothing.
Nothing. I’ve been listening to too many doomsayers.”

Her voice came hard and harsh. “You are mad. And you’re
coming with me. We’ll be sailing well before noon; we’ll be
sheltered from the sun; and you can rest a little. And when we come to the City—have
you a place to stay?”

“I’ll find one.”

“‘The lilies of the field…’”
she murmured. “You need a keeper, do you know that? You’ll stay
with us.”

He faced her. “What will people say?”

“That I’m as much a fool as ever.”

“And your husband?”

“Precisely the same.”

“But I can’t—”

“Do you object to the hospitality of the perfidious
Greeks?”

She was half jesting. But only half. He spread his hands. “I
could be a thief, or—or a murderer. I could slay you all in your beds and
make off with everything you own.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Oh, Lady!” He seemed caught between laughter
and tears. “The doctor was right, you know. You’d do well to be rid
of me.”

“Are you a demon?”

He shook his head. “But—”

“So,” Sophia said brusquely. “I’ve
things to see to. I’ll send for you when it’s time to leave.”

The sun danced and blazed upon the blue waters of the Bosporus;
a brisk wind filled the sail, lightening the oarsmen’s work, carrying the
barge toward the Golden Horn. Under a striped canopy on the deck the passengers
sat at their ease, even the guards relaxed in their vigilance.

Alf had been docile enough when they left Chalcedon, lying quietly
on the pallet Sophia had ordered spread for him in the deepest shade. But as
they drew nearer to the City he grew restless, until at last he rose and
settled his hat firmly upon his head and stood like a hound at gaze, his face
toward the wonder across the water. Slowly, as if drawn by the hand, he moved
to the rail. He stood full in the sun, though with his back to it.

Sophia sighed and came to his side. “Don’t you
think—” she began.

He seemed not to have heard. “Look,” he said,
his voice soft with wonder.
“Look!”

All the splendor of Byzantium spread before them: the long stretch
of the sea walls set with towers, guarding the Queen of Cities; and within
their compass rank on rank of roofs and domes and pinnacles. Gold glittered
upon them, crosses bristled atop them, greenery cooled the spaces between,
rising up and up to the summit of the promontory that was Constantinople.

There on its prow shone the dome of Hagia Sophia with its lesser
domes about it like planets about the moon, rising above the gardens of the
Acropolis, crowning the Sacred Palace with all its satellites.

“The walls of Paris on the banks of the Seine,”
Alf murmured. “The citadel of Saint Mark on the breast of the sea; Rome
herself in her crumbling splendor; Alexander’s city at the mouth of the
Nile; Cairo of the Saracens; Jerusalem, Damascus, Ephesus; Antioch and holy
Nicaea: I’ve seen them all. But never—never in all my
wanderings—never such a wonder as this.”

Yet it was a wonder touched with death. The ship had turned now,
sailing past the Mangana, striking for the narrow mouth of the Horn. A city
spread over its farther shore, once rich, now much battered, guarded by a
charred and broken tower.

“Galata,” the ship’s captain said, coming
up beside them. “All that shore is infested with Franks, though they’ve
camped farther up in the fields beyond the wall. Most of the ships you see
there are theirs.”

Sophia’s hands clenched on the rail.

The captain spat. “They broke the chain. Clear across
the Horn it went, from Galata to Acropolis Point, thick as a man’s arm
and strong enough to hold back a fleet. But they broke it. Hacked at the end on
Galata shore and sent their biggest war galley against the middle with wind and
oar to drive her, and snapped it like a rotten string.”

“Couldn’t our own fleet do anything?”
demanded Sophia.

The man laughed, a harsh bark. “Our Emperor that was, bless
his sacred head, called up the fleet, sure enough. Only trouble was, there wasn’t
any. A couple of barnacle-ridden scows was all he had. The rest of it was in
the Lord Admiral’s pocket. The cursed Franks sailed right over them.”

“And then?” she asked. “What then?”

“Well,” said the captain, “then everybody
decided to do some fighting. The Frankish horseboys headed northward to the bridge
past Blachernae. Saint Mark’s lads took the sea side. Between them they
flattened a good part of the palace up there before the real fight began. The
Franks got a drubbing, but the traders got the Petrion and set it afire. Burned
down everything from Blachernae hill to Euergetes’ cloister, and as deep
in as the Deuteron on the other side of the Middle Way.”

“What of our people? Where were they?”

He shrugged. “They fought. Drove off the Franks,
thanks mainly to the Varangians. But the Emperor turned tail and bolted. The
mob dragged old Isaac Angelos out of his hole and put the crown back on his
head, and the Franks brought in the young pup Alexios and crowned him, and now
there’s two Emperors, father and son, as pretty as you please, with the Franks
pulling the boy’s puppet-strings and the old man roaming about looking
for his poor lost eyes.”

“If I had been Emperor,” Sophia said fiercely, “this
would never have happened. The shame of it! All the power of the empire laid
low by a mere handful.”

The captain shrugged again. “It’s fate, some
people say. Fate and sheer gall. The traders’ leader, what do they call
him, the Doge; he’s ninety-five if he’s a day, blind as a bat, and
there he was in the lead ship, giving his men what for when they wouldn’t
let him off first. They say he fights better, blind as he is, than most young
sprouts with two good eyes.”

“He ought to.” It was one of the passengers, a
wine merchant from Chios. “I’ve heard that he masterminded the
whole affair for revenge, because his city had been slighted when the Emperor
was handing out favors.”

“If that were all it was,” the captain said, “he’d
have stayed home and pulled strings. The way I’ve heard it, he was in the
City twenty years ago when the mob burned down the Latin Quarter, and he was
blinded then by the Emperor’s orders. Now he’s making us pay for it
in every way he knows how.”

“With Frankish help at least, that’s certain.
They’re barbarian fools, but when they’re up on those monstrous
horses of theirs in all their armor, they’re impossible to face. A troop
of them, I heard once, could break down the walls of Babylon if they were
minded to try.”

“If the Emperor hadn’t been a coward, they’d
never have got into the City. They were in terror of Greek fire and of the Varangians’
axes.”

“But not in such terror that they turned and fled.”
Sophia glared at a galley moored among a hundred lesser vessels near the sands
of Galata, its sides hung with bright shields, its lion banner snapping in the
breeze; and turned to glare even more terribly at the walls that loomed out of
the sea. “The City could have held forever if there had been men to hold her.”

The men shifted uneasily. After a little the captain said, “You
should have been a man, Lady.”

“Such a man as sold my city to the Latins?” She
tossed her head. “I’m better off as a woman. At least my sex can
claim some excuse for cowardice.” She stalked to her seat under the canopy,
to cool slowly and to begin to regret her show of temper.

Alf remained by the rail, unconscious of aught but the sight
before him. The wind had borne the barge into the teeming heart of the empire.
Warehouses clustered all along the shore, thrusting wharves into the Golden
Horn; steep slopes rose beyond to the white ridge of the Middle Way, clothed in
roofs as a mountain is clothed in trees.

Even from so far he could hear and smell the City: a
ceaseless roar like the roar of the northern sea; a manifold reek of men and
beasts, flowers, spices, salt brine and offal, with an undertone of smoke and blood.
At the far end of the strait he could see the battered walls, and beyond them
great gaps in the roofs and towers, or charred remnants thrusting blackly
toward the sky.

He hardly noticed when Sophia spoke to him, until she tugged
sharply at his sleeve. “Come. Up. Into my litter.”

With an effort he brought himself into focus. A litter stood
on the pier, its bearers waiting patiently. None of the many officials standing
about, inspecting cargo, peering at lists, interrogating passengers, seemed at
all interested in him, although one bowed to his companion.

“Come,” she repeated. “It’s all been
seen to. Get in.”

He looked down at the woman. She was small even for an easterner;
her head came barely to his shoulder. “I’ll walk,” he said.

“You’ll do no such thing. Get in.”

“But—”

“Get in!”

She was small, but she had a giant’s strength of will.
He smiled his wry smile, bowed and obeyed. She settled opposite him. With a
smooth concerted motion the bearers raised the litter to their shoulders and
paced forward. The escort fell into place about it with Sophia’s maid
trudging sullenly behind.

The house of Bardas Akestas stood at the higher end of a narrow
twisting street in the shadow of the Church of the Apostles, a bleak forbidding
wall broken only by a grating or two and a gate of gilded iron. Even as the
bearers paused before it, the gate burst open, releasing a flood of people.

There were, Alf realized afterward, less than half a dozen
in all: three children of various sizes and sexes, an elderly porter, and a
mountainous woman with a voice as deep as a man’s.

They overwhelmed the arrivals with shouts and cries,
sweeping them into a sunlit courtyard. The light was dazzling after the high-walled
dimness of the street, the children’s joy dizzyingly loud. Alf made
himself invisible in his corner of the litter and waited for his head to stop
reeling.

“Come now,” a new voice said over the uproar,
deep and quiet. “What is all this?”

At once there was silence. The speaker came forward, a short
broad man in a grey gown. The servants stepped back; the children leaped to
attention. Sophia stepped from the litter, smoothed her skirts, and said, “Good
day, Bardas.”

“Sophia.” He was as unruffled as she. “How
was your journey?”

“Bearable,” she replied.

The smaller of the two girl-children wriggled with
impatience. “Father,” she burst out at last. “Mother’s
home.
Mother’s home!
”

Sophia swayed under a new assault. Over the children’s
heads she smiled at her husband; he nodded back briskly, but there was a smile
in his eyes.

The elder girl had greeted her mother with a warm embrace, but
dignity forbade her to join in the others’ exuberance. While Nikki clung
tightly to his mother’s skirts and Anna babbled whole months’ worth
of happenings in one breathless rush, she stood aloof, trying to imitate her
father’s lofty calm. Her eyes were taking it all in, litter, bearers, and
escort; the servants coming from everywhere to greet their mistress; plump
Katya the maid deep in colloquy with the towering nurse; and if that was not
she sitting in the litter, then—

“Mother,” she said suddenly, “who is this?”

Sophia nodded in response to Anna’s flood of news,
lifted Nikki in her arms, and turned toward the litter. Its occupant emerged
slowly and somewhat unsteadily: a tall thin figure in pilgrim’s dress,
with a terribly ravaged face and clear pale eyes gazing out of it. Irene forgot
her dignity and loosed a little shriek; Nikki hid his face in his mother’s
shoulder.

“My guest,” said Sophia. “Alfred of Saint
Ruan’s in Anglia, who has come up from Jerusalem to see our City.”

They all stared, save Bardas who bowed and said, “Be
welcome to House Akestas.”

Alf returned the bow with grace and precision; straightened and
swayed. Several of the servants sprang to his aid. Gently but firmly they bore
him into the cool shade of the house.

Anna opened the door as quietly as she could and peered around
it. The room was dim and cool and smelled of the roses that grew up over the
window from the garden outside. There was no one there except the stranger in
the bed.