There were more problems than solutions. In providing guards for the patriarch, the prince, the count, and the empress, I gradually came to know too much, as did Sir John Partner, Nerio, Stapleton and Fiore, as we had become the captains of the various guard detachments. We never saw each other – I continued to live at Lady Anna’s house, in the English bourg, and so did Nerio and Fiore and Stapleton – but I was there perhaps one night in three, and never the same night as my friends. I did take the time to write letters: to Emile; to Hawkwood; to Fra Peter and de Midelton; and finally, in the same cover as the one for Hawkwood, to Janet, asking for a note for Richard. And explaining a good deal too much, I felt. I had time to write, but I never saw my friends; we were on watch too often.
I only mention this so you will understand that there was never a moment that we could pause and compare notes, so to speak. We never could examine the plot, or guess at the main players. We were reacting.
My second day arranging the guard detachments with Syr Christos, I asked the count for the loan of his physician, and was granted him. Master Guy Albin was a polymath, a brilliant mind and a fine scholar, independent of his practical medical knowledge. He was a cautious, careful man, of middle height, and he seemed quite old to me, being the same age I am now. He had white in his beard, but he was quick-witted. He wore a sword and considered himself a gentleman, and all the Savoyards treated him with respect, which is rare for quacks and mountebanks and doctors.
I cadged him to help guard the princes, as we called the lot of them. As they were close to hating each other, and as they were very strongly not in agreement on anything, they refused to live in one building and share food, to our endless annoyance.
However, Fra Peter had taught me well, when we were guarding the legate. I knew how to guard a great man, or even three great men and a great woman, and with the doctor’s help and a small army of tasters, mongrel dogs, and an ever-increasing army of informants, it almost seemed as if we could relax.
There was a Greek officer; I was allowed to speak to him, although the empress was concerned about his loyalty. His title was logothete; he was a spy, the head spy of the Empire. He was a large man, bald and tall and heavy; he was not my idea of a spy at all, but he gave us the only warning we had to the counter-attack. He seemed to have a legion of thieves and thugs at his service, but in fact, it was a washerwoman, blushing because she was talking to a man – and a foreign man at that – who came to my door.
‘They will try and take the caesar,’ she said, after giving me the correct sign. ‘Now, or very soon.’
‘Christ,’ I spat. I was in arming clothes. ‘Marc-Antonio!’ I roared. I was home, off duty. It was the sixth of September, and I had intended to go to Mass after a bath in hot water.
I grabbed the young woman, who was indeed very slight, and pulled her into Lady Anna’s house and slammed the door. This terrified her. I pushed her into Lady Anna’s arms. Syr Christos was also off duty. He came into the hall.
I hesitated for perhaps ten heartbeats.
‘Someone is trying to take Andronicus,’ I said. ‘It’s now.’
He looked at me for the count of three. ‘Then they will kill the empress,’ he said.
I didn’t even think it through. ‘I’ll cover the empress,’ I said. ‘You go to the tower. You know … everything.’
He nodded.
I grabbed my sword, long since returned to me, and buckled it on.
And we were out of the doors, Marc-Antonio behind me with a fine brocade napkin still tucked into his black arming coat – he’d been that close to food.
The empress was in the palace proper, of course. She was guarded by Varangians, mixed with some of my people; by then, after almost two weeks, we were Varangians. That night, the men on duty were Guiscard’s Bretons.
I ran. I didn’t bother with a horse.
As soon as I neared the gatehouse, I roared ‘A l’arme!’ at the tower, and I heard men move inside.
‘It’s the captain!’ someone called. I waved and saw Mark between crenellations, and the gate opened.
‘We are under attack,’ I called as soon as I was inside. ‘On me. The whole quarter guard.’
‘Quarter guard is on rounds,’ Mark said apologetically, but in fact, it was their duty. ‘It’s just the four of us here.’
I cursed. ‘No one in or out.’
I ran for the palace hall.
I was just too late.
But then, sometimes, just too late is perfect.
Guiscard was dead, cut down at the entrance doors of the palace, stabbed in the throat with a dagger. Even with a dagger in his throat, he’d killed one with nothing more than his steel gauntlets.
They left the hall doors agape and they had just killed him.
I ran in, stepping over his body, and I was right behind the pack of them. I didn’t even get to count – they had huddled up to pass the doors. The killing had put them in that state – terror, elation, purpose – they were too loud and they moved in jerky, ugly movements.
They were a mixed bag of Greeks and Franks. Hired muscle, for the most part, although I could see two men in silk by the hall’s candlelight.
I could see the Empress Helena on her feet on the dais, and thanks to God, two of the Varangians by her, axes coming off their shoulders.
Men at the back of the attackers were turning as I barged into them. The nearest was a sailor in a knit cap, and he had a long knife in his hand, with blood on it; his eyes glittered, as a certain kind of man’s eyes shine when killing.
I was too close to him to draw.
I stepped back with my right leg, drew across my body and used my scabbard against his knife hand in one motion, and then ran him through the throat bole. He was dead before the fourth inch of steel went in. I whipped my blade out and made a little turn to the outside, and cut about a hand’s breadth of the next bastard’s skull off the top of his head.
And then I waded in. I wasn’t in harness, but this was what we trained for, and I couldn’t let them reach the empress. Odd, isn’t it?
I had no fealty to her. And yet, I take to duty quickly. It was my duty.
I turned on the balls of my feet and punched the hilt of my sword into an undefended face without freeing my point from the man I’d killed with the blow to his skull. He slid off the point as my third victim stumbled back with the imprint of my pointed pommel cap in the centre of his forehead, dead or dying.
They were bravos with sticks or daggers.
I was a knight.
I took a blow – thankfully from a cudgel – on the muscle of my left arm and lost my left grip on the sword in the pain. I cut, thrust, and Marc-Antonio killed my man with a nice, economical blow under my right arm. I got my left hand down at mid-blade and stepped in again, parried, and I had six men backing away from three of us.
One of the silk-robes lost his head, literally. The Russian Varangian beheaded him with a sweep of his axe, and the back cut belimbed another one.
Axes are fearsome, and the bravos were not in armour.
The other Varangian was hard by the empress, and had his axe across his chest. Waiting.
Good men.
Except I wasn’t sure that the nearest Russian knew I was on his side.
‘Hrolf!’ I roared.
His axe wound and cut again.
A hired sword backed, turned to eye the axe, and fell when Marc-Antonio stabbed him low, in the kidneys. The man screamed on the floor, dark blood pouring out, and Marc-Antonio finished him on the floor.
The axeman’s cut went down, slashing a man’s face almost in half, and then rose, spilling his intestines with a delicacy worthy of Fiore.
There were now only three of them left, and they were broken; one was the Greek nobleman I’d seen with Half-Cloak at the Pisan Tavern.
He was dead before I could stop Hrolf,
but in that pass I knew the Russian knew me as an ally, and the last two dropped their weapons.
I shook the blood off the emperor’s sword. Hah! The Western Emperor, of course. I took a dozen steps forward and knelt on one knee to the empress. ‘Apologies for the interruption of your dinner,’ I said in Italian.
She was very pale. She put a hand to her veil and twitched it forward; but then she held out a hand and touched mine.
She was made of stern stuff.
‘My thanks,’ she said, in very good Italian.
I bobbed my head and motioned to the two Varangians. ‘I need to know if there are other …’ I shrugged. ‘Conspirators,’ I said.
They spoke Russian and Greek. I didn’t.
‘I can tell them,’ the empress said. She rattled off a string of words in Greek.
Hrolf shrugged. ‘Guard,’ he said, using a dead man to wipe the cutting edge of his axe.
‘Aye,’ I said.
The empress said a few words, and they bowed – first to her, then to me.
‘They understand,’ she said. ‘Go. I fear … everything.’
Marc-Antonio didn’t even look pale. He was an old soldier by then. And not a mark on him.
‘Quarter guard!’ I roared.
Ah. Pardon, mes braves. When you set a watch of say, twenty men, you keep some in reserve. I’m told the habit originated in guarding a quarter of a town – but for me, it was always a quarter of the men on watch, all together, to overawe an enemy and respond to an emergency.
I found them, quickly enough; four Breton men-at-arms, enraged by the death of their best knight. I led them out into the darkness outside the palace gatehouse, our swords in our fists. We found a group of men outside; they couldn’t answer for what they were doing after curfew. One bastard drew his dagger, and then they were dead.
The Bretons were ready to massacre the population of the city, but luckily for everyone, there were only four of them. And we kept them in hand – ran to the house where the prince and his knights were staying.
They hadn’t had an attack; instead they had a fire. I saw Percy, made sure the prince was alive, and then we took horses and rode to the Green Count’s house, but he was safe.
That left the patriarch, who had steadfastly refused to be kept in the Blacharnae neighbourhood and was being protected that night by Fiore and Maurizio di Cavalli.
I needn’t have worried. But I did, and I rode across Constantinople in the dark with Marc-Antonio by my side to find the patriarch saying prayers for the dead, and Francesco Orsini a mirror-bright armoured presence, barely visible in the candlelight and incense.
It was a night of death, but thank God, none of the dead were ours.
And in my panic, I forgot that the whole plot would be directed at the rescue of Andronicus. I forgot, but Fiore didn’t. When the plotters came for Andronicus, Fiore ambushed them; the survivors were pursued through the streets by Kipchaks.
Over the next four days, they hammered out a plan of campaign while the imperial torturers had a go at the survivors. It didn’t really matter any more; I think we knew more about the plot than Andronicus or the Hungarian knew. But the attempt to kill the empress broke her heart, because that was her son, trying to kill his mother. He denied it, and claimed that the palace chamberlain had acted without his permission.
I’m not a follower of the count, nor his greatest admirer, but I confess it was he who convinced the patriarch to move into the palace. When the Prince moved all his crossbowmen into the palace barracks, I finally had all my charges secure and in one place, and I think that I slept the clock around.
When I awoke, I was summoned by the empress, and I was treated to a level of court ceremonial that would have staggered King Edward, or even Prince Lionel. There were perhaps three hundred courtiers and functionaries, and as many again in servants present; the occasion was the presentation of a pair of ambassadors from the sultan, who was currently holding court off to the west, at a city called Didymoteichon.
The empress used me to send a little message. You may smile, but here’s the wonder of it – the Turks were, of course, spies. I was almost sure they had provided material support to the assassins – perhaps even paid them – and the empress herself said, in private, that she believed they only demanded audience to see if any of the principals had been wounded or killed.
So she made them wait, standing at the very entrance of the magnificent hall, while I came forward with my harness all polished, my maille immaculate as Marc-Antonio and I could make it, my helmet gleaming and wearing a fine scarlet silk surcoat. I knelt where I had been told by the new chamberlain, three times approaching the throne, and then I kissed her shoe, as if she was the Pope.
She put a foot on my shoulder, so that I stayed with my head bent while the chamberlain opened a purple scroll with gold ink, and read from it of my devotion to the Imperial Majesty, and how I had saved the empress from a cowardly attack by paid assassins. And by the order of the emperor, I was made spartharios, an officer of the Imperial household, with the right, still mine to this day, to bear the emperor’s sword in a procession, and further, to wear my own on all court occasions.
I know she did it to rub the Turk’s faces in the failure of their plot. Well – if they were involved at all, which is debatable. But I enjoyed it very much, and the little bag of gold sequins that went with it, and the fine scarlet silk cloak, which, I’m sad to say, I pawned.
The Turks eyed me and listened to the empress, bowed low, and left.
My friends gathered round me and congratulated me, and that night I dined well, with Lady Anna and her son; Hrolf and his mate Ragnar; Giannis and Giorgios and the Logothete; and, of course, Fiore, Nerio, Miles and Richard Percy. And we had roast boar in the Greek manner, and a variety of other dishes – a wonderful dish of saffroned rice, and some sweets in the Russian manner. After dinner we paid the company from the empress’s beneficence, and Sir Richard informed me that we were sailing for Bulgaria.
I watched the cat eat Russian salmon from a plate, and listened to him purr, and wondered if I would ever get home to Emile.
Bulgaria
September 1366 – March 1367
On the sixth of October in the year of our Lord 1366, we passed the ancient lighthouse at the head of the Bosporus. Just when you think you understand something, you see something else; just when I was comfortable that the Eastern Roman Empire was at the edge of death, I saw this – a magnificent tower with a flame that lit the dull heavens from miles away, towering over the entrance to the straits. It was manned by a garrison and a keeper, and well tended.
But like many things in the empire, this proved to be symbolic, for it was the last vestige of imperial authority, and when we turned west into the Euxine, the Black Sea of the ancients, we immediately picked up fishing boats who reported that the entire coast was in the hands of Prince Dobrotitsa, who styled himself ‘Lord of Dobrudja’ and had seized all the imperial possessions on the Black Sea coast. We landed at Lorfenal, a mere fishing village which pledged its loyalty to the emperor, and there we disembarked. We heard there of a Turkish force – that is, an Ottomanid force – that was planning to move against Constantinople. The Prince of Lesvos decided to return to Constantinople to help the Savoyard Gaspard de Montmayeur and the empress to hold it. He intended to take with him Sir Richard Percy and all his soldiers.
I met with him on the beach, and he tugged at his beard.
‘Walk with me, Monseigneur,’ he said.
I suspected he was about to offer me the kingdoms of this world, nor was I disappointed.
‘I have had enough of the good count,’ he said, with a false smile. ‘But he does not have the men to conquer Bulgaria. Even with all my people – even with my levies from Lesvos – I would not be sure we could take it. Bulgaria is strong.’ He shrugged. ‘It is also an utter waste of time. The count doesn’t even appr
eciate that if he storms these coastal towns, he is only helping the man who holds the emperor to fight his brothers.’
I said nothing.
‘He is not a fool,’ the prince went on. ‘Merely very sure of himself, and utterly wrong.’ He shrugged. ‘I need you to stay with him. Listen – I have a very good place for you, if you wish it. You have given good service – excellent service.’
I bowed. In fact, I knelt.
‘You have already sworn to me for the baronetcy of Methymna,’ he said. ‘I will hold you to that. I will hold your pay and that of your company at Constantinople – the Pera banker Niccolò di Quarto will have the whole amount to pay out.’
I nodded. He was a good lord, and a good captain – a pleasure to serve. I suspect that perhaps he was a bad man; on the other hand, his goal, of preserving the empire, was worthy. I have no idea how to judge such a man.
But it is God’s to judge, not mine.
‘However, I will pay your wages from now until the emperor is rescued,’ he said. ‘And double your wages and add a bonus if you get him. Yourself.’ He stopped on the gravel. ‘Savoy is a good captain, and he has a fine army. It is possible that he will cut his way to the emperor and rescue him. Well and good.’ He smiled a crooked smile, looked away, and then looked at me.
‘But I predict he will reach Varna, or perhaps a little higher, and run out of men and money,’ he said. ‘The King of Hungary is not coming. He was never coming. Your friend Nerio knows all about this. I do not think the King of Hungary is part of this awful plot – but I think that he is happy to benefit from it.’
Still there was nothing for me to say.
‘When Savoy has run out of time and money and men, I want you to try and rescue the emperor,’ he said. ‘It is not worth trying now. They will be ready. But men who are alert in the autumn may be fools in the dead of winter. Understand me?’
‘Yes, My Lord,’ I said.
‘Good man. They may just kill him. A pity – he is my friend, or at least, as close to a friend as I have ever had.’ He shrugged. ‘But …’
The Green Count Page 47