‘You will be caught up in the war.’
‘It will all be as God wills it.’ Silence fell for a moment, and in the stillness, Arnau could just hear chanting outside.
‘Alexios the Fifth?’
Doukas shrugged. ‘Perhaps not the best of precedents, I suppose, but we can do little about the names our parents choose. Should you decide to leave, seek me out and I will make sure you are escorted to safety. Should you choose to stay, I fear you cannot avoid involvement. There is always a place in the defence of the city for men like you.’
Ramon gave his tiny nod once more, accepting, if unhappy.
With a last smile, Doukas turned from the two men and began to make his way down the steps. At the bottom he paused for a long moment, looking down at the bloodied smears on the floor, shook his head sadly, then skirted the pile of rich clothing, including the red boots that marked an emperor, and left the building. Outside a thousand Waring voices chanted his name.
‘I have never witnessed the succession of a crown before,’ Arnau said quietly.
‘With luck you will never do so again.’ Ramon, his face still radiating his displeasure at events, turned and strode back to the imperial apartment. Arnau followed. The room was quite simply the most sumptuous he had ever seen. Any two square feet of the chamber contained enough gold, ivory, silver, silk and gemstones to pay for an entire palace. He mused ruefully that the contents of this room might have been able to pay the city’s debt to the Crusaders without taxing the citizens.
Ramon strode across to the body and crouched.
‘No sign of violence,’ he confirmed with audible relief. ‘In truth I would say the shock took him. Perhaps that is a blessing.’
‘Certainly after what Doukas told us they usually do to failed emperors. Young Alexios has little to look forward to, I suspect.’
Ramon nodded bitterly. ‘I knew a change was coming. I had thought it would be more of a public decision than this.’ He sighed and straightened. ‘But no matter how little I like it, I fear this is all part of God’s plan. Perhaps Doukas is the man to stop the Franks. Perhaps he always was.’
‘Too little, too late,’ said a booming voice from the doorway. They turned to see Redwald standing there, axe once more hung over his shoulder.
‘What?’
‘Doukas would have been the man. But I think it is too late now. I urged him to move the day the exile was crowned, but he remained loyal for too long. Until it was too late, I think.’
‘You knew,’ Ramon said, accusingly. ‘You took an oath to protect the emperor, yet you violated it. You and men around you. Oaths are important. They are the very heart of our order. Are they nothing to you?’
Redwald snarled. ‘Do not think to lecture me on loyalty, you who aid the Greeks against your own Mother Church.’ Arnau recoiled, at both the force of the man’s anger and at the unpleasantly accurate accusation. The Waring sighed. ‘I was not alone. We take an oath to serve the legitimate emperor, and we all did so with the Third Alexios. But Isaac was no emperor. He had been blinded and usurped, and a blind emperor cannot rule. It is Byzantine law, centuries old. My oath cannot be given to an illegitimate emperor, and Alexios the Fourth was not crowned by the city. He did not stand on the omphalion for his coronation. He was imposed on the city by enemies, and was a puppet of the Pope and his Frankish mob. So no, I have never considered myself bound by oath to the dog. Neither of them were emperors in the eyes of many.’
‘That is just semantics,’ Ramon accused, though with considerably less vehemence now.
‘You are the legal expert,’ Arnau said quietly. ‘You know the value of details.’
‘What will happen now?’
Redwald straightened. ‘There will be a coronation. A proper one, in the Haghia Sophia on the omphalion, overseen by a true patriarch of the Church and not some Venetian wolf. The Laskaris brothers will marshal the army, and we will prepare to fight the Franks and the Venetians one last time. That,’ he pointed at Isaac, ‘will be entombed with his forebears. His son? Well, I think Doukas is bright enough not to let the dog live. He will be strangled and dumped before the fighting begins.’
Arnau nodded. ‘May God walk with you in the coming days, Redwald.’
‘And with you,’ the Waring replied, bending and throwing the body of the frail, blind old emperor over his shoulder and then leaving once more.
‘You know Bochard will refuse to leave, yes?’ Arnau said
Ramon turned to Arnau. ‘Of course. I will try persuasion one more time, but I fear we must be prepared to fight for our lives, no matter who it be against.’
‘I fear it is time they began to circulate with the icon of the Holy Mother again,’ Arnau said quietly. ‘She will bring hope and strength. Remember Chronicles two: “He called together all men in the street of the gate of the city, and spake to the heart of them, and said, Be ye manly, and be ye comforted; do not ye dread, neither be ye afeared of the king of Assyrians, nor of all the multitude that is with him; for many more be with us than with him. A fleshly arm is with him; but the Lord our God is with us, which is our helper, and shall fight for us. And the people were comforted with such words.”’
Ramon nodded. ‘The people might just take heart from such a sight. Assuming the icon is not in a chest in Bochard’s room.’
Arnau couldn’t help but let out a hollow laugh at that.
Chapter 18: The Emperor’s Valour
February 25th 1204
Arnau and Ramon stood at the top of the staircase that led to the top of the gatehouse and the Blachernae’s walls, watching the force being assembled below. Here, in the security of the Blachernae, no word of what was to come could leak out, since the time had come for action.
As had seemed to be the case throughout their time in Constantinople, the ongoing war with the Franks and Venetians proved to be a staggered, stop-start affair. The attempted burning of the enemy fleet and the Franks’ preparations for war, the coup that placed Doukas on the throne had all been a staccato and rapid succession of events. Then, as Arnau had felt certain they would fall directly into brutal combat, in fact they had hit another lull.
On the part of the Crusaders it was not so much a lull, in truth, as a shift in focus. Leaving sufficient forces to keep the city closed in, with the Venetians prowling the waters, bulky Frankish forces had marched and ridden around the Byzantine hinterland for weeks, sacking and raiding other towns and cities, giving them the supplies they needed for another season of war. All up the coast almost to the lands of the Bulgars they had destroyed and looted.
As for the Byzantines, they took the opportunity to prepare.
The Laskaris brothers had been reinstated and made the senior generals of the Byzantine armies. Doukas, though, had refused to leave all military matters in their hands. While he would defer to them strategically, he was determined to be a leader for his people. Just as the sacred icon from the Church of Saint Mary in Blachernae and other great relics were paraded for the morale of the people, so also Doukas made himself visible at all times, bedecked for war and not for court, leading the soldiers and marching the walls of the city. The emperor seemed to be everywhere. Arnau approved.
Preparations were made. The army was thoroughly reorganised, and the Warings told that they were expected to form a solid part of the city’s military throughout the crisis, regardless of what their emperor did. The gates of the city were sealed, strengthened and bolstered. Using the rubble from the burned-out districts, walls were strengthened. Those ramparts damaged by the Venetians the previous year were rebuilt, as were parts of the Blachernae walls. Most importantly, to prevent a repeat of the Venetians’ cunning mast tactics, the towers and walls of the Golden Horn defences were raised by twice the height of a man, using some stone and a great deal of timber. No Venetian ship could now spill its men onto them.
Doukas’s preparations were not all military, though. In order to fund the rest of the campaign, Doukas levied a new tax across the city. While
this was not the most popular move, the public were largely mollified with the knowledge that their money was going to sharpen swords and man artillery to save them from the Franks, rather than being loaded into chests and given to the Venetians. Moreover, Doukas was known to have donated great wealth from the palace to match the funds raised by the tax.
He was becoming tremendously popular. The emperor who stood against the Latins and defended his people – a far cry from any of his recent predecessors. After an initial demand sent to the Crusaders that they depart forthwith had been derisively rebuffed, Doukas had decided that his predecessor would serve no further purpose, and his continued existence could only serve as a motive for Frankish violence. Consequently, the young Alexios was quietly strangled in his dungeon and interred without fuss alongside his father in a monastery within the city. The calm and accepting, matter-of-fact feeling around the court at this officially sanctioned murder set Arnau’s teeth on edge, and he was forced to remind himself not to judge everyone by his own standards.
All seemed to be progressing with more consideration than Arnau had noted throughout the past year. If Byzantium could be saved, then it seemed that Doukas was the man to do it.
Then, one day, the roving Franks returned to the city, a sizeable force setting up camp in their old position on the monastery hill facing the city walls, while the rest returned to their place at Galata. It seemed that the siege was about to recommence in earnest. Equipped with almost adequate supplies now, the Franks began to forage the area to supplement their stores and prepare for the long term.
Arnau had wondered what the Byzantine leadership planned. With Doukas now almost wholly occupied with the business of empire and the Laskaris brothers assisting him, no one seemed to have the time to visit the Templars any more and keep them informed. Bochard, of course, redoubled his efforts, gathering what he could, fearing that if he did not, they might be destroyed during the siege.
The answer came early that morning. Arnau had heard the quiet but unmistakable sounds of soldiers gathering. The gardens and courtyards of the Blachernae were filling with men: archers and swordsmen, as well as cavalry both heavy and light. Doukas and both Laskaris brothers were there, marshalling their men.
It was inevitable in a siege that word of anything big would leak out. Surprise attacks were incredibly hard to organise and took much secrecy and preparation, as had Laskaris’s fire-ship attack, yet even that had come to the attention of the emperors who had halted the companion land attack. Hoping to avoid word of this one reaching the Franks in advance, the new emperor had gathered his troops over hours within the walls of the Blachernae. Even now, though there was a sizeable force in the palace complex, it could easily be mistaken for training, for each unit was gathered in a separate garden or courtyard. It did not look like an army until you took it all in together, which would be near impossible to do from outside the palace walls. Doukas and the Laskaris were taking no chances.
‘Hello, that’s unexpected,’ Ramon said, his voice tight. Arnau followed his gesture. Bochard had emerged from the doorway of the tower that led up to the Templars’ apartments. He strode out across the frost-rimed paving of the near courtyard with purpose, breath frosting in the air.
Arnau peered suspiciously. The preceptor was armed for war. Of course, Arnau and Ramon had been armed for war for months now, but then they had fought and struggled and learned the hard way that they needed to be armed and protected at all times. Bochard, conversely, had spent most of his time in negotiation with priests and noblemen, either in his rooms, in churches or in the court. Not once, to Arnau’s knowledge, had he gathered up his helmet.
Here he was, though, shield strapped to arm and helmet held tight in mailed grip. Arnau looked ahead, and sure enough the preceptor’s squire was busily leading out Bochard’s horse.
‘Surely he doesn’t intend to fight? Not after all the lectures he’s given us?’
Ramon snorted. ‘The day the preceptor lifts his bared blade in Byzantium, the good money says it will be among the Franks and aimed at a Greek. I don’t know, but I’m intrigued. Where is Sebastian?’
‘I have no idea. These days he belongs more to Laskaris’s army than to the Order, I fear.’
‘I cannot truly blame him. But in his absence, I think we might want to gather our own steeds.’
Arnau frowned. ‘Why?’
‘Wherever he’s going, it’s by horse. Personally, I want to see where, since I doubt he’s thrown in his lot with Doukas.’
Nodding, Arnau followed Ramon to the stables. The place was in chaos, though of the more organised kind. Though the cavalry, traditionally quartered at a place called the Hebdomon a mile or so outside the city walls, were now garrisoned in a temporary camp within the farmed land inside the defensive circuit, and therefore their stables stood there, the horses of nobles and commanders were still often kept here at the Blachernae, hence the frenzied activity.
Skittering slightly on the frosty stone, they hurried to tack and saddle their steeds. At least, since they did not expect to be in the saddle for any great length of time, they did not have to fit the saddle bags and load up with supplies. Thus in a matter of minutes they led their horses out.
Arnau stood shivering, peering around them at a large unit of Byzantine infantry, their kite-shaped shields painted brightly in red, shirts of chain gleaming, axes or swords in hand. He couldn’t see Bochard for some time, then finally spotted the mounted figure of the preceptor over in one of the other gardens. Ramon put a hand to his arm, holding him back.
‘Don’t follow too close. Whatever he’s doing, I suspect he will not want us with him, else he would have commanded it before now. Let us follow him at a distance. He is bound for the Blachernae Gate in the city walls, I’d wager. Let us move circuitously to the same place.’
They led their horses rather than mounting, being less conspicuous among the infantry that way, and passed through two gardens and across a courtyard behind the main imperial palace building. As they moved, they passed heavy cataphracti cavalry, armoured from head to toe, horse included, a unit of stocky, narrow-eyed men in fur hats with composite bows, and infantry with long lances. Doukas meant business.
At the lower end of the slope a small internal gate led out of the palace complex proper and met the Blachernae Gate. Arnau and Ramon approached and, spotting Bochard sitting astride his charger close to the gate, dipped into a side alley where they positioned themselves so that they could just see around the corner enough to observe Bochard. There they waited.
‘This feels wrong,’ Arnau murmured quietly after a while.
‘Why?’
‘It feels as though we are spying on the preceptor.’
‘That is because we are spying on the preceptor. I am no great lover of such subterfuge either, Vallbona, but we cannot afford to be left in the dark now. Bochard has lurked, cajoled, negotiated and visited numerous monasteries and the like, but I have never seen him without the company of a priest or a noble or one of his Frankish contacts. I have never seen him armed for war, and with what is about to happen, such changes make me nervous. The man has done nothing yet outside the bounds of the Rule, and I simply cannot challenge him until he does, but if we do not keep our eyes open, how will we know whether he does or not?’
Arnau nodded. He still didn’t like it, but he couldn’t argue with the logic either.
They continued to wait, and after perhaps half an hour a short chorus of horns blew in the palace, followed by the distinctive sound of several thousand men and horses moving. Arnau steeled himself, and at Ramon’s silent signal he mounted. The two men sat ahorse for a few minutes more until the imperial army approached the gate. Arnau watched with interest. Doukas led his troops in the military finery of an emperor, looking like a Roman of old, several hundred Warings and his senior officers accompanying him, barring the Laskaris brothers for they came next, with Constantine leading the infantry and Theodoros the cavalry.
Further noises drew t
he Templars’ attention then, and they turned to see a small mounted party of officers accompanying three priests on horseback, the central one of whom bore the sacred icon of the Blachernae, the Holy Mother with the infant Jesu on her arm, gesturing to him in the old Eastern way, with three fingers extended.
This was the icon that protected the city, which brought hope and morale to the people. It seemed it was now to accompany the army. Several things clicked into place in Arnau’s head and left him feeling distinctly nervous.
‘Ramon…’
‘I know.’
‘The icon.’
‘I know.’
Clicking into place. Bochard had been gathering relics, and his hungry eyes had repeatedly fallen upon the most precious items in the city: the shroud of the Saviour, the nails of the cross… the icon of the Holy Mother. Click. Bochard had made many, many visits to the Blachernae church where the icon was kept. Click. Arnau remembered the face of the Blachernae’s priest when he’d left Bochard’s rooms in anger. Click. The preceptor had been there again with an escort of Frankish knights, on the day when Arnau and Ramon’s curiosity had earned them a crossbow bolt. Click. It came as no surprise that Bochard coveted the icon. That was plain. That he had tried to obtain it by purchase, by argument and possibly even by force that day with the Franks. Had he even tried theft? But the icon was the city’s most precious relic, and no one within Constantinople would willingly let it go. The fact that the icon was accompanying the army and Bochard was here ahorse and armed for war was no coincidence.
Click.
‘Would he really?’
Ramon shrugged. ‘For his soul’s sake I hope not, but it rather looks that way.’
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