City of God

by S. J. A. Turney

  ‘See what we have. All this I have saved from ruin, Brother de Juelle. All of this will be kept sacred because of me.’

  ‘Pride is a deadly sin, Bochard,’ Ramon reminded him in flat tones.

  ‘So is the murder of other Christians,’ snapped Bochard. ‘Yet you happily cut down men of God on the walls for your heretic friends. I have told you once, and now twice, de Juelle, do not lecture me. I shall not tell you again. And while you kill our brothers, I—’

  Arnau saw it coming. He jumped, but there was nothing he could do. In a horrifying, slow-moving tableau, he watched Bochard turn once more, gesturing sharply with that gore-coated mace at the relics in the corner, thrusting out his arm with violent fury. He saw Sebastian, who had helped his fellow squire gather up the fallen relic and was now moving across to stand with Ramon once more.

  He watched in sick horror as the steel flange of the mace smashed accidentally into Sebastian’s forehead. He saw the bone crack and the terrible weapon push inside. Sebastian cried out, his forehead crumpling.

  Ramon moved instantly and Bochard, still turning, stared in shock. As though he might undo what he had done, he pulled his arm back instinctively, though it did no good. He could not unmake the wound. The mace, covered now with fresh gore, lowered. Sebastian took a shaky step forward. His forehead was mangled and blood was sheeting down, pouring over his eyes. He looked like a thing of nightmare.

  Bochard dropped the mace as though it had suddenly become white-hot, still staring at Sebastian as the boy took another step. He gurgled something unintelligible and dropped to his knees, beginning to shake. Arnau looked back and forth in horror between the preceptor and the dying squire, his mind’s eye hurled back over the months to that dusty road in Armenian Cilicia, and Bochard crouched over the body of an armoured youth, his face white.

  The preceptor’s face had gone pale once more, one eyelid jumping and flickering. His mouth dropped open wordlessly. Arnau stared at him and knew suddenly that something in Bochard had broken. Something that had been building since their arrival, and probably long before. Something since the death of the boy on the road? Most likely something since the death of so many civilians in the streets of Cyprus. Something had snapped.

  ‘What have you done?’ snapped Ramon as Arnau hurried forward and reached out to the shaking boy. With a closer view he could see that the point of the flange had smashed through the skull. He turned. Ramon was looking at him. He shook his head and turned back to Ramon’s squire.

  ‘I am so sorry, Sebastian. I really am.’

  Had he needed confirmation that the lad had lost the power of conscious thought, it came as he drew his misericorde from his belt and lifted it, ready to deliver the coup de grâce and Sebastian’s blood-soaked eyes just followed the movements with no fear, moving on instinct alone. With a sense of infinite sadness, he reached to the waist of Sebastian’s mail shirt, lifting the heavy links with his left hand. As it reached the level of his shoulders, Arnau carefully positioned his knife, adjusting it a couple of times due to the increased shaking of the boy and then, with as much force as he could muster, drove the narrow blade deep into the squire’s heart. Pulling the blade back out with a gout of blood, he allowed the mail shirt to fall and cut off the crimson flow. The lad continued to shake for a few moments more, falling face first on the flagstones and shuddering in a growing pool of blood, but quickly shook to a halt and then lay still. Reaching down, it took only moments to find the icon the boy had carried his whole life with the order. It was dry. Had it truly cried that morning? Somehow Arnau was a lot less sceptical about it now than he’d been earlier.

  He turned as he rose to his feet, icon gripped tight in his hand, about as angry as he’d ever been.

  The fury he felt evaporated at the first sight of Bochard. He’d intended to cast the icon at Bochard with some snide comment about the value of relics, but his grip remained tight. The preceptor was staring at the body on the floor with a look of abject horror. Every snarling accusation Arnau had felt building up inside ready to launch at Bochard died on his tongue. Nothing Arnau could possible say to Bochard could be worse for the man than what he was clearly currently inflicting upon himself.

  ‘I…’ was all the preceptor could manage.

  ‘We are leaving,’ Ramon said in a dead, flat tone to the preceptor. Bochard simply nodded, wide-eyed, still staring at the bloodied heap on the floor.

  He turned to Arnau. ‘He is gone. At peace now.’

  The younger knight nodded, silently, then reached down and gently rolled over the body so that the squire’s blood-filled eyes peered up sightlessly at Heaven. He drew a cross lightly over the horrible wound on the forehead, cringing as he did so, then looked up.

  ‘We commend to you, oh Lord, the soul of this your servant Sebastian, and beseech you, Christ, Redeemer of the World, that, as in your love for him you became man, so now you would grant to admit him into the number of the blessed. May all the saints and elect of God, who, on earth, suffered for the sake of Christ, intercede for him so that, when freed from the prison of his body, he may be admitted into the kingdom of Heaven: through the merits of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, world without end. May the blessing of God Almighty the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost descend upon you and remain with you always. Amen.’

  He rose slowly.

  ‘Do you suppose someone will bury him? I hate to think of what will happen otherwise.’

  Ramon nodded. ‘I hope so, but we cannot focus on that now. It is time to leave.’ He pointed at Bochard and then at the door. ‘Go.’

  Meekly, as though commanded by a superior, Bochard stepped over to the door, face still grey and eyes wide, body moving like an automaton. As Ramon guided the stunned preceptor, Arnau gestured to the man’s squire, who was cowering in the corner near the relics, terrified.

  ‘Come on. We are all leaving.’

  Hugues nodded, still bordering on panic, and struggled to gather up armfuls of things.

  ‘Don’t be stupid man, leave them.’

  With a hesitant nod, the squire dropped back most of what he was carrying, hugging to himself the one hastily wrapped package that Sebastian had helped him gather up so recently. Arnau hadn’t the heart to tell him to leave it, given the way he was clinging so tightly to it.

  Urging the terrified squire from the room, Arnau followed the others out into the corridor. At Ramon’s gesture, he ducked into their room. They had brought little with them that they could not afford to lose, and Arnau gathered up the bare essentials and thrust them in a leather bag, throwing it over his shoulder and following the older knight back out into the corridor.

  Bochard was standing at the window.

  ‘They come. They come now,’ he said, his voice strangely hollow. Arnau leaned in to peer past him. At the very limit of his vision, far off to the left, he could make out fighting on the palace’s boundary wall. The Franks were in the Blachernae and closing on this area. If they did not leave now, they might never get to do so.

  Ramon was already at the stairs, hurrying down them with a clatter and shush of mail, urgency in his every movement. It was perhaps another sign of how Bochard had been thrown by his action that he simply stood there, staring, until Arnau nudged his shoulder and pointed to the stairs. ‘Go.’

  The preceptor did so, still in his mechanical way, as though not truly with them, his limbs being moved by some phantom puppeteer. The squire, hugging his bundle, followed on. As they burst from the doorway below, Arnau’s heart leaped into his throat. To their left a mob of Crusaders, the colourful surcoats of knights mixed in the steel and drab jackets of their men-at-arms, was surging across the grass. A force of eight Warings had emerged from another doorway and was running to intercept the much larger force. It would be a slaughter. The Warings would be swiftly overcome by Franks. Ramon gestured to the gate.

  ‘The horses,’ shouted Arnau, pointing towards the stable building, horribly awar
e that it would mean running in the direction of that violent conflict to retrieve the beasts.

  ‘No time. Come on.’

  Leading the others, Ramon ran across to the gateway. A glance up and left as they ran showed that more Franks were on the wall top coming this way, overcoming small parties of defenders as they went. Once they reached this gate, they could control all access to and from the palace. Anyone inside would be effectively trapped. How close they had come to being part of this great tragedy.

  Arnau threw up silent thanks to the Lord as they reached the archway. In the last light of the day he could just make out the barred gate blocking their way and the four Byzantine spearmen, their weapons crossed, denying the Templars any exit.

  ‘Stand aside,’ bellowed Ramon in Greek, but the men remained still.

  ‘Let us out,’ he snarled.

  One of the guards shook his head. ‘By order of the Blachernae’s commander all gates are to remain barred in the current crisis.’

  Current crisis? What did the man think was happening?

  ‘There is precious little point holding this gate, man,’ Ramon spat, pointing back out into the courtyard. ‘Hundreds of howling Franks are already inside, heading this way, and they’re atop the wall, too. Now open the damned gate.’

  The man had the grace to look concerned, and Arnau stepped forward to join his friend, hand going to his waist, pulling the mace from his belt. As he raised it there was a blood-curdling howl at his shoulder making him jump in shock, and suddenly Bochard was on him, gripping the mace and bellowing like a wounded animal. Arnau, shocked to the core, reeled back and put up no resistance as Bochard tore the mace from his hand and cast it away as though it stank of Hell itself. Panting, the preceptor, still wide-eyed, stared at him. Arnau started to feel distinctly uncomfortable under that glare, and perhaps the seeming mania of the preceptor had got to the Byzantines too, for they were now hurrying to lift the bar from the gate, more to get rid of the raving madman before them than for Ramon’s benefit.

  The sounds of combat rolled across the courtyard outside as the great timber gate was swung open. With just a nod to the guards, Ramon led the others outside, and Arnau felt a mix of panic and relief as they emerged into the open. The Blachernae had fallen. In a matter of minutes, the imperial apartments themselves would be ransacked by marauding Franks. They would be standing at the window in the Templars’ room where they themselves had waited over the past year, watching the siege ebb and flow outside the walls.

  They were out of the Blachernae now, but still in a city being swiftly consumed by a victorious enemy force. Indeed, the Franks and Venetians presented only one of three great dangers that Arnau became aware of in an instant. In addition, he could see a flood of humanity surging through the city, fleeing the fighting and the Franks within the walls. Such a desperate mob could do anything and might be almost as dangerous as the enemy. And finally, above and beyond all that, in the increasingly mauve sky of sunset, rising black clouds spoke of fresh disaster.

  The city was on fire again.

  Chapter 22: Byzantium’s Fall

  April 13th 1204

  Arnau shoved the man hard until he staggered, tripped on the kerbstone and fell back with a cry. Others were pushing and shoving now. He felt someone grabbing his mantle and, as he pulled away, felt the material tear. Freed from the grasping hands, he followed the others into the alleyway. Someone behind him bellowed and he turned and lashed out with a mailed fist without even looking. His punch connected with some bony part of a figure now largely hidden in the shadowy alley.

  He ran.

  Ahead, the squire was clutching his precious bundle and trying to guide Bochard who was still moving with a sort of detached mindlessness, as though not fully in control of his own faculties. Only Ramon was alert and ready, leading the small party.

  The sun was down now, just at the level of the horizon, casting a last reach of golden fingers over the fallen city. Shadows lengthened and deepened in every corner, giving the streets a dangerous, eerie look. The last day of Byzantium was almost at an end. Arnau shook his head. He had to stop thinking in such poetic terms about one of the worst disasters of which he’d ever heard.

  Constantinople was dying, though. Half occupied by bloodthirsty and victorious Franks and Venetians, flooding with desperate, terrified and angry citizens all hoping to get out beyond the walls to safety, sections burned out, others freshly aflame, the emperor and his Warings retreated to a waterside palace to make a last stand and the council of nobles as useless as ever.

  Arnau had thought that escaping the Blachernae into the city before the invading Franks closed them in was paramount, and that relative safety would await them outside. How wrong he had been. They had emerged into the city just before the Franks stormed the gate house behind them, seizing control of the Blachernae palace complex, and had hurried along the wide thoroughfare towards the large sprawling monastery of Saint Saviour and the great Mese street, breathing heavy sighs of relief.

  But as they approached the monastery, they began to meet crowds of refugees, and suddenly the red crosses on their chests marked them out as targets. Those more able and angry among the fleeing Byzantines bellowed their hate and anger at the Westerners among them and rained fists upon them as they passed, assaulting and accusing. They had escaped the first press of refugees with bruises and contusions and slipped away, racing through narrow alleys until they were alone.

  Ramon and Arnau had to take control of this journey, as had been made clear in that first moment of trouble. Bochard was broken. When the Byzantines had attacked him, he had neither fought back nor made to defend himself. As Arnau had looked around in the press for him, he had seen Bochard standing defenceless with his hands raised, a look of blank acceptance on his face. Arnau had been forced to drag him away. The squire had been little help either. All he seemed to care about was the bundle he carried, which he hunched over and protected like a helpless child. So it was that the two knights had taken the roles of van- and rearguard, herding their companions along.

  From the backstreets near the monastery, they had kept to the narrow alleys, avoiding the floods of people on the main roads, moving slowly and carefully. Clearly now, with the chaos and the panic, the crowds of Byzantines presented as much of a danger to the knights as the Franks ever had. Thus they kept to the shadows.

  The Mese had presented difficulties. Their goal was the Golden Gate, since the other gates in the city walls had been filled with rubble and blocked with beams and iron bars to present a better defence against the Crusaders. The citizens might be flooding towards the nearest exit, but they would be disappointed. From their tours of the walls during the preparations, Arnau and Ramon knew well that the only gate that could realistically open to disgorge the population was the Golden Gate. Unlike most of the openings in the land walls, the Golden Gate consisted of a huge and powerful towered gate with a second, still-strong outer gate beyond it, connected to the ramparts with walls of its own, forming a small fortress. With the moat running around the outside, it was defensible enough that the emperor had left it without being completely sealed, against the possibility the Byzantine forces might need a ready portal from which to march.

  Sooner or later every desperate man, woman and child in the city would find themselves at that gate, filtering through.

  At the Mese, then, the small party of four men had been forced to cross the flood of humanity in the great wide street. They had spent a quarter-hour lurking in the shadows, waiting for a lull in the movement, but it had soon become clear that there would be no such lull.

  Taking a deep breath, they had forged out into the flow like a man attempting to swim across a fast and strong river. It had taken every bit of strength they could muster to stay together, Ramon and Arnau keeping close, herding their companions through the crowd as angry Byzantines landed blow after blow on them, howling their hatred of the West.

  Now Arnau pulled into the shadows again, breathing heavil
y. They had made it across the greatest of Constantinople’s streets and into relative safety. Their chain shirts had absorbed much of the violence against them, since most of their assailants used only fists and elbows, and at the very worst a makeshift club. But still, when – if – they finally got to rest, the aches and pains would catch up and make life truly miserable. At least no one had broken a bone yet.

  Bochard’s squire rolled his shoulders, hissing at some wound he had taken in the mobile beating, checking his precious cargo. Bochard stood limp, like a discarded doll. His face was a mass of bruises from the beatings he had taken. Arnau and Ramon had agreed from the first moment of trouble not to draw a weapon. They would defend themselves as best they could, but these people were only attacking them out of terror and righteous anger, and neither man felt they could deliberately hurt the refugees.

  ‘The time has come to hide our crosses,’ Ramon said.

  ‘How?’

  The older knight reached up. A line of cord hung from one side of the alley to the other, drab washing pinned to it. He grasped a voluminous tunic and pulled until it came free. In moments he had removed his mantle, folding it and stuffing it into his belt, having to loosen it by several notches. Then he shrugged into the huge grey garment. He still looked like a Westerner, but at least he did not stand out as a Crusader now.

  Arnau looked around, up side streets until he spotted what looked like a long brown cloak. Grabbing it, he did the same. It smelled of smoke and damp wool, which made his stomach churn, but it would help him move through the city unmolested and was therefore, right now, more valuable than gold. A few more minutes and they managed to find garments to cover the other two. The squire slipped into his without argument. Bochard numbly accepted what they did as they removed his mantle and covered him with a green woollen tunic. Arnau did notice a flinch as the cross came off and another as the wool settled on his shoulders. Was it automatic? Had Bochard been a brother of the Order for so long that even when his mind had apparently disconnected from his body, he still felt the wrench of his cross being removed, or did it perhaps indicate that Bochard was still there somewhere, and might be coaxed out once more?