A Place Called Armageddon

by C. C. Humphreys

  ‘Of course I will,’ he replied, not looking back. ‘Do you think I am a fool?’

  She watched him fumbling at the bar. ‘I do,’ she whispered, and smiled. The Jew had been good for a while, easily satisfied in their bed, teaching her many things beyond it. Of the Kabbalah; and especially secrets of the alchemical art. She had become adept in the basics of both. But it was his greatest desire, confessed in cooling sweat after lovemaking, that had suddenly revealed her destiny.

  ‘It is the original text,’ he’d sighed. ‘Annotated in Geber’s own hand. Centuries old, yet with forgotten knowledge that, remembered now, would make me the greatest alchemist in the world.’

  He’d sighed again, with greater lust than she’d ever brought forth, and she’d thought immediately, clearly: how valuable must this document be? This ancient scroll, collecting dust in a monastery in the city they call the Red Apple.

  From that first mention of it, she was distracted. Less attentive to his needs. Plotting the way ahead. He had begun to strike her. The first time he did, he wrote his fate. Yet figs were not in season.

  The door opened. He was gone.

  She began to dress swiftly, in men’s clothes. While she did, she wondered, where next? She had a year and a day at least. Or perhaps the question was, who next? She knew he was out there, waiting in the shadows. She had seen him too, in the stars. In dreams. Two men of destiny stalked them. The young man who’d just left, armed with her prophecy, was one. But who was this other?

  Something her visitors had discussed came to mind. A man, a German, who understood Greek Fire. He was a danger to their cause. ‘Johannes Grant,’ she muttered, stumbling over the hard sounds as the man known as Erol had. Then she smiled. She would find this German. Kill this German. For as much as the man who’d just left wanted the Red Apple to fall, so did she. Besides, the German’s death would bring a great deal of gold. She’d need that, now she was losing her protector.

  She heard the first cry, her ex-lover’s. Isaac was hailing the recent guest in his house. ‘Farewell,’ she said, and stooped for her bag.

  They had stood before the door for a few moments, clearing the sulphur from their lungs with river mist, so had only taken a few steps when the door behind them opened again and a voice called. They turned to see a man striding swiftly towards them. ‘Lord of lords of this world,’ called the man – a Jew by his garb. ‘Greetings, oh balm of the world. Oh bringer of light.’ He knelt before them, arms spread wide. ‘Oh most noble Sultan of Rum,’ he cried.

  Hamza felt almost sorry for the Jew. His master never liked to be recognised on his midnight outings. His anger could be swift and violent. Tonight, freighted with frustrated lust, and with prophecy, it wasn’t an importuning subject on the ground before him. It was a threat to his very destiny.

  ‘Cur!’ screamed his companion, stepping forward, backhanding the man across the face, knocking him into the dust. ‘Hold him, Hamza.’

  There was no choice, and little conscience. The word of the man he served was final. He had learned that from the old sultan. And if it had been true of the even-tempered Murad, it was even more so of his fiery son, Mehmet.

  As Hamza took his arms, Mehmet reached forward and pulled the man’s head up by the hair. ‘What is your name?’ he shouted.

  ‘I … I … Isaac, master.’

  Mehmet laughed. ‘Isaac?’ He looked at Hamza. ‘Son of Abraham, as we all are. But I see no ram in a bush nearby. So there is no need to seek elsewhere for a sacrifice.’

  One of Mehmet’s titles, that the Jew had left out, was ‘possessor of men’s necks’. And he made the slitting of this one look almost easy, though it never was. Hamza held the twitching body at arm’s length, trying to keep the spraying blood off both his master and himself, only partly succeeding. Yet what he thought about as life left was how the sorceress’s first prophecy had already come true. Then, as he lowered the body to the ground, he realised that was wrong.

  She hadn’t seen this. She’d ordered it.

  I will watch out for this sorceress, he thought.

  The other man leaned down, and wiped his blade on the dead man’s cloak. ‘A throat cut. A sacrifice made,’ Mehmet said, smiling. ‘Now, Hamza, let us go and cut the throat of a city. Let us go to Constantinople.’

  – TWO –

  Prayers

  Genoa, Italy

  2 November 1452

  It was hard to find God in Genoa.

  At least, it had become hard for her. Sofia was sure the Genoese managed it. It had to be her fault. Her weakness.

  The master who had painted the ikons in her wooden altar was not weak. His belief shone in his dazzling brushstrokes, in those depicted – Madonna and the Infant Christ. Saints either side venerated the holy pair. The paintings had always inspired her, centred her, joined her to the Divine. Yet now she knelt before them mouthing words, inhaling incense, seeking union, feeling … nothing. Because she kept hearing her son’s laugh, her daughter’s cry. She’d turn away from God to the door – and remember that they weren’t there. Half a year since her husband had taken her away from Constantinople. Half a year, and they were growing and changing beyond her sight.

  Her husband. Sofia heard him moving around the other room, awake at last. He had come in after dawn, and had collapsed, wine-heavy, onto the bed beside her. She’d thought to leave him, try and pray, but he had pulled her back and taken her, which he had not done in months. Taken her swiftly, caring nothing for her. After he’d collapsed immediately into sleep, she’d managed to slide from beneath him, gone to her house altar, knelt, sought God. She had not found Him.

  Yet. Perhaps it was a demon that afflicted her? There was one, the Demon of Midday, who brought this sluggish despair. Reaching beneath into her robes, she pulled out her enkolpia. It was an amulet her mother had given her, a picture of St Demetrios worked in lapis lazuli. Lifting it to her forehead, she closed her eyes and tried to pray.

  ‘Do you beseech God for our coupling to give us another child?’

  Theon’s voice startled her. She hadn’t heard the door open. He was standing in the doorway, already half dressed in his under robe and socks. She rose, letting the amulet fall against her breast. ‘I will fetch you food,’ she said, moving to the shelves where provisions were kept.

  ‘I want nothing. Maybe some water. I must go out.’

  ‘Then I will bring you water,’ she said. It was on the balcony off the bedroom. At home, a snap of fingers would have summoned three servants to do her bidding. Here, one sullen girl came by later in the day, to cook and clean. Sofia tried to go past him in the doorway as she spoke, but he took her arm, preventing her. ‘You did not answer me,’ he said.

  What was his question? The Demon of Midday still held her in its thrall. Oh, something about another child. ‘If it is God’s will,’ she said, and tried again to move past him.

  He did not let her. ‘Hasn’t man something to do with it?’ he asked, his grip tightening. ‘Shall we plant more seeds and see?’ She was never good at hiding her feelings. He must have noted her revulsion, because he smiled, released her.

  She dipped the ladle into the amphora and took her time filling a water jug. She needed to think. What was this talk of children? He hardly ever touched her. She knew he had other women. She did not care. What did he need her for?

  She replaced the ladle on its hook. He could hire a whore to fetch his water, cater to all his needs. She had served the small purpose he had brought her to Genoa for in the first week, so perhaps … perhaps he would let her go home. Where her city, her children and, she hoped, God awaited her.

  He was standing by their scrap of mirror, tidying his beard with a blade. She put the jug beside him, went to the wardrobe to fetch his tunic and cloak. Laying them carefully across the arms of a chair, she straightened and looked at him. ‘Theon … Husband.’

  His reflected eyes flicked to her. ‘Sofia. Wife,’ he replied, a slight smile for the formality.

  Her hands c
lasped and unclasped before her. ‘I wish to know … I wish to ask …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I wish to ask if I may go home before you.’

  His blade paused at his throat. ‘Go home? When my mission here is not complete?’

  She swallowed. ‘I do not see … I am not sure what use I am. You do not seem to need me here.’

  ‘Need? Does a man not always need his loving wife beside him?’ His voice was uninflected, all the more mocking for that.

  She breathed, spoke softly. ‘You said that my presence would aid the cause you plead. That I would make the Genoese think on chivalry, when they considered the fate of the women of Constantinople if they do not act.’

  He resumed shaving. ‘I think your appearance at the welcoming feast did that. For about a minute. After which these Italians briefly focused on your voluptuousness and envied the Turks their possible fortune.’ He laughed. ‘Then once chivalry and lust were dealt with, they reverted to the only thing truly important to them. Profit.’

  She was no longer shocked by his levity – even when he was discussing the possible rape of his wife by infidels. But she had hoped for better from the men of Genoa. ‘Are they not concerned about God?’

  ‘God?’ Theon laughed. ‘I think he ranks somewhere down their list of priorities.’

  Maybe it was her own self-doubt before the altar. Or maybe her noble parents stirred in her. For she felt her first flush of anger in a long while. ‘And yet you spend much of your time in discussing how we can sell our vision of God for Roman gold, do you not, husband?’

  He turned to look at her. ‘Well, well,’ he said softly, ‘I think that is the first passion I have seen from you in an age. I certainly saw none this morning.’ He waved his razor at the other room, turned again to the mirror and his toilet. ‘So are you come to the belief of your cousin Loukas Notaras? Would you rather see a turban in the Hagia Sophia than a Roman mitre?’

  As quickly as her anger came, it went. Though she had been educated like any noblewoman – she could read and write well – her husband had been trained almost from birth. Years of schooling under rigorous tutors, university and a dozen diplomatic missions had honed his mind far sharper than the razor he wielded. There was no point in arguing with him. Besides, she didn’t believe, like so many did, that to give up aspects of the Orthodox faith and reunite the Churches of East and West was a sin. She still trusted in God to save her city. But unlike many there, she knew that God needed men’s help. Men in armour, with cannon and crossbow.

  ‘You know I do not. All …’ she hurried over his interruption, because she knew if she gave him a chance he would use her like a whetstone for the wit he would deploy in the confrontations of the day, ‘all I now ask is that you consider letting me return. Our children need me. And I believe I can be more use to our city there than here. As you have said, I have already fulfilled my … meagre purpose.’ She lowered her eyes.

  ‘Well.’ He considered, looking above her. ‘I do need to send messages back to the Council. My talks here are almost concluded and then I must go briefly on to Rome and rejoin the main embassy.’ He studied her for a moment, then returned to the mirror. ‘I will think on it.’

  She turned to the bedroom, unwilling to show him hope on the open book of her face. His voice halted her. ‘But you can do something for me.’

  She did not turn. ‘Of course. What?’

  ‘That enkolpia you wear. Give it to me.’

  She looked down. Fool that she was, she had not tucked her amulet away within her tunic. ‘It is my protection and … and my mother gave it to me.’

  ‘God is our protection – or so you always tell me, wife. Your mother, bless her memory, is dead. And the funds the embassy left with me have nearly run out. I need the means to bribe one more minor official here. You have them round your neck, in gold and lapis.’ In the mirror he returned the gaze she gave him. ‘And what’s left might buy your passage home.’

  She knew he could have just taken it. She could not have denied him, as she could not have denied him that morning. But she also knew he was using her as his whetstone still. He would spend his day trying to win arguments. He might as well begin with her.

  She lifted the gold chain from round her neck, kissed the amulet once, and laid it on the table. Then she continued to the bedroom, closing the door on his soft laughter.

  Theon stepped through the iron grille onto the street. His bodyguards rose from beside the entrance but he did not acknowledge them. They would follow. They would defend him, if the odds were not too great. They did not exist beyond their function. And he wanted to remain for a moment in the rooms he’d left, even as he walked away from them.

  He observed his sense of triumph and wondered at it. Such minor victories, scarcely worth the fight, against an opponent who barely fought back. He had given her what she asked for, when he’d been planning to send her back anyway. In return he’d taken something she loved, for which he had a slight use. He had taken her, though it probably gave him as little pleasure as she. But that was not about pleasure, he reminded himself. That he got elsewhere, and the sending away was part of it, so he could indulge himself without even the slight restraint that Sofia provided. It was not about the hope for more children – the two he barely knew back in Constantinople were proof enough to the world of his potency.

  What was it, he wondered, that he had once gone to such lengths to obtain? Her beauty? He had not been immune to it, but it had not driven him. The fact that she seemed to possess a secret? Well, all people were locks and his delight was in seeking their key. He’d been disappointed to discover that hers was little more than a deep capacity for love – for God, for her city, for her children … even for him, if he’d chosen to accept it. He had not. Love blunted, it did not sharpen. He observed it, as he did everything else.

  As he turned into the Piazza de Ferrari, his larger bodyguard opening a passage in the noonday crowd, he realised what the small triumph was. Heard it like the faintest echo of a greater triumph.

  He hadn’t conquered Sofia. He’d conquered his brother. He’d conquered their love – observed it, taken it, severed it. It was his first real triumph in a battle that had begun in the cradle. In the womb, no doubt. He had preceded his brother by a breath and it had been the only time he had beaten him to anything. Gregoras had always been faster, stronger, near as skilled in rhetoric, far more skilled in arms. Yet who had ultimately won? Who had taken for wife the girl they’d grown up with? And where was Gregoras now? Dead, probably. Disfigured, certainly, the beauty that had come from their mother, and manifested only in the one twin, marred. Wit had triumphed over beauty. Brother over brother.

  Theon chuckled, surprised that this old victory still gave him such pleasure. Far, far more than the fruits of it had given him that morning.

  They’d reached the entrance to the Doge’s palace. Piero was announcing him to the gate guard. Over the hubbub of solicitors demanding entrance, Theon heard his other servant, Cassin, arguing. He turned – and saw that his man had his hand on the chest of a large Turk, whose outstretched arms spread his robes wide to show he was unarmed, whose dark brown eyes sought Theon’s.

  ‘Let him come,’ Theon called, and Cassin stepped back, allowing the Turk closer, but not near.

  ‘Peace be with you,’ the Turk said.

  ‘And with you and all your family, friend,’ Theon replied, the Osmanlica coming as easily as the second tongue it was for him. ‘What is your desire?’

  ‘Only this, most esteemed. To inform you that my master, Hamza Bey, seeks conference with you this night.’

  Theon had heard of Hamza, a rising man at the new sultan’s court. He was surprised to hear he was in Genoa but kept that surprise from his face. ‘When and where?’

  ‘At the ninth hour of the evening, excellence. My master has taken a room for the purpose above the tavern of the Blue Boar.’

  ‘I know it. Tell your master I shall be honoured to meet him there.�
��

  The messenger nodded, bowed, and was gone.

  A Turk wants to meet me in a tavern, Theon thought. Perhaps the bishop I am about to bribe will take me to a brothel?

  He allowed himself another chuckle. After several weeks, he now knew, almost to the ducat, what concessions the Genoese would demand for their aid. It would be very interesting to hear later what the Turk had to offer.

  – THREE –

  Rhinometus

  Genoa

  The same day

  Gregoras ignored the mockery, the disparagement of parentage, the comparisons of his marred beauty with a donkey’s puckered arse. Another time he would have given as good as he received, traded verbal blows; triumphed too, for his years of schooling had given him thrusts that most of the illiterate mercenaries lying around the courtyard of the Black Cock tavern could not parry. But their rough jests were not ill-meant; it was their way of expressing pleasure at his return. He had fought with them in a dozen campaigns, and they appreciated his skills of war even as they winced at his wit.

  Later, perhaps, he thought. Later to sit down with Half-Ear Mario or Giovanni One Thumb and compare mislaid body parts, losing himself in camaraderie and flagons of wine. First, though, he needed money, and plenty of it. For that he had to see one man.

  ‘Rhinometus!’ came the bellow as soon as he stepped into the room. ‘Now I know we are doomed, boys, when this beakless raven appears!’

  ‘Eminence.’ Gregoras bowed, sweeping off his hat with a flourish, holding the courtesy.

  ‘Eminent arseholes, Zoran. Where have you been? I have had messengers out for you for months now. I thought we were going to have to set forth without our talisman of ill-fortune. Rather have it beside me than levelling his crossbow at me, eh?’

  Gregoras rose from his bow. Giovanni Giustiniani Longo had changed little in the year since they’d last fought together. A little greyer, a little stouter perhaps, but still the tall and vigorous figure he had followed over ship’s gunwales and through breaches, dressed as ever in his blue-black armour, the large medallion of San Pietro ever at his throat. Like most killing men, the great mercenary leader was deeply religious. Superstitious, too. Years before, in a galley fight off Crete, Gregoras had deflected a crossbow bolt that would have ripped out the Commander’s throat. The Genoan had considered him his lucky star ever since.